· Independent
A five-tech HVAC crew pays anywhere from $1,260 to $7,524 in the first year, and the gap is mostly billing terms, not features. Here is every published price, the annual discount, and the revert.
Loistrofi Editorial — Aug 22, 2026 — 9 min read
Five technicians, nobody extra in the office, twelve months: you'll pay between $1,260 and $7,524. The floor is Jobber's Connect plan with five users included, prepaid annually at $105/mo. The ceiling is Service Fusion Pro billed month to month at $627/mo. Housecall Pro Essentials, which includes five users, sits between them at $149/mo billed annually — $1,788 for the year. Simpro doesn't publish a number at all.
Everything downstream depends on this number, and most people get it wrong by one or two. Jobber's definition is the strictest and the clearest: a user is "anyone who accesses your account at the office or in the field to view or manage the team's schedule." That includes you. It includes your wife who does the invoicing on Sunday nights. If you have five techs plus an owner who dispatches, your seat count is six, not five, and you have just walked out of every five-user tier on this page.
Housecall Pro counts the same way but charges very differently for the overage: Essentials includes 5 users and additional users are $100/mo each. Max includes 8 users and additional users are $75/mo each. Service Fusion and ServiceM8 sidestep the question entirely — Service Fusion states unlimited users on every plan, and ServiceM8 says it doesn't charge per user, with the sole exception of its free plan, which is capped at one user.
So do this before you open a single pricing page: write down the number of humans who will log in, including part-timers and including yourself. Then write down your jobs per month, because ServiceM8 prices on that instead. Five techs running four calls a day across twenty working days is 400 jobs a month — which lands you in ServiceM8's 500-jobs tier, not its 150-jobs tier.
| Vendor / plan | Seats for 5 techs | Billed monthly, year 1 | Billed annually, year 1 | Reverts to |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jobber Connect (5 users) | included | $2,211 | $1,260 | $149/mo — $1,788/yr |
| Jobber Grow (5 users) | included | $3,321 | $1,932 | $229/mo — $2,748/yr |
| Jobber Plus (5 users) | included | $5,541 | $3,360 | $399/mo — $4,788/yr |
| Housecall Pro Basic | not stated on page | $948 | $708 | not stated |
| Housecall Pro Essentials | 5 included | $2,268 | $1,788 | not stated |
| Housecall Pro Max | 8 included | $3,948 | $3,588 | not stated |
| Service Fusion Starter | unlimited | $2,940 | $2,496 | not stated |
| Service Fusion Plus | unlimited | $4,584 | $3,900 | not stated |
| Service Fusion Pro | unlimited | $7,524 | $6,396 | not stated |
| ServiceM8 | unlimited on paid plans | price not shown | price not shown | — |
| Simpro | quote only | — | — | — |
The Jobber monthly figures include its three-month introductory discount, which is why they aren't a clean twelve times the sticker price. Housecall Pro and Service Fusion figures are twelve times the published rate, because neither page shows a promo period.
The Jobber page gives you three tracks for every plan and they are easy to confuse. Take Connect with five users. Track one is month-to-month: $140/mo for three months, then $199/mo — 3 × $140 + 9 × $199 = $2,211 for the year, then $2,388 every year after. Track two is labelled "1 year commitment" and bills monthly: $102/mo for three months, then $169/mo — 3 × $102 + 9 × $169 = $1,827, then $2,028 a year. Track three is billed annually: $105/mo for twelve months, then $149/mo — $1,260, then $1,788.
Track two shows the lowest headline number on the page, $102, and it is the trap. It reverts to $169/mo while the annual track reverts to $149/mo. You save $567 in year one by prepaying instead ($1,827 versus $1,260) and another $240 every year after. If cash flow forces you onto monthly billing, that's a legitimate reason to pick track two — just know you're paying roughly $47 a month for the privilege from month four onward.
Moving up the plans, Grow with five users is $161/mo annually for twelve months, then $229/mo — $1,932 in year one, $2,748 after. Plus with five users is $280/mo annually, then $399/mo — $3,360, then $4,788. Core is the odd one out: the page only shows a one-user configuration at $21/mo annually (then $29/mo) or $49/mo month-to-month. Add four users at $29/mo each and Core lands at $137/mo, more than Connect's $105 five-user tier. If you have five people, Core is not your cheap option.
One more piece of Jobber arithmetic worth doing before you buy. Grow's ten-user tier is $210/mo billed annually. Grow's five-user tier plus two $29 add-on seats is $161 + $58 = $219/mo. At seven people the bigger tier is cheaper in year one. Check the same comparison at your own headcount rather than assuming add-on seats are always the frugal move.
Essentials is the plan built for a crew your size: 5 users included, $149/mo billed annually versus $189/mo otherwise, a $40/mo difference the page labels as your saving. Twelve months annual is $1,788; twelve months monthly is $2,268. No promo period appears on the page, so unlike Jobber, what you see is what year two costs too. Basic is $59/mo annually or $79/mo monthly, and Max is $299/mo annually or $329/mo monthly with 8 users included.
The number to stare at is $100/mo for each additional Essentials user. A sixth login costs you $1,200 a year — more than an entire Basic subscription. At six users, Essentials plus one add-on is $249/mo, still under Max's $299. At seven users it's $349/mo, and Max at $299 with eight seats included becomes the cheaper plan even though it's the more expensive product. If your headcount is drifting upward, price Max before you price Essentials-plus-seats.
This is the simplest structure on the list: three plans, unlimited users on all of them, 15% off for paying annually. Starter is $208/mo billed annually against $245/mo monthly — $2,496 versus $2,940, a $444 gap. Plus is $325 against $382, so $3,900 versus $4,584. Pro is $533 against $627, so $6,396 versus $7,524. The page notes the annual option is "charged as one annual payment at sign-up," so Starter means writing a $2,496 check on day one, not spreading it.
Service Fusion's own FAQ says all plans are month-to-month with no contract, and the 15% is the only thing you give up by staying flexible. For a five-person crew that's a real choice: $37/mo more to keep the exit open. It's also the vendor whose price doesn't move when you hire — the page says a company with one technician and one dispatcher pays the same as one with 20 technicians and a full office.
The pricing page confirms the model — unlimited users on every paid plan, tiers set by new jobs per month at 30, 50, 150, 500 and 1500+, with an AI usage cap on the entry tier and a phone add-on "from $19/mo." What it did not show us today were the tier prices. The only dollar figure that rendered was $349/mo, and we can't responsibly tell you which tier that belongs to. There's a free plan limited to one user and 30 jobs a month, which is not a five-tech plan.
If job volume is your shape rather than headcount — say two techs doing large commercial installs, or five techs sharing a modest call load — ServiceM8's model can undercut per-seat pricing badly. Count your monthly job creations from last quarter before you look at the tiers, because moving from 150 to 500 jobs is the decision that sets your bill.
Simpro's pricing page has no prices. Its FAQ says pricing is "tailored to your team size, whether in the office or field, and customized to include the add-ons you need," with monthly or annual billing available, and directs you to contact them for a personalized quote. That's a legitimate model for complex project work, but for a five-technician HVAC company that wants a number today, it means a sales call. Budget the time, and go in with the annual prices above so you have something to anchor against.
- **If your five techs are your only logins and you want the lowest number that exists**, pick Jobber Connect billed annually: $1,260 for year one, $1,788 after. Nothing else on this list is close in year one.
- **If you're already at six or seven logins and expect to hire again**, pick Service Fusion Starter at $208/mo annually ($2,496). Unlimited users means your eighth and ninth hires cost you nothing, where Housecall Pro would charge $100/mo each.
- **If you can't or won't prepay twelve months**, pick Housecall Pro Essentials at $189/mo monthly ($2,268/yr). It's $57 a year more than Jobber's month-to-month Connect after the promo lapses, but there's no revert cliff to plan around.
- **If you're exactly at eight users**, pick Housecall Pro Max at $299/mo annually over Essentials plus three add-ons at $449/mo. The bigger plan is $1,800 a year cheaper at that headcount.
- **If your five techs create fewer than 150 jobs a month**, get ServiceM8's tier price before you sign anything else. Its model doesn't charge for the four extra logins that everyone else bills you for.
- Confirm the revert price in writing. On Jobber's page it's printed next to every promo rate — ask your rep to state it in the order form so year two isn't a surprise.
- Ask whether Jobber's $29/mo add-on user rate is discounted on annual billing. The page lists the $29 figure without saying whether the annual discount applies to it.
- Check the offer deadline. Jobber's page currently shows the discount as "Offer ends Aug 31" — if you're reading after that, reprice before you budget.
- Ask Housecall Pro how many users Basic includes. The page states user counts for Essentials and Max but not for Basic, so don't assume it covers a crew.
- Get card processing rates for every vendor, not just the one that publishes them. Housecall Pro lists rates "as low as 2.59%" and a 1% fee on bank payments; on five techs' worth of invoices that number will outweigh the software fee.
- Ask about onboarding or implementation charges. None of these five pages listed one, which is not the same as there not being one.
Start a Jobber Connect trial with five users and prepay the year if it sticks. $1,260 for twelve months is the cheapest verified five-seat price in this category, and even at the reverted $149/mo it's the cheapest steady-state number here except Housecall Pro Basic, whose seat count we couldn't confirm. Skip Jobber's "1 year commitment" column entirely — it looks cheapest, reverts highest, and locks you in anyway.
The one thing that would change our mind is headcount drift. If you honestly expect a sixth and seventh login within the year — a second dispatcher, an apprentice, a bookkeeper — go straight to Service Fusion Starter at $2,496 prepaid. Paying $1,236 more up front to never think about seats again is a fair trade for a growing HVAC shop, and it's still less than Jobber Grow's five-user reverted price of $2,748.
Loistrofi does not take vendor briefings or speak to sales teams. Every figure here comes from a page the vendor publishes itself, checked on Aug 22, 2026. Where a number could not be confirmed at source, it is marked rather than smoothed over.
