How each one charges

We checked each vendor’s Australian pricing page on 18 October 2026. Prices and plans change. GST isn’t shown the same way on every page either, so check again before you sign up.

Source: each vendor’s Australian pricing page, checked 18 October 2026. List prices only.

What a six-person crew would pay

Take a made-up business with two people in the office and four on the tools. It does about 120 jobs a month.

• ServiceM8: Growing covers 150 jobs with unlimited users. That’s $79 a month including GST.

• Tradify: six users on Pro cost 6 × $52, or $312 a month plus GST.

• AroFlo: six users at a starting price of $80 each comes to at least $480 a month, plus its setup fee.

• Fergus and simPRO: get a written price for six users. You can’t calculate it from either page.

The same pattern applies beyond this six-person example. Per-job pricing, such as ServiceM8’s, usually costs less for a big crew doing a modest number of jobs. Per-user pricing, such as Tradify’s, usually costs less for a small team doing lots of short jobs.

Do the sum for your own crew before you book a demo.

The cost that isn’t on the pricing page

The monthly fee is only part of the cost. Someone has to load your price list, import customers, connect Xero or MYOB and get the crew using the app on site.

simPRO’s pricing FAQ says its setup fee depends on how complex your business is. One reviewer on Xero’s app store reported a discounted setup fee of about NZ$6,000, then hiring an extra person to run the system properly. That’s one account, not a typical figure, but it gives you something to ask about.

Before you sign, get the setup cost in writing, along with who will do the work. Then ask how many hours your office will need to spend on it in the first month.

Signs you’ve outgrown it

• Your work doesn’t fit their job card. Crane lifts, equipment hire, multi-day jobs or compliance steps the app has no place for.

• You run a second system beside it. Trucks are in a spreadsheet. Safety documents have their own folder, and dockets live in a notebook.

• The same details get typed twice. From the booking to the job, then from the job to the invoice.

• You pay for features you’ll never use while the one you need isn’t on their roadmap.

What a custom portal changes

A custom portal is built around your jobs rather than a general template. For C2C Crane Trucks, we built a dispatch calendar where the database refuses to double-book a truck. We also built a lift calculator that draws each truck’s load chart and checks the boom’s clearance against a building. Neither fits in a standard job app.

It also means one record for everything. Phone and website bookings land in the same place, and jobs flow through to invoices. The owner sees the day at a glance.

Side by side

Source: Carbon Black Digital. A summary of this article, not a product review.

A middle path

You can keep your job app and add the missing piece. That might be an AI receptionist that feeds new enquiries into it, or a small portal for the one workflow the app can’t handle.

Start with your workflow

A workflow diagnostic, from $1,200, maps how a job moves through your business today and tells you whether software you can buy will do the job. If it will, we’ll say so and tell you which app suits how you charge.

If you go ahead with a build, the diagnostic fee comes off it. Talk to us.