Software for trades businesses: ServiceM8, Tradify, simPRO, AroFlo or custom?

Do you need custom software, or ServiceM8, simPRO, Tradify or AroFlo set up properly?

For most trade businesses the honest answer is a platform, configured well, with custom work only where the platform stops. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, roofers and arborists share a core workflow (enquiry, quote, schedule, attend, invoice, get paid) that the mainstream platforms already handle, with mobile apps your team can use on site.

Custom software starts to make sense when one of these is true:

• You pay for three or four tools and someone rekeys data between them every day.
• Your quoting depends on pricing rules no platform supports, such as measured roof areas, tree size and access, or tiered maintenance contracts.
• A regulator, builder or insurer needs data in a format the platform can’t produce.
• The way you schedule, dispatch or report is the reason customers choose you, and the software is flattening it.

If none of those apply, spend your money on setup and training instead. Our build vs buy guide walks through the test in more detail.

How do the main trades platforms compare?

They differ most in how they charge and in how far they reach into stock, assets and projects. Prices below are from each vendor’s Australian pricing page at the time of writing (November 2026). Check the vendor’s page before you decide, because plans change.

Platform	How it charges	Listed price	Built for	Developer access
ServiceM8	Per account, by jobs per month	Free (1 user, 30 jobs) to $349/mo (1,500+ jobs); $29, $79, $149 tiers between. AUD inc GST	Sole traders to mid size service crews	REST API, webhooks, messaging API, add-on SDK, ChatGPT and Claude connector
Tradify	Per user per month	Lite $48, Pro $52, Plus $62 per user/mo, AUD ex GST; Custom on request	Small to mid trade teams focused on quoting and invoicing	Accounting and payment connectors; no public API documentation found
simPRO	By quote, base plan plus add-ons	Request pricing	Larger service, project and maintenance businesses	Published API documentation
AroFlo	Per user per month, sliding scale	From AUD $80 per user/mo, minimum 3 users	Asset heavy service, maintenance and compliance work	Supplier, accounting, SMS and industry integrations listed

A few details that change the decision:

• ServiceM8 caps jobs per month by plan, with unlimited users on paid plans. It also sells add-ons such as an Office Agent Pro AI assistant ($49 a month) and ServiceM8 Phone (from $29 a month).
• Tradify includes Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks Online sync on every plan and charges SMS quotes and reminders at $0.20 a message.
• simPRO sells add-ons such as Digital Forms, Takeoffs, Maintenance Planner and GPS fleet tracking on top of the base plan, which is why quotes vary widely.
• AroFlo lists more than 600 connected suppliers and inbuilt compliance and safety forms, and connects with industry bodies such as Master Electricians Australia and NECA.

Platform or custom: what does each cost over five years?

For a typical small team, a subscription costs less than owning software, even before you count the features you’d have to rebuild. This illustration uses listed prices and stated assumptions. It isn’t a quote.

The scenario: an eight person electrical business doing about 300 jobs a month.

Option	Year one	Five years	Notes
Tradify Plus	8 × $62 × 12 = $5,952 ex GST	About $29,760	Plus SMS at $0.20 a message
ServiceM8 Premium (500 jobs)	$149 × 12 = $1,788 inc GST	About $8,940	Add-ons such as Office Agent Pro extra
AroFlo	8 × $80 × 12 = $7,680	About $38,400	Starting rate; per user rate falls as users rise
Fully custom system	$40,000 to $150,000 build, plus hosting	About $64,000 to $270,000, plus hosting	Assumes 15% to 20% of build a year for maintenance

The custom figures use the $40,000 to $150,000 market range Expeed gives for mid complexity systems, which it says includes job management systems, plus annual maintenance of 15% to 20% of the build. Five year custom cost is the build plus four years of maintenance after the first.

The point isn’t that custom is bad value. It’s that a trade business should rarely replace a platform wholesale. The better pattern is platform plus targeted custom work: keep the platform as the job system, and build the one or two pieces it can’t do. That work is usually $15,000 to $40,000, the range Expeed gives for simple internal tools, rather than a six figure rebuild.

Which integrations pay off first?

Integrations that remove daily rekeying pay back fastest. Ranked roughly by how often they come up for trade businesses:

1. Accounting sync beyond the default. The standard Xero or MYOB connector moves invoices and payments. Custom work helps when you want job costing, progress claims or retention split into tracking categories your accountant actually uses.
2. Supplier price files and purchase orders. Loading supplier pricing automatically keeps quotes accurate. AroFlo lists connections with suppliers such as Reece, Rexel and Lawrence & Hanson; on other platforms, this is often a custom job against the supplier’s file format.
3. Customer and builder portals. Builders and property managers who send you repeat work often want to lodge jobs, see status and download certificates without phoning. A small portal reading from your platform’s API does this.
4. Calendars, SMS and phones. Most platforms handle these natively. Custom work is for routing rules, such as sending after hours emergency calls to whoever is on call.
5. Reporting across systems. Combining platform data with accounting, fleet and timesheet data into one weekly report.

Before scoping any of these, check what your platform’s API exposes. ServiceM8’s documentation lists REST, webhooks, messaging, document templates and custom fields APIs. If you’re on a platform without a documented API, the integration may need the vendor’s help or a different approach. Our API development and integration service covers this kind of work.

How should quoting, pricing and variations work?

Quoting is where trades software most often fails to match the business, because every trade prices differently. A roofer prices by measured area, pitch and access; an arborist by tree size, species and whether a crane is needed; an HVAC business by unit size and labour bands.

A good quoting setup, whether in a platform or custom, should:

• Hold your rates, markups and supplier costs in one place, updated from supplier files where possible.
• Offer options (good, better, best) the customer can accept online. Tradify Pro lists quote options and online acceptance; ServiceM8 lists proposals.
• Turn an accepted quote into a job and then an invoice without retyping.
• Record variations with photos and customer sign off before the extra work starts.
• Show quote win rate and margin by job type, so you can see which work actually pays.

If your pricing logic lives in one person’s head or a spreadsheet, that’s a sign it’s worth building a quoting engine that writes back into the platform, rather than replacing the platform.

How do compliance certificates and site photos fit in?

Compliance records are a growing reason to integrate, because regulators are moving certificates online. In NSW, licensed electricians must submit a Certificate of Compliance for Electrical Work (CCEW) through the Building Commission NSW eCert portal or an approved API no later than 7 days after completing the work, including the safety and compliance test. Building Commission NSW’s August 2026 advisory note says that includes like for like replacements such as water heaters, ovens and stove tops.

Building Commission NSW also runs an eCert API that lets job management software providers and high volume electrical contractors send CCEW data straight from their business system, once they’ve been onboarded. The portal still validates the electrician’s licence, stores the certificate and distributes it to the customer and others. The electrician stays legally responsible for each certificate.

For a NSW electrical contractor, that means the CCEW could be generated from the job record your team already completed on site, rather than typed in twice. Ask your platform vendor whether it supports the eCert API before you consider building anything. Gasfitters also submit through eCert, and plumbers have their own Notice of Work and Certificate of Compliance process. Other states run separate systems, so a multi state business needs per state handling.

Site photos matter for the same reason. Before and after photos, test results and signed forms attached to the job are your evidence if a customer, builder or regulator questions the work. Make sure they’re stored with the job, backed up, and exportable if you ever change platforms.

What about calls you miss on the tools?

Missed calls are lost jobs, and the options now range from a platform add-on to a custom voice agent. At the cheap end, platform phone features route calls, record them and attach transcripts to the job card; ServiceM8 Phone starts from $29 a month. Answering services with a person are the familiar middle option.

A custom AI receptionist is worth considering when you want it to triage by your rules (emergency, quote request, existing job), check real availability, book into your job system and send a text confirmation, and pass urgent calls to whoever is on call. Our guide to AI receptionist costs sets out the price bands and running costs.

How AWLabs approaches trades software

We start from the assumption that you should keep your platform. The first conversation is a Development Consult, where we ask what you rekey, what you can’t quote properly and where jobs get lost. If custom work is worth doing, a paid Discovery Audit maps your platform’s API, your accounting setup and any certificate or supplier systems involved. You then get a fixed price Schedule of Work with three options: The Minimum, The Recommended and The Complete.

Senior engineers lead every build, and you get progress updates every Tuesday and Friday, Sydney time. If the audit shows the platform can already do what you need with better configuration, we’ll say so. See our wider work for the construction and trades industry, or construction software for builders if your work is head contract or project based.