For a solo electrician expect about £54 a month in the UK (£25 job app, £29 receptionist) or $74 in the US ($29 and $45), plus ChatGPT at $20 to $25 a seat. A three-person firm lands near £98 or $158, and a five-person firm with an office admin near £211 or $317, with ChatGPT and tax on top.
Two things move the total more than the currency. The pricing model: ServiceM8 charges by jobs a month with unlimited users on both price lists, while Tradify and Powered Now charge per user. And the receptionist: Powered Now's receptionist is a flat fee with unlimited calls, while the dollar-priced services meter calls, callers or minutes. I haven't converted pounds to dollars, because the rate moves daily; compare each market's total at your own bank's rate on the day you buy.
Same job app, two price lists: Tradify and ServiceM8 side by side
Two job apps publish both a UK and a US list, which shows the regional gap cleanly. These are monthly prices from ServiceM8's UK page, Tradify's UK page and their US equivalents, read on 29 October 2026. The last column divides the dollar number by the pound number; it is a ratio of list prices, not an exchange rate.
| Plan | Pound price | Dollar price | Dollar number / pound number | Pricing basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tradify Lite | £34 | $47 | 1.38 | Per user |
| Tradify Pro | £37 | $51 | 1.38 | Per user |
| Tradify Plus (SmartTools AI) | £44 | $61 | 1.39 | Per user |
| ServiceM8 Starter (50 jobs) | £25 | $29 | 1.16 | Flat, unlimited users |
| ServiceM8 Growing (150 jobs) | £59 | $79 | 1.34 | Flat, unlimited users |
| ServiceM8 Premium (500 jobs) | £119 | $149 | 1.25 | Flat, unlimited users |
| ServiceM8 Premium Plus (1,500+ jobs) | £269 | $349 | 1.30 | Flat, unlimited users |
| ServiceM8 Office Agent Pro add-on | £29 | $39 | 1.34 | Per account |
Tradify's dollar numbers sit about 38% above its pound numbers on every plan, and ServiceM8's sit 16% to 34% above. Whether that makes one market cheaper in real money depends on the rate on the day, which is why I'd read the ratio against your bank, not against a number printed in a tutorial.
The pricing basis matters more than the ratio. A fourth electrician adds £44 or $61 on Tradify Plus, but nothing on ServiceM8 until the firm outgrows its job allowance (ServiceM8's help text says every new job card uses a credit, quotes included). Here are the job apps alone at three team sizes:
| Job app alone | 1 user | 3 users | 5 users |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tradify Plus (pounds) | £44 | £132 | £220 |
| Tradify Plus (dollars) | $61 | $183 | $305 |
| ServiceM8 as sized below (pounds) | £25 (Starter) | £59 (Growing) | £119 (Premium) |
| ServiceM8 as sized below (dollars) | $29 (Starter) | $79 (Growing) | $149 (Premium) |
Three more job apps: Powered Now, Jobber and Housecall Pro
Each of these tells a different regional story.
| Product | Plans and monthly prices | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Powered Now (UK specialist) | Business £28, one user, no electrical certificates. Professional £32 per user, adding certificates and custom forms, with as many users as you need. Premium £40 per user, adding an AI receipt and cost scanner, AI text writing and automatic quote and invoice chasing. | Paying yearly brings these to £23.33, £26.67 and £33.33 a month. Its page says prices exclude tax. No contract; 14-day free trial with no card. |
| Jobber (prices in dollars) | Core $49 for one user; Connect $139 for one user or $199 for five; Grow $199 for one or $299 for five; Plus from $499 for five users. Monthly, no commitment. | Receptionist add-on is $29 (included on Plus). Its pricing page says USD even on UK-facing paths, though dedicated phone numbers exist in the UK. |
| Housecall Pro (dollar prices only) | Basic $79, Essentials $189 with five users, Max $329 with eight users on monthly billing; $59, $149 and $299 when billed annually. | CSR AI call answering is listed with the add-ons, with no published price. Prices exclude tax. |
One realistic mistake: a UK sole trader picks Powered Now's Business plan as the cheapest and meets the limit at the first certificate, because electrical certificates, condition reports (EICRs) included, start on Professional. The £4 monthly difference isn't the loss; the lost week of set-up is. Check the plan that holds your paperwork before the plan that holds the AI. The gap between Professional and Premium, the AI tier, is £8 per user on monthly billing or £6.66 on annual. What the certificate side looks like is covered in AI electrical certification apps: what to check before you pay.
Monthly or yearly: what Powered Now's price really is
Powered Now's headline prices are the yearly-billing ones, which is easy to miss. Its pricing page sets the monthly-billing price beside a lower per-month figure that applies when you pay for a year up front:
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly (per month) | Yearly price | Saving a year, per user |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business (one user) | £28 | £23.33 | £280 | £56 |
| Professional | £32 | £26.67 | £320 | £64 |
| Premium | £40 | £33.33 | £400 | £80 |
For a three-person firm on Premium that is £1,440 a year on monthly billing and £1,200 on yearly, a £240 difference. The price of that saving is paying £1,200 at once. The page says there is no contract and you can cancel any time, but confirm what happens to an annual payment when you do before sending it. Every other price in this tutorial is a monthly-billing figure unless stated.
What the AI in each plan actually does
| Product and plan | The AI features its pages list |
|---|---|
| Tradify Plus | SmartRead for Bills: photograph a supplier invoice and the details are extracted. SmartWrite: fixes spelling and grammar, offers friendly or professional tones, and generates descriptions from quote and invoice line items. Plus plan only. |
| ServiceM8, all paid plans | AI Writing Helper (drafts and revises emails and texts, generates quotes and invoices, summarises jobs), AI Quote and Invoice, AI Image Generation and a Smart Report Helper. Office Agent Standard is included; Office Agent Pro, an add-on, chases quotes, drafts replies and flags overdue tasks with approvals. |
| Powered Now Premium | AI receipt and cost document scanner, AI text writing (a few words become a quote description or customer message) and automatic quote and invoice chasing. |
| Jobber | "Draft for me" quotes and automatic draft quotes from new requests (Connect and above), voice commands and AI-built reports. The pricing page doesn't say which plans get the voice and report tools. |
Whatever the product, read what the AI wrote. An illustrative case: the electrician types "new 10-way fuse board, test everything, certificate". The assistant returns "Supply and fit a new 10-way consumer unit, test all circuits, issue the certificate, and make good to plaster. Completed in one day." Two things are wrong against the quote: making good to plaster is an exclusion in your terms, and you quoted two days. A saved instruction listing your standard exclusions and a rule to leave out durations fixes both. How to turn these descriptions into tiered packages is shown in building three-option upgrade packages, and Tradify's own tools are worked through in Tradify for electricians: quotes, jobs and SmartTools.
Receptionist add-ons: a flat UK price, metered US prices
This is the line that differs most. The specialist option with a pound price is Powered Now's PN Receptionist, built for UK trades: £29 a month for Speech, which answers every call, takes the job details, texts them to your phone and keeps summaries and recordings, with unlimited calls and no setup fee. Speech + Text is £39 and adds text follow-ups to missed callers, a call menu of up to three options and team routing at £23.99 per teammate. The pricing page says it books jobs into your diary, while the receptionist page describes passing the details and a follow-up task to you, so ask to see a booking in the demo.
ServiceM8 has an option on both price lists. Its AI Phone Agent comes with ServiceM8 Phone's Connect Plus plan, £25 or $32 a month including 500 call minutes (then 3p or 3 cents a minute), and with the Unlimited plan at £119 or $119; the basic Connect plan (£15 or $19) doesn't include it. The agent texts callers a booking-form link or submits an online booking for them, transfers calls to staff, and logs a summary, transcript and recording of every call. The other services in the table meter use. For each volume the table gives the cheapest verified route from each vendor's own pages, assuming 2.8 minutes a call and 85% of callers being different numbers:
| Option | 40 calls | 100 calls | 220 calls |
|---|---|---|---|
| PN Receptionist Speech | £29 | £29 | £29 |
| ServiceM8 Phone Connect Plus, AI Phone Agent | £25 or $32 | £25 or $32 | £28.48 or $35.48 (116 minutes over 500; more if staff calls share them) |
| Smith.ai free plan or Pro tiers | $45 (free plan) | $212.50 (75-call tier + 25 extra) | $431 (150-call tier + 70 extra) |
| Goodcall Starter or Growth | $79 | $79 | $129 |
| Rosie Professional or Scale | $49 (no transfers) | $149 | $149 |
| Jobber add-on, $29 + $0.79 over 30 (needs Jobber) | $36.90 | $84.30 | $179.10 |
Read the table with the caveats on the pages. Goodcall's own page equates its 100-customer Starter plan with about 150 calls a month, so at that ratio 220 calls would fit Starter with about 47 extra customers, $116 rather than the $129 shown, and my 85% assumption is the cautious one. Goodcall's FAQ says its numbers are local US numbers today, and Rosie's and Smith.ai's pages say nothing about UK numbers. ServiceM8's 500 minutes are the phone plan's call minutes, so ask whether the agent's calls carry any charge beyond them before you rely on the low figure. What you get differs too: Goodcall books into a calendar and transfers to a chosen person with a backup, ServiceM8's agent sends a booking link or an online booking request, and PN Receptionist's own page describes taking the details for you to confirm. For electricians that split follows the call types in the call-outs against quote requests tutorial.
Does the receptionist pay for itself? A call-out sum
Turn the receptionist's price into a number of jobs. Suppose a rescued call-out earns £90 or $120 of gross profit (an illustration; use your own average). At £29, PN Speech has to rescue 0.32 call-outs a month, roughly one every three months. Speech + Text at £39 needs 0.43. On the US side Goodcall Starter at $79 needs 0.66 a month and Growth at $129 needs 1.08, a little over one a month. ServiceM8's agent on Connect Plus needs 0.28 (£25) or 0.27 ($32). These are low bars, but they assume callers who would otherwise have gone elsewhere, so run the arithmetic on your own call log: count last month's missed calls, then ask how many were new customers. If the answer is two or three, the cheaper options pay for themselves. If it is zero, none does.
ChatGPT and the assistant line
OpenAI's help page gives ChatGPT Plus as $20 a month and says annual billing isn't offered. Business seats are $25 monthly or $20 annually with a minimum of two seats, and business content isn't used for training by default. The help page shows no pound price, so I've kept the dollar list price in every build-up and tagged it separately; your checkout shows the real figure in your billing currency, with tax where it applies. If your email already runs on Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, try the assistant bundled with it before buying a seat. Whether you need a job app with AI or just a chatbot is the question of an AI app for electricians, or is ChatGPT enough?
Three build-ups: solo, three-person and five-person
Each build uses ServiceM8 as the like-for-like job app, so the two columns differ only by price list, then adds a dedicated receptionist service for each market and an assistant. Totals are monthly, on monthly billing, before tax. ServiceM8's own Phone Agent, at £25 or $32 on Connect Plus, would undercut the receptionist line in the solo and three-person builds if a booking link rather than a booked visit suits you and 500 minutes cover your calls.
Solo electrician, about 30 jobs and 40 receptionist calls a month:
| Line | UK | US |
|---|---|---|
| Job app: ServiceM8 Starter | £25 | $29 |
| Receptionist | £29 (PN Speech) | $45 (Smith.ai free plan) |
| Assistant: ChatGPT Plus | $20 list | $20 |
| Total | £54 + $20 | $94 |
If you issue certificates from the app, move to ServiceM8 Growing (£59 or $79) or, in the UK, to Powered Now Professional at £32.
Three-person firm, about 90 jobs and 100 calls a month:
| Line | UK | US |
|---|---|---|
| Job app: ServiceM8 Growing (includes electronic forms) | £59 | $79 |
| Receptionist | £39 (PN Speech + Text) | $79 (Goodcall Starter) |
| Assistant: ChatGPT Plus, owner | $20 list | $20 |
| Total | £98 + $20 | $178 |
The per-user alternative is dearer here: Tradify Plus for three users is £132 or $183 before any receptionist. Powered Now Premium for three is £120 on monthly billing or £99.99 on annual.
Five-person firm with an office admin, about 200 jobs and 220 calls a month:
| Line | UK | US |
|---|---|---|
| Job app: ServiceM8 Premium | £119 | $149 |
| Office Agent Pro (quote chasing) | £29 | $39 |
| Receptionist | £62.99 (Speech + Text plus one teammate) | $129 (Goodcall Growth) |
| Assistant: ChatGPT Business, 2 seats | $50 list | $50 |
| Total | £210.99 + $50 | $367 |
Five people on Tradify Plus would be £220 or $305 for the job app alone, so ServiceM8's flat model leaves room for the receptionist and the agent within about the same total.
What each build gets you, in plain terms
| Capability | Solo | Three-person | Five-person |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI drafting of quotes, invoices and messages | Yes (ServiceM8 AI Writing Helper and AI Quote and Invoice) | Yes | Yes |
| Electronic forms for certificates | No on Starter; step up to Growing | Yes (Growing) | Yes (Premium) |
| Automatic quote follow-up | Yes, on all plans | Yes | Yes, plus Office Agent Pro chasing and drafting replies with approvals |
| Calls answered when you are on a job | PN Speech: unlimited, details texted to you. Smith.ai: 40 calls for $45. | PN Speech + Text: unlimited, with text follow-ups. Goodcall Starter: up to 100 unique customers, with booking and transfers. | PN with one teammate: team routing. Goodcall Growth: up to 500 unique customers. |
| Assistant | One ChatGPT Plus seat | One ChatGPT Plus seat | Two Business seats |
The pattern is that the job app buys the paperwork and the AI drafting, the receptionist buys the evenings, and the assistant buys everything else. Skip a line if you can't name the task it takes over.
Small print that moves the total: tax, currency and texts
- Tax. ServiceM8's UK page says its prices exclude tax, which most registered businesses can reclaim; confirm how that works for you with your accountant. Powered Now's prices exclude tax too. Tradify's UK page doesn't say, so ask before you budget.
- Currency. Jobber quotes dollars even on UK-facing pages. A dollar subscription billed to a pound card adds the card's exchange margin, so check what your bank charges.
- Texts. Tradify's UK page lists £0.10 per text for quote and invoice messages and for reminders, so 150 a month is £15. ServiceM8's UK plans include 100+ texts on Starter, 300+ on Growing and 1,000+ on Premium, then 5p each. Its US page lists texts as included on paid plans up to a cap, with an overage fee.
- Add-ons. Tradify's Instant Website is £10 or $12 a month. Powered Now's Receptionist Team add-on is £23.99 per teammate.
- Billing terms. Powered Now bills monthly or yearly with no contract; Tradify's UK page describes month-to-month payment. Jobber's annual plans are prepaid and the first payment is non-refundable.
The first invoices are where this small print shows up, so check them against the build-up line by line. Take the illustrative three-person firm. On the pound side the build-up says £98 plus the $20 seat: ServiceM8 Growing arrives at £59 with 210 texts sent, inside the 300+ allowance, so nothing extra; PN Speech + Text is £39; and the card statement shows the $20 seat converted at the card's rate, with tax and any exchange fee added. On the dollar side Goodcall's invoice reads $79 plus 12 extra customers at $0.79, or $9.48, because a busy week pushed unique callers to 112. Neither surprise is large, but both recur every month, so move them into the budget line rather than treating them as one-offs.
When a hire changes the bill
The two pricing models diverge as a firm grows, so look one step ahead. Take the three-person firm and add a fourth electrician. On Tradify Plus that is another £44 or $61 a month, £176 or $244 in total. On ServiceM8 Growing it is nothing, unless job cards exceed 150 a month, in which case Premium is £119 or $149. At five people it is the same story: £220 or $305 for Tradify Plus against £119 or $149 for ServiceM8 Premium.
That doesn't make the flat model the right answer for everyone. A firm with lots of small jobs and few people can hit ServiceM8's job allowance before it touches a per-user plan's total. Count your monthly job cards, quotes included, and your users, then price both models. For a larger set of options and what each does in practice, seven AI tools for electricians from calls to certificates is the next step.
A fortnight's trial before you commit
Powered Now's pages offer a 14-day free trial with no card, and ServiceM8's FAQ says the same, so you can test the job app for nothing. Use the two weeks deliberately. In days one and two, import customers and your price list. In day three, quote five real jobs and read every AI-written line against your terms. In days four to seven, run live jobs and issue one real certificate or form from the app. In days eight to ten, test the receptionist with ten scripted calls, including one emergency and one wrong number. In days eleven to fourteen, add up what you spent in minutes and money.
Score three things: minutes per quote compared with your current way, calls that reached a person when they should have, and any customer-facing mistake the AI would have sent if you hadn't read it. If the quote time falls and the mistake count is zero because you caught them, the stack is working. If you caught three, tighten the saved instructions before you pay for a second month.
Small print questions on electricians' software prices
Are these prices before or after tax?
Before, in almost every case. Powered Now says its prices exclude tax, and ServiceM8's UK page says the same and notes that most registered businesses can reclaim it, so confirm how that works for you with your accountant. Tradify's pages don't say. Jobber and Housecall Pro list dollar prices excluding tax.
Why does Jobber show dollars on its UK-facing pages?
Jobber's pricing page states all prices are in USD, even on its UK-facing paths. Its Receptionist help page says its dedicated receptionist numbers are available in the UK. Ask Jobber in writing which currency you would be billed in, and what card fees apply, before you sign up.
Does ChatGPT cost the same in pounds?
OpenAI's help page gives ChatGPT Plus as $20 a month and says annual billing isn't offered. It shows no pound price, so the figure in your billing currency appears at checkout, with tax added where it applies. Treat the $20 in the build-ups as a dollar list price, not a pound figure.
Can a UK firm use Goodcall or Rosie?
Goodcall's FAQ says its numbers are local US numbers for now, with no toll-free or international numbers yet. Rosie's and Smith.ai's pages say nothing about UK numbers. Powered Now's receptionist and ServiceM8's AI Phone Agent both have pound prices, so UK firms should price those first and ask the others in writing.
Further reads
- Simpro Electrical Reviews: Is It Worth It for a Small Firm? — Whether a bigger platform is worth it for a small firm.
- Six AI Automations an Electrician Can Set Up in a Weekend — Six automations you can set up in a weekend.
- Tradify vs Fergus for Plumbers and Electricians: AI Features Compared — Two more job apps compared on AI features.
- Electrical Contractor AI: Setting Up Permit and Inspection Tracking — A spreadsheet tracker for permits, notifications and inspection dates, plus AI prompts that draft the chasers and flag jobs before they stall.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: ServiceM8's UK and US pricing and Phone pages and its Phone Agent help page; Tradify's UK and US pricing pages and SmartTools page; Powered Now's pricing and receptionist pages; Jobber's pricing page and Receptionist help page; Housecall Pro's pricing page; Goodcall, Rosie and Smith.ai pricing pages; OpenAI's ChatGPT Plus help page; all read 29 October 2026. No currency conversion has been applied.