Buyer's guide
We make one of the three products compared here, so we will be plain about it: this guide says what each is good at, what each lacks (ours included), and which kind of shop should pick which.
$49/month after the trial. No credit card required to start.
Model and serial numbers decide which part you order and whether the manufacturer pays. Check whether the software stores brand, model, serial and warranty expiry as searchable fields with a service history, or only as free-text notes on a job.
Price the plan for the team you expect to have, not the one you have today. Tiered and per-user plans can double the bill when you add a second or sixth person.
Some tools process cards for a per-transaction fee and record the payment for you. Others leave payment to you. Neither is wrong; know which you are buying.
Appliances sit where phones lose signal. Ask what a technician can still see offline and what needs a connection.
A live accounting sync saves steps but usually sits on a higher plan. A CSV export is manual and works with any plan. Decide how often you actually reconcile.
Marketing automation, phone systems and GPS are valuable if you use them. If you will not, they are cost and clutter.
Our column is exact. The other two summarize what each company publishes about its own plans.
| Appliance Repair Desk | Housecall Pro | Workiz | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $49 flat | Basic $59 to $79; Essentials $149 to $189 | About $225 last published; now by quote |
| Users included | Unlimited | Basic 1; Essentials up to 5 | First 3 on the entry plan |
| Appliance records (brand, model, serial, warranty) | Yes, searchable, with service history | General home-services tool | General field-service tool |
| Scheduling and dispatch | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Invoicing | Yes, labor and parts from the job | Yes, plus estimates | Yes, plus estimates |
| Customer card payments | No; your own payment instructions on the invoice | Yes, with per-transaction fees | Yes |
| QuickBooks | CSV export | Integration on Essentials and above | QuickBooks Online sync on Standard and above |
| Online booking | No | Yes | See its plan details |
| Phone system | No | See its plan details | Yes, as a paid add-on |
| Mobile | Phone browser; saved jobs readable offline | Native app | Mobile app |
What Appliance Repair Desk does not do: card processing, online booking, estimates, text messaging, GPS tracking, a phone system, a live QuickBooks sync or an app-store app. If any of those is a must-have, one of the other two is the better fit.
A week schedule, technician assignment, and a clear job status from scheduled to completed.
Each technician gets the address, appliance and checklist, readable offline once saved.
One click turns a completed job into a labor-and-parts invoice you can email.
It depends on the shop. A small shop that mainly needs appliance records, scheduling and invoicing at a fixed price is well served by Appliance Repair Desk. A shop that wants online booking and built-in card payments should look at Housecall Pro. A shop whose office runs on phone calls and wants call tracking should look at Workiz.
At minimum: customer records, appliance records with brand, model number, serial number and warranty dates, a schedule with technician assignment, job notes and parts used, and invoices that separate labor from parts. Everything beyond that depends on how you work.
Published prices range widely. Appliance Repair Desk is $49 a month for unlimited users. Housecall Pro lists $59 to $79 a month for one user and $149 to $189 for up to 5. Workiz last published plans from about $225 a month and now quotes on request.
It is written by the makers of Appliance Repair Desk, so read it with that in mind. To keep it useful we list what our product does not do, name the cases where another product is the better choice, and link to each competitor's own pricing page so you can check the numbers.
Appliance Repair Desk has a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. Other vendors offer their own trials; check their sites for current terms.
Most shops know within an hour whether they need more software than this. The 14-day trial is the full product.
$49/month flat after the trial. No credit card required to start.