Comparison
TradelyHQ vs Jobber.
Jobber is a good product — built for the wrong customer if your shop does commercial maintenance. Jobber's DNA is residential home services: lawn care, cleaning, residential plumbing and HVAC, single-visit consumer jobs paid on the same call. TradelyHQ is built for the opposite side of the trade: repeat commercial accounts, dispatchers juggling multiple sites, NTE limits set by the client, quote approval before extra work, completion proof attached to the invoice, and QuickBooks that doesn't need a month-end cleanup ritual.
| Feature | TradelyHQ | Jobber |
|---|---|---|
| Designed for | Commercial maintenance contractors — HVAC, plumbing, electrical, janitorial, and general FM shops servicing repeat commercial accounts | Residential home-service businesses — lawn care, cleaning, residential HVAC/plumbing, consumer-facing trades |
| NTEs by client and trade | NTE limits are set per client and per trade, then carried onto every job. Techs flag overages from the field; the office turns it into a quote before extra work happens. | No NTE concept — the residential model assumes the homeowner approves on the spot, not a property manager setting limits in advance. |
| Repeat-account workflow | Built around recurring clients with multiple sites: site-code lists, service history per location, lockbox codes, per-client billing rules. | Optimized for one-and-done residential jobs. Recurring service is supported but the data model assumes the customer == the address. |
| Quotes and approvals | When a job goes beyond the NTE, the office builds a quote from field notes and photos, sends it for approval, and keeps the approved work tied to the original job for billing. | Quotes exist, but the flow is built for selling a new residential job, not for getting commercial-client approval before extra work starts on an existing one. |
| Field proof for B2B invoices | Arrival times, photos, notes, parts, completion details, and signatures stay with the job so billing has proof before a commercial client questions the invoice. | Photos and notes are supported, but the residential consumer rarely audits invoices the way an AP department does. |
| QuickBooks integration | Connect QuickBooks once. Completed jobs become invoices, payments flow back, customer + item mirroring keeps the books clean without a monthly reconciliation ritual. | Two-way QBO sync exists. Strong for residential billing — single line items, on-the-spot payment. |
| Client portal | Property managers and AP teams get a portal where they submit work, watch status, comment, request quotes, and pull invoice PDFs. Multi-contractor under one login. | A consumer-facing booking page focused on capturing new residential leads, not a portal where a property manager runs an AP workflow against you. |
| Pricing model | $89 per tech per month. Owners, admins, dispatchers, and customers are free. Work orders unlimited. | Per-user tiered (Connect / Grow / Plus). Lower starting price for solo operators; gets more competitive as commercial shops add office + dispatch + admins. |
| Mobile (tech app) | Techs open the job from their phone, add proof, request approval when needed, close out cleanly. Works in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. | Strong residential mobile app — booking, scheduling, payment capture. The flow is built around a single-visit consumer interaction. |
When Jobber is the right call
- You do mostly residential work — homeowners, single visits, on-the-spot payment
- Most of your jobs are quote-on-arrival, not approve-then-dispatch
- You don't deal with property managers setting NTE limits or AP teams auditing invoices
- You're a solo operator or small crew without a dedicated office function
When TradelyHQ is the right call
- You service repeat commercial clients — property managers, retail chains, REITs, facilities groups
- NTE limits matter — your client sets a cap and YOU eat the overage if a tech goes over without approval
- Dispatch needs to see calls, scheduled visits, quotes, completed work, and invoices in one place
- You bill AP departments, not consumers — invoices need photos, completion reports, and clean QuickBooks records
- Your office staff (owners, admins, dispatchers) are full-time and shouldn't count against per-user seat caps
The honest framing
Jobber and TradelyHQ aren't really competing for the same customer. Jobber wins residential. TradelyHQ wins commercial. The hard part is when a shop does both — say, 70% commercial maintenance contracts and 30% residential service calls on the side. In that case Jobber's residential ergonomics will feel familiar but the commercial half of your work will keep falling out of the system: NTE caps tracked in a spreadsheet, property-manager approvals over email, completion reports rebuilt from text threads.
TradelyHQ is built to run the commercial half cleanly. If commercial is the majority of your revenue, that's the half worth optimizing.
Other comparisons
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