Guide
Electrician software cost at 1, 5 and 20 on the tools
Updated
There is no cheapest option in this category, only a cheapest option for a given shape of business. Two vendors publishing full rate cards swap places twice between a sole trader and a twenty van firm, and the thing that moves them is not headcount on its own. It is jobs per head.
One electrician: the free tier wins outright
ServiceM8 runs a genuinely free plan at $0 a month for 30 jobs and one user. A sole trader doing seven or fewer jobs a week pays nothing, indefinitely, and that is not a trial.
Against that, Housecall Pro's Basic is $59 a month billed annually and Kickserv's Start is $60. Kickserv's is the harsher of the two, because Start buys five users whether you need them or not: one electrician on Start is paying $60 for $12 of use.
Five vans: the ranking inverts
At five electricians Kickserv's Start plan finally does what it was built for. Five users for $60 is $12.00 a head, no job cap at all, and nothing else here is cheaper for a busy crew of exactly that size.
ServiceM8 at five vans depends entirely on job volume. Growing is $79 for 150 jobs with unlimited users, which fits a crew averaging 30 jobs each. Push past 150 and you are on Premium at $149, more than twice Kickserv, for the same five people.
So between one van and five vans the cheapest vendor changes, and it changes because of a number that has nothing to do with how many people you employ.
Twenty electricians: it inverts back
At twenty, ServiceM8's Premium is $149 for 500 jobs and unlimited users, which works out at $7.45 a head. Kickserv's Scale is $199 for 20 users, $9.95 a head. ServiceM8 is cheaper again, provided the twenty of them are not running more than 500 jobs between them.
Twenty electricians on 500 jobs is 25 jobs each a month, which is a maintenance-weighted or install-weighted book. Twenty electricians doing reactive callouts will clear that easily, and then Premium Plus at $349 plus 20c a job is the honest comparison.
The rule underneath all of it
Divide your monthly jobs by your headcount. Below roughly 25 jobs per person, a vendor that charges for jobs is cheaper. Above it, a vendor that charges for people is. That is the whole calculation, and it explains every inversion above.
It also explains why the two models exist. Per job pricing suits install and maintenance work with long jobs and few of them. Per user pricing suits reactive service work with short jobs and lots of them. Neither vendor is being clever or cynical; they are aimed at different halves of the electrical trade.