How we make money
Short version: software companies pay us when you sign up through our links. Long version below, including the parts that make us look worse.
The whole thing in four sentences
Vendors pay us. You don't.
When you click through to Jobber, Housecall Pro, ZenMaid or a similar tool from this site and end up paying for it, that company sends us a referral fee. You pay the same price you'd pay going direct. It does not change what we recommend or the order things are listed. Every set of recommendations on this site includes at least one option that pays us nothing.
What we get paid
Referral fees on field-service software run roughly $40 to $250 per paying customer, and one vendor pays a percentage of what you spend for as long as you stay. That's a wide spread, and it creates an obvious temptation: recommend whoever pays most.
Here's how we handle that, and you can hold us to it.
- Recommendations are ordered by who the tool actually fits, never by what it pays.
- Every recommendation set includes a free or no-commission option, labeled as paying us nothing.
- Every recommendation names who it's wrong for, in a "skip this if…" line.
- Every paid link is marked, and the disclosure sits above the first one — not in the footer.
- Prices are dated. If a page says "as of August 2026," that's when we last checked.
What that looks like in practice
On our house cleaning software page, the first thing we tell you is that a shared calendar and a spreadsheet works fine until roughly 50 jobs a month, and that most solo cleaners in year one should not be paying for software at all.
That advice costs us money on every reader who takes it. We publish it anyway, because the alternative is being a site that tells a woman cleaning eight houses a week to spend $59 a month she doesn't have.
What we don't do
- We don't sell your information. There is no lead form on this site that hands your phone number to contractors.
- We don't take payment for a ranking, a review score, or a "best of" placement.
- We don't publish reviews, ratings, testimonials, or customer counts we don't actually have.
- We don't use countdown timers, fake scarcity, or "3 people are viewing this" widgets.
The honest caveat. We are paid by some of the companies we write about. That's a real conflict of interest, not a theoretical one. The rules above are how we manage it, but you should read us the way you'd read any site with a commercial relationship — check a second source before you spend money, especially on anything over $50 a month.
Our data
Rate ranges on this site are compiled from publicly reported pricing and are labeled as ranges, not quotes. They're a starting point for setting your own price, not a number to hand a customer.
We're building something better: an annual survey of what service business owners actually charge, published openly with the sample size and the method. If you run one of these businesses, you can add your rates anonymously — that data becomes free for everyone, including your competitors.
Questions
Does clicking a link here cost me more?
No. You pay the vendor's normal price. The referral fee comes out of their marketing budget, not your bill. If a vendor ever offers a discount through us, we'll say so plainly and show you the regular price too.
Do the software companies see what I read here?
They see that a click came from this site, the same way any website referral works. They don't get your name, email, or anything you typed into a tool on this site — we don't collect that and we don't have it to give.
Do you get paid more for recommending expensive software?
Sometimes, yes — payouts are usually a share of what you spend, so a $299/month plan pays us more than a $29/month plan. That's exactly why our recommendations lead with the cheapest option that solves the problem, including free ones. If you ever catch us pushing a bigger plan than the situation calls for, tell us and we'll fix the page.
Who writes this?
See our about page, which names who writes and who reviews, and explains how we use AI in drafting and where a human has to sign off.