ServiceTitan Alternative for HVAC and Plumbing Shops Running 1 to 10 Trucks
ServiceTitan is sold per technician through a sales quote: its pricing page lists Starter, Essentials and The Works with a Request Pricing button on each and no dollar amounts (checked October 7, 2026). PocketBoss is built for the HVAC or plumbing owner running one to ten trucks who still answers calls and turns wrenches: four published plans from $19.99/month (Solo, one user) to $99.99/month (Boss, up to 25 users), with the dispatch board, maintenance plans, price book and tiered estimates a shop that size uses.
The honest line: if you run a CSR desk, more than one location, payroll and commissions inside the platform, or need enterprise reporting, ServiceTitan publishes those and PocketBoss does not. The rest of this page is the detail behind that sentence.
The current PocketBoss interface
The dashboard, the invoice list and the calendar as they look today. Demo data from a seeded test business; the names and amounts are fictional.
Which one fits the company you run today
Size first, then the one workflow that decides it. ServiceTitan rows cite its pricing page as read on October 7, 2026.
| Your company | What you need the software to do | Which fits |
|---|---|---|
| One truck. You answer the phone and do the work. | Jobs with return visits, a price book, estimates the customer signs on their phone, invoices and card payments, maintenance plans for your tune-up customers, two-way texting. | PocketBoss Solo, $19.99/month, one user. |
| 2 to 5 trucks. Someone is in the office part of the day. | A dispatch board, crew clock punches, projects with job costing, QuickBooks Online, an online booking page. | PocketBoss Essentials, $29.99/month, up to 5 users. |
| 5 to 10 trucks. You sell replacements as good, better, best. | Tiered estimates, smart routing for the day's stops, dashboard analytics, SMS campaigns for the spring and fall pushes, banking. | PocketBoss Pro, $49.99/month, up to 10 users. |
| Up to 25 users. Calls go to voicemail while everyone is on a roof. | A receptionist that answers the forwarded line, takes the caller's details and puts the request in your inbox. | PocketBoss Boss, $99.99/month, up to 25 users, with the AI Receptionist number and 100 minutes a month included. |
| A CSR desk books calls all day and every call has to be tracked against a job. | Call booking as a workflow of its own. | ServiceTitan lists Call Booking on Starter, its lowest published plan. PocketBoss has a Requests inbox and the AI Receptionist, not a CSR call-booking screen. |
| More than one location or branch rolled up into one view. | Multi-location management and reporting. | ServiceTitan. A PocketBoss account is one business. |
| Payroll and technician commissions run inside the platform. | Payroll and commission tracking. | ServiceTitan lists Payroll Management on Essentials and Commission Tracking on The Works. PocketBoss records crew hours and exports them; it does not run payroll or calculate commissions. |
Before you sign either quote, run your real numbers through the free HVAC profit margin calculator so you know what a software line item does to the margin on a typical job.
What PocketBoss includes at each plan, next to what ServiceTitan publishes
PocketBoss cells come from the current plan catalog. ServiceTitan cells quote the plan names and feature lists on servicetitan.com/pricing as read on October 7, 2026; where that page says nothing, the cell says so rather than guessing.
| Capability | PocketBoss | ServiceTitan, as published October 7, 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Published monthly price | Solo $19.99, Essentials $29.99, Pro $49.99, Boss $99.99. Listed on the pricing page. | None. Starter, Essentials and The Works each show a Request Pricing button. The page describes "per-technician pricing". |
| Users | Solo 1 user; Essentials up to 5; Pro up to 10; Boss up to 25; Enterprise 26 or more. | Priced per technician. No user counts are published. |
| Scheduling and dispatching | Calendar and appointments on every plan. The live dispatch board starts on Essentials. | Starter lists Dispatching and Scheduling. |
| Call booking | A Requests inbox on every plan for website leads. The AI Receptionist takes forwarded calls: an add-on on every plan, included on Boss. | Starter lists Call Booking. |
| Invoicing and payments | Every plan: invoices, card and eligible ACH payments through Stripe, tips, a customer portal. | Starter lists Invoicing. |
| Price book | Every plan: categories four levels deep, cost and sell price on each item, cost-band markup, CSV import. | Starter lists Pricebook. |
| Estimates in the field | Every plan, with e-signature approval on the customer portal. Good, better, best options start on Pro. | Essentials lists Mobile Estimates. |
| Maintenance agreements | Service Plans on every plan: members per property, a visit schedule, renewals due, auto-charge or manual billing. | The Works lists Customizable Memberships. |
| Payroll | Not offered. Crew clock punches and a crew hours report on Essentials, exported as CSV. | Essentials lists Payroll Management; The Works lists Configurable Payroll. |
| Commission tracking | Not offered. | The Works lists Commission Tracking. |
| Reporting | Reports on Essentials (overview, customers, projects, jobs, crew, inventory, taxes; CSV and PDF). Advanced dashboard analytics on Pro. | The Works lists Advanced Reporting. |
| Commitment | Month to month. Cancel anytime. 14-day trial. | Not stated on the pricing page. Ask for the term in writing with the quote. |
Card and ACH processing, text overages and AI usage beyond a plan's allowance are priced separately; the pricing page has every allowance and the current terms. ServiceTitan's feature names are its own; a listed feature is not a claim about how deep it goes, in either direction.
What an HVAC shop actually runs in PocketBoss
The seven things a ServiceTitan demo spends its time on, as they exist in PocketBoss today, with the plan each one starts on and the limit beside it.
Maintenance agreements
Every planA Service Plan sets the visits per year, the discount, and a price by week, month, quarter or year. Each member is enrolled per service address and gets a visit schedule you label yourself (Spring, AC Tune-Up, anchor month April; Fall, Heating Tune-Up, anchor month October), with a per-visit charge or zero when the plan fee covers it. The Renewals tab lists agreements due in the next 60 days, and every reminder, call, letter or text you log against a renewal is kept on the agreement. Billing is either auto-charge on a saved card or an invoice you send.
Plan visits are booked by hand unless you turn auto-scheduling on; when you do, upcoming plan visits land on the calendar with their reminders, and turning it off removes only the ones it created.
Recurring visits and seasons
Solo and upA recurring visit series carries a cadence, a preferred time, a price and a billing method, and can combine a month of visits into one invoice. A season is a dated window (the cooling season, the heating season) that a series inherits, so a filter-change route runs April through September and goes dormant on its own.
A series schedules visits; it does not forecast demand or tell you how many techs the week needs.
Dispatch board
Essentials and upOne row per technician for the day, an unassigned queue, and drag to assign or reassign with an optional text to the tech. Each visit block shows its live state: scheduled, on the way, working, paused, late, done or no-show, driven by the job timer and the on-my-way message. Idle crew can be hidden; the board refreshes itself every 30 seconds.
There is no live map of trucks. Clock punches carry a GPS stamp when the employee allows it; that is a location at punch time, not tracking.
Parts: price book and inventory
Every planThe Price Book is a catalog in a category tree up to four levels deep. Each item has a cost and a sell price (or a cost-band markup schedule that computes the price), a unit, labor hours per unit, a vendor and a SKU. An import wizard maps the columns of your existing price book CSV and loads it, up to 50,000 rows. Inventory tracks stock by location, so each truck is a location with its own reorder level and low-stock flag, and an opt-in setting deducts invoice line items from the truck they came off.
Estimates never deduct stock; only invoices do, and the deduction reverses if the invoice is edited or deleted.
Equipment on the customer record
Every planEach unit is a record on the customer: type, make, model, serial, where it sits on the property, filter size, refrigerant type, install date, warranty date and a status (active, replaced, removed) with dated notes and photos. The owner gets a one-time alert when an active unit's warranty enters its last 30 days.
There is no refrigerant movement log and no EPA Section 608 report. Keep those records in your approved process.
Good, better, best estimates
Pro and upA tiered estimate holds three options, each with its own line items, tagline and photos, and one of them can carry the Most Popular badge on the PDF and the portal. The customer picks an option and signs on the portal; the signature image is stored on the document.
Standard single-option estimates with e-signature are on every plan. Tiered and sectioned templates are what Pro adds.
AI Receptionist
Add-on on every plan; included on BossForward your line to a dedicated local number. It answers, captures the lead, recognizes an existing customer by phone number, collects what is wrong and when the caller is available, and transfers to a person when the caller asks or the call is urgent. Calls land in the same Requests inbox as website leads. Boss includes the number and 100 minutes a month; other plans pay $5 a month for the number and 25 cents a minute of talk time from a prepaid credit.
It takes intake only. It does not read your calendar or book the appointment; you book from the request.
The HVAC contractor software page walks one service call from the first visit to the next tune-up; the service agreement and dispatch pages go deeper on two of the items above.
What moves when you switch, and what does not
There is no ServiceTitan-specific importer. These are the paths that exist, in the order a shop usually runs them.
Customers and service addresses
Export your customer list as a CSV, put the columns in the PocketBoss template (name, email, mobile, phone, company, address, notes and a few more) and upload it from the Clients page. A QuickBooks or Jobber export goes through a separate wizard that previews what it will create and update, matches on email, then phone, then name, and never overwrites a field you already filled.
The template path does not check for duplicates, so clean the file first. A customer with several properties stays one record.
Your price book
Export it as a CSV, open the Price Book import wizard, map its columns to name, category, cost, price, unit and SKU, and import. Category names come across as a tree.
Up to 50,000 rows. Review the markup on a sample of items before you send the first estimate.
Maintenance agreements
Create the Service Plan (visits per year, price, discount), then enroll each member from their customer record with the service address and the visit schedule. Set the renewal date to match the old term so the Renewals tab is right from day one.
There is no agreement importer. A shop with a few hundred members should plan an afternoon for this, or enroll each customer at their next visit.
Equipment records
Add each unit on the customer record, or let the tech add it at the next visit from the field app.
No equipment importer. The warranty alert only fires for units with a warranty date recorded.
Invoices, estimates and job history
They do not import. Keep read-only access to the old system for the retention period your accountant wants, and start new work in PocketBoss.
If QuickBooks Online is your book of record, PocketBoss on Essentials and up syncs new invoices and payments to it, so the accounting history stays in one place.
A practical order for the 14-day trial: import customers on day one, import the price book on day two, enroll your ten biggest maintenance members on day three, then run every new call in PocketBoss for the rest of the trial while the old system stays open for history.
When you should stay on ServiceTitan
- You run more than one location and need them rolled up in one view. A PocketBoss account is one business.
- A CSR desk books calls all day and you need call booking as a tracked workflow. ServiceTitan lists Call Booking on Starter; PocketBoss has a Requests inbox and an AI Receptionist that takes intake.
- Payroll or technician commissions have to run inside the platform. ServiceTitan lists Payroll Management and Commission Tracking; PocketBoss exports crew hours as CSV and stops there.
- You rely on reporting that ServiceTitan lists as Advanced Reporting. PocketBoss has seven report tabs with CSV and PDF export and dashboard analytics on Pro; it has no report builder.
- You need integrations PocketBoss does not have. PocketBoss connects to QuickBooks Online, Stripe for payments, and a managed texting number, and offers a small inbound API that creates leads and appointments from another system. There is no open read API, no marketing automation and no call tracking.
If none of those apply and the quote still does not fit a shop your size, the Housecall Pro comparison covers the other product with published prices that small HVAC companies shortlist, and the best HVAC software guide puts six products side by side.
Questions owners ask after a ServiceTitan quote
Does ServiceTitan publish its prices?
Not on its pricing page as read on October 7, 2026. The page lists three plans, Starter, Essentials and The Works, describes "per-technician pricing" and shows a Request Pricing button on each plan. Any ServiceTitan dollar figure you see elsewhere is someone's quote, not a list price. PocketBoss lists Solo at $19.99, Essentials at $29.99, Pro at $49.99, Boss at $99.99 a month.
What would a 5-truck HVAC company pay for PocketBoss?
Essentials is $29.99/month for up to 5 users and includes the dispatch board, crew time, projects, QuickBooks Online, the booking page, reports and 300 text segments a month. If you sell good, better, best replacements or want smart routing, Pro is $49.99/month for up to 10 users. Card and ACH processing, text overages and AI minutes beyond the plan allowance are priced separately on the pricing page.
Can PocketBoss handle maintenance agreements the way ServiceTitan memberships do?
ServiceTitan lists Customizable Memberships on The Works. PocketBoss Service Plans are on every plan: visits per year, a discount, a price by interval, members enrolled per service address, a visit schedule you label (Spring AC Tune-Up, Fall Heating Tune-Up), a Renewals tab for agreements due in the next 60 days, a log of every renewal contact, and auto-charge billing on a saved card or an invoice you send. What it does not do is import your existing agreements; you enroll them.
Can I import my data from ServiceTitan?
Customers and service addresses come in through the CSV template on the Clients page, and your price book comes in through the Price Book import wizard. Invoices, estimates, job history, equipment records and membership agreements do not import; keep the old system read-only for history and start new work in PocketBoss.
Does PocketBoss have a dispatch board?
Yes, on Essentials and up: one row per technician, an unassigned queue, drag to assign or reassign with an optional text to the tech, and live states (on the way, working, paused, late, done, no-show) fed by the job timer and the on-my-way message. There is no live truck map.
Does PocketBoss do payroll or technician commissions?
No. Essentials and up record clock punches with an optional GPS stamp and produce a crew hours report you can export as CSV for your payroll provider. There is no payroll run and no commission calculation. ServiceTitan lists Payroll Management on Essentials and Commission Tracking on The Works.
Is there a contract?
No. PocketBoss is month to month with a 14-day trial and you can cancel from the subscription page. ServiceTitan's pricing page does not state its commitment terms; ask for them in writing with the quote.
Is PocketBoss also a ServiceTitan alternative for a plumbing company?
Yes. Nothing on this page is HVAC-only. The same jobs, dispatch board, price book, equipment records (a water heater is a unit with a serial and a warranty date too), service plans and tiered estimates apply to a plumbing shop of the same size.
Run one real service call through it before you decide
Import your customers, add one unit to one customer, book the visit, send the estimate for signature, invoice it and take the payment. If that loop feels right for your shop, the rest of the ladder is published and month to month.
Related: HVAC contractor software, Housecall Pro alternative, HVAC profit margin calculator, best contractor software guide, plans and pricing.
Sources and disclosure
PocketBoss publishes this page and benefits if you become a customer. ServiceTitan plan names and feature lists were read on the official ServiceTitan pricing page on October 7, 2026; that page publishes no prices, so none are claimed here, and it says nothing about contract terms, onboarding fees or user counts, so neither does this page. Nothing here is a statement about ServiceTitan's reliability, support or how its features perform. PocketBoss plan names, prices and allowances come from the current catalog (Solo, Essentials, Pro, Boss); the pricing page has the current terms. Capabilities were checked against the current product on the same date.
Reviewed by Blake McAmis, PocketBoss owner and product builder. Report a factual error to [email protected]. ServiceTitan, QuickBooks and Jobber are trademarks of their respective owners. See the editorial policy.