· Independent
Buy the shared calendar and the invoice button now; leave estimating in a spreadsheet a while longer. Kickserv Start runs $60/mo for five users. Service Fusion Starter is $208/mo billed annually.
Loistrofi Editorial — Sep 5, 2026 — 7 min read
Start with a shared schedule and an invoice you can send from the van. Kickserv Start is $60/mo for five users. Everything else — estimating templates, GPS, custom reports — can wait a quarter. If you want one system instead of three, Service Fusion Starter is $208/mo billed annually, which is $2,496 taken as one payment at sign-up.
Every vendor here counts something different, and that is where the comparison goes wrong. Jobber counts users: anyone who logs in from the office or the field to view or manage the team's schedule, with extra users at $29/mo each. Kickserv sells fixed buckets — 5 users on Start, 10 on Run, 20 on Scale. Service Fusion counts nobody: every plan says unlimited users. So write down the real number before you shop. A two-truck shop is usually four or five logins: you, two electricians, an apprentice who needs the address, and a bookkeeper. Not two.
| Setup | Plan | Published price | Users | Billing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bare minimum | Kickserv Start | $60/mo | 5 | monthly, 20% off annual |
| Bare minimum | Jobber Core | $29/mo | 1 | billed annually |
| Add-on | Jobber extra user | $29/mo | each | — |
| Step up | Kickserv Run | $119/mo | 10 | monthly |
| Step up | Jobber Connect | $149/mo | 5 | billed annually |
| All-in-one | Jobber Grow | $229/mo | 5 | billed annually |
| All-in-one | Service Fusion Starter | $208/mo | unlimited | annual, one payment at sign-up |
| All-in-one | Service Fusion Starter | $245/mo | unlimited | month-to-month |
| Bigger | Kickserv Scale | $199/mo | 20 | monthly |
| Bigger | Service Fusion Pro | $533/mo | unlimited | annual |
The most expensive thing in a two-truck electrical shop is a truck sitting still. A missed service call, a double-booked afternoon, an apprentice driving across town for an address you texted to the wrong number — each one is a half-day of billable labour gone, and at a loaded rate that is worth more than any subscription on this page. A shared calendar your crew can see on a phone fixes that on day one, which is why it is the only thing you should be willing to pay for in month one. Kickserv Start at $60/mo covers five people; that is $720 for the year, roughly one lost afternoon.
The second leak is the gap between finishing a panel swap and the customer seeing a bill. Invoicing from the driveway closes it. But look past the subscription: Jobber publishes 2.9% + 30¢ for online card payments through client hub and 2.7% + 30¢ for tapping a card in the mobile app. On $30,000 a month of card volume, 2.9% is $870 — more than any plan in the table. The 0.2% difference between those two rates is $60 a month at that volume, which is the entire Kickserv Start subscription. Ask about ACH before you assume cards are the answer.
Estimating software wins you work you were probably going to win anyway, and it takes the longest to set up because it needs your real material and labour rates loaded before it produces anything usable. Your existing spreadsheet or takeoff sheet already does that. Kickserv reserves custom data fields and custom reports for Run at $119/mo, double Start's $60 — that is $708 a year to formalise paperwork you can currently do by hand. Same logic for GPS: Kickserv puts GPS check-ins and dispatch mapping on Scale at $199/mo. Buy that when you cannot see your crews, not before.
Kickserv Start at $60/mo is the only plan here that includes five users at under $100. Twelve months of it is $720, and the page states a 20% discount for paying annually — though it does not print the resulting monthly figure, so make them show it at checkout. There is also Kickback: process a minimum of $1,000/mo in online payments on Start and you get 5% off the monthly fee. Five percent of $60 is $3/mo, or $36 a year. Nice, not decisive. Treat it as a rounding error, not a reason to choose a payment processor.
Jobber Core looks cheapest at $29/mo billed annually, but that is one user — you. Add two electricians at $29 each and you are at $87/mo, or $1,044 a year. Add four people to reach a five-person shop and it is $145/mo, $1,740 a year, against $720 for Kickserv Start with the same five heads. Watch the billing columns too: Jobber lists three prices per tier. Grow with five users is $229/mo billed annually, $259/mo on a one-year commitment, $299/mo with no commitment. That middle column is $3,108 over a year versus $2,748 annual — $360 to pay monthly while still being locked in for twelve.
Service Fusion charges the same whether you have one technician and one dispatcher or twenty technicians and a full office. Starter is $208/mo billed annually — $2,496 taken as one payment at sign-up — or $245/mo month-to-month, which is $2,940 a year. The annual route saves $444 but wants the cash now. Against Kickserv Start's $720, you are paying $1,776 more per year for unlimited seats and whatever Starter bundles. For a five-person shop that is a bad trade. For a shop about to hire three apprentices and a dispatcher, seat maths stops mattering entirely, and that is when it flips.
- If you have five or fewer people who need the schedule and you are still doing estimates by hand, pick Kickserv Start at $60/mo — $720 a year for five users is the lowest published price here that covers a whole crew.
- If you are a one-truck owner-operator with no office help, pick Jobber Core at $29/mo billed annually, and know that the third login costs you $87/mo total once you add two seats at $29 each.
- If you are heading past ten users this year, or hire seasonal help you keep adding and removing, pick Service Fusion — $208/mo billed annually is fixed regardless of headcount, and you stop re-pricing your software every time someone joins.
- If you would be your eighth Jobber user, buy the 10-user tier instead of adding seats: Connect with five users is $149/mo annually, and $149 + three seats at $29 is $236/mo, more than the $229/mo 10-user Connect price.
- Confirm on Jobber's own plan page that the $29/mo extra user rate applies to the annual price you were quoted, not only to the no-commitment price — the seat maths above collapses if it doesn't.
- Get the card and ACH processing rate in writing from whichever vendor you pick. Only Jobber's card rates were published today (2.9% + 30¢ online, 2.7% + 30¢ in the mobile app), and its ACH rate was cut off mid-sentence.
- Ask Service Fusion which of scheduling, invoicing and estimating are in Starter rather than Plus or Pro, and whether the GPS Fleet Tracking listed under every tier is included or a separate line item — the pricing page names it without a price.
- Run one real job end to end on a trial before paying: quote, schedule, tech marks complete, invoice sends, payment lands. Kickserv's page advertises a 30-day free trial next to Run; Jobber offers a free trial; Service Fusion's page offers a demo instead.
Start on Kickserv Start. $60/mo, five users, $720 for the year — it buys the shared calendar and the invoice button, which is where the money actually leaks, and it costs less than one lost afternoon. Keep estimating in your spreadsheet until you are turning down work because quotes are slow. Revisit at ten users: at that point Kickserv Run is $119/mo and Service Fusion Starter is $208/mo billed annually with no seat ceiling at all, and the gap is small enough that unlimited users starts to be worth $1,776 a year more than where you began.
Loistrofi does not take vendor briefings or speak to sales teams. Every figure here comes from a page the vendor publishes itself, checked on Sep 5, 2026. Where a number could not be confirmed at source, it is marked rather than smoothed over.
