How Tools for Trades Scores Software

Most "best software for contractors" pages are ranked by commission. You can verify that yourself: check whether the top pick changes when the affiliate program does. This page publishes our method completely, so you can check us the same way. It applies to every trade we cover and every software category on the site.

Commissions never touch the Stack Builder score

Several vendors in the database pay this site nothing. They are scored by the same code as everyone else, and the Stack Builder recommends them when they fit. Each vendor's profile states plainly whether it pays us a commission or not.

Field service, accounting and marketing software: what gets scored

Field service management is what the Stack Builder scores, using the weights below.
Accounting and marketing software aren't scored by the Builder; their pages present the same verified facts (prices, sync paths, tier gating) and state fit in prose. The same rule holds: companies that pay us nothing are presented on the same terms as companies that pay a commission.

How a vendor gets verified for a trade

Every fact in the database is read from the vendor's own pages and dated; nothing is filled in from software directories or review sites. Verification is per trade: a vendor appears on a trade's pages only after we've checked what its own pages say about that trade. When a vendor claims something only in marketing copy, or prices a feature behind a tier without saying so up front, that lands on its profile as a warning. When we can't confirm something, the site says "unconfirmed" instead of guessing.

Hard filters run before any scoring

Accounting sync is a hard filter, not a preference. If you run QuickBooks Desktop, vendors without a Desktop path are removed, not demoted. If only one vendor supports your accounting software, and only partially, the Builder says exactly that instead of pretending.
Team size uses the vendor's own fit claims plus seat math. A per-seat product that's cheap solo can cost more at 8 techs than a flat-price product, so size changes the ranking, not just the price shown.

Stack Builder scoring weights, point by point

Team-size fit: 3 points. The vendor's stated target size matches yours.
Work-mix fit: 2 points. Commercial-lean shops route toward vendors with service-agreement and job-costing depth; residential service routes toward dispatch-and-quote speed.
Must-have features: 2 points each, with gating honesty. If a feature exists but only on a top tier, you get the match and a warning chip naming that tier.
Buying preference: 1 point. If you want to see prices and sign up without a sales call, vendors that publish their pricing get one point and the demo-gated ones get a warning chip. Choosing "fine with demos" changes nothing.
Budget: 1 point, and the first sort. Each platform is priced on the cheapest plan that covers your team size, including a higher tier or paid add-on that your accounting system or a must-have requires. It earns the point only when that price fits your budget. A platform with no published price can't be checked, so it earns the point only against an open-ended budget. Results come in three groups, each sorted by score: platforms with a published price inside your budget, then platforms with a published price above it, then platforms that publish no price. A hidden price is usually a high one, so it never ranks ahead of a printed one. When a higher-scoring platform lands in a lower group, the top result names it and says why.
"Not sure" contributes zero. Answering "not sure" never penalizes a vendor and never fakes a preference you didn't state.

The trade question routes you to vendors verified for your trade. Where trades share a vendor pool, as HVAC and electrical largely do today, the same weights apply; as trades diverge, their scoring diverges with them and this page will say how.

Why the Stack Builder shows software prices as bands

Vendors publish annual-billed and month-to-month prices, add per-seat overages, and sell add-ons. So the Builder shows a band from the yearly-billed to the month-to-month price, for the cheapest plan that covers your team and your answers, and the pricing database pairs list prices with what contractors report actually paying. Vendors that publish no prices are marked "on request" instead of quoted from a directory's guess.

Fit beats money: a worked example

GorillaDesk shows up in HVAC software lists constantly. We excluded it and documented why: it's a pest-control product first, bills per route, and its site has no real HVAC content. It was replaced with ServiceBox, which pays us exactly as much (nothing) but is genuinely built for commercial trade work, down to rooftop-unit and boiler history records. That trade, fit over money, is the whole method in one decision.

What "verified" means on this site

Every fact was checked against the vendor's own pages on a stated date; each profile links its sources. When something changes, it lands on the changelog the day we see it. The full dataset, including the gated flags, is public at /data/vendors.json.