What moves the price above $5,000
The base price covers the back-office core (what’s in it →). Each of these adds scope, and we quote each from your actual workflow rather than a tier chart:
- Quoting and invoicing — quotes that become invoices that chase themselves
- Scheduling and dispatch — jobs, crews, and a calendar that matches how you assign work
- A customer portal — the page your customers open, with your name on it
- SEO and traffic tracking — your website’s numbers on the same screen as your job numbers
- The assistant — it reads your records, drafts replies and follow-ups, and waits for your approval before anything sends
A full operation — the whole business running on one system — is the top of the range. For businesses replacing a serious software stack, we quote it against the stack: usually around half of one year of what you’re paying now. Send us the bill and we’ll give you the number.
The comparison that actually matters
A custom system is priced once. Rented software is priced forever. A Houston field-service company with 8 technicians on per-tech software at around $300 per tech per month — the middle of what users of the big platforms report paying — spends $2,400 a month: $28,800 a year, $86,400 over three years, and owns nothing at the end of it. Even a lean $1,000-a-month stack is $36,000 every three years. The full math, drawn to scale: what owning costs →
After a custom build, the only recurring cost is hosting, which runs on your own accounts and is paid straight to the host — typically a utility-bill amount, not a software bill. Nothing recurring comes to us.
When custom is NOT the right answer
If an off-the-shelf tool already fits how you work, costs you little, and you don’t mind renting it — keep it. Custom pays for itself when you’re paying real money every month, when you’ve bent your process around someone else’s software, or when your data is scattered across five tools that don’t talk to each other. If your whole software spend is $50 a month, a custom system is the wrong purchase, and we’ll tell you so on the first call.