The Honest ServiceTitan Alternative for Small Electrical Teams
Every electrical contractor we talk to eventually mentions ServiceTitan. Either they're on it and frustrated, they're shopping and intimidated by the price, or they're trying to downgrade and the contract won't let them. ServiceTitan is a real product — it works, the dispatch is solid, the reporting is genuinely good. The problem is who it's actually designed for.
It's built for $5M+ shops with a dedicated office staff. If you're running 2-10 trucks, you're paying for infrastructure you'll never touch. Here's an honest breakdown of the alternatives, including the option most contractors don't realize they have.
What ServiceTitan actually costs a small shop
ServiceTitan doesn't publish pricing, but small electrical shops we've talked to are paying between $400-700/month for the base platform plus $99/tech. A 5-truck shop runs $900-1,200/month all-in, and that number only goes up. They also require an upfront implementation fee — often $5,000-10,000.
That's $11,000-15,000 in year one before you've made a dime back. For a $3M shop, that's painful. For a $1M shop, it's irresponsible.
The off-the-shelf alternatives, ranked honestly
Housecall Pro
The most common landing spot. Strong scheduling, decent mobile app, good for service work. Weak for new construction phases and permit- heavy work. Pricing creeps from $79/mo at the Essentials tier into $250+ once you need anything serious. Customer support and the integration ecosystem are the real wins.
Best for: Pure service shops with simple workflows, 2-4 techs, no permit management.
Jobber
Cleaner UX than Housecall, slightly more affordable. Limited on construction-style workflows and complex job phases. Good if you're doing primarily residential service.
Best for: Service shops where speed of estimating matters more than depth of job data.
FieldEdge
More commercial-focused than HCP or Jobber. Better at recurring maintenance contracts. Pricing is on the high side and the UI feels dated. If you're doing a lot of commercial service work, worth a look.
Workiz
Underrated. Good middle ground between Housecall Pro and ServiceTitan. Strong call tracking and lead management. Doesn't have ServiceTitan's dispatch sophistication.
The option nobody mentions: build your own
Here's what changed in the last 18 months: with AI-accelerated development, custom software costs less than enterprise SaaS over a 3-year window. We've built electrical contractor CRMs in 4-6 weeks that include:
- Service ticket + new construction phase tracking in one tool
- Permit numbers, AHJ submissions, inspection scheduling
- Panel size, breaker count, and EV charger spec fields
- On-site quoting with deposit collection
- QuickBooks integration
- SMS arrival notifications
Total cost: $20,000-30,000 to build, $50-100/month to host. You own the code. No per-seat licensing. No price hikes. No vendor lock-in.
For a small electrical shop, a custom CRM pays itself back inside 18 months and keeps paying you back forever. The "right" software for your shop is the one you commissioned to match your workflow — not the one you bent your workflow to match.
How to decide
Ask yourself these three questions:
- Are you spending more than $500/month on field service software right now?
- Are there workflows in your shop (permits, EV installs, new construction phases) that your current software can't track properly?
- Are you willing to invest 4-6 weeks of project time upfront in exchange for the next 10 years of software you actually own?
If you answered yes to any two of those, you should at least see what a build costs. See our custom CRM for electricians page for the full feature breakdown, or read the math on why monthly field service software costs more than building your own.