Buying guide

What your business software costs over a year

Published 21 July 2026 · Prices last checked 21 July 2026

A $49-a-month app is easy enough to budget for. Add a phone line, extra users, and the fees on customer payments, and the annual total looks different. These examples put those costs together for a solo business and a three-person shop.

Put the recurring costs together

A field-service app, a phone line, and accounting software can each seem affordable on their own. Adding them together makes the recurring commitment easier to see.

Payment processing can be the largest item in the total, especially when much of your revenue comes through cards. It is worth including it alongside the subscriptions when you plan the year.

The examples below use July pricing for a solo operator and a three-person shop. They include recurring subscriptions and an illustrative amount of card revenue.

What a solo operator pays

A one-person shop needs somewhere to schedule and dispatch jobs, a way to send invoices and take payments, and a business phone line that isn't a personal cell number. A realistic minimum stack:

• Jobber Core (1 user: scheduling, invoicing, built-in payments): $49/month month-to-month, or $21/month if you prepay 12 months. That year-one prepaid rate reverts to $29/month afterward.
• Quo (formerly OpenPhone), Starter, 1 seat: $19/month billed monthly, or $15/month ($180/year) billed annually.
• Accounting: Wave Starter includes free invoicing and bookkeeping. If you need QuickBooks Online, add the price of the plan that fits your accounting needs.

Paid month-to-month, that's $816/year in subscriptions. Paid annually where the vendor offers it, year one drops to $432/year. That gap (nearly half) is the annual-prepay discount. We'll come back to what it costs you in exchange.

What a 3-person shop pays

In this example, adding two employees adds two Jobber users at $29/month each, plus two phone seats.

• Jobber Core + 2 additional users: $49 + $29 + $29 = $107/month ($1,284/year) month-to-month, or $21 + $29 + $29 = $79/month ($948/year) with the base plan prepaid annually.
• Quo Starter, 3 seats: $57/month ($684/year) month-to-month, or $45/month ($540/year) annual.
• Accounting: compare user access, reporting, and job-costing needs with your bookkeeper. QuickBooks Online Essentials is one option; its subscription is not included in this example.

Housecall Pro Essentials includes five users at $189/month paid monthly, or $149/month ($1,788/year) on annual billing. Compare its features and included users with the Jobber plan you would use.

The annual stack, added up

For these examples, assume $120,000 in annual revenue for the solo shop and $300,000 for the three-person shop, with 70% paid by card: $84,000 and $210,000. The processing rows include the 2.9% portion only. Add 30¢ per card transaction to calculate a full processing total; the examples do not assume a transaction count.

In both examples, card processing is the largest line item, exceeding the subscriptions shown.

Card processing is the line that grows with you

Card fees grow with the amount processed. A subscription may stay flat until you add users or change plans, so the two costs behave differently as the business grows.

Published rates from vendor pages:

• Jobber Payments: 2.9% + 30¢ per card, 2.7% + 30¢ for tap-to-pay, 1% for bank/ACH
• Wave Starter: 2.9% + $0.60 for cards (more per swipe than Jobber, though Wave's subscription is free), 3.4% + $0.60 for Amex
• Housecall Pro: advertises rates "as low as 2.59%" without stating the ceiling. Ask which rate applies to your transactions.

Square offers lower in-person rates on its paid plans:

• Free plan: in-person cards at 2.6% + 15¢
• Plus ($49/month): 2.5% + 15¢
• Premium ($149/month): 2.4% + 15¢

At these rates, saving 0.1 percentage points on the Plus plan needs about $49,000 a month in card volume to cover the extra $49/month on the rate reduction alone. The Premium example needs about $74,500 a month. Other plan features may be useful before then, but the rate saving alone is a separate calculation.

Bank payments can reduce processing costs on suitable invoices. Compare the ACH rate, any minimum or cap, and the settlement time with what you pay for cards.

What another user adds to the bill

Compare additional-user fees with the people included in each plan.

• Jobber: 1 user on Core, then $29/month per additional seat. Clean, but linear with headcount.
• Housecall Pro: 5 seats baked into $189/month Essentials, 8 into $329/month Max. A third or fourth hire is effectively free until you outgrow the bracket, then $35/month per extra seat on Max.
• Quo: per-seat from the first user on every tier ($15 to $47 a month per person). A phone line for a new hire is recurring from day one, not a one-time setup.

Before you hire, price out what the new person adds to every subscription, not just their wage. Adding one employee to the solo stack above (one more Jobber seat at $29/month, one more Quo seat at $19/month, both month-to-month) adds $576/year in software alone, before anything else that comes with adding a person.

Monthly or annual billing?

The annual discount varies by vendor.

• Jobber Core: $49/month to $21/month year one if you prepay 12 months (57% off), then $29/month after (41% off monthly)
• Housecall Pro Basic: $79 to $59/month annual (25% off)
• Quo Starter: $19 to $15/month (21% off)

Annual billing lowers the subscription cost but commits more money up front. Check cancellation and refund terms before choosing it.

Try the software through a billing cycle before committing to a year. Once it fits the work and the team uses it, compare the annual discount with the cancellation terms.

Onboarding fees and the cost of getting out

Two costs pricing pages often leave blank, but that show up when you switch software:

• Onboarding and implementation. Some vendors sell paid setup or data-migration help beyond the base subscription. The vendor pages behind this article didn't list a specific onboarding fee. That doesn't mean one doesn't exist for your account size or plan. Ask before you sign, and get it in writing.
• The cost of leaving. Job history, customer notes, and payment records inside a CRM or field service tool don't always export cleanly. Time spent re-entering customers into a new system is a real cost even when the new tool is free. Factor that in before you pick a platform. Check what exports are available before you commit.

Comparing the total with revenue

The illustrated subtotals ($3,252 solo and $8,058 for three people) are about 2.7% of the assumed revenue. They exclude per-transaction charges and any paid accounting plan.

These examples are not a benchmark across businesses. Add the omitted costs, then calculate the share using your own revenue and payment mix.

Also worth reading before you commit to one vendor for everything: all-in-one vs. best-of-breed covers the tradeoff between a bundled platform and picking each tool separately, which changes this math again.