For a sole-trader heating engineer, Powered Now Professional is the cheaper route to compliant certificates, and of the two only Powered Now lists a phone-answering add-on. Tradify Pro suits those who like its templates and recurring jobs. Neither tool's writing or receipt-scanning AI justifies a higher tier alone; the phone assistant has the clearest payback.
Review sites rank these two by star ratings and feature counts. A sole trader needs a different test. Nobody dispatches you, nobody chases your invoices for you, and every call you can't take is work you never see. So the questions are which plan holds your certificates at the lowest price, and whether any AI feature earns its extra cost.
Figures come from each vendor's own pages as they stood on 29 October 2026. Powered Now publishes prices in pounds only, so every figure below is in pounds (GBP) and nothing is converted. Powered Now shows its prices before sales tax; Tradify's pound-priced page doesn't say either way. Powered Now's headline monthly figures are also annual-billing equivalents: GBP 280 a year shows as GBP 23.33 a month, while monthly billing works out at GBP 28.
One boundary. I compare what the software can produce, not what the law requires of you. Which certificates you must issue, and how you must keep them, depends on your registration and the work you do, so confirm that with your registration body or adviser before you rely on any template.
What a sole trader pays on each plan
Both vendors price per user, and both start with a 14-day free trial. Powered Now has Business (one user), Professional and Premium. Tradify's pricing page in pounds shows Lite, Pro and Plus on monthly billing with no contracts.
| Plan | Monthly billing | Yearly billing | Certificates | AI features |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Powered Now Business | GBP 28 | GBP 280 | Not listed | None listed |
| Powered Now Professional | GBP 32 | GBP 320 | Yes | None listed |
| Powered Now Premium | GBP 40 | GBP 400 | Yes | AI receipt and cost scanner; AI text writing |
| Tradify Lite | GBP 34 | Not shown | Not listed | None |
| Tradify Pro | GBP 37 | Not shown | Listed (compliance certificates) | None |
| Tradify Plus | GBP 44 | Not shown | Yes | SmartRead for Bills; SmartWrite |
The monthly figures for Powered Now come from its yearly prices and the savings it prints against them: GBP 56, 64 and 80 a year saved on the three plans, which fits GBP 28, 32 and 40 a month. Its home page also shows Premium at GBP 40 billed monthly.
The first finding is that Powered Now's Business plan, though aimed at sole traders, doesn't list certificates. A heating engineer is therefore pushed to Professional at GBP 32 a month, which is GBP 5 below Tradify Pro. Over a year that is GBP 384 against GBP 444 on monthly billing, or GBP 320 against GBP 444 if you pay Powered Now yearly. Neither plan price includes a phone assistant. That is the other cost to add, and of the two tools it exists on only one side.
Certificates and annual servicing: the part that decides it
Everything else in this comparison matters less than whether the paperwork you issue every day comes out right. Tradify has a separate page for gas and oil engineers listing 15 digital forms. The gas side runs from the landlord or homeowner safety record and service maintenance record to the warning notice, gas testing and purging, central heating commissioning and the boiler record; there is also an unvented hot-water cylinder commissioning and inspection record and, for oil work, the CD/10, CD/11, CD/12 and CD/14 reports plus a TI/133D tank risk assessment. Signatures are captured on the phone's touchscreen and the PDFs email from the app. The page names no plan, and it mentions accounting sync only for invoices, not certificates.
Powered Now's home page claims more than 80 trade forms and certificates, signed on the customer's phone, from gas safety records to electrical reports. Its FAQ confirms compliant digital certificates and custom forms on Professional and Premium, and that customers are reminded a month before a certificate expires. I could not find a full list of the heating forms on the pages I read, which is a reason to test, not a reason to rule it out.
The test is simple and takes an afternoon. Take the last five certificates you issued, including the awkward ones. Recreate each in both trials and check the fields, the signature step, the PDF and how it is named and filed. If a form you rely on isn't there, ask whether the vendor can add it as a custom form and how long that takes.
Annual servicing is the second half. Tradify's gas engineer page says you can schedule automatic customer reminders for regular maintenance jobs, and its pricing page lists service reminders on Plus, with recurring jobs and appointment reminders on Pro. Powered Now's product page says customers are prompted to rebook around 11 months on, but it doesn't name a plan, while its pricing page lists appointment reminders and automatic quote and invoice chasing under Premium. Ask each vendor, in writing, which plan sends a service reminder with no work from you. For routines beyond these two tools, see AI service plan reminders for heating and cooling customers.
The AI features, one at a time, with a verdict
| Feature | Powered Now | Tradify | Extra cost | Verdict for a sole trader |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phone answering | PN Receptionist. Speech: GBP 29, unlimited calls, keeps your existing number, takes name, number and job, texts you a summary and saves a recording. Speech + Text: GBP 39, adds a text to callers who hang up and a call menu | Not found on the pages I read | GBP 29 to 39 a month | The only AI add-on with a clear payback, if you miss calls |
| Writing quotes and messages | AI text writing, Premium only | SmartWrite, Plus only | The tier step: about GBP 8 and GBP 7 a month | Not a reason to upgrade; a free chatbot does the same job |
| Capturing bills and receipts | AI receipt and cost document scanner, Premium only | SmartRead for Bills, Plus only | The same tier step | Worth it above roughly nine bills a month, if it reads accurately |
| Chasing quotes and invoices (not labelled AI) | Automatic chasing, Premium | Quote and invoice reminders, Pro | None at Tradify Pro | Cash arrives sooner; Tradify gives it a tier lower |
The receipt figure comes from a sum worth showing. Say a scanner saves about a minute and a half on each bill and your time is worth GBP 35 an hour. That is about GBP 0.88 a bill, so roughly nine bills a month cover a GBP 8 step. Both numbers are my assumptions; replace them with yours. And the step buys other features too, so the AI line is only part of the comparison. Powered Now lists an "AI receipt and cost document scanner" on Premium without describing the steps; Tradify's SmartRead page says you snap a photo of any invoice and it extracts the details. Neither page describes a review step, so you must supply one.
Writing help is the weakest reason to pay. Powered Now's features page says its AI Text generates job notes and descriptions with a tone you can adjust; Tradify's SmartWrite builds descriptions from quote and invoice line items, corrects spelling, grammar and formatting, and offers a friendly or professional tone. A free chatbot does the same job on a pasted note, so pay for it only if having it inside the quote screen would genuinely get descriptions written that you would otherwise skip. The broader market for bill scanning is covered in the receipt scanning comparison for tradesmen.
Five stacks priced for a fourteen-jobs-a-week engineer
Picture a one-person firm doing about fourteen jobs a week: eight boiler services, four repair call-outs and two quote visits for new boilers. About thirty supplier bills arrive each month and roughly six calls a week go unanswered while the engineer is on a job. Swap in your own week. Prices are monthly billing, in GBP, before any sales tax.
| Stack | Monthly | What it gives you |
|---|---|---|
| A. Powered Now Professional | 32 | Certificates, accounting sync, unlimited texts and emails; no AI |
| B. A plus PN Receptionist (Speech) | 61 | Everything in A, and calls answered while you work |
| C. Powered Now Premium plus Receptionist (Speech + Text) | 79 | All three AI features, automatic chasing, reminders, portal |
| D. Tradify Pro | 37 | Certificates, recurring jobs, reminders, no AI |
| E. Tradify Plus | 44 | Everything in D plus SmartRead, SmartWrite, service reminders |
Over twelve months on monthly billing those stacks cost 384, 732, 948, 444 and 528 pounds. Powered Now's yearly prices take A down to 320, B to 668 (the receptionist stays monthly) and C to 868. The spread from the cheapest stack to the dearest is therefore about 600 pounds a year, and nearly all of it is the AI and phone add-ons, which is why they deserve a sum of their own.
Now the phone sum, which is where the money is. Six missed calls a week is about 26 a month. Suppose a quarter are new enquiries (6 or 7), the assistant captures about 60% of those (4), and you win half of what it captures (2). At GBP 90 margin per job, that is GBP 180 a month against GBP 29 for Speech, so Speech covers its cost if it wins one extra job every three months. If most of your missed calls are existing customers who ring back, the figure shrinks, which is why a two-week log of who rang is worth more than any estimate here.
For Tradify, the practical answer to stack B is a separate phone assistant, with a price and hand-off method of its own. The cheapest AI receptionist for a sole trader compares what you give up at the low end.
Quoting a new boiler from the driveway
The quote visit is where a sole trader's time turns into money, so look at how each tool presents choices. Powered Now's product page describes branded quotes sent by email or text from the van, with customer details filled in automatically, a deposit request if you want one, and open quotes followed up automatically on Premium. Tradify's pricing page lists quote options and online acceptance under Pro, plus quote and invoice reminders.
Take three boilers offered for a two-bedroom flat: a basic model at GBP 2,300, a mid-range model with a smart thermostat at GBP 2,750, and a premium model with a longer warranty at GBP 3,200. The test is how each tool shows those three to the customer: side by side on one page they can accept, or as three separate documents. Try it on your own phone, then on a friend's. Whichever tool makes the choice easier to accept earns its keep faster than any AI feature in this comparison.
A 7.40 pm call on a cold evening: the rules to set
A phone assistant earns trust or loses it on the evening calls. Powered Now says its receptionist takes the caller's name, number and job, texts the details to you, and handles urgent calls by rules you set: it will text you straight away or put the call through. The receptionist page doesn't mention booking jobs into the diary, although the pricing page says it does, so check which is true. Both plans let you set a closed-hours message, and Speech + Text adds a call menu with a company greeting and up to three options. Write your rules before you switch it on.
- No heating or hot water. Text me at once. If the caller says there are young children or an elderly person in the house, put the call through.
- Smell of gas or an alarm sounding. Tell the caller to get everyone out of the building and ring the gas emergency line now, then text me. This is the line that must never be left to improvisation.
- Boiler fault code or low pressure. Take the make, age, fault code and address, say I will ring back in the morning, and text me.
- New boiler quote. Take the address, current boiler type and property type, and say I will ring to arrange a survey visit.
Ask the vendor whether the second rule can be a fixed, word-for-word safety message, for example as one of the call-menu options. If it can't, don't rely on the assistant for it: keep your own line forwarded for those phrases. Then try a made-up call. The caller says: "The boiler's started banging and the hot water's gone. Can anyone come out tonight?" A good assistant takes the address and fault, asks whether the heating is also off, flags it as urgent and texts you. A badly briefed one says "an engineer will be with you this evening". Fix that by adding "never promise a time or a visit" to the rules, and check that the Speech plan texts only you while the Speech + Text plan also sends follow-ups to callers.
Two AI drafts a heating engineer must correct before sending
Both vendors' AI sits between your notes and a document someone relies on, so each output needs a quick read. Two examples show what to look for.
First, writing. Your job note says: "swapped diverter valve, topped up to 1.2 bar, bled 3 rads, tested all zones." A writing assistant might return: "We replaced the faulty diverter valve, restored system pressure, bled the radiators and carried out a full system flush." Everything is right except the last four words, which describe work you never did and would be hard to defend if a customer relied on them. The fix is to delete anything you can't evidence, and to tell the tool to use only the facts in your note.
Second, receipts. A merchant receipt shows net 72.00, tax 14.40 and gross 86.40. A scanner might file gross 86.40 correctly but read the tax as 8.64 and the date as the previous month. Check three fields on every scan: the date, the total, and the tax line. Ten seconds per receipt is still faster than typing, but skipping the check puts the error into your books, and it surfaces at the worst moment.
Fourteen days on each: a trial plan for one person
Start both trials on the same day so you compare like with like, and cancel the loser before its trial ends.
| Days | Do this | Good looks like |
|---|---|---|
| 1 and 2 | Set up your business details and recreate your last three certificates | They match what you issue today, and the PDF emails cleanly |
| 3 | Send yourself a quote and open it on a phone | It looks like something a customer would accept, with a deposit or options if you want them |
| 4 | Raise an invoice and watch how chasing works | You know exactly which plan chases and when |
| 5 to 7 | Photograph ten real receipts into the scanner, or the nearest equivalent | At most two need correcting |
| 8 | Add five annual-service customers and set a reminder | You know which plan sends it and what the customer receives |
| 9 to 11 | If you are testing Powered Now, add the receptionist for a month (its page offers a demo rather than a free trial, and says billed monthly, cancel any time), forward your phone to it for two evenings and ring it as an angry, a confused and an emergency caller | Your rules hold on every call |
| 12 and 13 | Connect your accounting package and export a month of jobs | Nothing is trapped inside the tool |
| 14 | Decide, and set the review date for the AI tier three months out | By then you have real bills and calls to count |
What the pages did not settle
Before you pay, put these questions to each vendor by email, because the pages I read didn't answer them.
- Does Tradify offer yearly billing? Its page shows monthly prices only.
- Which Tradify plan includes the gas and oil certificate library? The pricing page lists compliance certificates under Pro, while the gas page doesn't name a plan.
- Does the Powered Now receptionist book jobs into your diary? Its own pages disagree.
- Is the Powered Now receptionist GBP 29 or GBP 29.99 a month? The pricing and receptionist pages say 29; the home page says it starts from 29.99.
- Which Powered Now plan sends the prompt to rebook a servicing customer around 11 months on?
- Do the scanner and the writing tools have fair-use limits? None is stated.
- Are Tradify's prices shown with or without sales tax?
Which one I would start with
If missed calls are costing you jobs, start with Powered Now Professional and the Speech receptionist, GBP 61 a month in all, and treat the receptionist as a three-month experiment. If calls are not your problem and you value Tradify's quote options, recurring jobs and templates, start on Tradify Pro at GBP 37 and leave AI alone until you have a month of bills to count. Move up a tier for scanning and writing only when the sums above say it pays, and for gas and heating work specifically, test your own certificates first. The wider set of tools is surveyed in heating engineer software compared, and a rival worth a look is covered in ServiceM8's AI for a small heating firm. If you want the Tradify plan prices on their own, Tradify pricing: Lite, Pro and Plus goes through them.
Questions from one-person heating firms
Does Tradify have an AI receptionist like PN Receptionist?
I found none on its pricing, features or SmartTools pages. Tradify's AI features are SmartRead for Bills and SmartWrite, and both sit on the Plus plan only. If you want a phone assistant alongside Tradify, you would add a separate service and check how its call notes reach your jobs.
Is the Powered Now Business plan enough for a heating engineer?
Its pricing page lists compliant certificates and custom forms under Professional and Premium, not Business. If you issue gas and heating paperwork from the app, Professional is the cheapest plan that lists it. Business suits a sole trader who only needs quotes, invoices and a diary.
Should I pay Powered Now yearly to save money?
The page shows yearly prices of GBP 280, 320 and 400 and says two months are free, which beats monthly billing. Wait until the 14-day trial and a month of real use have shown the plan fits. Paying a year upfront for the wrong plan costs more than the discount saves.
Do these prices include sales tax?
Powered Now says its prices exclude it. Tradify's pricing page doesn't say either way, so assume nothing and check at checkout. If you are not registered to reclaim sales tax, the difference matters to your real cost, and your accountant can tell you which applies.
Further reads
- Boiler Replacement Leads: Follow Up in Minutes Using AI — Reply to boiler enquiries in minutes, not hours.
- AI Receptionist for Trades: Built Into Your Job Software or Standalone? — Built-in or standalone phone assistant for any trade.
- AI Quote Generators for UK Tradesmen: Built-In or ChatGPT? — What the AI in four job-software tools really does with a quote, what a general assistant adds, and a scored three-job test to settle it.
- Is Checkatrade's AI-Powered TradeMore App Right for a Heating Engineer? — TradeMore's free plan has no AI, and a second engineer costs GBP 200 a month: a switch-or-stay test with certificates and data export checked first.
- AI Receptionist for Tradesmen: Put It on Your Own Mobile Number — Own-number set-up for a one-person trade: forwarding steps for iPhone and Android, ring-time sums, a greeting, recording notes and real plan costs.
- Best AI for Tradesmen: Seven Phone Apps for Quotes, Notes and Receipts — Seven phone apps that handle quotes, job notes and receipts from the van, what each one does, which plan carries the AI, and a 30-minute test to run first.
- Boiler Installation Checklist: AI Sorts the Photos, You Sign the Records — A 24-photo boiler install shot list, AI prompts for sorting photos and drafting the handover pack, and warranty prompts. The engineer signs every record.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: powerednow.com home, pricing, receptionist, Core product and features pages; tradifyhq.com regional pricing pages, SmartTools page, gas safety certificates page and gas engineer page. All read on 29 October 2026.