Guide
Half of HVAC software vendors will not publish a price
Updated
Of six HVAC platforms read on 15 August 2026, three publish a rate card. The other three target larger contractors, where the demo is the price of the price.
Talk to a specialist Six US HVAC platforms, the four different things they bill you for, which three will not publish a price, and who lets you trial it on real jobs first.
Who publishes and who does not
ServiceM8, Kickserv and Housecall Pro all publish full rate cards you can read without giving anyone your phone number. ServiceTitan shows three tiers with a Request Pricing button on each. FieldEdge names three tiers and states that pricing can vary with the features you choose. FieldPulse states it is seat based and offers a custom quote in one conversation.
None of the three is hiding anything unusual. They are all selling a configured product where the number genuinely depends on the configuration. The cost to you is that comparison becomes sequential: you cannot line them up, you have to run three sales processes.
What an unpublished price usually means
Three things tend to travel with it. The first is an implementation or onboarding fee, which none of these three discloses. For a platform sold to multi-truck operations that figure is often the largest single line in year one and it does not appear in any comparison table, including ours.
The second is a contract term. FieldEdge is the only one of the six to publish one, and it is restrictive: downgrades are permitted only at the end of the current contract period. Read that as a year, and read it as meaning that buying too much is expensive to undo.
The third is that the trial disappears. FieldEdge states plainly that it does not offer a free trial because it prefers guided onboarding. ServiceTitan does not mention one. FieldPulse does not mention one. All three of the publishing vendors offer 14 to 30 days.
How to get a comparable number anyway
Ask every unpublished vendor the same four questions in writing, before the demo rather than after. First, the monthly cost for your exact headcount and job volume. Second, the one time implementation or onboarding fee.
Third, the contract length and what happens if you shrink. Fourth, the price in year two.
The last one matters most and is asked least. A discount that applies to year one and lapses afterwards is common in this category and is not a discount, it is a payment plan.
When paying for the demo process is right
This is not an argument for only buying published software. Contractors running many trucks with dispatch, inventory and payroll integration genuinely need configuration, and a rate card cannot express it. FieldEdge's position, that it would rather onboard you properly than let you fail alone in a trial, is a defensible one.
It is an argument for knowing which conversation you are entering. A two van HVAC firm can price itself in ten minutes on three of these six and start a trial the same day. That is a much cheaper way to find out you were wrong.