CRM for tradies: do you need one, or is your job app enough?

Short answer

Most trade businesses don’t need a separate CRM. If you quote and win jobs within days, your job management app already keeps customers, enquiries, quotes and job history, and the better ones chase quotes for you.

A separate CRM earns its keep when quotes stay open for weeks or months (builders, renovators, solar, commercial tenders), when paid ads bring in more enquiries than you can follow up by hand, or when you have someone whose job is selling.

If you add one, check it connects to your job app first. Tradify has no API or Zapier, so no CRM can sync with it.

What a CRM does for a trade business

CRM stands for customer relationship management. For a tradie it means one place that holds every enquiry and customer, and keeps track of what you promised them: who rang, what they wanted, whether you quoted, and whether anyone followed up.

Most tradie CRM sales pages tell the same story, and it’s a real one: a call comes in while you’re on the tools, it goes on a sticky note, the quote doesn’t go out until next week, and the customer has hired someone else. A CRM is meant to stop that happening.

The features to look for:

• Capture every enquiry from your website, phone, email and social media in one list.
• A pipeline: new enquiry, quoted, won, lost, so you can see what’s waiting on you.
• Automatic follow-up: a text or email when a quote hasn’t been accepted after a few days.
• Customer history: past jobs, addresses, notes, so you can rebook a service or chase a maintenance visit.
• Marketing to past customers: service reminders, seasonal offers, review requests.

Your job app is already a CRM

ServiceM8, Tradify, Fergus, AroFlo and Simpro all keep a customer database with job history, and most cover enquiries and quote follow-up too. Several “tradie CRM” sales pages say job software can’t send automatic follow-ups. For ServiceM8, at least, that’s wrong.

From each vendor’s pricing and help pages, checked 25 October 2026. AroFlo lists a “trade CRM” in every plan.

Before paying for a CRM, ask what it would do that your job app doesn’t. For a business doing call-outs and small jobs, the answer is often “nothing much”.

When a separate CRM is worth it

We’d add one in these situations:

1. Your quotes stay open for weeks or months. A builder, renovator, pool or solar installer might, for example, quote 30 jobs to win eight, with months between quote and start. A job app shows the quote. A CRM shows the whole pipeline, reminds you to follow up at week two, week four and week eight, and tells you your win rate.
2. You’re running paid ads and the leads pile up. If Google or Facebook ads bring in dozens of enquiries a week, you need them answered within minutes and followed up in sequence. CRM automation (instant text back, follow-up sequences) does that faster than you can by hand.
3. Someone in your business only sells. A sales or estimating person needs their own pipeline, targets and activity tracking, which job apps don’t do well.
4. You market to past customers. Service reminders, newsletters and review requests to a list of hundreds of past customers are easier in a CRM with email and SMS campaigns.
5. You use Tradify and want automation. Tradify has no API or Zapier, so you can’t automate anything around it. A CRM can at least capture and chase enquiries before they become a Tradify job, though you’ll re-key the customer.

If none of those apply, spend the money on getting more out of your job app instead.

What trade businesses run

We crawled 7,126 Australian and NZ trade business websites found through Google Maps and looked for CRM forms, chat widgets and tracking code. 485 of them (6.8%) had a CRM we could see:

Builders were the most likely to have one: 12.4% of building sites, twice the average, which fits the long quote-to-start cycle above. Landscapers were the least likely (3.8%).

GoHighLevel leads because marketing agencies resell it under their own names, often with the website, so the business owner may not know which CRM they’re on. If an agency built your site and set up “your CRM”, ask what it runs on and whether you keep the data if you leave.

The CRM options and what they cost

Prices per user per month unless stated. GST is extra on all of these.

Sources: Zoho’s own price list in AUD (zoho.com/crm, 25 October 2026); HubSpot and Pipedrive AUD prices from four Australian pricing guides dated September–October 2026, because their sites showed US dollars to our crawler; GoHighLevel’s pricing page, which doesn’t print a currency (HighLevel is US-based).

Zoho CRM and Bigin

Zoho is the cheapest serious option for a small crew. The free plan covers three users. Standard at A$20 a user (billed yearly) adds automated workflows and “cadences”, which are follow-up sequences across email, calls and tasks. Bigin is Zoho’s cut-down version, built around a single pipeline, and suits a sole trader or small crew moving off a spreadsheet.

Zoho doesn’t make its own Xero connection. Third-party apps on the Zoho Marketplace do it for a fee. Zoho would rather you used its own accounting app, Zoho Books.

HubSpot

HubSpot’s free CRM is good for keeping contacts and deals, and its paid Starter plan adds simple automation. The catch for a growing business is the jump to Professional, where most of the automation sits. Australian pricing guides put it at around A$140 a seat a month on annual billing, plus a required onboarding fee that most put at about A$2,160 (one guide reports options from A$580).

HubSpot has a native Xero sync, but it rates 2.14 out of 5 from seven reviews on the Xero App Store. There’s no native ServiceM8 connection; you’d use Zapier, Make or a third-party app.

Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a clean sales pipeline, popular with people coming from a spreadsheet. Growth (about A$49 a seat on annual billing) is the first plan with automations. You pay for every seat whether it’s used or not. Xero connects through third-party apps.

GoHighLevel and agency “tradie CRMs”

Many tradie marketing agencies sell a CRM under their own name with missed-call text-back, a shared inbox for SMS, email and Facebook, review requests and an AI chat bot. Several of these are GoHighLevel underneath: a US platform that agencies buy for US$97 to US$497 a month and resell. Some agencies say so and some don’t.

GoHighLevel itself is fine, but before you sign up, ask the agency:

• Is this GoHighLevel or another platform underneath?
• What do I pay each month, and what do SMS and calls cost on top?
• Is there a minimum term?
• If I leave, can I export my contacts and conversation history, and in what format?
• Does it connect to my job app, or will I re-key every won job?

Will it connect to your job app?

Most CRM plans fall down here. If won jobs don’t flow from the CRM into your job app, someone types every customer twice.

ServiceM8’s Zapier app can create a job or client when something happens in the CRM, and trigger the CRM when a job is completed or a new client is added. Fergus’s Zapier app can create customers and jobs and trigger on new quotes and completed jobs. Tradify says it has no public API, webhooks or Zapier app (as of September 2026), so any CRM next to Tradify runs on its own.

What it adds up to

For a three-person business with one person doing the quoting, on ServiceM8 Growing (A$79 a month inc GST):

Add the cost of Zapier or Make if you want the CRM and ServiceM8 talking. Both have free plans for simple automations; check their current paid plans if you need more.

Common questions

What CRM do plumbers and electricians use? Mostly the CRM inside their job app: ServiceM8, Tradify, Fergus, Simpro or AroFlo. Separate CRMs are more common in businesses with longer sales cycles.

What’s the cheapest CRM? Zoho CRM’s free plan (3 users), HubSpot’s free CRM (2 users) and Bigin’s free plan cost nothing. ServiceM8’s free plan also keeps customers and enquiries for one person doing up to 30 jobs a month.

Can I use a spreadsheet instead? For a handful of open quotes, yes. Once you’ve got more open quotes than you can remember, or more than one person quoting, you’ll lose track in a spreadsheet.

Does MYOB or Xero have a CRM? Both keep contacts and can send quotes. Neither is built to run a sales pipeline or chase quotes for you.

In New Zealand

Zoho publishes NZD prices: Standard NZ$23 a user a month billed yearly (NZ$32 monthly), Bigin NZ$12 (NZ$15 monthly). Fergus and Tradify, both NZ-built, work the same way in NZ, including Tradify’s lack of an API.

Related

• Call tracking for tradies: find out which marketing makes the phone ring before you decide how to follow up.
• ServiceM8 alternatives

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Written by Dan Edwards

Dan sets up job management, call tracking and CRM systems for trade businesses. More about Dan.