Published March 2026 · Updated September 2026
QuoteIQ is the CRM built for low-voltage outdoor lighting contractors — tiered per-fixture pricing, satellite property measurement for lighting layouts, per-project job costing on fixtures and wire, holiday lighting upsells, and builder and designer pipelines. Plans start at $29.99/month.
QuoteIQ is the best CRM for landscape lighting companies in 2026. It is the only affordable platform that combines Good/Better/Best per-fixture estimating, satellite property measurement built into the estimate screen, fixture and transformer inventory, per-project job costing that nets fixtures, wire and crew hours against the contract, and package estimating for holiday lighting and annual maintenance. Plans run from $29.99/month for Essentials to $699/month for Max, with the $149.99 Pro plan covering most two-crew lighting operations and Elite at $299 adding inventory, pipelines and crew management. Every plan includes a 14-day free trial.
TL;DR: Outdoor lighting is a design-and-sell trade, not a dispatch trade, so the CRM has to win the estimate. QuoteIQ does it with Options Estimates for brass/copper/integrated-LED tiers, MapMeasure Pro for pre-visit fixture counts, AI before/after previews, job costing on fixtures and wire, Package Estimates for holiday add-ons, Pipelines & Deals for builder and architect referrals, and QuoteIQ Cam for nighttime documentation. Price your work against the holiday lighting cost calculator, keep trenching compliant with OSHA excavation rules, and design to the DarkSky lighting principles your high-end clients increasingly ask for.
Most field service software is built around a work order: a customer calls with a problem, a technician is dispatched, the job is closed. Landscape lighting does not work that way. The customer usually has no problem to solve — they have a dark property and an idea. The sale is won at the design consultation, the margin is decided by the fixture tier the homeowner picks, and the relationship pays out for years afterward through maintenance visits and seasonal work. A CRM for this trade has to be strong exactly where dispatch software is weak: estimating, visual selling, measurement, and follow-through on a long referral pipeline.
That is the reason QuoteIQ fits outdoor lighting so well. Its four estimate types exist because contractors sell differently at different price points — a service call gets a Quick Estimate, a whole-property lighting design gets an Options Estimate with three fixture tiers side by side, and a year-round program gets a Package Estimate bundling permanent lighting, holiday installs, and annual service into one number. Every one of those is available on the entry Essentials plan, which matters when a one-truck lighting company is still deciding whether software is worth paying for at all.
The measurement problem is just as specific. A lighting designer needs driveway linear footage for path light spacing, walkway distances for step lights, bed perimeters for accent zones, tree positions for moonlighting, and façade dimensions for wall wash — all before quoting a wire run or sizing a transformer. MapMeasure Pro puts satellite measurement inside the estimate screen rather than in a separate app, and its August 2026 update added a historical aerial imagery timeline so you can scroll back through years of photos of a property and see how the landscaping matured. Property Street View and Zillow Quick Access sit alongside it for architectural detail and property context. All three unlock on the Beginner plan and up.
The U.S. Department of Energy reports that LEDs use up to 90% less energy and last up to 25 times longer than incandescent bulbs, and that lighting accounts for roughly 15% of a typical home’s electricity use. When you are asking a homeowner to move from a $175-per-fixture brass tier to a $425-per-fixture integrated LED tier, operating cost and lamp-replacement labor are the two arguments that survive scrutiny — put both on the estimate.
Then there is the part nobody outside the trade appreciates: landscape lighting is a digging trade. Every permanent installation means direct-burial wire in a trench, and that puts you squarely inside utility-strike and excavation territory. 811, the free national before-you-dig service, should be on every job checklist, and OSHA’s trenching and excavation standards apply once your crews are in the ground. QuoteIQ handles the operational side of that with custom inspection forms for wire depth and splice documentation, QuoteIQ Cam for photographic proof of burial depth before backfill, and contract attachments for locate tickets and scope addendums bound to the job record.
1. Present tiered fixture pricing without three separate documents. Brass, copper, and integrated LED are genuinely different products with different lumen output, finish behavior, and warranty terms. Options Estimates put Good, Better and Best on one document the homeowner can compare and approve, with per-line photos and the ability to hide individual line-item prices when you want the conversation to be about the package rather than the parts.
2. Show the result before the trench is dug. Homeowners cannot picture a lighting effect from a fixture schedule. The Before & After AI preview generates a realistic illuminated version of the actual photo you just took, in roughly 15 to 20 seconds, attachable to any estimate type. It is a credit-metered AI feature, so each regeneration draws from your monthly IQ Credit allowance.
3. Cost the job at the fixture level. Lighting margins live and die on the spread between wholesale fixture cost and installed price, and on how many crew hours the wire pull actually took. Job Costing on the Pro plan nets Total Price minus Labor minus Expenses into a profit figure with a margin bar, pulling labor automatically from Time Tracker Pro hours and materials from Expense Tracking.
4. Keep the second and third sale alive. Holiday lighting and annual maintenance are the two revenue lines that turn a lighting installer into a lighting company. Invoice Subscriptions auto-bill maintenance agreements on a schedule, and Email & Text Automations fire the October holiday-lighting reminder to your entire installed base without anyone remembering to send it.
5. Track referral sources separately from retail leads. A custom home builder, a landscape architect, and a homeowner who saw a neighbor’s yard are three completely different sales motions. Pipelines & Deals on Elite runs up to five separate pipelines with close-probability weighting, so your forecast reflects the fact that a signed architect spec is not the same thing as a Saturday phone inquiry.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics put the median annual wage for building and grounds cleaning occupations at $36,790 in May 2024 — and that is base wage, before payroll burden, drive time, or the demo-night hours that outdoor lighting uniquely requires. If your estimates carry a flat labor allowance rather than clocked hours, GPS time tracking feeding job costing is the fastest way to find out what your installs really cost.
QuoteIQ was built by contractors for contractors — Co-Founders Mike Vidan and Justin Rogers ran home service businesses before they built the platform, which is why the estimate screen behaves like a sales tool rather than a data-entry form. If you also run adjacent outdoor services, the same account covers landscaping, holiday lighting, irrigation, and tree care work without a second subscription.
Every plan tier below is stated from QuoteIQ’s live plan pages. Dollar figures inside the examples are illustrative price-book entries you would set for your own market — not QuoteIQ pricing.
Build Good, Better and Best on a single document: solid brass path lights at a standard rate, raw copper with patina development in the middle tier, and fully integrated LED with adjustable colour temperature and smart dimming at the top. A 24-fixture front-and-back design can be presented at three price points on one estimate, with photos on each line so the homeowner is comparing fixtures rather than numbers.
Options Estimates →Measure driveway linear footage for path light spacing, walkway runs for step lights, bed perimeters for accent zones, mature tree positions for moonlighting, and façade dimensions for wall wash — from satellite, before the site visit. Roof segments are auto-detected with colour-coded pitch, screenshots attach to the estimate as visual proof of scope, and the historical imagery timeline lets you scroll back through years of aerial photos.
MapMeasure Pro →Five modules — Products, Locations, Suppliers, Orders and Transactions — track path lights, spotlights by beam angle, well lights, step lights, underwater fixtures, transformers by wattage rating, 12/2 and 10/2 direct-burial wire by spool, silicone-filled connectors, stakes and brackets across warehouse, truck and job site. Stock deducts when the invoice is paid, and a deposit does not count as paid unless you use the deduct option on that screen.
Total Price minus Labor minus Expenses equals Profit, with a live margin bar on the job’s Report tab. Labor pulls automatically from clocked hours at each employee’s hourly rate; wholesale fixture cost, wire, connectors and transformer spend link in from expenses. A 28-fixture copper installation shows you its real margin while the crew is still backfilling, not at year end.
Job Costing →Package Estimates bundle permanent lighting, a November holiday install with January takedown, and an annual maintenance agreement into one Year-Round Lighting Package. Because you already measured the roofline and know the tree count, the holiday quote is a two-minute add-on at the consultation instead of a cold sale in October. Price it against the holiday lighting cost calculator.
Package Estimates →Photograph the dark property at the consultation and generate a realistic illuminated version in roughly 15 to 20 seconds — warm path lighting down the drive, uplighting on the oaks, wall wash across stone, moonlighting onto the patio. Attach it to any estimate type or invoice. Each generation and regeneration draws IQ Credits, and the app previews the credit cost before it runs.
AI Image Generator →Drag-and-drop across day, week, month and employee-timeline views, colour-coded by status, with multi-day installs rendered as continuous events. Rain pushes a trenching day and you drag it; Schedule Later lets you create a job with no date and assign it once the soil dries. Nighttime demo appointments block separately from daytime trenching, and completed jobs can be mass-invoiced straight from the calendar.
Scheduling →Capture the dark property before, trench depth and splice locations during, and the finished illumination after — organised by job and date with unlimited 4K photo and video storage. Custom inspection forms record wire burial depth, transformer settings and fixture positions for warranty service, and galleries can be shared with the customer from the job record.
QuoteIQ Cam →A dedicated business number with two-way calling and texting inside QuoteIQ from phone, tablet or computer. Every call and text saves to the customer profile, so the “can you move my demo night to Thursday” text is attached to the job rather than lost in a personal phone. Call routing and forwarding send after-hours calls wherever you choose. Messaging is metered in IQ Credits.
ClientHub →Conversational control of the CRM by voice or text, spanning 55 integrated tools across 13 categories. Real commands: move all of today’s jobs to Friday and text every customer; invoice all of today’s completed jobs and send them. Inside the app the interface is called Ask AI — same feature, different name. Useful when you are 30 feet up a ladder setting a tree mount and the office question cannot wait.
AI Autopilot →An AI phone team that answers inbound calls around the clock, qualifies the lead, filters spam, records and transcribes the call, and notifies you with a summary — with a customisable knowledge base and agent voice. It does not book the appointment for you; it makes sure the Saturday-evening caller who just drove past a lit street reaches a human-sounding response instead of voicemail. Metered at 125 IQ Credits per minute, so available minutes scale with your plan’s credit allowance.
Virtual Call Team →A Kanban board — named Deals in the interface — tracking Lead, Consultation, Design, Estimate Sent, Contract Signed, Trenching, Wiring, Fixture Install, Demo Night and Closeout. Stages carry close-probability percentages so weighted value equals amount times probability, giving you a forecast that separates a signed architect spec from a Saturday inquiry. Elite runs up to five pipelines; Max is unlimited.
Pipelines & Deals →The features above do not all live on the same tier. Estimating, scheduling, invoicing, e-signatures and the AI suite start on Essentials at $29.99. Measurement and camera tools open on Beginner at $74.99. Job costing, ClientHub, automations and QuickBooks Online open on Pro at $149.99. Inventory, pipelines, route optimization and EmployeeHub open on Elite at $299. Crew creation and scheduling are Max only.
The scenario below is a composite example, not a customer case study. It follows a two-crew outdoor lighting company through an estate installation, a design consultation, a holiday upsell, a costing review and a demo night — and shows which part of QuoteIQ carries each step.
The calendar shows Site 1 as a 32-fixture integrated-LED installation on a six-thousand-square-foot property: driveway path lights, bed accents, moonlighting in six mature live oaks, façade uplighting on limestone, rear patio entertainment lighting and two underwater fixtures in the koi pond. Yesterday’s crew finished 420 linear feet of trench and pulled the two main 10/2 home runs. Today’s three-man crew is on site at 7:15 to set fixtures, make connections, backfill and prepare for demo night. Inventory shows the exact fixture, transformer, connector and splice-kit counts staged on the truck, because stock was allocated against the job when the estimate converted. Everyone clocks in on Time Tracker Pro with GPS verification, which is what makes the labor half of the job cost real rather than estimated. Crew B is at Site 2 finishing a 16-fixture brass path-and-accent install on a colonial.
First path light in at 7:30, stake driven, fixture levelled, home-run connection made with a silicone-filled connector. The crew works the driveway at eight-foot spacing, then moves to the oaks — tree mounts bolted high, spotlights angled for canopy wash. QuoteIQ Cam captures every fixture position, every splice with a depth marker, and the transformer wiring configuration. This is the documentation that settles a warranty argument two years later, and it is the reason a custom inspection form for burial depth is worth building once and reusing forever. Afternoon is backfill: close all 420 feet, reset sod, restore mulch beds. Material usage logs through expense tracking as it is consumed, with receipts photographed on the spot.
A 3,800-square-foot craftsman with a wraparound porch and a large rear deck. Before leaving, MapMeasure Pro gave the driveway at 110 linear feet, the front walk at 45, the deck perimeter at 64, four mature maples in front and three crape myrtles at the rear; Property Street View showed the stone columns and cedar shake gables. On site the designer walks every zone with the camera, then builds an Options Estimate with three fixture tiers on the one document and shows the AI before/after preview of that exact house lit. Fixture spec sheets, the photometric layout, the manufacturer warranty and the scope of work go on as contract attachments, and the whole thing is signed on the homeowner’s phone with e-signatures. The deposit is collected on the spot through online payments — card, ACH, Apple Pay or Google Pay — and the deal moves to Design in the pipeline. If the customer wants to spread the cost, consumer financing is available on every plan, the contractor is paid in full up front, and the provider carries collections.
Before the pen is down, the designer asks about December. The craftsman has 165 linear feet of roofline, 80 feet of porch railing, and four front maples that wrap beautifully. A Package Estimate add-on goes out on the spot: commercial-grade warm white C9 runs along the roofline, railing wrapping, trunk-and-canopy wraps on the maples, lighted wreaths on the front windows, all mounting hardware, plus takedown and storage in January. The reason this closes at a rate a cold October call never will is that the property is already measured, the relationship already exists, and there is no second mobilisation to sell. If your seasonal price book needs a sanity check, run the numbers through the Christmas light installation cost calculator and the wider home service business calculators before you quote.
Job Costing runs on the estate job: path lights, spotlights, wall wash fixtures, step lights, underwater units, well lights, two 600W transformers, 420 feet of 10/2, 85 connectors, splice kits, the smart controller and hub, brackets and stakes — all at wholesale — against 38 clocked crew hours across trenching, install and demo night. The margin bar tells you where the job landed before the final invoice goes out, and if it landed low you know whether the cause was fixture cost or the wire pull taking a day longer than quoted. Business analytics roll the same data up across jobs — revenue by service, by customer and by crew, conversion rate, average ticket, completion rate — and data export puts it in a spreadsheet if your accountant wants it there. Contractors quoting adjacent scope on the same properties often pull from the deck, concrete and fence calculators for hardscape and perimeter work that touches the lighting plan.
Demo night is the moment the premium tier justifies itself. All 32 fixtures on: even 2700K path lighting down the drive, moonlight filtering through six oak canopies, wall wash across limestone, the patio and pond turned into an outdoor room. Final nighttime photos go into the gallery, and the before/after photo editor builds the side-by-side that sells the next three jobs. The final invoice sends from the job, the customer pays online, and Review Multiplier triggers the review request — either as an instant post-payment redirect to your review page or as an email and SMS review-request sequence, both of which it ships. Then the part that matters most: the landscape architect who specified the job wants a lighting partner for her design-build work. That relationship becomes its own pipeline, tracked separately from retail leads, because it is worth forecasting on its own terms.
Drive time is the silent cost in a trade where jobs cluster in a few affluent neighbourhoods and then scatter. Route Optimization on Elite sequences the day’s stops for minimum drive time, accounts for appointment windows and duration, and recalculates when a job is added late — cutting drive time by 15 to 30%. Route Density answers the different question of where your work clusters, so you can decide which zone to sell into next season. Density tells you where; optimization tells you in what order.
Rather than guessing at what other vendors include this month, here is the honest version of what matters: exactly which lighting-relevant capability unlocks on which QuoteIQ plan, so you can size your subscription to the way you actually sell.
| Capability for outdoor lighting | Plan it unlocks on | What it does for a lighting job |
|---|---|---|
| Options Estimates (Good/Better/Best fixtures) | Essentials | Three fixture tiers on one signable document |
| Package Estimates (lighting + holiday + maintenance) | Essentials | Bundles the second and third sale into the first |
| E-signatures on estimates | Essentials | Homeowner signs on their phone at the consultation |
| Consumer financing (Affirm, Klarna, Afterpay) | Essentials | Moves the buyer up a fixture tier; you are paid in full |
| AI before/after lighting preview | Essentials · credit-metered | Shows the illuminated result before the trench |
| AI Autopilot (55 tools, 13 categories) | Essentials · credit-metered | Runs the CRM by voice from the job site |
| MapMeasure Pro satellite measurement | Beginner | Fixture count and wire runs before the site visit |
| QuoteIQ Cam 4K documentation + inspection forms | Beginner | Wire depth, splice locations, nighttime portfolio |
| Contract attachments | Beginner | Spec sheets, photometrics, warranties on the estimate |
| Expense tracking | Beginner | Fixture and wire spend attached to the job |
| Job costing (price − labor − expenses = profit) | Pro | Real margin per installation, not a year-end guess |
| ClientHub dedicated business number | Pro | Calls and texts saved against the customer record |
| Email & text automations · client portal · QuickBooks Online | Pro | October holiday reminder to your whole installed base |
| Fixture and transformer inventory | Elite | Never stage a truck short a transformer |
| Pipelines & Deals (up to 5 pipelines) | Elite | Builder, architect and retail leads forecast separately |
| Route optimization and route density | Elite | Maintenance season sequenced by neighbourhood |
| EmployeeHub, GPS tracking, Time Tracker Pro | Elite | Clocked hours that feed job costing automatically |
| Crew creation, crew scheduling, sales team tracker | Max | Separate install crew from holiday crew properly |
| Starting price | $29.99/mo | 14-day free trial on every plan |
Lighting contractors shortlisting software usually land on the same three names: Jobber, Housecall Pro and ServiceTitan. All three are capable platforms, and all three restructure their plans and feature gates frequently enough that any price or feature list printed in an article goes stale within a quarter. We are not going to publish figures we cannot stand behind today, so: check each vendor’s own pricing page for current rates, seat counts and what sits behind which tier, and compare them against the QuoteIQ table above.
What we will say plainly is where the structural difference lies. QuoteIQ is priced per plan with a fixed number of included seats rather than per user, so adding a second installer or a seasonal holiday crew member does not reprice your subscription — Max carries unlimited seats at a flat rate. The measurement, AI preview, camera and estimating tools that a lighting company depends on are in the core product rather than bolted on as separate paid apps. If you want to model what an enterprise-tier platform would cost your operation before you book a sales call, the ServiceTitan pricing calculator is a useful reality check, and our full side-by-side comparison hub covers each platform individually.
Outdoor lighting companies tend to grow into an awkward shape: a permanent installation crew doing trenching, wiring, fixture setting and demo nights; a seasonal holiday crew running high-volume roofline and tree work from October through January; and one design consultant who never touches a shovel but closes most of the revenue. Those three groups need different access to the same system, and getting permissions wrong is how price books leak and margins get discussed in front of customers.
EmployeeHub on the Elite plan handles this. The design consultant gets a Manager role: she runs satellite measurements, builds tiered estimates with AI previews, works the builder and architect pipeline, and coordinates spec sheets with landscape architects — without visibility into per-project margin or the ability to change pricing. Installers get field access only: their schedule, their jobs, clock in and out, and photo capture. The August 2026 release rebuilt permissions with clearer gates and separated calendar permissions properly, which matters most in exactly this kind of mixed-role shop.
GPS location tracking shows the live team map while people are clocked in, pauses on breaks, and stops at clock-out — clocked-out employees are never shown on any map. Team Communication keeps one-on-one and group chats attached to jobs instead of scattered across personal text threads. Two limitations worth knowing before you plan around them: QuoteIQ does not calculate overtime automatically, and there is no native payroll — hours export cleanly to whatever payroll system you already run. Crew creation, crew scheduling and crew-level analytics sit on Max, which is the tier that genuinely separates a holiday crew from an install crew as distinct scheduling units.
Transformers, trailers, trenchers, augers and the software itself are business property. IRS Publication 946 covers the Section 179 election, which lets qualifying property be expensed in the year it is placed in service rather than depreciated over years, subject to annual dollar limits that change. Talk to your accountant before the December equipment order — the timing of a trencher purchase can matter as much as the price.
Installation revenue is lumpy and weather-dependent. The lighting companies that get past the feast-and-famine cycle build three channels on top of it, and each one is a software workflow more than a sales skill.
Every permanent lighting estimate that goes out without a holiday option is a second sale you will have to make cold in October, to a customer who by then has three flyers on the counter. The property is already measured, the roofline linear footage is already in your notes, the tree count is already known, and the homeowner already watched your crew work. Package Estimates put the Year-Round Lighting Package on the same document as the permanent design; Email & Text Automations fire the reminder in September to anyone who declined; and because the automations builder now lets you describe the sequence in plain language and have it built for you, setting this up is an afternoon, not a project. Margins on holiday work are strong precisely because mobilisation, relationship and property knowledge are already paid for — but only if you are costing it, which is what job costing is for. Cross-check your seasonal pricing against the holiday lighting calculator before the season locks in.
Custom home builders put outdoor lighting on nearly every new build with an outdoor living component, and almost none of them do the lighting design or installation in house. Landscape architects specify lighting as part of design-build packages. Both are repeatable, budgeted, pre-qualified lead sources — and both behave nothing like retail demand. Pipelines & Deals tracks each relationship in its own pipeline with its own stages and close probabilities, so a builder who sends three projects a month at a given average value produces a forecast number you can plan hiring around, and an architect partnership that produces fewer but larger design-build jobs is weighted differently. Deals carry attachments, internal notes separate from customer-visible content, multi-assignee ownership and deal-age tracking, which is the metric that tells you a builder relationship is going quiet before the revenue does.
Every installed system needs lamp replacement, fixture cleaning and re-aiming, wire and connection inspection, transformer voltage checks, timer and photocell adjustment, and seasonal programming. That work is recurring, high-margin, weather-flexible, and it compounds — every system you install this year adds to next year’s maintenance base. Invoice Subscriptions auto-bill agreements on the cycle you set, with full discount, tax and deposit handling. Scheduling blocks the spring maintenance sweep across every contracted property, and route optimization sequences those visits by neighbourhood so a day of maintenance calls is not a day of driving. Maintenance is also your natural upgrade channel: the customer with eight-year-old halogen fixtures is the easiest integrated-LED retrofit you will ever quote.
DarkSky International and the Illuminating Engineering Society jointly publish the Five Principles for Responsible Outdoor Lighting: useful, targeted, low level, controlled, and warm-coloured. Shielded, downward-directed, dimmable, warm-CCT design is increasingly written into HOA rules and municipal ordinances — and it is also a genuine premium-tier selling point. Document the specification in your contract attachments so the compliance argument is on file.
The lighting-specific features are the reason to look at QuoteIQ. The reason contractors stay is that it also replaces the photo app, the second phone line, the estimating spreadsheet and the separate marketing tool.
Three AI tools are easy to confuse, so the distinction is worth stating clearly. AI Autopilot is the general manager — conversational control of the whole CRM across 55 tools. AI Estimator is the photo-to-quote specialist: it reads property photos, asks targeted follow-ups and produces market-accurate line-item pricing for your area, used once per new estimate. AI CoPilot is the in-document editor that lives inside estimate and invoice creation, adding services, adjusting discounts and drafting client messages while you build. All of them draw IQ Credits, and every AI action previews its credit cost and asks for confirmation before it runs — there are no surprise draws.
Every plan includes a monthly IQ Credit allowance — 500 on Essentials, 1,500 on Beginner, 3,000 on Pro, 5,000 on Elite, 8,000 on Max — reset each billing cycle, with no separate AI add-on. Credits are consumed by AI actions and ClientHub messaging: 125 credits equals one Virtual Call Team minute, AI AutoMeasure runs 100, property and parcel lookups run 50. Credits have no cash value, are non-transferable, and are non-refundable once purchased or consumed. The core CRM never requires them.
Every QuoteIQ plan includes all four estimate types, Options pricing, scheduling, invoicing, online payments, e-signatures and the AI suite. Annual billing is ten months’ price for twelve — two months free. Most two-crew lighting operations start on Pro, because job costing, ClientHub and automations are the tools that change how the business runs, then move to Elite when inventory and separate referral pipelines start to matter.
Add-ons are deliberately few. The AI website builder is $34.99/month and is included on Max. Additional businesses are a paid add-on, with four included on Max. Done-For-You setup — contact import, price book build and a one-on-one onboarding session — comes in two tiers at $299.99 and $999.99, which is worth considering if you are migrating a mature fixture price book rather than starting clean. IQ Credit top-up packs are available if a heavy AI month runs your allowance down, and every AI action shows its credit cost before it runs.
Every plan includes a 14-day free trial, and the trial grants full access to the features of the plan you choose. Upgrading mid-cycle charges the prorated difference, credits jump immediately, and annual rates adjust proportionally — so starting on Pro and moving to Elite when your first architect partnership lands is a clean transition, not a migration. If you want a second opinion on whether software is worth it at your revenue level, run your own numbers through the business calculators and the outdoor services cost calculators before you commit.
QuoteIQ is the best CRM for landscape lighting companies in 2026 because it is built around the design sale rather than around dispatch. It is the only platform in its price band that combines Good/Better/Best per-fixture Options Estimates, satellite property measurement inside the estimate screen through MapMeasure Pro, AI before/after previews of the illuminated property, per-project job costing that nets fixtures, wire and clocked crew hours against the contract, and Package Estimates that bundle holiday lighting and annual maintenance into the original proposal. Plans start at $29.99 per month and every one includes a 14-day free trial. More than 40,000 contractors use the platform, which holds a 4.7 average across 4,103 reviews. Because outdoor lighting is a digging trade, pair it with the free national before-you-dig service at 811 on every install checklist.
QuoteIQ runs from $29.99 to $699 per month depending on plan. Essentials is $29.99 for one user and 500 IQ Credits, covering all four estimate types, scheduling, invoicing and e-signatures. Beginner is $74.99 for two users and adds satellite measurement and 4K job documentation. Pro is $149.99 for four users and is where most two-crew lighting companies land, because it unlocks job costing, the ClientHub business line and QuickBooks Online. Elite is $299 for ten users and adds inventory, pipelines, routing and EmployeeHub. Max is $699 with unlimited seats. Annual billing costs ten months for twelve, and every plan includes a 14-day free trial plus a monthly IQ Credit allowance for the AI tools rather than a separate AI subscription. The only common add-on is the AI website builder at $34.99 per month, which is included on Max. Before you budget, remember the software line is only part of the picture — the Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data shows labor is by far the larger number in this trade.
Yes. Options Estimates present three fixture tiers side by side on a single document the homeowner can compare and approve — typically solid brass, raw copper with patina development, and fully integrated LED with adjustable colour temperature and smart dimming. Each line carries photos, notes and warranty terms, and you can hide individual or all line-item prices when you want the conversation to be about the package. Options Estimates are included on every plan starting at Essentials, alongside Standard, Quick and Package types. Tier selling is easier to justify when you can quantify running cost: the U.S. Department of Energy reports that LEDs use up to 90% less energy and last up to 25 times longer than incandescent lamps, which turns a fixture upgrade into a lifetime-cost argument rather than a taste argument. Attach the spec sheets with contract attachments.
Yes. MapMeasure Pro, included from the $74.99 Beginner plan upward, measures driveway linear footage for path light spacing, walkway runs for step lights, bed perimeters for accent zones, tree canopy positions for moonlighting and façade dimensions for wall wash — all from satellite, before the site visit. Drawing tools handle irregular shapes, measurements save to the customer profile and export straight into the quote, and screenshots attach to the estimate as visual proof of measured scope. The August 2026 release added a historical aerial imagery timeline so you can scroll back through years of photos of a property and calculated roof pitch. Companion tools Property Street View and Zillow Quick Access unlock at the same tier. Measurements flow straight into an Options Estimate, so arriving with a preliminary fixture count and transformer sizing already calculated changes the consultation from a measuring exercise into a design conversation — and design conversations close. Design to the DarkSky principles where ordinances require it.
Yes, on the Elite plan and above. Inventory Management runs five modules: Products with SKU, category, unit, cost and reorder point plus In Stock, Low and Out indicators; Locations for warehouse, truck and job site; Suppliers; Orders moving Draft to Confirmed to Received; and Transactions logging every movement including receipts, returns, issues, damage, loss and adjustments. For a lighting company that means path lights, spotlights by beam angle, well lights, step lights, underwater fixtures, transformers by wattage rating, 12/2 and 10/2 direct-burial wire by spool, silicone-filled connectors, splice kits, stakes and brackets all tracked with low-stock alerts. Materials on estimates and invoices link to products so pricing stays current, and stock deducts when the invoice is paid — a deposit does not count as paid unless you use the deduct option on that screen. Pair it with expense tracking, job costing and analytics for a full materials picture, and keep purchase timing in mind against IRS depreciation rules.
The reliable method is to quote it at the permanent-lighting consultation rather than cold in October. At that point the roofline linear footage, the tree count and the electrical capacity are already documented, and the homeowner has just watched your crew work. Package Estimates put the Year-Round Lighting Package — permanent design, November install with January takedown, and an annual maintenance agreement — onto the same signable document as the original proposal. For anyone who declines, Email & Text Automations fire a September reminder to the entire installed base automatically, and the automation builder will construct the sequence from a plain-language description. Invoice Subscriptions handle the recurring maintenance billing, scheduling blocks the seasonal build and takedown windows, and the Christmas light installation cost calculator sanity-checks your seasonal price book. Follow the responsible outdoor lighting principles in neighbourhoods with lighting ordinances.
Job Costing, included from the $149.99 Pro plan, gives every job a Report tab computing Total Price minus Labor minus Expenses equals Profit with a live margin bar. Labor pulls automatically from Time Tracker Pro at each employee’s hourly rate, so trenching day, fixture day and demo night are all counted rather than estimated. Materials link in through expense tracking with receipts attached — wholesale fixture cost, transformers, wire by the foot, connectors and splice kits. The Hourly Rate Calculator sits alongside it, and business analytics roll margins up across jobs, services, customers and crews. That matters because labor, not fixtures, is usually the line that moves: BLS put the median annual wage for building and grounds cleaning occupations at $36,790 in May 2024, before payroll burden, drive time or evening demo hours.
Yes. Every plan includes a 14-day free trial, and the trial grants full access to the features of the plan you choose — not to a higher tier. There is one trial per person, per business and per payment method, and a credit or debit card is required to start. The trial converts to the paid rate of the selected plan at expiry unless it is cancelled beforehand, and it can be cancelled at any point during the trial. Most lighting companies evaluate on Pro because that is where job costing and ClientHub live, though Beginner is enough to test satellite measurement against a real property. Upgrading mid-cycle is prorated and credits jump immediately. If you would rather see the system driven by someone who knows it, book a live demo instead — and while you are evaluating, review OSHA’s trenching requirements against how your crews currently document excavation.
A short tour of estimating, scheduling, job costing and the mobile app — the same workflow a lighting company runs from the truck.
Watch Video →Create the account and pick the tier deliberately. If your bottleneck is closing design consultations, Beginner gets you satellite measurement and camera tools. If it is knowing whether jobs are profitable, start on Pro for job costing and ClientHub. The 14-day trial gives full access to whichever plan you choose. Expect about fifteen minutes to be up and running.
AI Smart Import reads a CSV export from your existing system with automatic column mapping, or pulls contacts from your phone. Then build the price book properly: every fixture by brand and wattage, transformers by rating, wire by the foot, connectors and splice kits, with wholesale cost against customer price so margin is visible from day one. If you would rather not do it yourself, Done-For-You setup covers contact import, price book build and a one-on-one onboarding session.
Pre-measure the property in MapMeasure Pro before you drive out. Build the estimate with three fixture tiers, photograph the dark property, generate the AI before/after preview, attach spec sheets and the photometric layout with contract attachments, and collect the signature and deposit on the phone with e-signatures and online payments. Add the holiday and maintenance package to the same document before the pen goes down.
Put crews on Time Tracker Pro so labor flows into costing without anyone typing it. Log materials through expense tracking as they are consumed. Invoice from the job and let Review Multiplier handle the review request. Then read analytics at month end and adjust the price book where margin came in thin — which is the whole point of doing any of this.
QuoteIQ was founded in Savannah, Georgia in September 2022 by two home service operators who had already run the businesses the software is aimed at. That background is why the estimate screen behaves like a closing tool and why the pricing ladder starts where a one-truck operation can actually reach it.
“Same day. Not tomorrow morning — same day. Whoever sends a clear, specific estimate first is the one the customer starts comparing everyone else to. That’s a psychological anchor, and it’s real.”
— Mike Vidan, Co-Founder, QuoteIQ · Full insights →“Around $75,000 to $100,000 in annual revenue is where the invisible cost of manual management typically starts exceeding what software would cost. The most expensive thing in manual management isn’t the time spent on the tasks — it’s the revenue lost to the things that don’t get done.”
— Justin Rogers, Co-Founder, QuoteIQ · Full insights →“Amazing UI and easy to use! I use this for my landscaping company and it makes it very easy to track projects and payments for projects. The built in picture protection is also fantastic. I would highly recommend this to anyone who is thinking about it!”
Camden NaggGoogle Play review“This app really makes life easy. 1. It makes sending estimates really easy, as well as invoices so you can be paid quicker, and make it easy on the costumer. 2. Being able to schedule work times really drives up effeciency, making you more money. 3. Being able to price your services by square foot in the app saves time wasting calculations 4. Having all your finances in one place makes life so much easier. I’d reccomend this app to any new and upstarting businesses, as well as old ones. 5/5”
Kyler ClayGoogle Play review“I’ve been using the app for a little over a month and in my opinion, is an essential part of my business. The app is easy to use and I love how professional the estimates and invoices look, especially when you attach photos. You can upload receipts, along with pictures which will be a huge benefit come tax time. It also integrates with quick books! I am so happy with how the app works, I’d give it more than five stars if I could! In a nutshell, the app is AWESOME! Highly recommended!”
Nick BosickGoogle Play reviewTiered fixture pricing, satellite measurement, AI before/after previews, per-project job costing, holiday packages and builder pipelines — in one platform starting at $29.99 per month, with a 14-day free trial on every plan.
Tell Google that QuoteIQ is a source you trust. One tap unlocks up to 40% off your annual plan. No free trial — billed in full at checkout.
Estimates
Create and send professional estimates.
Invoicing
Send, track and collect invoices.
QuoteIQ Cam
Capture and document every job with ease.
Scheduling
Schedule jobs to your calendar in seconds.
Inspection Forms
Create and complete inspection reports.
MapMeasure Pro
Measure and price properties instantly.
Business Analytics
Real-time insight into your performance.
EmployeeHub
Assign, schedule & pay employees.
Virtual Call Team
Never miss a call with 24/7 AJ, assistant.
ClientHub
Send and keep messages inside QuoteIQ.
InstaQuote
Allow customers to create estimates themselves.
InstaSchedule
Let clients schedule appointments themselves.
Facebook User Group
Connect with and get advice from other QuoteIQ users.
Competitor Comparisons
See how QuoteIQ compares to it’s top competitors.
QuoteIQ Partners
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Press & Media
Brand assets and coverage about QuoteIQ’s journey.
