Four pricing models, ten questions worth asking anybody, what a shop of your size actually needs, and the things that go wrong. Everything about another provider comes from their own public pricing page, linked, and read on October 28, 2026.
We sell one of these. JobPanel is field service software for crews of roughly one to fifteen people, so take the parts of this page that are about us with the scepticism they deserve. The rest of it — the pricing models, the questions, the red flags — is the page we would have wanted when buying, and it is just as useful if you end up choosing somebody else.
Comparing monthly headline prices across these models tells you almost nothing. Knowing which model you are looking at is most of the work.
You pick a tier for the features, and the tier comes with a number of people. Going past that number costs extra per person, and the next tier up is usually a bigger jump than the extra seats would have been.
Watch for: Work out the price at the crew size you will have in a year, not the one you have today. The headline price is almost always the one-person price, and the number that matters is what five or six people costs.
Priced this way, by their own pages
The price is per route, per territory or per truck, and users are unlimited within it. This is common where the work is route-based, and it is genuinely cheaper when you have a lot of people covering a little ground.
Watch for: Find out exactly what counts as one of the units, and what happens on the day you add a second. That step is usually the whole price again.
Priced this way, by their own pages
The pricing page describes the plans and asks you to book a demo. The quote is built around your company, usually per technician, and often includes an implementation fee and an annual commitment.
Watch for: Ask for the total first-year cost in writing, including implementation, training and the minimum term — not the monthly figure. Ask what it costs to leave.
Priced this way, by their own pages
Tiers with seats included, the first model above. Starter $25/mo for 3 users, Growth $98/mo for 6, Pro $165/mo for 15. Extra seats are $5/mo each on every plan, so hiring somebody never forces a tier change.
Monthly only — there is no annual commitment to sign and no discount for one. No implementation fee. Apply the same scepticism here as everywhere else and check it on the pricing page.
Including us. The answers are more revealing than any feature list.
Seats, add-ons, payment processing and any implementation fee. The monthly headline is rarely the number you end up paying, and a vendor who will not put the annual total in writing is telling you something.
Several products in this market sell an annual commitment at the advertised price and charge more month-to-month. Find out which you are on before you enter a card, not in month four.
Your customer list, your job history and your invoices are yours. Ask specifically whether you can export them yourself, or whether you have to request it. The answer tells you how hard leaving will be.
Hiring should not force a plan change. Ask the per-seat price and whether the seat is prorated, and check whether the next tier is the only way to add somebody.
Processing rates vary, and so do payout times. A percentage point on a year of invoices is real money, and a three-day hold matters more than most people expect when payroll is Friday.
Invoicing, scheduling and a time clock being on the entry plan is not universal. Check the specific things your shop does every day rather than the feature list in general.
Your crew is not at a desk. Ask what happens in a basement or a rural dead spot, and whether the parts they use most work on a phone at all.
Email, chat or phone, and in what hours. 'Priority support' is a tier name, not an answer. Ask what a reply typically looks like on a Saturday when the board is down.
Ask what moves in bulk and what gets typed in. Anyone promising a complete, one-click migration from your current system should be asked exactly which data, because the honest answer is almost always 'the customer list'.
A free trial that cannot overlap with your current system is not a trial, it is a leap. Overlapping for a fortnight costs one month of two subscriptions and is the cheapest insurance available.
Most shops buy a tier above the one they need, because the feature list is written to make the next one up sound necessary.
Worth paying for
Skip for now
Routing, dispatch boards, inventory and reporting. You are the dispatcher, you know what is on the van, and the reporting is your bank balance. Paying for them now is paying for a problem you do not have.
Worth paying for
Skip for now
Subcontractor compliance and deep reporting, unless you are already running 1099 crews. This is the size where most shops buy a tier they do not use.
Worth paying for
Skip for now
Anything sold as enterprise. The jump in price at this size is usually a jump in implementation, not in capability.
None of these mean a product is bad. They all mean the price on the page is not the price you will pay.
A pricing page that only offers a demo booking is a sales process, not a price. That is a legitimate way to sell complicated software, but it means you cannot compare until you have sat through a call, and the quote will be built around what they learn on it.
Check whether the number on the pricing page requires a year up front. Month-to-month is frequently a different, higher number, and the difference is rarely on the same screen.
A one-off setup or onboarding charge can be several months of subscription. It is a real cost of the first year and belongs in the comparison, not in a footnote.
Ask which objects move: customers, jobs, invoices, photos, price lists. The honest answer from almost anybody is the customer list and not much else. A confident 'we move everything' is worth testing before you cancel anything.
A $49 headline that is one user is not a $49 product for a crew of four. Do the arithmetic at your real size before you compare anything else.
If getting your customer list out means raising a support ticket, you are renting your own records. Check this before you put three years of history in.
Most trials are spent clicking around the demo data and learning nothing. Six steps that fix that.
15 days free, no card required to sign up, and no annual commitment to sign. Run it beside whatever you have now — that is question ten, and the answer here is yes.