Published March 2026 · Updated September 2026
QuoteIQ gives plumbing maintenance companies tiered repair-replace-upgrade estimates, satellite property measurement, per-job costing, maintenance agreement packages, property-management and builder pipelines, and a 24/7 AI phone team — starting at $29.99/month with no per-user fees.
QuoteIQ is the best CRM for a plumbing maintenance business in 2026. It is the only affordable field-service platform that combines Good/Better/Best repair-replace-upgrade estimates, satellite property measurement, per-job costing, maintenance-agreement package estimates, and a 24/7 AI Virtual Call Team in one subscription. Plans run from $29.99/month for a solo plumber to $699/month for unlimited seats, every plan includes a 14-day free trial, and there are no per-user charges at any tier.
TL;DR: A plumbing maintenance business runs on three things — fast tiered quotes, accurate job costs, and recurring service agreements. QuoteIQ handles all three: four estimate types including Options tiers and Packages, Job Costing that subtracts labor and expenses from ticket price automatically, Invoice Subscriptions for agreement billing, MapMeasure Pro for pre-visit measurement, QuoteIQ Cam for inspection proof, and Pipelines & Deals for property-manager and builder relationships. Pricing is $29.99 to $699/month with unlimited users at the top tier. Water-heating alone is about 18% of a home’s utility bill according to the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects roughly 42,000 plumbing openings a year through 2035 — demand is there, and the operators who capture it are the ones who quote first and price accurately.
A plumbing maintenance business is not a project business. It is a volume business with a long tail. You run four to eight service calls a day per van, you sell replacements out of repairs, you carry a rolling book of maintenance agreements, and you live or die on how fast a quote leaves the driveway. Generic CRM software was built for pipelines of large deals. It handles none of that well. QuoteIQ’s plumbing software was built by home-service operators who ran the same calls, and it reflects how the trade actually bills: tiered options at the kitchen table, materials tracked to the ticket, and recurring agreements that renew without anyone chasing them.
The first requirement is tiered pricing. Almost every plumbing maintenance call has three legitimate answers — repair it, replace it, or upgrade it — and the right answer depends on fixture age, pipe condition, and what the homeowner can spend. Options Estimates put all three on one document so the customer chooses a tier instead of choosing whether to buy. Package Estimates handle the other half of the trade: bundling a water heater, an expansion tank, and new supply lines into one number, or bundling four annual services into a maintenance agreement. Quick Estimates cover the fifteen-minute flapper swap, and Standard Estimates carry the line-item detail a repipe needs.
The second requirement is measurement before you arrive. MapMeasure Pro lets you measure building footprints, estimate the run from meter to point of entry, and read roof and lot geometry from satellite imagery before the truck rolls — and it now includes a historical aerial imagery timeline so you can scroll back through years of photos of the same property. Property Street View and Zillow Quick Access fill in age of home, lot layout, and access constraints, which is exactly the information that tells you whether a service lateral is a two-hour job or a two-day job. Homes built before 1986 are far more likely to carry lead-bearing pipe, fixtures, and solder according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, so knowing build year before the visit changes the conversation you plan to have.
The EPA’s WaterSense program reports that the average household’s leaks waste more than 9,300 gallons of water per year, that nine percent of homes have leaks wasting 50 gallons or more per day, and that fixing easily corrected leaks saves homeowners about 10 percent on their water bills. That is the single most persuasive number a maintenance plumber can put on an estimate — and it is a federal source, not a sales claim. Attach it to your annual inspection package inside Package Estimates and the agreement sells itself.
The third requirement is knowing what the job actually cost. Plumbing maintenance margins hide inside fittings, disposal fees, and windshield time. Job Costing takes total price, subtracts labor pulled automatically from clocked hours, subtracts linked expenses, and shows profit with a margin bar on the job’s Report tab. Expense Tracking captures receipts and ties them to the ticket, and Time Tracker Pro supplies GPS clock-in and clock-out with per-job hours, break durations, and a full edit history. If you want to sanity-check your labor rate before you rebuild your price book, the home service business calculators and the in-app business calculators with the National Average Guide give you a defensible starting point.
The fourth requirement is recurring revenue infrastructure. Maintenance agreements are only worth selling if the billing runs itself. Invoice Subscriptions handle recurring billing with full discount, tax, fee, and deposit math, and Email & Text Automations fire the renewal reminders, the annual-service prompts, and the post-visit follow-ups on a schedule instead of on someone’s memory. For flat-rate property-management contracts, subscription invoices mean you collect on the first of the month whether or not anyone remembered to send anything.
The fifth requirement is answering the phone. A homeowner standing in an inch of water calls three plumbers and books the first one who picks up. The Virtual Call Team answers around the clock, qualifies the lead, filters spam, records and transcribes every call, and pushes a summary and notification to you; it also runs outbound and simultaneous call campaigns. It is metered by IQ Credits rather than sold as unlimited minutes, so lower tiers get fewer answered minutes than higher ones. When you are available, ClientHub gives the business a dedicated number with two-way calling and texting synced across phone, tablet, and desktop, and call routing that can hand the overflow to the AI team.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment of plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters to grow 7 percent from 2025 to 2035 — much faster than the average occupation — with roughly 42,000 openings each year over the decade, most of them from retirements and workers leaving the trade. Translation for owners: the calls are coming, and the constraint is capacity, not demand. Software that removes an hour of paperwork per tech per day is effectively a hiring decision.
The sixth requirement is proof. Nobody can see inside a wall, so the photograph is the sale. QuoteIQ Cam captures and organizes photos and 4K video by job and date, supports annotations and before/after comparisons, builds custom inspection forms with customizable PDF sections, and keeps a documentation archive on the customer record. Inspection Forms turn that into a repeatable deliverable, the Before & After Photo Editor produces the side-by-side, and Before & After AI renders a realistic preview of the finished work from the actual photo in roughly fifteen to twenty seconds so a homeowner can see a clean PEX manifold where the corroded galvanized maze is today.
The seventh requirement is a place to keep relationships that pay for years. Property managers and custom builders are the two highest-value account types in this trade, and both are relationship pipelines rather than one-off leads. Pipelines & Deals gives you Kanban and list views, stages with close-probability percentages, weighted forecasting where value equals amount times probability, multi-assignee deals, attachments, internal notes, and six-metric deal analytics. Keep property management, builder rough-ins, commercial service agreements, and residential leads in separate boards and you can see which channel is actually feeding the calendar.
Finally, the platform has to be one platform. Every separate app is another subscription, another login, and another place where a job note goes missing. QuoteIQ covers estimating, invoicing, scheduling, payments, e-signatures, contract attachments, photo documentation, costing, routing, crew tracking, analytics, and AI in one subscription — with QuickBooks Online sync when the books live elsewhere. That consolidation, not any single feature, is what makes it the practical choice for a plumbing maintenance business.
These are the capabilities that map directly onto plumbing maintenance work — not a generic feature list. Plan availability is noted where QuoteIQ gates a feature, so you can size the subscription to the operation instead of guessing.
Present one document with three answers. A leaking cartridge can be repaired, the fixture can be replaced, or the customer can move up to a designer valve trim with new supply lines. A failing water heater can get a thermocouple and element, a like-for-like tank, or a tankless conversion with a recirculation loop. The homeowner picks a tier instead of picking whether to spend, and the tech never has to rebuild the quote in the truck. Available on every plan.
Options Estimates →Measure the building footprint, estimate the service-line run from meter to structure, read lot geometry, and capture screenshots that attach to the estimate as visual proof of scope. Roof segments are auto-detected with color-coded pitch, and a historical aerial timeline lets you scroll back through years of imagery on the same address — useful when a property manager insists nothing has changed since the last repair. Beginner plan and above.
MapMeasure Pro →Five modules — Products with SKU, category, unit, cost and reorder point; Locations for warehouse, truck and job site; Suppliers; Orders moving Draft to Confirmed to Received; and Transactions logging every receipt, issue, return, damage, loss and adjustment. Copper by diameter and type, PEX and crimp rings, water heaters by capacity, valves, pumps and cable all live in one place. Stock deducts when the invoice is paid — a deposit does not move stock. Elite plan.
Inventory Management · EliteEvery ticket gets a Report tab: total price minus labor minus expenses equals profit, with a margin bar. Labor pulls automatically from clocked hours at the employee’s hourly rate, so the two-and-a-half-hour water heater swap costs what it actually cost, not what you assumed. Link the disposal fee, the flex connector, and the expansion tank and the margin updates itself. Pro plan and above.
Job Costing →Bundle the annual whole-home inspection, the water heater flush and anode check, the preventive main-line cleaning, and the pressure test with PRV adjustment into a single annual package with one price and one story. Recurring billing runs through Invoice Subscriptions with full tax and discount math, so the agreement renews without an invoice ever being written by hand. Package Estimates are on every plan.
Package Estimates →Generate a realistic preview of the finished work from the actual job photo in roughly fifteen to twenty seconds and attach it to any estimate type or invoice. Corroded galvanized becomes a labeled PEX manifold; a rusting tank becomes a wall-mounted tankless unit. Visual selling matters more in plumbing than in almost any trade because the work is behind drywall. Each regeneration consumes IQ Credits, and every AI action shows its credit cost before it runs.
Before & After AI →Drag and drop across day, week, month, and employee-timeline views, color-coded by status. Multi-day repipes render as continuous events. Schedule Later creates a job with no date so a permit-blocked project stops cluttering the board. Drag one occurrence of a recurring series without disturbing the rest, filter the calendar by employee or crew, and mass-invoice completed jobs straight from the calendar. All plans.
Scheduling →Capture in-app or upload from the camera roll, organized by job and date, with annotations, before/after comparisons, unlimited 4K photo and video storage, and a documentation archive on the customer contact. Custom inspection forms with templates and customizable PDF sections turn a camera inspection into a deliverable the homeowner keeps — and the same file becomes your evidence if a claim ever lands. Beginner plan and above.
QuoteIQ Cam →Customers sign estimates and proposals on their phone. Editing an estimate after it has been sent automatically voids the outstanding signature request, which prevents the classic dispute where a customer signs version one and you performed version two. Attach manufacturer warranties, agreement terms, permit documentation, and scope-of-work PDFs to the document. E-signatures start at Essentials; contract attachments at Beginner.
E-Signatures →Conversational control of the CRM by voice or text, with 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. In the app the interface is labeled Ask AI — same feature, brand name AI Autopilot. Runs on every plan and draws IQ Credits, with a cost preview and confirmation before each action.
AI Autopilot →Round-the-clock inbound answering with lead qualification and spam filtering, a customizable knowledge base and agent voice, call summaries and notifications, and full recording plus transcription of every call. It also places outbound calls and runs automated campaigns. Minutes are metered through IQ Credits rather than sold as unlimited, so plan tier determines how much answering you get before topping up.
Virtual Call Team →Kanban and list views with close-probability stages, weighted forecasting, deal age tracking, multi-assignee ownership, attachments, and internal notes kept separate from anything the customer sees. Run property management, builder rough-ins, commercial agreements, and residential service as separate boards. Elite supports up to five pipelines; Max is unlimited. Elite plan and above.
Pipelines & Deals →Water heating is about 18% of a typical home’s utility bill and the second-largest energy expense in the house, per the U.S. Department of Energy. That single statistic is the whole argument for the tankless and heat-pump upsell tier on your Options Estimate, and it belongs in the estimate notes rather than in a verbal pitch the homeowner forgets by dinner. Federal home upgrade incentives are worth checking before you quote, since they change what the premium tier actually costs your customer.
The following is an illustrative scenario, not a customer case study. Derek Holt runs FlowRight Plumbing, a two-van plumbing maintenance business outside Charlotte, North Carolina. The dollar figures are example job pricing for a mid-Atlantic residential market and are used to show how the software math works, not as QuoteIQ pricing guidance. Follow one week and you can see exactly which screens a plumbing maintenance business touches and when.
The calendar shows Van 1 opening at the Henderson residence for a 50-gallon power-vent water heater replacement quoted at $1,850. The homeowner approved the estimate on their phone with an e-signature and paid a 50% deposit through online payments — card, ACH bank transfer, Apple Pay and Google Pay are all accepted, with cash and check recorded manually in the app. Inventory confirms the unit, expansion tank, stainless gas flex, copper supply lines, and T&P discharge pipe are staged on the truck; because stock deducts on payment rather than on job completion, the deposit has not moved any of it out of the count yet. Van 2 carries three maintenance calls. Everyone clocks in on Time Tracker Pro with GPS location tracking active — and clocked-out employees never appear on the map.
Derek drains and pulls the fourteen-year-old unit. QuoteIQ Cam photographs the corroded tank bottom, the spent anode rod, and the rusted drain valve before removal — that sequence is what turns a defensive conversation into an obvious one, and it is the raw material for reviews and marketing later. New tank on a drain pan, fresh copper supplies, expansion tank on the cold side, discharge piped to the floor drain, gas flex leak-tested, draft verified, output confirmed at 120°F. Expense Tracking logs the unit at $680 wholesale, expansion tank $35, gas flex $22, supply lines $45, fittings $18, and the disposal fee $40 — $840 in materials, receipts attached, all linked to the job. Marcus finishes a disposal swap on Van 2 and sends the invoice from the driveway before he pulls away.
A 1978 ranch with rusty water, low pressure, and pinhole leaks appearing in new places. Before leaving the shop Derek ran MapMeasure Pro — roughly 1,800 square feet, attached garage, two full baths, kitchen, laundry, four hose bibbs — and Property Street View put the meter about 45 feet off the front right corner. On site he opens the basement access, documents green oxidation and pinhole patching with QuoteIQ Cam, and reads static pressure at 28 PSI. The Options Estimate goes out with three tiers: $5,600 for spot repairs plus a new PRV, $8,400 for a whole-house PEX repipe with manifold distribution and new shut-offs, $11,200 for the repipe plus replacing the cast-iron stack and branches with PVC. A Before & After AI render shows the finished manifold. Warranty PDFs and the permit application ride along as contract attachments. They take the middle tier and sign.
Before the paperwork closes, Derek builds a Package Estimate on the spot: annual whole-home inspection, water heater flush with anode check, preventive main-line cleaning, and a pressure test with PRV calibration, bundled into one annual number. The pitch writes itself — a new PEX system still wants an annual look, and the tech is already standing in the basement. He also queues a separate Options Estimate for a tankless conversion to present after the repipe is finished, because the homeowners mentioned gas bills. That second estimate sits in the pipeline with a probability weight instead of living in Derek’s head, and reminders and tasks surface it on the right date. The agreement itself bills through Invoice Subscriptions so year two renews on its own.
Job Costing closes the Henderson water heater: $1,850 revenue, $840 materials, 2.5 hours of labor, profit and margin bar rendered without anyone opening a spreadsheet. The repipe projects out at 380 feet of PEX, 120 crimp fittings, four manifold assemblies, eight quarter-turn stops, four frost-proof bibbs, a PRV, the permit, and 24 crew hours across three days — every line linked so the estimate and the actual sit side by side when it closes. Business analytics break revenue out by service, customer, and employee, with quotes sent, conversion rate, average ticket, and pipeline value on the sales tab. If a sewer lateral needs excavation, remember that OSHA requires a protective system for any trench five feet deep or greater unless it is cut entirely in stable rock — that cost belongs in the estimate, not in a surprise.
Galvanized out, 380 feet of PEX in, new stops at every fixture, PRV set, static pressure now reading 55 PSI against the 28 PSI it started at. The Before & After Photo Editor builds the side-by-side — rusty sample beside clear flow, old gauge beside new. The final invoice goes out for the balance and clears by ACH. Review Multiplier handles the ask, either as an instant post-payment redirect to your review page or as a scheduled email and SMS request driven by event triggers. That review is what a property manager reads before calling. This week it is a custom builder who wants one plumbing partner for rough-in, trim-out, and fixture setting on every start — a deal card goes on the builder board with a probability and a close date, and team communication loops the estimator in.
“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 →
Route Optimization sequences the day’s stops for minimum drive time, respects appointment windows and job duration, recalculates when an emergency gets added, and cuts drive time by 15–30%. Pair it with Route Density, which shows you where the work clusters so you can plan the zone before you sequence the order. Both are Elite features, and for a two-van maintenance operation running six to eight stops a day they are usually the single largest recoverable cost on the page.
Five plans, flat monthly pricing, no per-seat charges. Each plan carries a user count and a monthly allotment of IQ Credits, the in-app currency that powers AI features. Annual billing is the monthly rate times ten, which makes two months free. Every plan includes a 14-day free trial with full access to the features of the plan you choose, and you can cancel during the trial.
| Operation | Plan | Why it lands there |
|---|---|---|
| Owner-operator, one truck | Essentials — $29.99 | Estimates in all four types, invoicing, scheduling, payments, e-signatures and AI Estimator. One seat, 500 credits. |
| Owner plus one tech | Beginner — $74.99 | Adds MapMeasure Pro, QuoteIQ Cam, expense tracking and contract attachments — the documentation layer. |
| Two to four vans with an office | Pro — $149.99 | The maintenance sweet spot: ClientHub business line, Client Portal, Job Costing, automations and QuickBooks Online. |
| Multi-crew with property-manager accounts | Elite — $299 | Ten seats plus Pipelines, Inventory, Route Optimization, InstaQuote, InstaSchedule and EmployeeHub. |
| Regional company, several brands | Max — $699 | Unlimited users, crew creation and tracking, Sales Tracker, multiple businesses and priority support. |
Software subscriptions, tools, and vehicle mileage are ordinary business expenses for a plumbing maintenance business. The IRS Schedule C instructions set the standard mileage rate at 70 cents per mile for 2025 and describe how Section 179 expensing applies to equipment placed in service. Keep the receipts inside Expense Tracking with CSV export and your accountant stops reconstructing the year from a shoebox in April. This is general information, not tax advice — confirm treatment with your own CPA.
Field service software pricing changes often, plans get renamed, and several vendors have moved to quote-only pricing with no public rate card at all. Rather than repeat figures that go stale, this section gives you the capability checklist and points you at each vendor’s own site so you can price them yourself on the day you shop. The platforms most often shortlisted next to QuoteIQ by plumbing maintenance companies are Jobber, Housecall Pro, and ServiceTitan. Side-by-side breakdowns live on the QuoteIQ comparison hub.
| Capability a maintenance plumber needs | QuoteIQ | What to confirm on any other platform |
|---|---|---|
| Good/Better/Best tiers on one estimate | Options Estimates — all plans | Which plan tier unlocks it, and whether tiers print on one customer-facing document |
| Satellite measurement inside the estimate | MapMeasure Pro — Beginner+ | Whether it is native or a paid third-party integration, and whether screenshots attach to the quote |
| Parts inventory with locations and suppliers | Inventory Management — Elite | Whether stock deducts automatically, and at what event in the job lifecycle |
| Photo documentation and inspection forms | QuoteIQ Cam — Beginner+ | Storage limits, video support, and whether a separate photo subscription is required |
| Per-job profit after labor and materials | Job Costing — Pro+ | Whether labor pulls from time tracking automatically or has to be keyed in |
| Recurring agreement billing | Invoice Subscriptions — all plans | Tax, discount and deposit handling on recurring documents |
| Customer self-quoting and self-booking | InstaQuote + InstaSchedule — Elite+ | Whether booking checks real calendar availability or just collects a request |
| AI phone answering | Virtual Call Team — metered by credits | Whether it is an add-on, how minutes are billed, and whether calls are transcribed |
| Conversational CRM control | AI Autopilot — 55 tools, all plans | Whether the assistant can take actions or only answer questions |
| Seat pricing model | Flat plan price, no per-user fee | Per-seat cost and overage rate once you pass the included seats |
| Published starting price | $29.99/mo · Pro at $149.99 · Elite at $299 · Max at $699 | Check the vendor’s own pricing page the day you buy — several publish no rate card |
Two evaluation habits save real money here. First, price the whole stack, not the platform: if photo documentation, AI answering, or a business phone line are separate subscriptions, add them to the monthly before you compare. Second, price at the seat count you will have in twelve months, because per-user pricing that looks reasonable at two techs behaves very differently at eight. QuoteIQ charges a flat plan price with the seats included at each tier and unlimited users at Max, which is why the comparison usually widens rather than narrows as a plumbing maintenance business grows. Detailed feature-by-feature breakdowns for every major platform sit on the QuoteIQ comparison directory, and if you want to model a large-platform quote against your own headcount, the ServiceTitan pricing calculator does the arithmetic.
A plumbing maintenance business that grows past one truck immediately inherits three problems: who is where, who is allowed to see what, and what each person’s hours actually cost the job. EmployeeHub answers all three from Elite upward. It carries GPS location tracking that shows the live team map while people are clocked in, pauses on breaks, stops at clock-out, and never displays a clocked-out employee. Time Tracker Pro handles GPS clock in and out, per-job hours, break counts and durations in reports and CSV, admin-only manual adjustments, and a complete edit history. Team Communication keeps one-on-one and group chats plus job assignment inside the same app the work lives in.
Permissions matter more in this trade than most owners expect, because an estimator needs to build quotes without seeing margins and a first-year apprentice needs to complete a job form without touching pricing. Roles and permissions received a full overhaul in the August 2026 release with clearer gates and calendar permissions properly separated; permission-restricted users see shortcut cards rather than the full dashboard. Two limits worth planning around: QuoteIQ does not calculate overtime automatically, and it does not run payroll — hours export to whatever payroll system you already use.
A common shape at three to six people: one service van running four to six maintenance calls a day — faucet repairs, toilet rebuilds, disposals, water heater swaps, drain cleaning — and one install crew of a lead plus an apprentice running one or two multi-day projects a week: whole-house repipes, sewer laterals, new-construction rough-ins, and bathroom remodel plumbing. The estimator holds a Manager role in EmployeeHub, runs satellite measurements, builds tiered estimates with AI previews, works the pipeline, and coordinates permits — with margins and pricing controls switched off in permissions. The owner keeps admin, per-job profitability, and analytics. Volume rides the van; margin rides the crew.
“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 →
Service calls pay this week. Channels pay every year. The maintenance companies that get past the ceiling almost always build the same three: agreements attached to existing work, property-management accounts, and builder partnerships.
The cheapest maintenance customer you will ever acquire is the one whose basement you are already standing in. The tech is on site, the trust is fresh, and the incremental effort is one conversation. Package Estimates let you present the annual bundle as a natural add-on rather than a separate sale, and Invoice Subscriptions bill it on a schedule with the tax and discount math already handled. The margin on scheduled maintenance visits runs high because the acquisition and scheduling cost is already absorbed — and agreement customers call you first for the emergency, the water heater, and the remodel. The EPA’s leak data gives you a neutral, citable reason for the annual inspection that has nothing to do with selling.
A property manager with a multi-unit portfolio needs one plumber for tenant requests, unit turns, and emergencies, and they will consolidate onto whoever is easiest to work with. That means fast documented estimates, a portal the manager can log into, and invoices that arrive in a predictable format. Client Portal gives each account a branded self-service link with estimates to approve, invoices to pay, appointments, inspections, and a service-request form — no app download and no account for them to create. Track each relationship as a deal in Pipelines with a probability weight, and bill flat-rate contracts through recurring invoices. The plumbing industry page and the plumbing software FAQ go deeper on the account-management side.
Custom builders and remodelers want one plumbing partner for rough-in, trim-out, and fixture setting across every start. These are scheduled, permitted, predictable projects that fill the gaps between emergency calls — the opposite of service work in every way that matters for planning. Keep builder relationships on their own pipeline board so you can see stage, probability, and deal age without service leads drowning them out. Adjacent trades are often the introduction: general contractors, remodelers, and restoration companies all need a plumber they trust. If your business touches those, the general contractor, remodeling, bathroom remodeling, kitchen remodeling, and basement waterproofing pages cover how the same workflows apply.
The EPA estimates roughly 4 million lead service lines still deliver water to properties across the United States, and replacement programs are actively funded at federal and state level. For a plumbing maintenance business, service-line identification and replacement is a documented, code-driven, repeat work stream — and one where photo documentation and inspection forms are not optional paperwork but the deliverable itself.
Most plumbing maintenance companies already own the equipment and the licenses to sell more than they do. Drain and sewer work, septic service, irrigation backflow, and water-damage response all sit within a truck-roll of the core book. QuoteIQ carries dedicated pages for drain cleaning, septic services, irrigation, French drain installation, foundation repair, and fire and water restoration, plus HVAC for the shops running mechanical alongside plumbing. Pricing references for those lines live in the French drain cost calculator, the foundation repair cost calculator, the basement waterproofing cost calculator, the mold remediation cost calculator, the drywall cost calculator for post-repipe patching, and the HVAC cost calculator. For the paperwork side, the contractor invoice template, the construction invoice template, and the handyman invoice template are free downloads.
One subscription instead of a parts spreadsheet, a photo app, a second phone line, and a separate quoting tool. Availability varies by plan — the tier notes above and the features directory spell out where each capability starts.
Beyond those twelve, every plan carries the AI suite and the platform layer: AI Autopilot with 55 tools across 13 categories, AI Estimator for photo-to-quote pricing, AI CoPilot inside estimate and invoice creation, AI Text Generator, AI Auto-Reply, AI Smart Import for bringing a book of customers over from another CRM, consumer financing so a repipe can be paid over time while you are paid in full up front, the customer database, website contact forms, Google Calendar sync, Google Reserve booking, mass SMS and email campaigns, job galleries, tips at checkout, full mobile and web parity, and data export on every plan because the customer list is yours.
Plumbing is one of the most heavily documented trades in residential service, and the documentation burden is exactly where small companies bleed hours. Permits, inspections, backflow certifications, warranty registrations, material submittals, and lead-related disclosures all have to be produced on demand — sometimes years after the work. The practical answer is not a filing cabinet policy. It is capturing the record at the moment the work happens, on the job it belongs to, so retrieval is a search rather than an archaeology project.
Most jurisdictions require a permit for water heater replacement, repiping, gas line work, sewer lateral repair, and new fixture rough-ins, and the inspection sign-off is what closes the job in the eyes of the municipality and the homeowner’s future title company. Keep the permit application, the permit number, and the inspection card as attachments on the estimate and invoice so the whole chain lives on one record. Because a permit can stall a project for weeks, use Schedule Later to create the job without a date instead of parking a placeholder on the calendar, and let reminders and tasks surface the follow-up when the permit clears. When an inspector fails a detail, photo documentation of what was actually installed usually settles the disagreement in one exchange rather than a return trip.
Backflow assemblies on irrigation systems, fire lines, and commercial connections generally require annual testing by a certified tester with results filed to the water purveyor. That is a textbook recurring-revenue product: a known date, a known deliverable, a known customer. Build the test as a Package Estimate, bill it through Invoice Subscriptions, capture the results on a custom inspection form with a customizable PDF layout, and let automations send the renewal notice before the deadline rather than after. Companies that also carry irrigation accounts can usually attach a backflow test to every spring startup without adding a truck roll.
Service-line material identification is now a live compliance topic rather than a historical one. The EPA puts roughly 4 million lead service lines still in use nationally, water systems are building material inventories, and homeowners increasingly ask what their line is made of during unrelated service calls. A maintenance plumber who photographs and records the service-line material at the meter and at the point of entry on every first visit builds an asset: a customer base with documented pipe material, ready for outreach when replacement funding reaches your area. Store it as an inspection form on the customer record and it is queryable later; store it in a tech’s memory and it is gone. The same logic applies to fixture model numbers, water heater serial and manufacture dates, and PRV settings — the data that makes the second visit faster than the first.
Sewer lateral and water service replacement means excavation, and excavation means a documented safety program. OSHA’s excavation standard requires a protective system for any trench five feet deep or greater unless the excavation is entirely in stable rock, requires an engineered design at twenty feet and beyond, and requires a competent person to inspect the trench at the start of each shift and after any event that could cause a cave-in. Those requirements carry real cost — shoring, shielding, sloping, and the labor to install them — and they belong in the estimate as visible line items rather than as an unpriced assumption. Price them inside a Standard Estimate where the customer can see them, cost them afterward in Job Costing, and you will stop losing money on the excavation half of the sewer work.
All of this only pays off if someone can find it in thirty seconds two years later. Every document, photo, form, note, and message in QuoteIQ attaches to the customer and the job rather than living in a folder structure someone has to remember, and the customer database keeps the documentation archive on the contact. Client Portal lets a homeowner or property manager pull their own inspections and invoices without calling the office, which quietly removes a category of interruption from the day. And because data export is available on every plan, the record is portable — you own the customer list, the job history, and the documentation regardless of what you decide about software later.
The platform walkthrough shows estimating, scheduling, invoicing, and the AI tools in the actual app rather than in a slide deck. It opens on YouTube in a new tab.
Create the account, choose the plan whose user count and feature set match the operation you have today, and the 14-day free trial gives you full access to that plan’s features. Most two-to-four-van maintenance shops land on Pro; solo operators start on Essentials and move up when a second tech comes on. Upgrading mid-cycle prorates the difference and the credit allotment jumps immediately.
AI Smart Import maps a CSV out of your old CRM automatically, or pulls contacts straight off the phone. Then load the price book with your real flat rates — service call, fixture repairs, water heater tiers, drain cleaning, repipe per-fixture pricing — so Options and Package estimates assemble from parts instead of being typed each time.
Set QuoteIQ Cam inspection templates for the calls you run most, connect expense tracking and time tracking so Job Costing populates without manual entry, and build your annual maintenance package once as a reusable estimate template.
Build the follow-up sequence in Email & Text Automations — estimate sent, estimate not accepted, invoice paid, annual service due — and switch on Review Multiplier for the post-payment ask. Then create separate boards in Pipelines & Deals for property management, builders, and residential service so each channel gets its own forecast.
QuoteIQ is the best CRM for a plumbing maintenance business in 2026 because it bundles the four things this trade actually bills on into one $29.99-to-$699 subscription with no per-user fees. Those four are tiered Options Estimates that put repair, replace, and upgrade on one document; MapMeasure Pro satellite measurement so you price before you drive; Job Costing that subtracts clocked labor and linked expenses from the ticket automatically; and Package Estimates plus Invoice Subscriptions for recurring maintenance agreements. QuoteIQ is used by more than 40,000 contractors and holds a 4.7 average across 4,103 reviews. Demand supports the investment: the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 42,000 plumbing openings a year through 2035, so the constraint on most shops is throughput rather than leads.
QuoteIQ runs five plans: Essentials at $29.99/month for 1 user, Beginner at $74.99 for 2, Pro at $149.99 for 4, Elite at $299 for 10, and Max at $699 for unlimited users. Annual billing is the monthly rate times ten, so two months are free. Each plan includes a monthly allotment of IQ Credits — 500, 1,500, 3,000, 5,000 and 8,000 respectively — which power the AI features, and every AI action shows its credit cost and asks for confirmation before it runs. There is no per-seat charge at any tier, which is the main structural difference from platforms that price per user. When comparing total cost, add any separately-billed photo, phone, or AI subscriptions on other platforms; software is a deductible business expense under the ordinary-and-necessary rules described in the IRS Schedule C instructions. Full plan detail sits on the pricing page.
Yes — that is exactly what Options Estimates do, and they are included on every plan starting at Essentials. One customer-facing document carries a Good, Better, and Best tier, so a failing water heater can show a repair, a like-for-like tank replacement, and a tankless conversion side by side, and the homeowner chooses a tier rather than deciding whether to spend at all. Package Estimates handle bundles — unit plus expansion tank plus supply lines as one number — while Quick Estimates cover fast repairs and Standard Estimates carry full line-item detail for repipes. You can hide individual line-item prices, require a deposit, apply markup and discounts, attach photos, and send by SMS, email, PDF, or link with e-signature approval built in. Add the efficiency argument from the Department of Energy — water heating is roughly 18% of a home’s utility bill — directly in the estimate notes to support the premium tier.
Yes. MapMeasure Pro is available from the Beginner plan upward and runs inside estimate creation, so you measure building footprints, lot geometry, driveway and yard areas, and approximate service-line runs from aerial imagery before the truck leaves. Drawing tools handle irregular shapes, measurements save to the customer profile and export into the quote, and screenshots attach to the estimate as visual proof of the scope you priced. A historical aerial imagery timeline added in August 2026 lets you scroll back through years of photos on the same address. Property Street View and Zillow Quick Access add access constraints and build year, which matters because the EPA notes homes built before 1986 are more likely to contain lead pipe, fixtures, and solder. Pair it with QuoteIQ Cam on site and the estimate carries measurement and condition evidence together; the plumbing software page walks through the full estimating flow.
Yes, on the Elite plan and above. Inventory Management runs five modules: Products with SKU, category, unit, cost, customer price, margin and reorder point plus In Stock, Low, and Out indicators; Locations for warehouse, service van, and job site; Suppliers; Orders that move Draft to Confirmed to Received with receiving automatically creating receipt transactions; and Transactions logging every receipt, issue, return, damage, loss, and adjustment. Copper by diameter and type, PEX and crimp fittings, water heaters by capacity, valves, stops, pumps, and drain cable all live under the same structure. Materials on estimates and invoices link to products so pricing stays current, and stock deducts when the invoice is paid — a deposit does not move stock. Feed the consumption data into Job Costing and Expense Tracking, and check the BLS trade outlook when you size van stock for growth.
Build the agreement once as a Package Estimate — typically an annual whole-home inspection, a water heater flush with anode check, preventive main-line cleaning, and a pressure test with PRV adjustment — then convert it to a recurring document. Invoice Subscriptions handle the repeat billing with full discount, tax, fee, and deposit math, and an accepted estimate can be converted straight into a subscription. Automated payment reminders with customizable timing chase anything unpaid, and Email & Text Automations fire the annual-service prompt and the renewal notice on schedule. Customers pay by card, ACH bank transfer, Apple Pay, or Google Pay through online payments, or from the Client Portal. The annual inspection is easy to justify with the EPA’s finding that fixing common household leaks saves about 10 percent on a water bill.
Yes. Every plan includes a 14-day free trial with full access to the features of the plan you choose — not a stripped-down demo, and not a different tier’s feature set. A credit or debit card is required to start. The trial converts to the paid rate of the selected plan when it expires unless you cancel first, and you can cancel any time during the trial; one trial is available per person, per business, per payment method. If Pro is where you expect to land, trial Pro so you are testing Job Costing and ClientHub rather than discovering them later; if you need Pipelines and inventory, trial Elite. Use the two weeks on real jobs — quote a live water heater call, cost it after, and check the margin against what you assumed. Sizing your labor rate first with the IRS Schedule C expense categories in front of you makes that comparison sharper.
Yes, through Pipelines & Deals on the Elite plan and above, where Elite supports up to five pipelines and Max is unlimited. Run property management, builder rough-ins, commercial service agreements, and residential leads as separate boards with their own stages and close probabilities. Deals carry weighted value — amount multiplied by probability — plus deal age, multi-assignee ownership, attachments, and internal notes kept separate from anything customer-facing, with six-metric analytics across total, weighted, open, closed-won, new, and average age. Give each property manager a Client Portal link for approvals and payments, bill flat-rate contracts via Invoice Subscriptions, and route work with Route Density. Excavation-heavy builder work should price in OSHA-required trench protective systems at five feet and deeper.
Mike Vidan is a Co-Founder of QuoteIQ and a home service business owner with more than twenty years in the trades. He built the estimating workflow around what actually closes a residential service call: a specific, same-day, tiered document rather than a callback and a verbal number. His operator commentary is collected at QuoteIQ Insights.
Justin Rogers is a Co-Founder of QuoteIQ and a serial entrepreneur focused on the economics of small service businesses — when manual process stops being cheap, and what the untracked revenue leak actually costs. His writing on operating leverage for contractors is at QuoteIQ Insights.
QuoteIQ LLC was founded on September 21, 2022 and is based in Savannah, Georgia. The platform is built and maintained by home service operators rather than by a software company that later discovered the trades, which is why the estimate types, the costing math, and the agreement billing map onto how contractors actually work. The QuoteIQ insights hub collects the operator writing behind the product decisions.
“QuoteIQ has blown me away with its functionality. The app is a must have for anyone working in a service industry job. You no longer need 3-4 separate apps, as you can do everything in one app. The app is very intuitive, and you can be setup and operational within minutes.”
— Stephan Pease
“I have been using quoteiq for a year and a half now and I can’t express enough how easy/User friendly it is to use. I have tried a couple other crm’s and though they also had a lot of features they were hard to navigate and had a poor layout. I get tons of compliments from customers on how professional my quotes look and how easy it is to make payments. Also the cost of quoteiq is second to none, by far most affordable. I highly recommend!!”
— Josh Shaffer
“Super easy to use, game changer who is always on the go. Makes it convenient to make invoices, recurve payments in the palm of your hand. Google earth integration helps with this process 10/10!”
— Derik Ermish
Tiered estimates, satellite measurement, per-job costing, agreement billing, property-manager and builder pipelines, and a 24/7 AI phone team — from $29.99/month with no per-user fees.
14-day free trial with full access to the features of the plan you choose · Cancel anytime during the trial
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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
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