Tradify alternatives: what UK trades move to, and why they move

Nobody looks up "Tradify alternatives" because the software crashed. Tradify has been at this since 2013, it's stable, the support is real, and thousands of UK trades run their week on it. The searches come from somewhere more specific: a renewal email, a second van, or a Sunday evening spent doing the bit the software doesn't do.

Switching costs real evenings, so it's worth being precise about what you're actually trying to fix before you start trialling things.

The three reasons people leave

The price shape, not the price. Tradify charges per user per month, across four tiers. That's a fair model for a firm with an office and five vans — everyone who logs in costs the same. It's a worse fit if you're one person, because you're on a per-seat price for a seat count of one, and it's a worse fit again the month you take someone on and your bill steps up with them.

Features sat one tier above you. The entry Lite plan covers jobs, scheduling, quoting, invoicing, payments and accounting sync. Enquiry forms, job photos, quote options and progress invoicing start at Pro. A sole trader who wants photos on a job and a form on their website is buying a tier built for a team to get them.

It doesn't reach where your enquiries land. This one needs stating carefully, because the version of it you'll read elsewhere — that Tradify only starts once you've won the job — is not true. It has enquiry handling: a form you can put on your website or share as a link, a dedicated forwarding email address, and enquiries that convert into a customer, a quote or a job without retyping anything. If your work arrives by email and through your own site, that is covered, and this is not a reason to leave.

The gap is everything that arrives some other way. A Checkatrade or MyBuilder enquiry sits in that platform's own portal. A WhatsApp message sits in WhatsApp. A missed call sits on your phone as a voicemail. Each one needs you to go and look at it, and the one you don't look at today is the one that goes cold. No product in this category has solved that yet, ours included — it's the problem we're building towards rather than one we can tell you is finished.

If none of those three is your problem, stay where you are. Mature software you know how to drive is worth a lot.

The alternatives, and who each one suits

ServiceM8 — flat monthly plans with unlimited users, which is unusual and genuinely good if you're growing. The plans are capped by jobs per month instead, so work out your job volume before you compare. The real question is your phone: ServiceM8's full app is iOS-only, and the Android app, ServiceM8 Lite, is a deliberately cut-down version for technicians and subcontractors rather than the person running the business. On an iPhone it's a strong pick. On Android, it isn't the same product.

Powered Now — UK-built and unapologetic about it: VAT returns, Making Tax Digital, and digital certificates and forms on the higher tiers. If certificates are a big part of your week and you want them in the same place as the invoicing, this is the one to trial. Priced per user, so the headcount question comes back.

YourTradebase — also UK-built, quoting-led, and honest about who it's for ("it's for trades, by trades"). Web plus iOS and Android, Xero and QuickBooks connections, 30-day trial with no card. A good fit if winning the quote is the part you want to be slick.

Fergus — from New Zealand, and its job board is the most-loved single screen in this whole category. Genuinely worth seeing. The shape of the product and the add-on pricing (timesheet users, contractor day rates) point at established teams rather than sole traders.

grafter.ly — ours, so treat this paragraph accordingly. £25 a month covering you and two crew, then £10 for another admin or £5 for another crew member. One version of the product, and everybody gets all of it. Built in Scotland for sole traders and teams of two to four.

We've left competitors' prices off the table on purpose. They change, and a stale number here would be worse than no number — every one of those pricing pages is a click away and current.

Why we built a different shape

Several products above now start at the enquiry rather than the won job — Tradify, ServiceM8 and Fergus all have something here, and we'd rather say so than pretend otherwise. What differs is how much of the work the software does once the message lands.

Forward an enquiry email to your grafter.ly address and it lands as a job, with the customer's details read off the message, ready to quote. No typing it in twice. From there it's the same pipeline you'd expect — a board showing every open job, quote to invoice without re-keying, card payments through Stripe, and Xero on the other end so your accountant isn't chasing you.

That's the shape, stated plainly: we wanted the awkward part handled from the van, at 4pm, with one hand. On email that works today. On the marketplaces and WhatsApp it doesn't yet, for us or for anyone else — so judge it on the sources you actually use.

The rest of the shape follows from who it's for:

• One version of the product. £25 a month covering you and two crew, and everybody gets all of it. No tier holding back job photos.
• Phone-first, not phone-also. The whole product runs one-handed, and keeps working when the signal doesn't.
• Set up by you, in minutes. No sales call, no onboarding fee, no implementation consultant. 30 days free with no card to start.

When we're not the answer

Worth saying out loud, because a bad fit wastes your evening as surely as bad software.

You've got six or more staff and engineers to dispatch. Look at Commusoft, Joblogic or Simpro instead. Commusoft states a minimum of six staff for a reason — that class of product is built for planned maintenance, asset registers and route planning, and we deliberately don't do any of it.

You need certificates issued from the same app. We're not certification software. EICRs, gas certs and the rest belong in a cert app, and always will. We're where the rest of the job lives.

You want a product with a decade of scar tissue. Tradify, ServiceM8 and Powered Now have been running trades businesses for years and we haven't. If "never surprises me" is the top of your list, that's an honest reason to stay put.

Switching without losing a week

1. Name the thing you're fixing. Price shape, a locked feature, or the enquiry stage. If you can't name it, a trial won't tell you anything.
2. Export your customers before you cancel. Do this even if you don't import them yet. It's the one thing that's painful to get back.
3. Run both for a fortnight. New work in the new system, existing jobs finish where they are. Nobody migrates half-done jobs and enjoys it.
4. Judge it on a real week. Not on a Sunday with a cup of tea and a clear head — on a Tuesday, in the van, between jobs. That's the week the software has to survive.
5. Cancel when the trial's proved it, not before, and diarise the old renewal date so it doesn't auto-renew underneath you.

Most trades who switch don't do it because the old software was bad. They do it because the shape stopped matching the business — and the shape is the thing to compare, well before the price.

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Sources. Plan structures, platform support and target team sizes come from each vendor's own pricing and product pages — Tradify, ServiceM8, Powered Now, YourTradebase, Fergus and Commusoft — checked 23 August 2026. Their prices and tiers change; check theirs before deciding.