Does ServiceM8 charge per user?

No. ServiceM8 states plainly that it does not charge per user. The Free plan caps out at 1 user, but every paid plan (Starter at $29/mo through Premium Plus at $349/mo) allows unlimited user logins at the same flat monthly price. Run the annual math and the per-seat savings get sharper as a crew grows: a 5-person team on Starter still pays $29/mo total, or $348/year, which works out to under $6/month per person at that headcount. The same $29/mo on a 10-person crew works out to under $3/month per person, purely because the plan price doesn't move with user count.

What happens if I go over my monthly job limit?

If your plan resets within your billing cycle, job credits reset with it. Otherwise ServiceM8 prompts you to upgrade. Only the Premium Plus plan lists a stated per-job overage fee of 20c per additional job; the other four plans show no listed overage rate. To put that 20c figure in concrete terms: 25 extra jobs beyond the Premium Plus cap would add $5 to that month's bill, and 100 extra jobs would add $20. Because Starter, Growing, and Premium don't publish an equivalent per-job rate, a business that regularly runs over its cap on those tiers should treat the next plan up as the real cost of overflow, not a per-job fee — for example, a business that consistently hits 160 jobs a month on Growing (capped at 150) is effectively being pushed toward Premium's $149/mo and 500-job ceiling rather than paying an itemized overage charge.

Are SMS messages free on ServiceM8?

Only on paid plans. The Free plan charges 10c per SMS sent. Starter, Growing, Premium, and Premium Plus all include SMS at no per-message charge up to a plan cap, after which a standard overage fee applies, though ServiceM8 does not publish that overage rate on its pricing page. On the Free plan, the 10c-per-message rate adds up quickly for any business that texts customers regularly — 50 SMS in a month is $5, 200 SMS is $20 — which is a cost that disappears entirely the moment you move to Starter at $29/mo, since SMS is bundled in on every paid tier.

Can I build custom forms on the Free plan?

You can buy and use any of the 250+ pre-made forms from the Form Store on every plan, including Free. Building your own custom forms, or having a ServiceM8 Partner build them for you, requires the Growing plan or higher. A business on Starter that needs custom forms is looking at a $50/mo jump to Growing ($79/mo minus $29/mo), which also comes with a higher job cap (150 vs 50) and a higher SMS allowance as part of the same upgrade — the custom-forms requirement effectively bundles in more job capacity whether or not that capacity is needed.

What does Auto Time Tracking cost on top of a ServiceM8 plan?

Auto Time Tracking is listed as an add-on starting from $19/mo on every plan tier, Free through Premium Plus. The pricing page does not state whether the $19/mo figure changes with job volume or user count above that starting price. Stacked on top of a base plan, the combined monthly cost would be $19 on Free ($0 + $19), $48 on Starter ($29 + $19), $98 on Growing ($79 + $19), $168 on Premium ($149 + $19), and $368 on Premium Plus ($349 + $19), assuming the add-on price does not scale up from its stated starting point.

ServiceM8: What the Base Plan Doesn't Include

ServiceM8’s Free plan covers 1 user, 30 jobs a month, and 10 AI uses a day, with self-serve support only and SMS billed at 10c per message. It does not include unlimited users, free SMS, 24/7 support, or the ability to build custom forms, all of which start on the paid tiers according to the ServiceM8 pricing page.

The five plans, side by side

ServiceM8 publishes five tiers. The core differences are job volume, SMS cost, and support level, not features, since the vendor states that every plan includes the same essentials: job cards, scheduling, quotes, invoices, email and SMS, mobile payments, and accounting integrations.

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Plan	Price	Users	Jobs/Month	AI Uses/Day	SMS	Support
Free	$0/mo	1	30	10/day	10c per SMS	Self serve
Starter	$29/mo	Unlimited	50	Unlimited	Free	24/7
Growing	$79/mo	Unlimited	150	Unlimited	Free	24/7
Premium	$149/mo	Unlimited	500	Unlimited	Free	24/7
Premium Plus	$349/mo	Unlimited	1500+	Unlimited	Free	24/7

Source: servicem8.com/us/pricing.

Multiplying each monthly price by 12 gives the annual commitment a business is actually signing up for: Free is $0/year, Starter is $348/year ($29 × 12), Growing is $948/year ($79 × 12), Premium is $1,788/year ($149 × 12), and Premium Plus is $4,188/year ($349 × 12). That framing matters when comparing tiers, since the jump from Starter to Growing looks small monthly ($50 more) but adds up to $600 more per year, while the jump from Growing to Premium adds $840 to the annual bill.

What the Free plan leaves out

The Free plan is built for a solo operator, not a crew. Per the vendor FAQ, it is “the only plan which limits the number of users you can have,” and it is capped at 30 jobs a month with 10 AI uses a day, against unlimited AI uses on every paid tier. SMS is pay-per-message at 10c each rather than bundled free, and support drops to self-serve, with 24/7 email and chat support starting only at Starter.

The Free plan does list the same feature set as the paid plans in the vendor’s per-plan breakdown, including Recurring Jobs, Deposits, Asset Management, Job Costing, and Forms & Certificates. What actually separates it from Starter is volume and support, not feature access.

A business right at the edge of the Free plan’s 30-job cap should also weigh the SMS math: at 30 jobs a month, even a modest 2 texts per job (confirmation and follow-up) works out to 60 SMS, or $6 in per-message charges on Free — on Starter, that same texting volume is included at no extra cost, on top of the $29/mo base fee that already grants unlimited users and 24/7 support.

What doesn’t scale with user count

This is the detail worth flagging in the title: ServiceM8’s base plans don’t charge per seat once you’re past Free. Every paid tier is unlimited-user at a flat monthly rate. Running the numbers on the Starter plan:

Users	Starter ($29/mo)	Growing ($79/mo)	Premium ($149/mo)
1	$29	$79	$149
3	$29	$79	$149
5	$29	$79	$149
8	$29	$79	$149

The monthly bill does not move as headcount grows, because ServiceM8 states it does not charge per-user fees on any paid plan. The only place user count matters is the Free plan, which is hard-capped at 1 user regardless of job volume.

Put another way, an 8-person crew on Growing pays the same $79/mo, or $9.88 per person, that a solo operator on Growing pays as $79/mo for one seat. The flat-rate structure means the per-person cost of any paid plan keeps falling as a business adds staff, which is the opposite of how per-seat software pricing usually behaves.

What changes with job volume instead

Since the plans are priced on job volume rather than seats, the arithmetic to do before signing up is jobs-per-month against plan price, not users-per-month:

Architect wearing hard hat checks wall alignment in a renovation project.

Free: 30 jobs, $0/mo → $0 per job at the cap
Starter: 50 jobs, $29/mo → roughly 58c per job at the cap
Growing: 150 jobs, $79/mo → roughly 53c per job at the cap
Premium: 500 jobs, $149/mo → roughly 30c per job at the cap
Premium Plus: 1500+ jobs, $349/mo → roughly 23c per job at 1500 jobs

Only the Premium Plus tier lists a stated overage rate for jobs beyond the plan cap: 20c per additional job. The other four tiers show no published overage rate; the vendor’s FAQ says exceeding your cap either resets on your billing cycle or prompts an upgrade, without a stated per-job charge in between.

The per-job cost trend across tiers is worth sitting with: it drops from roughly 58c per job on Starter to roughly 23c per job on Premium Plus, meaning the highest-volume plan is also the cheapest per job, not the most expensive. A business doing exactly 500 jobs a month pays $149/mo on Premium, or 30c per job; the same 500 jobs squeezed into Growing’s 150-job cap would mean running well over the limit for two-thirds of the month, which is the scenario the vendor’s “resets or prompts an upgrade” language is describing.

Add-ons that sit on top of every plan

Two features are listed as paid add-ons regardless of which base plan you’re on:

Auto Time Tracking — automatic clock on/off, job check-in/out, and travel time via GPS — is listed at “from $19/mo” on every plan, Free through Premium Plus.
Bundles — for streamlining pricing, quoting, and invoicing — is also listed at $19/mo, but is only available on the Growing plan and above, not on Free or Starter.

Caller ID / ServiceM8 Phone is described as coming “at a single, affordable monthly price… no per-user fees,” with a free trial attached to any standard subscription. No dollar figure is published for this add-on on the pricing page, so it cannot be quoted here.

Because Bundles is gated to Growing and above, a Starter subscriber who wants both add-ons is actually blocked from one of them: Auto Time Tracking ($19/mo) is available on Starter, but Bundles is not, regardless of willingness to pay. That gate only lifts at Growing’s $79/mo tier, where both add-ons become available together.

Forms: what’s included versus what costs more

Every plan, including Free, can buy and use any form from ServiceM8’s Form Store, which the vendor lists as over 250 pre-made forms across industries. What is not included on Free or Starter is the ability to build your own custom forms, or have a ServiceM8 Partner build them for you; that requires upgrading to Growing ($79/mo) or higher.

For a business currently on Free or Starter, the practical question is whether the 250+ pre-made forms already cover its trade — general contracting, HVAC, plumbing, and similar service categories are common enough that the Form Store may remove the need for custom forms entirely, which would mean the Growing-plan requirement never applies. Only businesses with a genuinely unique form (a proprietary inspection checklist, a specific compliance document) hit the wall that forces an upgrade purely for form-building access.

What could not be verified

A few figures on the ServiceM8 pricing page are described in words rather than fixed numbers, so they are left out of the tables above:

Architect wearing hard hat and mask reviews floor plans on site for new construction project.

The exact price of ServiceM8 Phone / Caller ID is not stated as a dollar figure, only as “a single, affordable monthly price.”
The SMS overage fee that applies once a paid plan’s included SMS allowance is used up is referenced as a “standard overage fee” without a stated per-message rate.
Whether the “from $19/mo” Auto Time Tracking price increases with plan tier, user count, or job volume is not specified; it is listed identically as a starting price on all five plans.
Trial length for ServiceM8 Phone appears inconsistently on the page, once as a 1-month free trial and again as a 3-month free trial with a standard subscription; the vendor page does not clarify which applies by default.

No other vendors were compared in this article; only ServiceM8’s published pricing page was used as a source.

What to check before buying

Confirm your actual monthly job count against the 30/50/150/500/1500+ caps, since job volume, not user count, is what moves you between tiers.
If you’re a solo operator staying under 30 jobs a month, the Free plan removes the monthly fee but adds a 10c-per-SMS charge and self-serve-only support.
If you plan to add crew, price out Starter at $29/mo rather than a higher tier first, since users are unlimited on every paid plan and the job cap, not headcount, is the real ceiling.
If you need custom forms rather than store-bought ones, budget for Growing ($79/mo) or above, not Starter.
Ask ServiceM8 directly for the dollar figure on Caller ID/Phone and the exact SMS overage rate before assuming either is included at no extra cost, since neither is published as a number on the current pricing page.
Before adding Auto Time Tracking or Bundles, check both the starting add-on price ($19/mo each) against your base plan’s monthly fee and, for Bundles specifically, confirm your base plan is Growing or above — the add-on isn’t purchasable on Free or Starter regardless of budget.
If job volume runs close to a tier’s cap most months, compare the annual cost of staying on the current tier and occasionally hitting the vendor’s “reset or upgrade” prompt against the annual cost of the next tier up ($348, $948, $1,788, or $4,188 respectively), since only Premium Plus has a published per-job overage rate to run that comparison precisely.