ServiceTitan vs. Alternatives as CRM/FSM platform in Home services

November 19, 2024

by a searcher from Duke University - The Fuqua School of Business in Portland, ME, USA

Hello, I acquired a Plumbing & HVAC contractor this fall that is 90/10 residential/commercial and does more new construction than service.

The business is run almost entirely with pen and paper today. I am eager to implement a software platform to help us operate more efficiently and effectively, and have looked at ServiceTitan as well as House Call Pro, FieldEdge, Simpro, BuildOps, Service Fusion etc.

ServiceTitan has a lot of momentum and evangelists, but I have number of concerns about it, including pricing and utility for longer term new construction projects.

Would love to connect with operators that have experience & perspective to share to help me make this critical decision, as well as resources folks could point me towards to help me learn more about these programs. Thank you.

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Reply by a searcher
from Baruch College in New Jersey, USA

Thanks for the tag ^redacted‌ Lots of good advice here. A few additional thing to add on ServiceTitan. They have made a push recently with new features to support longer term construction related projects to the point where they support AIA billing etc. which is required on construction projects in the commercial space. The other things is that although ServiceTitan is typically more expensive, you are buying into not only their software ecosystem which tries to be your one stop shop for everything, you are also buying into a bit of a best practices approach as well. The rollout of ServiceTitan includes not only the software but they have certain processes expectation on how to run your business. To the point where they have partnered with Nextstar which is a pretty popular best practices group for trades/home services. That being said, they are still strongest on the service side of things and if you are mostly doing construction projects, housecall pro, buildertrend etc. may be better fits.‌

Reply by a professional
from Western Washington University in Spokane, WA, USA

Several things. First and most important is this - it's not the system, it's how you use it. There is no magic in software. The best golfers in the world can use the worst set of clubs and still perform well because they know how to swing a club. I don't know how to swing a club and the best set of clubs in the world won't fix that. I have deployed many ERP / CRM systems and in the process coined this phrase - "What First, Then How." Know what you need to do, then get help from your software company to use the system to do it.

Second, I use Service Titan in an HVAC business that I own. I like it well enough. I have not tried others since this is what was being used when I bought the business. A huge advantage for Service Titan is that it is the big dog in the industry. That means that all other software packages integrate with it. That's a big advantage. It's probably more spendy than the others.

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