Short answer. For a sole trader or a two-van business, Powered Now (£28 per user per month) and Tradify (£34 to £44 per user per month) are the two realistic choices, and both let you trial for 14 days without a card. Fergus is a credible third option but prices in US dollars. Commusoft is built for larger contractors and does not publish prices. Payaca has moved decisively upmarket and now starts at £299 a month.
All prices below were read from each vendor's own published pricing page in September 2026 and exclude VAT unless stated. Software pricing moves, so check before you commit. We have no affiliate relationship with any of these products and receive nothing if you sign up.
The five, compared on published price
| Product | Entry price | Top published tier | Trial | Built for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Powered Now | £28 per user, per month | £40 (Premium) | 14 days, no card | Sole traders and small teams |
| Tradify | £34 per user, per month | £44 (Plus) | 14 days, no card | Sole traders up to small teams |
| Fergus | From $53 per month | From $75 (Professional) | 14 days, no card | Small to mid-size teams |
| Payaca | £299 per month | £3,199 (Scale Max) | Demo only, no trial | Established installers |
| Commusoft | On request | On request | Demo only | Multi-engineer contractors |
Powered Now: the cheapest credible option
Three published plans, Business at £28, Professional at £32 and Premium at £40 per user per month excluding VAT, with two months free if you pay annually. The Professional tier is the one most electricians end up on, because forms and certificates sit there rather than on the entry plan, along with VAT submission and Xero.
What you get for the money is the whole administrative loop: quotes, invoices, expenses, supplier invoices, job sheets, project management and Making Tax Digital compliance. Scheduling, a customer portal and automatic chasing of unpaid invoices only appear on Premium, which is worth knowing before you compare the entry price against a competitor's mid tier.
Tradify: the one most electricians have heard of
Lite at £34, Pro at £37 and Plus at £44 per user per month. As with Powered Now, the entry plan is thinner than it first appears: compliance certificates, job photos, recurring jobs, enquiry forms and appointment reminders all live on Pro. If you are pricing Tradify against anything else, price the Pro tier, because that is the one that does what an electrician actually needs.
Two details worth flagging. Tradify sells an "Instant Website" add-on at £10 a month, which is a template with your details in it rather than a site built around your services and your area. And text message quotes, invoices and reminders are charged per message at 10p, which is trivial at low volume and less trivial when you are sending several hundred a month.
Fergus: capable, but priced in dollars
Fergus publishes from $53 a month for Basic and from $75 for Professional, with a 14-day trial and no lock-in. The feature split is sensible: GPS tracking, checklists, job phases, purchase orders and the health and safety tooling sit on Professional. For a UK electrician the practical objection is not the product, it is that a dollar-denominated subscription means your monthly bill moves with the exchange rate.
Payaca: no longer a small-business product
This is the finding most likely to surprise anyone who looked at Payaca a few years ago. Its published pricing now runs from an Accelerator plan at £299 a month, which is restricted to businesses with eight or fewer employees incorporated in the last two years, through Growth at £1,199 a month and Scale at £1,999, both with a one-off onboarding fee of £1,500. There is no free trial, only a demo.
That is not a criticism of the software, which is aimed squarely at installers running sales teams and finance options. It is a warning that the product has repositioned, and that any comparison article quoting a low monthly figure for Payaca is out of date.
Commusoft: for when you have engineers, not mates
Commusoft does not publish prices. What it does publish is the shape of the commitment: all contracts run for twelve months, billed monthly by direct debit, excluding VAT, with users counted as office staff, managers and engineers alike. Volume discounts start above a hundred users, which tells you plainly who the product is for.
For a contractor running multiple engineers with planned maintenance, parts, stock and subcontractors, it is genuinely strong. For a sole trader it is the wrong tool and the wrong contract length.
How to choose in ten minutes
- Count the people who need a login. Every one of these products charges per user, and engineers count.
- Decide whether certificates live here or elsewhere. If you already use a dedicated certification app, you do not need to pay for forms twice.
- Check the tier, not the headline price. On both Tradify and Powered Now the useful features sit one plan above the advertised entry point.
- Trial two, not five. Fourteen days is enough to know, and running five trials at once means you will not properly use any of them.
- Ask about export before you sign. Getting your data out later is the cost nobody prices in.
The part that is usually missed
Whichever you pick, the software only pays for itself if enquiries arrive in it. Most electricians install a job management system and then carry on receiving work through an email address, retyping every enquiry by hand. That is the gap: a website whose quote form drops a lead straight into your system, as a job, with the customer details already populated.
It is the one thing a generalist web designer will not do, because it means understanding your trade's software rather than just your brand colours. If you want that part handled, it is what our software integration service exists for.