How We Evaluate

This page is the standard the rest of the site is held to. It is specific enough to be checked, and where a claim can be measured, the measurement is printed below rather than asserted.

Scope

Field service management software for operations running 1 to 10 technicians — electrical, plumbing, HVAC, and small contracting work. That is the entire scope.

Enterprise platforms are out of scope and stay out. A product sold on a quoted per-technician contract to a hundred-truck operation is not competing for the same decision as a product a three-person shop signs up for on a Tuesday, and evaluating them on one list would flatter both. Where an out-of-scope tool is named here, it is named to explain why it was excluded.

Published Pricing Is a Criterion

A vendor that publishes its price on its own pricing page is evaluated on that price. A vendor that does not is evaluated as a vendor that does not, and this counts against it. An operation with four technicians cannot compare a number it has to book a sales call to receive, and the cost of finding out is part of the cost.

Published means rendered. A price is counted only if it paints on the page in a browser, which is a stricter test than reading the delivered markup and a deliberate one: 2 of the tools tracked here ship plan prices inside markup that is never displayed. A figure a reader cannot see is not a published price, whatever the source contains.

Of the 7 tools tracked, 4 show no price to a reader: Housecall Pro, Service Fusion, Workiz, and ServiceTitan. Every price used on this site is read from the vendor's own pricing page and carries the date it was read. Figures from review sites, aggregators, and comparison directories are not used, including for the vendors that show nothing — a number the vendor will not stand behind is not a price.

Prices go stale. A piece that quotes one carries the date its facts were last checked, and after 90 days the site refuses to build it until the figures are re-read from source. That is enforced in the build, not by a reminder.

Ordering and Commissions

Order is never influenced by commission. A tool with no affiliate program can win, and when it wins, that is said in the piece.

This is a promise every site in this category makes, so it is measured here instead. Ranked comparisons list their tools in order; first place is first place. The share of first-place picks that run an affiliate program is recomputed on every build from the published pieces, and it is not adjustable.

No ranked comparison is published yet, which is below the 3 this site requires before publishing the figure. A share computed from one or two rankings moves by half its own range on a single editorial choice, so no percentage is shown here yet. The count is recomputed on every build, and the figure appears on its own once there is a denominator to divide by.

Publishing a share before there is a denominator worth dividing by would be the same overclaiming this page exists to rule out. The figure appears here on its own, without an announcement, once the count is reached.

Where a piece links to a tool through a commission link, a disclosure appears directly above that link, in the section where it sits. There is no generic notice in the footer, because a notice a reader has already scrolled past is not a disclosure.

How the Evaluation Is Done

From public documents, each claim linked to the source it came from: the vendor's documentation, its changelog or release notes, its pricing page, and its terms of service. Terms of service are read, not skimmed — the cancellation terms, the data export terms, and the contract length are frequently where a product priced for a small operation stops being one.

Where two sources disagree, the piece says which one it followed and why. Where a question cannot be answered from public documents, the piece says it is unanswered rather than inferring an answer.

Every verification date on this site carries the hour and the time zone it was performed in, and that zone is JST. The work is done from Japan. A site whose only asset is declared provenance does not get to launder its own location into looking domestic, so the zone stays on the page rather than being flattened into a bare date.

Right of Reply

Before a piece is published, every vendor it evaluates is sent the findings that concern it, at the vendor's own published contact address or form, with a deadline at least 14 days out. The build enforces both halves: a piece cannot publish while naming a vendor it has no contact record for, and it cannot publish while a reply window is still open.

This is a request for comment and not an approval step, and the difference is the whole of it. No vendor sees the piece, no vendor can change it, and no vendor can delay it by not answering. A reply that arrives is printed in full, in the vendor's own words, with no editing and no summary set beside it. A reply that does not arrive is printed as that: the vendor's name and the date it did not answer by. Silence is data, and a policy that omitted it would hand every vendor an edit it could make by ignoring an email.

What This Site Does Not Do

• It does not test these tools in a live field operation. Nothing here is written as though it does. Where a conclusion would require running a real dispatch board through a real season, that is stated as the limit of the evaluation.
• It does not accept review units, free accounts, or trials arranged with a vendor.
• It does not accept payment for placement, and there is no placement to sell.
• It does not let a vendor review a piece before publication or approve what it says. Being sent the findings that concern you is not the same as being shown the piece, and the right of reply above is not a veto: nothing a vendor says or declines to say decides whether the piece runs.
• It claims no credential. No certification, no professional title, and no years of experience are asserted anywhere on this site, because none has been established. What is offered is public documents read carefully, with the sources attached and the date they were read.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, email [email protected]. Reports are reviewed within seven days. Corrections are made in the piece and logged with the date and what changed. Published claims are not silently edited.