Housecall Pro vs Jobber vs ServiceTitan: Breaking Down Strengths and Weaknesses of Each

ServiceTitan: Field-Service Management Software Designed to Grow with Your Business

Something that separates ServiceTitan from Housecall Pro and Jobber is that we have focused on providing a more extensive software for a fewer number of specific service businesses, whereas our competitors offer lighter software options to a wider range of service businesses. 

Traditionally, our focus has been on serving HVAC, plumbing, electrician, garage door, and chimney sweep businesses. More recently, we’ve been expanding to serve other trades like landscaping, water treatment, and pest control.

Strengths

At ServiceTitan, we’re always trying to optimize our product. But there are six strengths in particular that our users gravitate to most.

1. Intuitive Mobile App That Preps Your Techs and Enables Upsells

Our mobile app transforms tablets into your tech’s go-to-tool to manage service and sales in the field. It can sync to our phone integration in your office, empowering your techs to have all the information they need to deliver outstanding service. Details like CSR notes and initial customer call recordings are easily accessible via the app, allowing for more accurate context and smoother customer interactions.

In addition, our mobile functionality allows your techs to provide a highly professional experience to customers when they’re in the field. And with the ability to present “Good, Better, Best” options, ServiceTitan customers reap the benefits of increased revenue from upsells (where customers are inclined to choose the “Better” and “Best” options when they’re presented with them). 

2. Accounting Software Integrations

Many service professionals appreciate that ServiceTitan plays well with other software. In particular, ServiceTitan works with QuickBooks, which is the most common accounting system used by our customers.

What makes ServiceTitan different when it comes to our QuickBooks integration is our Sync-As-You-Go feature. You see, most of our competitors who offer QuickBooks integrations don’t truly sync the two programs together in real time, which causes additional manual work on the back end to make the two tools work together. This can lead to duplicate records and errors in your bookkeeping, which can be a headache to resolve. And we’re talking about accounting here — one of the most important aspects of your business to get right. 

That’s why we created Sync-As-You-Go, which allows you to map your customer, vendor, and pricebook records before you transfer them into QuickBooks online or desktop. Ultimately, it prevents inaccuracies and additional work from office staff to resolve issues.

3. Detailed Reports for Making Better Business Decisions 

We offer service professionals deeper business insights compared to our competitors. And many business owners have noted that these reports are invaluable to them. With ServiceTitan, users have access to 150 pre-built reports. They cover all facets of your business, including inventory, customers, and marketing. 

In particular, our customers have found a lot of value in our field reporting dashboard, which helps you monitor your technician’s performance with time tracking, GPS tracking, and other useful metrics. 

In addition, our Marketing Scorecard feature gives you a bird’s eye perspective on all your advertising campaigns, organized in order of most revenue generated — which allows you to adjust your marketing budgets accordingly and get the most out of your spend. For example, you can see how your Google Ads are performing in comparison to your Mailchimp campaigns, and optimize your budgeting decisions as needed.

4. Gated Workflows for Facilitating Technician Accountability

As many service businesses grow and get busier, they find that their techs are less likely to follow some of the owner's best practices. For instance, neglecting to gather crucial information on the job or get the right signatures. 

Some shops actually have to downsize due to the customer experience being negatively impacted because they lose control of getting their techs to do what they're supposed to do. So to help with technician accountability, we’ve created gated workflows for:

• Ensuring techs get certain signatures or fill out certain checklists and forms 

• Making sure that techs timesheets are automatically tracked so you don't have to rely on them remembering 

• Giving a consistent customer experience

Many of our customers have found this to be an invaluable feature for providing top notch service at scale.

5. Streamlining Service Agreements with Ease of Use

With service agreements rising in popularity among service businesses, we’ve also paid ample attention to developing a solution that makes managing these agreements much easier. 

Set up only takes five minutes and users don't have to worry about any nuanced details. Using our Service Agreement interface, you have the option of offering prepaid membership checkups and tune-ups to your customers. 

From renewal agreements to discounts, to advanced features that allow you to prioritize your members based on profit maximization, ServiceTitan is fully equipped to help you manage these recurring customer relationships.

6. Simplifying Job Costing

In order for service businesses to remain profitable, getting their job costing right is absolutely essential. But pricing jobs is a notoriously difficult thing to execute on, and many service businesses fall victim to the costs of getting it wrong.

This is why we’ve dedicated significant focus to helping contractors get their pricing right — and, importantly, to do so consistently. We help users achieve this through our robust pricebook feature, which allows them to take into account all of the nuanced factors involved in pricing (including labor rate, overhead, membership agreements, material surcharges, and more).

These pricing elements are customizable and easy to update as they change. When updates are made to your pricebook, they’re immediately taken into account in your pricing system. That way, techs in the field have the ability to price jobs correctly, and you can maintain your profit margins.

Weaknesses

For some number of users, ServiceTitan can be intimidating. With a deeper suite of features, it takes some getting used to, especially for those who haven’t had a lot of experience working with software. 

Because of its catalog of features, ServiceTitan also requires a high upfront investment. If you have a tight budget, then our field service management software might not be for you. However, even though the cost is higher than our competitors, the returns are higher, too. 

In the past, our customer support has received mixed reviews. Because of our software’s fair amount of complexity, at times it takes speaking to multiple departments to resolve an issue. This has led to frustration for some users with our customer service in the past. But, we’ve been working diligently to improve this, and as a result our unresolved support tickets are down to as low as 2-3%.

Note: With that said, many software companies don’t provide the option to talk to live support agents, instead making customers email and wait days to hear from someone. With ServiceTitan, you’ll be able to speak to someone as soon as they are available. But of course, when you service 50,000 technicians, the incoming calls can sometimes have a wait time. 

Lastly, we don’t currently offer progressive billing. So if your customer base wants to pay in installments, we can't facilitate this right now.

Who ServiceTitan Is Best for

There are a few qualities that make a service business a particularly good fit to choose ServiceTitan:

1. They’re looking for a tool that connects their techs in the field with their office staff, and helps both parties do their job better, more efficiently, and more profitably.

2. They’re looking for a digital solution that will continue to support them as they grow (avoiding switching costs associated with adapting a more powerful tool in the future).

3. They’re looking to centralize their entire business operation in one, streamlined system.

Field service businesses who want to expand stand to benefit the most. Oftentimes, they’re companies that see software as an investment in their future. In fact, many of our users have managed to increase revenue by five to six-figures due to increased efficiencies across their business with ServiceTitan. When they see the big picture, most of them acknowledge that the upfront costs are minor in comparison to the returns over time.

Housecall Pro: Software with a Strong Community

First things first — we are not affiliated with or entitled to speak for Housecall Pro.  Everything we write here is our opinion and a good faith effort to compare products.

Housecall Pro is software that's empowering a wide swath of service professionals. From dog walkers to janitorial services, they aim to serve as many industries as possible. Housecall Pro offers a suite of features, but it makes the most impact among its users with dispatch management.

Strengths

To begin with, Housecall Pro has a mobile app available for both iPhone and Android. They possess an attractive design, accentuated with a sleek dashboard. Service professionals praise the software’s modern feel and ease of use. Thanks to its simplistic build, new users can get up and running with Housecall Pro in a few hours.

Above all else, Housecall Pro’s greatest strength is its community. It does a fantastic job engaging with customers, especially through content like podcasts. One of its co-founders, Roland Ligtenberg, is active on social media and he interacts with customers often.

Housecall Pro has also built forums where users can exchange ideas and strategies. They have two tight-knit communities that they've grown on Facebook. These groups have a combined membership of 11,000 active and engaged Housecall Pro users.

Weaknesses

Housecall Pro offers a variety of features, but the issue is that some of them fall short of expectations. For example, for larger shops who need to handle dispatching for over 20 technicians, customers have told us their system becomes unstable and isn’t up to the task.

And they’re also missing key services including:

• Offline Mode: If techs don’t have service in the field, their app won’t work.

• iPad Functionality: They don’t have an iPad-specific app.

• Live Customer Support: They only have chat-based support.

In addition, Housecall Pro offers limited job costing capacity. Their pricebooks don’t include a sales component and aren’t customer-facing. Technicians find it hard to build a menu of service options that customers can choose from — and this limits their ability to use it as a sales tool.

We’ve heard reports of accuracy issues with Housecall Pro’s reports, and collaborative bookkeeping has been mentioned as a challenge as well. Housecall Pro doesn’t sync as smoothly with software for such circumstances, like QuickBooks or Xero.

Finally, their maintenance agreements feature isn’t as robust as the competition. Housecall Pro built a simpler system on the foundation of reminders and follow-ups.

Who Housecall Pro Is Best for

Housecall Pro works best for small contractors with less than 5 technicians. And its biggest benefit is its thriving community of service professionals. If you’re the kind of user that enjoys talking shop with fellow contractors, this could be incredibly valuable to you. With Housecall Pro’s community, you’ll never have to look for a place to exchange ideas with business owners like you.

If your goal is to maintain your existing level of business, then Housecall Pro may be a good option for you. From dispatch management to payment processing, it does enough in every area that matters to help your business stay afloat. However, if your company has its eyes on expansion, you’d likely get a lot more value out of a more robust platform like ServiceTitan.

Jobber: A Top-Notch Dispatching Solution

Again, we are not affiliated with or entitled to speak for Jobber.  Everything we write here is our opinion and a good faith effort to compare products.

Like Housecall Pro, Jobber also serves a variety of different trades. Service professionals in up to 100 industries rely on Jobber to deliver results.

Strengths

As a solution for field service companies, Jobber doesn’t overpromise what they can deliver. Jobber embraces the fact that they excel most in dispatch management.

The platform used to have an outdated design, but not anymore. Jobber's invested the time to upgrade their previous look and functionality. As a result, Jobber now has a contemporary interface that user reviews indicate as a significant improvement.

Weaknesses

Aside from dispatching, Jobber has a limited menu of features. The rest of Jobber's functionality often leaves users desiring more.

Relative to other platforms, reporting on Jobber isn't as in-depth. As a result, it can be a struggle for users to gain rich insights about their business’ health and customer database.

The mobile app places a premium on work order management and online booking. But it doesn't provide users with tools to bolster sales. As a result, techs don’t have access to “Good, Better, Best” options to show customers and increase upsells.

Without a pricebook to reference, job costing isn’t easy with Jobber, either. As a result, technicians may find it challenging to price their work and provide accurate estimates to customers.

The last weakness to note about Jobber is their customer onboarding process. We’ve heard Jobber could stand to do a better job educating and acclimating new users.

Who Jobber Is Best for

Jobber is built for a wide market of service professionals. If your company is primarily looking for a solution for dispatching, Jobber may be the right choice for you. Often smaller, family-owned and operated shops can benefit from the simplicity of this option. And with an updated platform that’s designed for better ease of use, Jobber won’t take you long to learn. 

However, if you’re looking for more of a holistic solution that can truly bring together the many disparate parts of your business into a unified system, Housecall Pro or ServiceTitan would likely be a better choice for you.

Jobber vs Housecall Pro vs ServiceTitan: Sizing Up Your Options

By this point, we hope we’ve armed you with enough information to make the best decision for your service business. The choice you make will be influenced by where your business is today and where you see it headed in the future.

For small businesses that don’t need much more than scheduling and dispatch management, Jobber may be the right choice. The learning curve for Jobber isn’t steep either, which is ideal for business owners who rank ease of use at the top of their list.

If your field service business needs a holistic solution, then ServiceTitan or Housecall Pro would be better fits. From job management to email marketing, both of these software can unify the many parts of your business under one roof. 

In analyzing the difference between Housecall Pro and us, Housecall Pro has a vibrant and active community of fellow service pros, accessible at a low cost — but once a shop has more than 5 technicians to dispatch, it becomes difficult to manage. Meanwhile, we excel with connecting your field techs and office staff in the most efficient and profitable way possible — and do so in a way that scales for larger service businesses.

But ultimately if you see this decision as an investment rather than an expense, then we’re confident that we can deliver the best and highest returns long-term. At ServiceTitan, we’ve designed our software to be best-in-class while also considering your desire to expand. 

As your service business gains momentum, you can rest assured that our software won’t lag behind. We’re built to grow with you and give your company the boost it needs to reach its full potential.