Tradify vs ServiceM8: Cheapest Start for an Electrical Startup

For a solo electrician, ServiceM8’s Free plan at $0 is the cheapest start, but it allows 1 user and 30 jobs a month. For two or more users, ServiceM8 Starter at a flat $29 a month sits below the lowest per-user figure on Tradify’s page ($47) at every headcount, though it caps new jobs at 50 a month.

Key points

• ServiceM8 publishes a Free plan at $0 per month for 1 user and 30 jobs per month, then Starter at $29, Growing at $79, Premium at $149 and Premium Plus at $349, all with unlimited users on paid tiers.
• Tradify’s pricing page shows $47, $51 and $61 USD per user per month, so a 3-person crew pays between $141 and $183 a month before any other charge.
• ServiceM8 Growing at $79 flat is cheaper than Tradify’s lowest listed figure from 2 users upward ($94 against $79).
• ServiceM8 limits new jobs per month (30, 50, 150, 500, 1500+), while the Tradify page text we checked states no job limit.
• Neither page, as extracted, states sales tax, onboarding fees or whether Tradify’s per-user prices assume monthly or annual billing.

How was this comparison built, and what does it not cover?

This is a record of what each vendor publishes, not a product review. We have not used either product and make no claim about how well either one works for wiring, service calls or inspections. Every price below comes from the vendor pricing pages as retrieved on 2026-11-02: Tradify pricing and ServiceM8 USA pricing.

The question is narrow: what is the lowest subscription cost for an electrical startup that has to choose between a per-user model and a flat-fee model? The answer covers subscription fees only. It excludes sales tax, onboarding, payment processing, accounting add-ons, hardware, and any quote-only enterprise pricing. The title promises a cost comparison, so the other differences (features, support quality, integrations) are mentioned only where they change the price.

Arithmetic below is derived from the published figures and is labelled as calculation. It is not measured data from either vendor.

What does ServiceM8 publish for pricing?

ServiceM8 publishes five plans, all priced in USD, with job volume rather than headcount as the main limit. The figures below come from the plan comparison on the ServiceM8 pricing page.

Plan	Monthly price	Users	New jobs per month
Free	$0	1	30
Starter	$29	Unlimited	50
Growing	$79	Unlimited	150
Premium	$149	Unlimited	500
Premium Plus	$349	Unlimited	1500+

The page says plainly that it does not charge per user: “The only plan which limits the number of users you can have is the Free plan, to help sole traders get started.” Once you move to a paid plan you can set up as many user logins as you need.

Other published details that affect cost:

• Text messaging costs 10c per SMS on the Free plan. The comparison table lists SMS as free on the four paid plans, but the FAQ also mentions an overage fee per SMS above a plan’s monthly SMS cap. The cap itself is not shown in the extracted text.
• Premium Plus lists “20c per Job” for additional jobs. No other plan lists a per-job overage; the FAQ says you will be “prompted to upgrade your plan” instead.
• There is a 14-day free trial with access to all features, and the page says there are no lock-ins. Credit from a previous plan is applied pro rata to a new plan.
• Several items are priced as add-ons or higher-plan extras: Bundles at $39/mo (available in Growing and up), ServiceM8 Phone at $19/mo, and Auto Time Tracking at $19/mo.
• Custom Forms need the Growing plan or higher, though the page says customers on all plans can buy and use forms from the Form Store.

What does Tradify publish for pricing?

Tradify publishes per-user monthly prices, but the extracted page text is ambiguous about which price belongs to which plan. The Tradify pricing page shows three plan names (Lite, Pro, Plus) and three per-user figures: $47, $51 and $61 USD per user per month.

Here is the problem. In the text, “$47 USD per user/month” sits in a sentence about SmartTools: “Available on our Plus plan only. $47 USD per user/month.” That reads as the SmartTools add-on price. Yet the same figure also appears just before the Lite feature list in page order, which could make it the Lite price. The $51 and $61 figures follow the Lite and Pro feature lists respectively. Two readings are possible:

1. $47 is Lite, $51 is Pro, $61 is Plus.
2. $47 is the SmartTools price, $51 is Lite, $61 is Pro, and the Plus price is not shown in the extracted text.

We cannot resolve this from the text we have. So this article treats the page as publishing a range of $47 to $61 per user per month and uses all three figures in the arithmetic. If you only need the lowest possible number, $47 is the floor; if reading 2 is correct, the real floor for a core plan is $51.

The page also shows an unlabelled “$12 per month” next to each plan block. The text does not say what it covers. It could be a separate monthly charge, an add-on, or something else. We have not added it to any total below. If it applies per business on top of the per-user price, add $12 to each Tradify monthly figure.

Other Tradify details on the page: a 14-day free trial that includes all features, a menu of features (quoting, estimating, scheduling, timesheets, job tracking, invoicing, online payments, subcontractor management) and an Electrical and AV trade page. The pricing text does not list job limits, billing term (monthly or annual), tax, or onboarding terms.

How much does each option cost at 1, 3, 5 and 8 users?

At 3 users and above, a flat ServiceM8 plan costs a fraction of a per-user Tradify bill, and the gap widens with every hire. The table below is calculation only: Tradify figure multiplied by headcount, ServiceM8 shown at its flat price.

Users	Tradify at $47	Tradify at $51	Tradify at $61	ServiceM8 Starter ($29)	ServiceM8 Growing ($79)
1	$47	$51	$61	$29 (or Free at $0)	$79
3	$141	$153	$183	$29	$79
5	$235	$255	$305	$29	$79
8	$376	$408	$488	$29	$79

All amounts are monthly, in USD, before tax and before the unlabelled Tradify “$12 per month” figure. ServiceM8 Free is only valid at 1 user.

Three things stand out.

At 1 user, ServiceM8 is cheaper at every tier except Growing. Free is $0 and Starter is $29, both below Tradify’s lowest figure of $47. Growing at $79 is above all of Tradify’s per-user figures except none; it costs more than the $47, $51 and $61 prices at 1 user. A solo electrician has no reason to pick Growing on price alone.

At 2 users, Growing already beats Tradify. Two users on Tradify cost $94 at $47, $102 at $51 and $122 at $61, all above $79. This is the break-even point for flat pricing against the lowest Tradify figure: 79 divided by 47 is about 1.7, so the second user is where Growing wins.

At 5 and 8 users, the difference is large. Eight users on Tradify at $47 costs $376 a month, which is more than ServiceM8 Premium at $149 and above Premium Plus at… no: $376 exceeds Premium Plus at $349. At the $61 figure the Tradify bill of $488 is $139 above Premium Plus. So even the most expensive ServiceM8 tier is below the Tradify total for 8 users on the lowest-to-middle prices, though it only matters if you actually need 1500+ jobs.

What does a worked example look like for a small electrical crew?

Take an assumed crew: one owner-electrician plus two employees, so 3 users, handling 40 new jobs in an average month and about 70 in a busy month. These numbers are assumptions chosen for the example. They are not data from either vendor.

Tradify, 3 users: $141 a month at $47, $153 at $51, or $183 at $61. Over 12 months that is $1,692, $1,836 or $2,196. The page text we checked states no job limit, so the busy month does not change the bill.

ServiceM8, 3 users, 40 jobs in an average month: Starter at $29 covers it, since the plan allows 50 new jobs per month. That is $348 over 12 months.

ServiceM8, 3 users, 70 jobs in a busy month: 70 exceeds Starter’s 50. The page says you will be “prompted to upgrade your plan” if your plan has not reset. Growing at $79 covers up to 150 jobs. If you stayed on Growing all year, that is $948. If you only upgraded for busy months, you would pay less, but the page does not spell out how mid-cycle upgrades are billed beyond saying credit from the previous plan is applied pro rata. Check this before relying on it.

With add-ons: suppose you add ServiceM8 Phone ($19) and Auto Time Tracking ($19) to Growing, plus Bundles ($39): 79 + 19 + 19 + 39 = $156 a month, still below Tradify’s $183 at 3 users on the $61 figure and above its $141 at the $47 figure. So add-ons can close the gap. Whether you need them is a feature question the pricing pages do not answer. Time tracking and Bundles are not on the minimum plan; the page lists Bundles as available on Growing and up.

The lesson of the example: the cheaper option flips depending on whether the add-ons are needed. For bare job management, quotes, invoices and scheduling, which the ServiceM8 page lists as included on every plan, Starter or Growing is far cheaper than per-user pricing. For a crew that wants the full ServiceM8 add-on set, the total moves much closer to Tradify’s.

Which ServiceM8 plan fits which electrical startup?

The right plan depends on job volume, because that is the limit that bites. This section is decision guidance derived from the plan limits above.

• Free ($0): fits a sole trader with no more than 30 new jobs a month and no employees needing logins. It does not fit anyone with a second user. SMS cost 10c each here, so heavy texting adds up: 200 texts would be $20 by that rate, which is arithmetic on the published 10c figure.
• Starter ($29): fits a small crew with up to 50 jobs a month. If you routinely create 51 or more new jobs, you will hit the limit.
• Growing ($79): fits crews with 51 to 150 jobs a month, or anyone who needs custom forms or the Bundles add-on, which the page lists for Growing and up. Electrical work often involves certificates and test reports, so check whether the pre-made forms in the Form Store (over 250, available on all plans) cover what you need before paying for the plan that allows custom ones.
• Premium ($149): fits up to 500 jobs a month. For a startup this is rarely the first plan.
• Premium Plus ($349): 1500+ jobs, with 20c per extra job. Not a startup tier.

The Starter-to-Growing step is the one most small electrical businesses will weigh. The extra $50 a month buys 100 more jobs, which is 50c per additional job of capacity, assuming you use all of it. That figure is calculated, not published.

When does Tradify make sense on price alone?

Tradify is cheaper than a flat plan in only one scenario: a single user who would otherwise need ServiceM8 Growing. At 1 user, Tradify’s $47 to $61 is below ServiceM8 Growing’s $79. But that same user could use ServiceM8 Free ($0) or Starter ($29) instead, which are cheaper still, provided the job count fits. So Tradify wins on price only where a solo operator needs something that ServiceM8 gates behind Growing or higher and does not want to pay $79.

Beyond price, Tradify’s pricing text shows no job cap, which matters for a business with high job counts but few staff. Take an owner-operator who creates 200 small jobs a month: ServiceM8 would require Premium at $149 (500 jobs), while Tradify at $47 to $61 for one user has no stated job limit on the page. This is the narrow case where Tradify is clearly cheaper. It rests on the absence of a stated limit in the extracted text, so confirm with Tradify that no job or volume cap exists on the plan you pick.

What could not be verified?

The following items could not be confirmed from the pages as retrieved on 2026-11-02.

• Tradify plan-to-price mapping. The text shows $47, $51 and $61 per user per month, but we cannot tell with certainty which figure belongs to Lite, Pro or Plus, or whether $47 is the SmartTools price.
• Tradify’s “$12 per month”. It appears several times with no label. We did not include it in any total.
• Tradify billing term. The page text does not say whether prices assume monthly billing or an annual commitment.
• Tradify job or client limits. None are stated in the extracted text. Absence of a limit on the page is not proof that none exists.
• Tax and onboarding. Neither page states sales tax treatment, onboarding fees or setup fees.
• ServiceM8 SMS caps. The FAQ refers to a monthly SMS cap and an overage fee, but the cap and the fee are not given in the extracted text beyond the Free plan’s 10c per SMS.
• ServiceM8 mid-cycle upgrade billing. The page says credit is applied pro rata, but the exact charge for upgrading part-way through a month is not shown.
• Vendors that could not be verified. None. Both vendors in this comparison published pricing we could read.

Anything in this list that affects your total should be confirmed with the vendor before you pay.

What should you check before buying?

Use this checklist, in order, before you commit to either product.

1. Count your real new jobs per month. Use last year’s invoices or calendar. If you are under 30 and working alone, ServiceM8 Free is the cheapest option on the page. If you are under 50 with a crew, Starter fits.
2. Count the logins you need. Include office staff, apprentices and subcontractors if they need their own accounts. On Tradify each is a per-user charge; on ServiceM8 paid plans the count does not change the price.
3. List the add-ons you actually want. For ServiceM8, price Bundles ($39), Phone ($19) and Auto Time Tracking ($19) against your plan. For Tradify, ask what the “$12 per month” is and what SmartTools costs.
4. Ask Tradify which price applies to which plan, and whether the rate is monthly or annual.
5. Ask both vendors about tax and onboarding. The pricing pages do not state either.
6. Use the free trials. Both vendors offer 14 days, and ServiceM8 says the trial includes full access to features. Run a normal week of quotes and invoices through each before you pay.
7. Check electrical-specific needs. If you need certificates and test reports on site, look at the forms options. ServiceM8 says over 250 pre-made forms are available on all plans and custom forms need Growing or higher. For Tradify, check its Electrical and AV page feature list against your paperwork.

The short version: on published subscription prices alone, ServiceM8 is cheaper for nearly every startup size, and the gap grows with headcount. The exceptions are a one-person business with very high job counts, and any case where the add-ons you need push ServiceM8’s total above Tradify’s. Confirm the unverified items above, then decide.

Read next

• Cheapest ServiceM8 Setup for Two Technicians
• Tradify Invoice and Quote Costs by Plan
• Tradify Costs for Electricians: $47 to $61 a Seat
• Tradify Quoting and Invoicing Fees by Plan