Does any general contractor software charge per user?

ServiceM8 does not charge per user on paid plans — Starter, Growing, Premium and Premium Plus all include unlimited users, and the price scales with monthly job volume instead. That means a solo operator and an 8-person crew doing the same job volume pay the exact same monthly fee on ServiceM8. Kickserv does the opposite: each tier caps user count (5, 10 or 20) and moving to more users means moving to a higher-priced tier, even if only one extra seat is needed — a 6-person crew has to pay for the 10-user Run plan at $119/mo, not a prorated amount above the 5-user Start plan's $60/mo. FieldPulse and ServiceTitan use seat-based pricing but do not publish the per-seat rate, so neither vendor's cost curve as headcount grows can be calculated from public information.

What does ServiceM8's Free plan actually include?

The Free plan is $0/mo for 1 user and 30 jobs per month, with 10 AI uses per day and access to all essential features including scheduling, quotes, invoices and forms. SMS costs 10 cents per message on this plan, so a solo operator sending 50 text reminders a month would add $5/mo on top of the otherwise-free plan, and 100 texts would add $10/mo. It has no time limit stated on the pricing page, but is restricted to a single user, which makes it a solo-operator plan rather than a crew plan — the moment a second person needs an account, the Free plan no longer applies and the cheapest paid option becomes Starter at $29/mo.

How much does Kickserv's annual discount actually save?

Kickserv lists a 20% discount for paying annually. On the Start plan ($60/mo), that brings the effective monthly rate to $48/mo, or $576 billed once a year — compared with paying month-to-month for a full year at $60 × 12 = $720, that's a $144 annual savings. On Run ($119/mo), annual billing brings it to roughly $95.20/mo effective, or $1,142.40 for the year, versus $1,428 paid monthly — a $285.60 savings. On Scale ($199/mo), annual billing brings it to roughly $159.20/mo, or $1,910.40 for the year, versus $2,388 paid monthly — a $477.60 savings. The site does not display the exact annual invoice amount, so confirm the total at checkout.

Why don't FieldPulse and ServiceTitan list a starting price?

Both vendors use custom, seat-based quotes tied to team size and feature package. FieldPulse's pricing page states plans are 'customized to your team size and setup' and asks for a quote request, and it distinguishes full-access seats from limited field seats without pricing either type. ServiceTitan's Essentials and The Works tiers both route to a 'Request Pricing' form with no listed dollar figure, minimum contract value, or per-seat rate. Neither published a number that could be verified for this article, so any per-seat figure a reader sees attributed to either vendor elsewhere should be treated as unconfirmed until it comes from the vendor's own quote.

General Contractor Software: What Each Vendor Charges

Of the four vendors general contractors most often compare, only two publish an actual price: ServiceM8 ($0 to $349/mo depending on job volume) and Kickserv ($60 to $199/mo depending on user count). FieldPulse and ServiceTitan both require a custom quote before you see a number.

The two vendors with public prices

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ServiceM8

ServiceM8 prices by monthly job volume, not by user count. Every paid plan includes unlimited users.

Plan	Price	Users	Jobs/month	AI uses/day
Free	$0/mo	1	30	10/day
Starter	$29/mo	Unlimited	50	Unlimited
Growing	$79/mo	Unlimited	150	Unlimited
Premium	$149/mo	Unlimited	500	Unlimited
Premium Plus	$349/mo	Unlimited	1500+	Unlimited

Source: ServiceM8 pricing

Two extras sit outside these numbers. Auto Time Tracking and the ServiceM8 Phone/Bundles add-on each cost an extra $19/mo on top of any plan. On the Free plan, SMS costs 10 cents per message; on all paid plans, SMS is included free up to the plan’s cap, with a standard per-SMS overage fee after that (the page does not state the overage rate). On Premium Plus specifically, jobs beyond the 1,500 included cost 20 cents each.

Because users are unlimited on paid plans, cost per job is the number that actually moves as a crew grows:

Starter: $29 ÷ 50 jobs = $0.58/job
Growing: $79 ÷ 150 jobs = $0.53/job
Premium: $149 ÷ 500 jobs = $0.30/job
Premium Plus: $349 ÷ 1,500 jobs = $0.23/job

A one-person crew doing 20 jobs a month stays on Free at $0/mo. A five-person crew running 140 jobs a month needs Growing at $79/mo, and that $79/mo does not change whether the crew is 5 people or 8 — only job volume pushes the price up. Put another way: at 1 user, 3 users, 5 users, or 8 users, a crew doing 140 jobs/month pays the identical $79/mo on Growing, because ServiceM8’s meter is jobs, not headcount. That’s the core trade-off against Kickserv — a growing crew that stays lean on job volume never gets pushed into a higher ServiceM8 tier, but a lean crew with a high job count (say, 3 people running 160 jobs/month) gets pushed into Premium at $149/mo purely on volume, even though headcount never grew.

The tier boundaries also reveal what each upgrade actually buys in extra headroom. Moving from Starter to Growing costs $50/mo more ($79 − $29) for 100 more jobs of capacity, a marginal cost of $0.50 per additional job of headroom. Moving from Growing to Premium costs $70/mo more for 350 more jobs, or $0.20 per additional job. Moving from Premium to Premium Plus costs $200/mo more for at least 1,000 more jobs, also about $0.20 per additional job. In other words, the first upgrade (Starter → Growing) buys headroom at more than double the marginal rate of the later ones — a business scaling past 50 jobs/month pays a steeper premium for that first jump than for any jump after it.

Kickserv

Kickserv prices by user count, in three fixed tiers, billed monthly or annually with a stated 20% discount for annual billing.

Plan	Price	Users
Start	$60/mo	5
Run	$119/mo	10
Scale	$199/mo	20

Source: Kickserv pricing

Cost per user drops as the tier goes up:

Start: $60 ÷ 5 users = $12.00/user
Run: $119 ÷ 10 users = $11.90/user
Scale: $199 ÷ 20 users = $9.95/user

At 1 user you’re paying for a full 5-user Start block regardless: $60/mo, or $60.00/user for that single seat. At 3 users, still $60/mo, which works out to $20.00/user. At 5 users, still $60/mo — the last seat in that tier is effectively free, bringing the per-user cost down to the plan floor of $12.00/user. At 8 users, you must move to Run at $119/mo, because Start caps out at 5; that’s $14.88/user at 8 seats on a 10-seat plan. So the jump from 5 to 6 users costs $59/mo more, not a marginal per-seat amount — a single added employee at that boundary effectively costs as much as the entire rest of the crew combined. The same cliff repeats between Run and Scale: an 11th user forces the jump from $119/mo to $199/mo, an $80/mo increase for one added seat, even though Scale has room for nine more before the next cliff.

With the 20% annual discount applied:

Start: $60 × 12 × 0.8 = $576/year (≈$48/mo effective), versus $720/year paid monthly — a $144/year savings
Run: $119 × 12 × 0.8 = $1,142.40/year (≈$95.20/mo effective), versus $1,428/year paid monthly — a $285.60/year savings
Scale: $199 × 12 × 0.8 = $1,910.40/year (≈$159.20/mo effective), versus $2,388/year paid monthly — a $477.60/year savings

Annual billing saves proportionally more in dollar terms on the larger tiers, since the 20% discount is applied to a bigger base — Scale’s annual savings ($477.60) is more than triple Start’s ($144), even though the discount rate is identical across all three tiers.

Kickserv also runs a “Kickback” program: Start, Run and Scale users get a 5% discount on their monthly fee if they process a minimum volume in online payments through the platform — $1,000/mo on Start, $2,000/mo on Run, $3,000/mo on Scale. For annual-plan customers, that monthly minimum is multiplied by 12 to set the annual processing threshold. On Start, that 5% discount would reduce $60/mo to $57/mo ($684/year instead of $720), a saving that’s separate from and stackable with the annual-billing discount, though the page does not confirm whether both discounts compound or how the combined rate is calculated.

What could not be verified

FieldPulse and ServiceTitan do not publish plan prices. Both list feature sets by tier and route every “see pricing” click to a quote-request form.

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FieldPulse states its model is seat-based, splitting “full access seats” (complete platform access) from “limited field seats” (mobile-only, job view and clock in/out). Its pricing page says rates are “customized to your team size and setup,” with no dollar figure shown. Source: FieldPulse pricing

ServiceTitan lists two tiers, Essentials and The Works, each with a feature list (dispatching, scheduling, call booking, invoicing, pricebook, mobile estimates, payroll management, advanced reporting) but both link to “Request Pricing” with no number on the page. Source: ServiceTitan pricing

Neither vendor’s published page states a monthly fee, per-seat rate, or minimum contract value. Any number attributed to either vendor elsewhere did not come from their own pricing page and should not be treated as current.

What to check before buying

Get the seat price in writing. For FieldPulse and ServiceTitan, ask the sales rep to confirm the exact monthly or annual cost per full-access seat and per field-only seat, in an email or quote document, before signing.
Confirm what happens at your job volume. ServiceM8 charges 20 cents per job over the Premium Plus cap; ask whether lower tiers have a similar overage or simply force an upgrade. Given the marginal headroom cost calculated above ($0.50/job on the first upgrade, $0.20/job on later ones), it’s worth asking whether a mid-cycle upgrade is prorated or billed at the full new rate starting that month.
Ask what the SMS overage rate actually is. ServiceM8’s paid plans include SMS free up to a cap, but the page states an overage fee exists without listing the rate — get that number before you rely on text reminders at volume.
Check the Kickback minimum realistically. Kickserv’s 5% processing discount only pays off if your crew is actually routing that payment volume through Kickserv’s own processing, not a separate merchant account. On Start, hitting the $1,000/mo processing minimum to unlock $3/mo in savings is a low bar; on Scale, hitting $3,000/mo to unlock roughly $9.95/mo in savings is a materially bigger commitment for a proportionally smaller discount.
Model the seat cliffs before committing headcount. Because Kickserv’s tiers jump in fixed blocks, a crew hovering near 5, 10, or 20 users should decide in advance whether to hire up to the tier ceiling (getting “free” extra seats) or hold below it, rather than triggering an unplanned $59/mo or $80/mo jump mid-year.
Re-verify before signing. All four vendors can and do change plan structure. Treat every figure here as accurate for 2026-08-09 and pull the current page again before a purchase decision.

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