Does ServiceM8 charge per user?

No. ServiceM8's four paid plans (Starter $29/mo, Growing $79/mo, Premium $149/mo, Premium Plus $349/mo) include unlimited users at one flat monthly price. Only the free $0/mo plan limits users, capping the account at one user and 30 jobs a month. Adding staff on a paid plan does not change the bill; only the monthly job allowance and AI-use limits differ between tiers. This means a two-person crew and an eight-person crew pay the identical $79/mo on Growing, as long as both stay under the plan's 150 jobs/mo allowance — the only lever that moves the price up is job volume, never headcount.

How much does Kickserv cost for a 10-person electrical crew?

Kickserv's Run plan covers 10 users for $119/mo on monthly billing, or roughly $95.20/mo equivalent with the 20% annual discount. Its Start plan tops out at 5 users for $60/mo, so an 11th user (or even a 6th) forces an upgrade to Run, since Kickserv sells seats in fixed blocks of 5, 10 and 20 rather than one at a time. A crew that grows from 5 to 6 techs mid-year would see its Kickserv bill jump from $60/mo to $119/mo for that single added seat — a $59/mo increase — because there's no partial-block pricing between Start and Run.

Does FieldPulse publish its prices?

No. FieldPulse's pricing page confirms the model is seat-based, split into full-access seats and limited field seats, but no dollar figures appear anywhere on the page. The site requires a name, phone number and industry submitted through a form to receive a custom quote, so no monthly cost can be verified from public information. That also means there's no way to calculate a per-user or per-crew-size cost table for FieldPulse the way there is for ServiceM8 and Kickserv; any number quoted outside FieldPulse's own sales process should be treated as unverified.

What happens if an electrical contractor goes over their ServiceM8 job limit?

On the Free through Premium plans, exceeding your monthly job allowance prompts an upgrade to the next tier at the next billing reset. Only the top Premium Plus plan ($349/mo, 1,500+ jobs) lists a published overage rate of 20 cents per additional job; the four lower plans do not show a per-job overage fee in ServiceM8's plan comparison table. In practice this means a contractor on Growing (150 jobs/mo, $79/mo) who books 160 jobs in a month has no per-job charge to fall back on and instead gets pushed toward Premium ($149/mo, 500 jobs/mo) at renewal — a $70/mo jump — rather than paying a small overage fee for the extra 10 jobs.

Does ServiceM8 charge extra for text messages to customers?

Only on the Free plan, which is billed 10 cents per SMS sent. On all four paid plans (Starter, Growing, Premium, Premium Plus), SMS is listed as free and included in the base monthly price, according to ServiceM8's plan comparison table. A solo electrician sending 100 texts a month on Free pays $10/mo in SMS charges on top of the $0 plan fee — effectively $10/mo total — while the same volume on Starter ($29/mo) costs nothing extra, making Starter cheaper in total spend than Free once SMS volume passes roughly 290 texts a month (at which point $29 flat undercuts 10¢ × 290 = $29 in SMS fees alone, before counting the Free plan's other limits).

Electrical Contractor Software: ServiceM8 vs FieldPulse vs Kickserv

ServiceM8 publishes five flat-fee plans from $0 to $349 a month with unlimited users on every paid tier. Kickserv sells fixed user blocks of 5, 10 or 20 seats from $60 to $199 a month. FieldPulse does not publish any price at all; it requires a custom quote. For an electrical contractor comparing the three, the choice comes down to whether you want a flat fee regardless of headcount, a per-seat block price, or a negotiated number you can’t check in advance.

ServiceM8 pricing

ServiceM8 lists five tiers on its pricing page. All paid tiers include unlimited users; only the free plan is user-capped.

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Plan	Monthly price	Users	New jobs/mo
Free	$0	1	30
Starter	$29	Unlimited	50
Growing	$79	Unlimited	150
Premium	$149	Unlimited	500
Premium Plus	$349	Unlimited	1,500+

The Free plan also caps AI use at 10 uses/day, while all paid plans get unlimited AI uses/day. Text messaging is billed at 10 cents per SMS on the Free plan; on all four paid plans SMS is listed as free/included. Only the Premium Plus plan shows a published overage rate for going past the job allowance: 20 cents per additional job. Auto Time Tracking is a $19/mo add-on available on every plan. Bundles, a pricing/quoting/invoicing add-on, is listed as available “in Growing & up” for $19/mo.

Kickserv pricing

Kickserv’s pricing page lists three named plans with user caps built into the tier, plus monthly billing and an annual option that saves 20%.

Plan	Monthly price	User cap
Start	$60/mo	5 users
Run	$119/mo	10 users
Scale	$199/mo	20 users

Kickserv also mentions a “Premium” tier in its Kickback loyalty program copy, but no price for a Premium plan appears on the pricing page, so it is left out of the table above.

Kickserv Kickback is a separate discount: Start, Run, Scale and Premium users get a 5% discount on their monthly fee if they process a minimum volume through Kickserv’s payments each month — $1,000/mo for Start, $2,000/mo for Run, $3,000/mo for Scale. On annual billing, the monthly minimum is multiplied by 12. Applied to Start, that discount brings $60/mo down to $57/mo if the $1,000/mo processing minimum is met.

FieldPulse: no public price to compare

FieldPulse’s pricing page states plainly that pricing is seat-based, with full-access seats and limited field seats “based on what your team needs,” and that pricing is “customized to your team size and setup.” No dollar amount, no per-seat rate, and no plan-level price appears anywhere on the page. The page instead collects contact details (email, name, phone, company, industry) to route the visitor to a sales quote. There is no way to state what an electrical contractor would pay for FieldPulse without a vendor quote, so no FieldPulse figures appear in the tables above.

Cost at 1, 3, 5 and 8 users

ServiceM8’s paid plans don’t change price with headcount, so the same plan costs the same whether you run 1 tech or 8. Kickserv’s price steps up whenever headcount crosses a seat-block boundary. Using the Growing plan as a representative ServiceM8 mid-tier:

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Users	ServiceM8 Growing ($79/mo flat)	Kickserv (cheapest tier that fits)
1	$79/mo	$60/mo (Start, 5-user cap)
3	$79/mo	$60/mo (Start, 5-user cap)
5	$79/mo	$60/mo (Start, 5-user cap)
8	$79/mo	$119/mo (Run, 10-user cap — Start’s 5-user cap is exceeded)

At 1-5 users Kickserv’s Start plan is cheaper than ServiceM8 Growing on price alone, but Kickserv’s job-volume features and job cap aren’t stated on its pricing page the way ServiceM8’s are, so the comparison is price-only, not feature-for-feature. Once a crew crosses 5 techs, Kickserv jumps a full tier to $119/mo even for a single additional hire, while ServiceM8’s flat per-plan price absorbs that same hire for free as long as the job volume still fits the plan’s monthly job allowance.

For a solo electrician, ServiceM8’s Free plan ($0/mo, 1 user, 30 jobs/mo, 10 AI uses/day) is the only zero-cost option in this comparison; Kickserv has no free tier and FieldPulse’s cost is unknown until a quote is returned.

It’s also worth running the same math against ServiceM8’s cheapest paid tier. Starter is $29/mo flat for unlimited users, which undercuts Kickserv’s Start plan ($60/mo, 5-user cap) at every headcount from 1 through 5 users — a $31/mo gap — provided the crew’s job volume stays inside Starter’s 50 jobs/mo allowance. That allowance is the tradeoff: Starter suits a 1-3 person crew doing straightforward service calls, but a 5-person crew booking more than 50 jobs a month would need to move up to Growing ($79/mo) anyway, at which point the price gap with Kickserv Start narrows to $19/mo rather than $31/mo.

Break-even point: when does ServiceM8’s flat fee win?

Because ServiceM8’s price is flat per plan and Kickserv’s price is stepped per seat-block, there’s a specific headcount where the cheaper option flips. Comparing ServiceM8 Growing ($79/mo) against Kickserv’s tiers on monthly billing: Kickserv Start ($60/mo) is cheaper for any crew of 1-5 users, since $60 < $79. The moment a 6th user is added, Kickserv requires the Run tier at $119/mo, which is $40/mo more than ServiceM8 Growing’s flat $79. So the break-even point sits exactly at the 5-to-6 user boundary — ServiceM8 Growing becomes the cheaper option the instant a crew grows past 5 techs, and stays cheaper all the way up to Growing’s 150 jobs/mo ceiling, since ServiceM8’s price doesn’t move again until that job-volume cap is hit rather than a headcount cap. A crew that expects to stay at 5 or fewer users long-term has no arithmetic reason to prefer Growing over Kickserv Start on price alone; a crew that expects to grow past 5 has a $40/mo incentive to price out ServiceM8 before signing.

Annual billing and processing-fee arithmetic

Kickserv states annual billing saves 20% versus monthly. Applied to the three published tiers:

Start: $60/mo monthly → roughly $48/mo equivalent on annual billing
Run: $119/mo monthly → roughly $95.20/mo equivalent on annual billing
Scale: $199/mo monthly → roughly $159.20/mo equivalent on annual billing

Spelled out as yearly totals rather than monthly equivalents: Start on monthly billing runs $60 × 12 = $720/year, versus $48 × 12 = $576/year on annual billing — a $144/year saving. Run runs $119 × 12 = $1,428/year monthly versus $95.20 × 12 = $1,142.40/year annual, a $285.60/year saving. Scale runs $199 × 12 = $2,388/year monthly versus $159.20 × 12 = $1,910.40/year annual, a $477.60/year saving. The dollar savings from annual billing grow with plan size even though the discount rate (20%) stays constant across all three tiers, simply because 20% of a bigger number is a bigger number.

Stack the Kickback discount on top of annual billing and Start drops further: $48/mo × 0.95 ≈ $45.60/mo, provided the account processes at least $12,000/year in Kickserv payments (the $1,000/mo minimum × 12 for annual accounts). That processing minimum is a real threshold, not a marketing line — Kickserv states it explicitly per plan, and it resets differently for annual vs. monthly billing. Over a full year, that combined discount brings Start down to roughly $547.20/year ($45.60 × 12) against the $720/year monthly-billing baseline — a $172.80/year total saving for a contractor who both commits annually and clears the payments-volume minimum every month.

ServiceM8’s per-SMS charge only applies to the Free plan. A solo electrician sending, say, 100 appointment-confirmation texts a month on the Free plan would pay $10/mo in SMS fees on top of the $0 plan fee, a cost that disappears entirely by upgrading to Starter ($29/mo) where SMS is included. Annualized, that’s $120/year in SMS fees on Free versus $348/year in plan fees on Starter ($29 × 12) — meaning Free only stays cheaper overall if SMS volume is low enough that $10/mo × 12 = $120/year plus $0 plan cost still beats $348/year, which holds only up to roughly 290 texts/month before Starter’s flat fee wins outright on total annual spend.

What could not be verified

FieldPulse publishes no plan names, no per-seat rate, and no starting price on its pricing page. Any FieldPulse dollar figure you see elsewhere online is not confirmed by FieldPulse’s own site as of the date this was checked and should be treated as unverified until you get a written quote. Kickserv’s “Premium” tier is referenced in the Kickback section but carries no listed price, so it is also excluded from the price table above rather than guessed at.

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What to check before buying

Before signing with any of these three, confirm in writing: the exact monthly job or seat allowance for your team size today (not the promotional headline number), whether SMS and payment processing carry per-transaction fees on top of the subscription, whether the plan requires annual billing to get the quoted rate, and — for FieldPulse specifically — get the seat-by-seat quote in writing and ask what a full-access seat costs versus a field-only seat, since the public pricing page won’t tell you. If your crew size sits right at a Kickserv seat-block boundary (5, 10, or 20 users) or a ServiceM8 job-volume ceiling (50, 150, 500 jobs/mo), ask what the next tier costs before you need it — both vendors’ step pricing means growth by even one user or one job over the line can trigger a full tier jump rather than a small incremental fee.