Cleaning & Restoration Software Stack
The carrier writes the check, so the carrier writes the rules for documenting the job
42+ tools, walked through in the order the decision actually happens — the platform that runs the shop first, then the tools built for the trade, then what it all costs at your size.
A restoration contractor pulling water out of a basement at 2 a.m. is running an insurance business first and a cleaning business second: the job starts with a first notice of loss, gets estimated in Xactimate to match what the carrier and the TPA will actually approve, and doesn't get paid until moisture logs, photos, and scope line up with what was submitted. A routine cleaning operation — recurring janitorial contracts, move-out cleans, carpet cleaning on a schedule — never touches an adjuster and lives instead on route efficiency, recurring invoicing, and crew scheduling across dozens of stops a day. Software built for one does almost nothing for the other: a janitorial scheduling tool has no idea what an Xactimate line item is, and restoration estimating software is overkill for a biweekly office clean.
What doesn't change regardless of crew size: IICRC standards govern how the work is performed and documented, and a carrier or TPA can deny payment if psychrometric readings and daily moisture logs don't show the job actually reached dry standard before equipment came out. Emergency dispatch has to work at 2 a.m. for a one-truck operation the same way it does for a fifty-truck one, because water and fire losses don't wait for business hours and the first call often decides who gets the job. Chain-of-custody documentation on contents, samples, and disposed materials matters as much on a small mold remediation as on a large fire loss, since that trail is what protects the company if a claim is disputed or a customer alleges something was mishandled.
What runs the shop
This is the one decision that constrains every other tool you buy — and it isn't a question of which platform is best. It's which kind of work you sell.
Pick the lane that matches how the money actually comes in, then judge platforms only against others in that lane. Comparing a residential dispatch tool to a project-costing platform tells you nothing except which one has more features.
These platforms optimize for scheduling density and getting a technician to the next call — dispatch boards, call booking, on-site payment. You gain a well-oiled service operation and give up serious job costing: if you later start bidding multi-month build-outs, this tier will fight you.
Housecall Pro is a cloud-based field service management platform built for residential home service contractors. Founded in 2013 and headquartered in San Diego, CA, it serves 45,000+ businesses across HVAC, plumbing, electrical, cleaning, roofing, painting, landscaping, and 50+ other trades. The platform covers the full job lifecycle — scheduling, dispatching, estimating, invoicing, payments, GPS fleet tracking, CRM, online booking, and marketing automation — delivered via web and native iOS/Android apps. Operated by parent company Codefied Inc., it also runs subsidiaries BuildBook and Trade Academy.
Workiz is a cloud-based field service management platform built for home service businesses. Founded in 2015 by former locksmiths in San Diego, it serves 120,000+ professionals across 50+ trades including locksmith, junk removal, carpet cleaning, appliance repair, HVAC, and plumbing. The platform covers scheduling, dispatching, CRM, invoicing, payments, online booking, inventory, and an AI-powered communication suite (Workiz Genius) — all accessible via web and mobile apps.
The rest of the stack, by role
Everything below fills a specific job. Tools are only compared against others doing the same job, because "is Gusto better than Procore" is not a real question — the useful question is always which payroll tool, or which documentation tool.
The books
Job costing, invoicing, and a P&L your accountant will accept without re-keying it. This is the tool you're most likely to still be running in ten years, so the switching cost is real — weight it accordingly.
Housecall Pro is a cloud-based field service management platform built for residential home service contractors. Founded in 2013 and headquartered in San Diego, CA, it serves 45,000+ businesses across HVAC, plumbing, electrical, cleaning, roofing, painting, landscaping, and 50+ other trades. The platform covers the full job lifecycle — scheduling, dispatching, estimating, invoicing, payments, GPS fleet tracking, CRM, online booking, and marketing automation — delivered via web and native iOS/Android apps. Operated by parent company Codefied Inc., it also runs subsidiaries BuildBook and Trade Academy.
Workiz is a cloud-based field service management platform built for home service businesses. Founded in 2015 by former locksmiths in San Diego, it serves 120,000+ professionals across 50+ trades including locksmith, junk removal, carpet cleaning, appliance repair, HVAC, and plumbing. The platform covers scheduling, dispatching, CRM, invoicing, payments, online booking, inventory, and an AI-powered communication suite (Workiz Genius) — all accessible via web and mobile apps.
End-to-end business management for commercial landscape, snow and ice, and janitorial contractors — estimating on production factors, crew scheduling, job costing and invoicing in one system.
Payroll & crew
Timesheets, onboarding, and — on prevailing-wage work — certified payroll. The compliance paperwork here scales faster than headcount does, which is why owners usually buy this a year later than they should have.
When I Work is a cloud-based employee scheduling and time-tracking platform built for hourly and shift-based workforces. It combines auto-scheduling, GPS-enabled time clocks with geofencing, team messaging, labor forecasting, and payroll integrations into a single mobile-first app. Serving 200,000+ workplaces across 30+ industries—including construction, cleaning, landscaping, pest control, and other field trades—it targets small to mid-size businesses that need to manage distributed crews without complex enterprise software.
Time tracking and scheduling software built for field service and construction companies.
Deputy is an AI-powered workforce management platform built for shift-based and hourly workforces. Founded in 2008 in Sydney, Australia, Deputy provides employee scheduling, time and attendance tracking, labor compliance, HR onboarding, payroll integration, and team communication tools. Serving over 375,000 workplaces across 100+ countries, it is widely used in trades, field services, construction, cleaning, landscaping, and hospitality. Deputy's platform spans mobile and web, with deep integrations into payroll (ADP, Gusto, Paycor, QuickBooks) and POS systems.
Job documentation
Photos, notes, and sign-offs attached to the job rather than to somebody's phone. This is the record that settles a dispute a year after the crew left.
CompanyCam is a photo documentation and field communication platform purpose-built for contractors. Founded in 2015 by Luke Hansen out of his family's roofing business in Lincoln, Nebraska, the platform lets field teams capture timestamped, GPS-tagged photos and videos, annotate images, manage project timelines, run AI-powered checklists and reports, collect in-app payments, and collaborate with customers and subcontractors — all organized by job. Serving 140,000+ contractors and pros across 50+ trades, CompanyCam is a documentation-first layer that integrates with field service management, estimating, and CRM tools rather than replacing them.
Xactimate is the industry-standard property damage repair cost estimating platform developed by Xactware, a subsidiary of Verisk Analytics. Originally founded in 1986 and acquired by ISO (now Verisk) in 2006, it is used by approximately 80% of insurance repair contractors and 19 of the top 25 U.S. property insurers. The platform provides a continuously updated regional pricing database covering materials, labor, and equipment for hundreds of geographies, enabling restoration contractors, roofers, painters, and general contractors to produce insurance-defensible estimates. Xactimate operates across desktop, web, and mobile and includes tools like Sketch AR (LiDAR-powered floor plan capture), XactScope (guided estimating), XactRebuild (mitigation-to-rebuild workflow automation), Time and Materials job cost tracking, and XactAnalysis for claims performance dashboards and workflow management.
Cloud-based construction preconstruction and operations platform offering AI-accelerated takeoff, estimating, proposal generation, and field collaboration tools. Serves general contractors, specialty subcontractors, and suppliers with solutions spanning plan management, digital measurement, cost estimating, and mobile field operations. Founded by Phil Ogilby and Justin Ogilby, STACK integrates with major ERP and accounting systems including QuickBooks, Sage, and Acumatica.
Getting the phone to ring
Paid lead channels and marketplaces. Genuinely useful before you have referral flow, and expensive to stay dependent on — judge these on cost per booked job, never cost per lead.
Angi (formerly Angie's List / ANGI Homeservices) is the leading US home services marketplace connecting homeowners with local service professionals across 500+ categories. Formed by the 2017 merger of Angie's List (founded 1995) and HomeAdvisor (founded 1998 as ServiceMagic), and rebranded to Angi in March 2021. The platform operates a pay-per-lead model (Angi Leads), display advertising (Angi Ads), and a fixed-price instant-booking service powered by the 2018 Handy acquisition. Angi completed its spin-off from IAC on April 1, 2025, becoming an independent public company (NASDAQ: ANGI). Revenue in 2025 was approximately $1.05B (declining YoY as platform shifted to homeowner-choice lead model). As of 2025 the platform counts roughly 200,000 active service professionals across all trades.
Thumbtack is a nationwide online marketplace connecting homeowners with local service professionals across 500+ project categories. Founded in 2008 and headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Thumbtack operates a pay-per-lead model where contractors pay only for qualified leads — never a commission on completed jobs. The platform serves 4+ million customers annually, hosts 300,000+ active professional businesses, and has facilitated 90 million+ projects. Thumbtack offers AI-powered matching, professional profile pages with reviews and portfolio photos, background check and license verification badges, and integrations with ServiceTitan, Jobber, Workiz, and Google Calendar. It is strictly a lead generation and customer acquisition platform — job management, scheduling, dispatch, invoicing, and CRM must be handled in a separate FSM tool.
Trucks & equipment
GPS, maintenance intervals, and being able to answer "where's the van?" while the customer is still on the phone. Worth buying at roughly the third truck.
Housecall Pro is a cloud-based field service management platform built for residential home service contractors. Founded in 2013 and headquartered in San Diego, CA, it serves 45,000+ businesses across HVAC, plumbing, electrical, cleaning, roofing, painting, landscaping, and 50+ other trades. The platform covers the full job lifecycle — scheduling, dispatching, estimating, invoicing, payments, GPS fleet tracking, CRM, online booking, and marketing automation — delivered via web and native iOS/Android apps. Operated by parent company Codefied Inc., it also runs subsidiaries BuildBook and Trade Academy.
What it costs, by size
A solo operator and a 40-truck company buying the same platform pay differently and use it differently. Pick your company type to see it highlighted first — each stack also lists the signals that you've outgrown it.
Solo / 2-Truck Owner-Operator
residential1–3 employees · $100K–$500K
The self-employed tradesperson or micro-crew running on personal hustle and minimal tooling. Jobs are dispatched from a phone, invoices are often paper or a basic app, and new work arrives through word-of-mouth and marketplace listings. Technology decisions are driven by cost sensitivity and simplicity, not capability gaps. The single most common gap at this stage: no formal scheduling or dispatch tool — appointments tracked in a personal calendar or text messages.
| Category | Common picks |
|---|---|
| Lead Generation / Marketplaces | Angi Quote-only get a quote TaskRabbit Quote-only get a quote |
| Field Service Management | Workiz Quote-only get a quote Housecall Pro $59/mo published |
| Accounting & Financial | Aspire Quote-only get a quote |
| Documentation & Communication | CompanyCam $79/mo published STACK Construction Technologies Quote-only get a quote |
Covers 2 of the 4 tools in this stack.
Picks are this archetype's typical stack where this trade has those tools, topped up with the strongest tools the trade actually has in each category.
Approximate — assumes a ~2-person company (this archetype's typical size) and one tool per category. Priced lines use each vendor's published entry price, so per-seat tools are a starting point rather than what 2 people cost. Your actual stack and headcount will change this.
You've outgrown this stack when
- →Revenue crossing $250K with repeat customer base growing, making lead-gen marketplace fees increasingly costly relative to owned relationships
- →Hiring a first technician or helper, triggering a need for payroll, scheduling visibility, and job assignment beyond the owner
- →Customer complaints about slow or missing invoices, or difficulty tracking which jobs have been paid
SMB Service Contractor
residential1-20 employees · $200K-$2M
Solo operators and small crews doing residential service/repair The single most common gap at this stage: no dedicated crm.
| Category | Common picks |
|---|---|
| Field Service Management | |
| Accounting & Financial | Aspire Quote-only get a quote |
| Lead Generation / Marketplaces |
Covers 1 of the 3 tools in this stack.
Picks are this archetype's typical stack where this trade has those tools, topped up with the strongest tools the trade actually has in each category.
Approximate — assumes a ~11-person company (this archetype's typical size) and one tool per category. Priced lines use each vendor's published entry price, so per-seat tools are a starting point rather than what 11 people cost. Your actual stack and headcount will change this.
You've outgrown this stack when
- →Hiring 5th+ technician
- →Adding second location
- →Revenue >$1M
Mid-Market Residential Trades
residential20-100 employees · $2M-$20M
Growing residential service companies with 20-100+ employees The single most common gap at this stage: disconnected marketing stack.
| Category | Common picks |
|---|---|
| Field Service Management | |
| Accounting & Financial | Aspire Quote-only get a quote |
| CRM & Sales | |
| HR & Workforce |
Covers 2 of the 4 tools in this stack.
Picks are this archetype's typical stack where this trade has those tools, topped up with the strongest tools the trade actually has in each category.
Approximate — assumes a ~60-person company (this archetype's typical size) and one tool per category. Priced lines use each vendor's published entry price, so per-seat tools are a starting point rather than what 60 people cost. Your actual stack and headcount will change this.
You've outgrown this stack when
- →Opening third+ location
- →Revenue >$10M
- →Acquiring other companies
Commercial Service Contractor
commercial25–250 employees · $5M–$50M
A commercial-focused HVAC, plumbing, electrical, or facilities service company operating under multi-year maintenance contracts with building owners, property managers, and facility directors. Revenue is recurring and agreement-based, technicians are skilled and often certified, and regulatory compliance (OSHA, EPA refrigerant, NFPA) is a real operational burden. The FSM platform is the operational core, but fleet management, safety compliance, and customer-facing portals are persistent gaps at this tier. The single most common gap at this stage: safety compliance documentation is handled manually or in disconnected tools, creating audit risk and inconsistent incident reporting across job sites.
| Category | Common picks |
|---|---|
| Field Service Management | |
| Accounting & Financial | Aspire Quote-only get a quote |
| Safety & Compliance | SafetyPlus Quote-only get a quote |
| Fleet & Equipment | |
| HR & Workforce |
Covers 4 of the 5 tools in this stack.
Picks are this archetype's typical stack where this trade has those tools, topped up with the strongest tools the trade actually has in each category.
Approximate — assumes a ~138-person company (this archetype's typical size) and one tool per category. Priced lines use each vendor's published entry price, so per-seat tools are a starting point rather than what 138 people cost. Your actual stack and headcount will change this.
You've outgrown this stack when
- →Landing contracts with large enterprise or government facility accounts that require formal ISNetworld or Avetta prequalification and documented safety programs
- →Fleet growing past 20 vehicles where fuel, maintenance, and routing costs become a measurable drag on service margin
- →Service agreement renewal rates dropping below 85%, often traceable to poor PM completion documentation and lack of customer-facing reporting
Multi-Location Trade Service Franchise
residential5–50 employees per location, 2–20 locations · $3M–$50M total network revenue
A franchisee or small franchise network operating under a national brand (Neighborly, Authority Brands, or similar) where the franchisor mandates core technology — most commonly ServiceTitan — as a condition of franchise agreement. The franchisee has limited stack autonomy but real operational needs around cross-location visibility, local marketing, and independent financial reporting that the mandated stack does not fully satisfy. Technology decisions are split between what the franchisor requires and what the local operator adds on top. The single most common gap at this stage: cross-location performance reporting requires manual data exports from the fsm — there is no consolidated dashboard showing revenue, job counts, and technician efficiency across all locations in real time.
| Category | Common picks |
|---|---|
| Field Service Management | |
| Lead Generation / Marketplaces | |
| Accounting & Financial | Aspire Quote-only get a quote |
| HR & Workforce | |
| Fleet & Equipment | |
| Scheduling / Dispatch / Route Optimization |
Covers 4 of the 6 tools in this stack.
Picks are this archetype's typical stack where this trade has those tools, topped up with the strongest tools the trade actually has in each category.
Approximate — assumes a ~28-person company (this archetype's typical size) and one tool per category. Priced lines use each vendor's published entry price, so per-seat tools are a starting point rather than what 28 people cost. Your actual stack and headcount will change this.
You've outgrown this stack when
- →Adding a third or fourth location where the owner can no longer personally monitor performance across all sites and needs aggregated reporting they cannot get from the franchisor's tools
- →Franchisee royalty audits revealing revenue discrepancies attributable to data entry errors from manual reconciliation between FSM and accounting, creating pressure to automate the integration
- →Desire to sell the franchise network as a portfolio, requiring clean consolidated financials and demonstrable operational systems that a buyer can evaluate across locations
Frequently asked questions
How were these tools chosen?▾
Tools are only ever compared against others doing the same job — accounting against accounting, dispatch against dispatch. Within a job, we order by how often a tool shows up in real contractor stacks, then vendor tier, review rating, and pricing transparency. Never by who pays us. See /how-we-vet.
Are these prices accurate?▾
Where a vendor publishes pricing, we show it exactly. Where they don't, we show a sourced, dated estimate range instead of guessing — and label it as an estimate. Tools with neither are marked quote-only and excluded from the cost totals.
Why does my stack cost differ from the totals here?▾
The per-archetype totals assume one tool per category and a company sized to that archetype's typical range — your actual headcount, trucks, and tool choices will move the number.
Why isn't there one "best" tool at the top?▾
Because a single ranked list would be comparing your accounting software to your dispatch software, which tells you nothing. The decision is really a sequence: pick the platform that matches how you sell work, then fill in the roles around it.