Quote docks by the square foot, pilings by the count and seawalls by the linear foot — then document every driven pile for the permit file. Built for dock, seawall and boat lift contractors.
QuoteIQ is the best marine service software for dock builders, seawall installers and boat lift contractors. It measures waterfront square footage and walkway length from satellite imagery with MapMeasure Pro, prices work off saved rate templates for floating docks ($15–$35/sq ft), fixed piling docks ($20–$40/sq ft) and pilings ($200–$600 each) using the AI Estimator, timestamps every driven pile and repair with QuoteIQ Cam for the documentation a Clean Water Act Section 404 or Section 10 permit file demands, and collects payment dockside. Plans start at $29.99/month with unlimited users on Max at $699 — against Jobber, whose published monthly Grow plan for 10 users runs $399 plus $29 per extra user.
TL;DR: Marine work is the only residential trade where the job site moves twice a day and the paperwork outlives the structure. QuoteIQ handles both ends. MapMeasure Pro pulls dock footprint, walkway run and seawall length off satellite imagery so a waterfront quote doesn’t need a boat ride, and the AI Estimator turns that measurement into a priced estimate off your own rate card. QuoteIQ Cam and Before/After AI build the timestamped photo record that federal and state reviewers ask for — and that Section 404 maintenance authorizations depend on years later. Job Costing reconciles barge days, crew hours and piling counts into real margin, Inventory Management tracks lumber and hardware against what each job consumed, and Virtual Call Team answers the calls your crew can’t take from open water. Contractors licensed through groups like the Florida Marine Contractors Association run tighter books when estimate, photo record and invoice live in one place — the operating discipline the U.S. Small Business Administration treats as the baseline for a healthy contracting business. Plans run $29.99 to $699 per month with a 14-day free trial.
Dock footprint, walkway run and seawall length from satellite — no boat ride to quote.
Rate templates for floating, fixed piling, crib, pilings, lifts and electrical.
Timestamped pile and repair photos for the permit and maintenance file.
Barge days, crew hours and piling counts reconciled into true job margin.
Card, ACH or financing taken on the dock before the barge pulls off.
Dock and marine outfits don’t all look the same, and what breaks first changes with crew size. Find yours.
You sell the job, drive the pilings and chase the paperwork. What breaks first is time — every trip out to measure a dock is a trip not spent building one.
What it does for you: measures the waterfront from satellite, prices it off your rate card, and takes payment before the barge pulls off.
Some days you’re on the barge, some days you’re bidding. What breaks first is visibility — which job type actually made money, and which quote stalled waiting on a permit.
What it does for you: costs every job against barge days, pilings and crew hours, and works the stalled estimates on its own.
You run the business, not the pile driver. What breaks first is consistency — every crew has to document the same way, because a maintenance authorization years from now depends on it.
What it does for you: holds every crew to one photo standard and reconciles material against what each job actually consumed.
Twelve tools dock and marine crews use in a normal week. Tap any name for the full feature page.
Dock footprint, walkway run and seawall length straight off satellite imagery.
Turn square footage and piling count into a priced estimate in seconds.
Timestamped pile, bulkhead and under-dock footage tied to the job record.
Paired pre and post shots for permit files and seawall repair proof.
True margin after barge days, crane time, pilings and crew hours.
Track treated lumber, hardware and hardware against each job.
Homeowners book their own install window around your tide calendar.
Every waterfront quote waiting on a permit decision, in one view.
Owner portal holding the estimate, photo set and completion record.
Ask for the review the day the dock is finished, not next month.
Answers the calls your crew cannot take from open water.
Follow-up on unaccepted estimates runs without anyone remembering.
Dock work is the rare trade where four jobs on the same street get priced four different ways — per square foot, per piling, per linear foot, per unit. Save the rate bands once and every estimate after that is arithmetic.
| Work type | Typical installed rate | Priced by | Where it shows up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Floating dock | $15–$35/sq ft | Deck area | Lakes, sheltered coves, big water-level swings |
| Fixed piling dock | $20–$40/sq ft | Deck area + piling count | Stable levels, deep-water access, boathouses |
| Crib dock | $50–$100/sq ft | Deck area | Heavy permanent construction, rocky beds |
| Pilings | $200–$600 each | Count, or $50–$150 per linear ft | Depth, bed composition and drive length drive it |
| Boat lift | $1,000–$8,000 per unit | Capacity rating | Far cheaper installed with the dock than retrofitted |
| Fishing pier / walkway | $100–$300 per linear ft | Walkway length | Long tidal-creek approaches to the pierhead |
| Dock electrical | +$6–$8 per linear ft | Linear ft + $40–$100/hr labor | Lighting, power pedestals, lift wiring |
Rate bands compiled July 2026 from published 2026 residential cost guides (HomeGuide, Angi, HomeAdvisor). Regional labor, tide range and barge access move these materially — set your own rates from your own completed jobs.
A crew that prices everything per square foot loses money on the pilings and leaves the walkway off entirely. Splitting deck area, piling count and walkway run into separate line items is what makes a waterfront estimate defensible to the homeowner and reusable on the next one.
Pilings are where dock estimates go wrong, because the visible part of the job has almost nothing to do with the cost. Published 2026 residential guides put piling installation at roughly $200 to $600 each, or $50 to $150 per linear foot — a four-times spread driven almost entirely by conditions nobody can see from the seawall.
Bed composition is the biggest single variable. Soft mud takes longer pile and more drive depth to reach bearing; rock refuses at depth and forces a redesign. Marine crews increasingly survey depth and bed makeup before quoting rather than after, and the results belong on the estimate as an assumption the homeowner signs off on, not as a surprise change order in week two.
Tide range compounds it. A six-to-seven-foot tidal swing means the walkway has to run longer to reach usable depth at low water, and the pierhead has to sit higher. Crews working tidal creeks routinely find the walkway is the largest line item on the estimate — which is exactly why it gets priced per linear foot rather than folded into a square-foot number. Public tide predictions from NOAA Tides & Currents are the reference most marine contractors work from when they set both the design and the install window.
MapMeasure Pro handles the part satellite imagery can answer — shoreline frontage, existing structure footprint and walkway run — so the site visit becomes a confirmation of depth and bed conditions rather than a measuring exercise. The AI Estimator then applies your saved per-square-foot, per-piling and per-linear-foot rates to the measured geometry in one pass.
Boat lifts run roughly $1,000 to $8,000 per unit depending on capacity rating, and they are the clearest upsell in the trade: published guides note that integrating a lift during original dock construction is materially cheaper than retrofitting, because a retrofit can mean modifying pilings and revisiting the original authorization.
The service tail is the part most dock builders under-monetize. Cables, gearboxes, motors, bunk carpet and remote systems all wear on a schedule, in salt air, on equipment that lifts several tons of someone’s boat. That’s recurring, seasonal, high-margin work — and it only compounds if the install is on record with model, capacity and install date attached.
Because every lift you install is already a customer record, ClientHub keeps the equipment history where the next service tech can find it, InstaSchedule lets owners book seasonal service themselves, and Text Blasts reaches every lift owner on your list before haul-out season instead of after.
Almost no other residential trade carries this. Under Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899, structures placed in navigable waters of the United States — docks, piers, bulkheads, mooring piles — require federal authorization, and under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act the discharge of dredged or fill material requires it too. Most routine residential work is authorized under a Nationwide Permit rather than an individual permit, and Nationwide Permit verifications generally carry no federal fee, while individual permits carry a nominal one.
The one that catches contractors out is maintenance. The Nationwide Permit covering maintenance applies to repair, rehabilitation or replacement of a structure that was previously authorized and is currently serviceable. Proving “previously authorized and currently serviceable” years after the fact is a documentation problem, not a construction problem — and the crew that photographed the original build with dates attached is the crew that can answer it.
To be direct about scope: QuoteIQ does not file permits and does not replace a marine engineer or a permitting consultant. What it does is hold the evidence those people need in one place, attached to the job it belongs to.
Requirements vary by Corps district, by state agency and by water body, and they change on their own schedule. Confirm current requirements with the administering district and state agency before quoting any permit timeline to a homeowner — and price permit coordination as its own visible line item, the way trade groups like the Florida Marine Contractors Association encourage members to do.
Waterfront is the one property type satellite imagery reads almost perfectly. Shoreline frontage, the footprint of the existing dock, the run of the walkway out to the pierhead, the length of seawall or bulkhead along the bank — all of it is visible from above, which means the geometry of a marine estimate can be settled before anyone leaves the shop.
That matters more here than in any land trade, because the trip itself is expensive. A measuring visit to a waterfront property can burn half a day between drive time, dock access and the walk-out, on a job that may quote at $18,000. MapMeasure Pro returns frontage and footprint in about a minute, so the homeowner who calls Tuesday morning has a real number Tuesday afternoon.
Satellite can’t tell you water depth at low tide or what the bed is made of — and those two things set your pile length. Measure remotely, then use the site visit to confirm depth and bed conditions and shoot the existing-condition photos for the permit file. One trip instead of two.
Marine work gets buried, submerged or replaced. The pile you drove is in the mud, the bulkhead tieback is behind backfill, and the only thing that will ever prove what you built is the footage you shot the day you built it. In a trade where a federal maintenance authorization can hinge on whether a structure was previously authorized and currently serviceable, that footage is an asset with a long life.
QuoteIQ Cam timestamps and attaches it to the job instead of the phone roll. Pile driving, bulkhead condition, under-dock framing, cable and gearbox condition on a lift service call — it lands in the customer record, where the next crew and the next reviewer can both find it. EmployeeHub keeps crew hours and clock-ins on the same job so the labor record and the photo record agree.
Shoot existing condition before you touch anything — every time, including on jobs that don’t seem to need it. It costs four minutes and it is the only evidence that will exist when a homeowner, an insurer or a permit reviewer asks what the structure looked like before your crew arrived.
Marine construction carries equipment costs no land trade touches. A barge, a crane or pile driver, a push boat, and a crew that can only work when the tide and weather cooperate. Regional cost data puts labor at roughly half of a residential dock project's total — and unlike a lawn or a driveway, a marine crew can lose a full billable day to weather with the equipment already mobilized. Skilled marine labor is also getting harder to price, since it competes for the same workers the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics construction and extraction outlook tracks across every building trade.
That makes per-job margin the number that runs the business. Job Costing reconciles mobilization, barge and crane days, piling count, treated lumber and crew hours against what the job actually invoiced, so you find out which work is carrying you — new build, repair, seawall or lift service — from your own numbers rather than instinct. Inventory Management ties lumber and hardware draw to the job that consumed it, and the SBA's guidance on managing business finances treats exactly this kind of job-level tracking as the foundation of a contracting operation that survives a slow season.
Mobilization. Getting the barge and pile driver to the site and back is a real cost that gets absorbed into the square-foot rate and then quietly destroys margin on small jobs far from the ramp. Price it separately and short-haul repair work stops subsidizing itself.
Repair is the hardest marine work to sell, because the finished product often looks close to what was there before. A rebuilt bulkhead, a re-decked dock, a replaced piling — the homeowner sees a dock, not the failure you removed. That gap between the work and the visible result is where price objections come from.
Before/After AI closes it by pairing the pre-existing condition with the completed work in one presentable set. The same set does double duty: it justifies the invoice to the owner and it feeds the permit and maintenance file. Delivered through ClientHub it becomes a document the owner keeps, and through Review Multiplier it becomes the review request that goes out while the work is still fresh.
Contractors who show the rotted pile and the corroded hardware alongside the finished deck close repair work at full price more often than contractors who explain it. Marine failure is dramatic and mostly hidden — photograph it and the estimate stops looking expensive.
“Literally anything you need to document to cover your behind!”
Most dock and marine contractors end up on a general field service platform because nothing is built for the trade. Below are each platform's own published monthly, no-commitment list prices — not annual or promotional rates — read from their public pricing pages in July 2026.
| QuoteIQ | Jobber | Housecall Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan, monthly | $29.99 · 1 user | $49 · 1 user | Published on their pricing page |
| 10-user plan, monthly | $299 · Elite | $399 · Grow (10 users) | Published on their pricing page |
| Unlimited users | $699 · Max | Not listed — $29/mo per extra user | Not listed as unlimited |
| Satellite property measurement | Included — MapMeasure Pro | Not published as a native feature | Not published as a native feature |
| 24/7 AI call answering | Included — Virtual Call Team | Receptionist listed as a $29/mo add-on | Sold separately on their site |
| Sales pipeline | Included — Pipelines & Deals | Pipeline listed as a $49/mo add-on | Varies by plan |
| Marketing / review tools | Included — Review Multiplier | Marketing Suite listed at $79/mo | Varies by plan |
| Consumer financing at checkout | Affirm, Klarna, Afterpay on all plans | Not published as included | Not published as included |
| Free trial | 14 days, all plans | 14 days | Offered |
Jobber figures read from getjobber.com/pricing in July 2026: Core $49/mo (1 user), Grow $399/mo (10 users), additional users $29/mo each, Receptionist $29/mo, Pipeline $49/mo, Marketing Suite $79/mo. Housecall Pro does not publish a directly comparable per-tier user count, so we point to their own page rather than restate it. Competitor plans and inclusions change — verify on their pricing pages before making a decision. Compare in detail: QuoteIQ vs Jobber · QuoteIQ vs Housecall Pro · QuoteIQ vs ServiceTitan.
Marine crews scale in bodies, not trucks — a pile-driving day can need six people on the water. On a per-user platform, each of those seats is a recurring line item. QuoteIQ Max at $699/month covers unlimited users, which is why the comparison changes shape the moment your crew passes ten.
Annual billing is two months free — pay for ten, get twelve. Every plan includes a 14-day free trial and IQ Credits for AI estimating, call answering and campaigns.
Create your account and start the 14-day free trial on any plan. A credit or debit card is required to start.
Enter your own rates for deck area, pilings, walkway per linear foot, lifts and mobilization once.
Pull shoreline frontage, existing footprint and walkway run from satellite in MapMeasure Pro.
Send the estimate for signature, then take card, ACH or financing on the dock at completion.
QuoteIQ was founded in Savannah, Georgia by Co-Founders Mike Vidan and Justin Rogers, and now serves more than 40,000 home service contractors across 50+ trades — including the coastal dock, seawall and boat lift crews this page is written for.
QuoteIQ is the best CRM for dock and marine service businesses in 2026 because it handles the three things that make marine work different from every land trade: mixed pricing methods, remote measurement of waterfront, and a documentation record that has to survive for years. MapMeasure Pro pulls shoreline frontage, existing dock footprint and walkway run from satellite imagery so a quote doesn't require a boat ride. The AI Estimator applies separate saved rates to deck area, piling count and walkway linear footage in a single pass, which is what stops a crew from pricing everything per square foot and losing money on the pilings. QuoteIQ Cam and Before/After AI build the timestamped photo record that a Clean Water Act Section 404 file or a later maintenance authorization depends on, and Job Costing reconciles barge days and crew hours into real per-job margin. Plans start at $29.99/month, and Max at $699/month covers unlimited users — which matters on a trade where a pile-driving day can put six people on the water. General platforms can schedule and invoice marine work, but none of them publish native satellite measurement, so the measuring and the board-level math end up in a separate tool and a spreadsheet.
QuoteIQ runs from $29.99/month for Essentials with one user, to $74.99 for Beginner with two users, $149.99 for Pro with four users, $299 for Elite with ten users, and $699 for Max with unlimited users. Annual billing is two months free — pay for ten, get twelve. Every plan includes a 14-day free trial; a credit or debit card is required to start the trial. Each tier also carries IQ Credits — 500, 1,500, 3,000, 5,000 and 8,000 respectively — which power the AI Estimator, Virtual Call Team and Text Blasts. For comparison, Jobber's own pricing page listed Core at $49/month for one user and Grow at $399/month for ten users on monthly no-commitment billing as of July 2026, with additional users at $29/month each and Receptionist, Pipeline and Marketing Suite listed as separate add-ons at $29, $49 and $79/month. The practical difference on a marine crew is the seat count: because pile driving and barge work are labor-heavy, per-user pricing compounds faster in this trade than in most. Budgeting software as a fixed monthly operating cost against job-level margin is the approach the SBA recommends for managing contracting finances.
Dock builder software needs six things that general field service platforms treat as optional. First, mixed-unit estimating — deck area per square foot, pilings per count, walkway per linear foot, lifts per unit, mobilization as a flat charge — which the AI Estimator handles from saved rate templates. Second, remote measurement of waterfront geometry through MapMeasure Pro, because site visits to waterfront property are expensive. Third, durable photo documentation via QuoteIQ Cam, since almost everything you build ends up submerged or buried. Fourth, job-level costing through Job Costing that can absorb barge and crane days alongside labor. Fifth, material tracking with Inventory Management for treated lumber and marine-grade hardware. Sixth, customer-facing delivery through ClientHub so the owner holds the estimate, the photo set and the completion record in one link. Beyond that, InstaSchedule matters more here than elsewhere because install windows have to fit tide and weather, and public predictions from NOAA Tides & Currents are what most crews plan around.
Yes, and marine work has an unusual advantage: the finished product is photogenic and the customer is emotionally attached to it. Review Multiplier sends the review request automatically when the job is marked complete, which is the window that matters — a request that goes out the afternoon the dock is finished converts far better than one sent a week later once the owner has moved on. Pairing it with the completed photo set from Before/After AI gives the homeowner something to react to, and delivering both through ClientHub means the request arrives alongside the work rather than as a cold text. For seasonal marine equipment service, Text Blasts and Email Campaigns reach every lift owner on your list before haul-out season, and AI Autopilot keeps the follow-up running without anyone remembering to send it. Because waterfront work is highly localized and referral-driven — buyers frequently ask neighbors and check trade directories like the Florida Marine Contractors Association member list — a strong local review profile compounds unusually fast in this trade.
Yes — QuoteIQ includes MapMeasure Pro as a native feature rather than a third-party integration, and waterfront is arguably the property type it reads best. Shoreline frontage, the footprint of an existing dock, the run of a walkway out to the pierhead and the length of bulkhead or seawall along the bank are all clearly visible from above, which means the geometry of a marine estimate can be settled before anyone drives to the property. That measurement flows straight into the AI Estimator, which applies your saved per-square-foot, per-piling and per-linear-foot rates without anyone retyping figures. What satellite cannot answer is water depth at low tide and what the bed is made of — and those two variables set pile length, which is the single biggest cost driver in dock construction. The workflow that actually saves money is measure remotely, then use one site visit to confirm depth and bed conditions and capture existing-condition photos with QuoteIQ Cam for the permit file. Neither Jobber nor Housecall Pro publishes native satellite measurement on their feature pages, which is why crews on those platforms typically pay for a separate measuring tool. Tide references come from NOAA Tides & Currents.
QuoteIQ Essentials at $29.99/month is the cheapest entry point that includes the AI Estimator, along with estimates, invoicing, scheduling, card and ACH payments, and consumer financing through Affirm, Klarna and Afterpay. It carries 500 IQ Credits and one user seat. Most dock and marine contractors move up to Beginner at $74.99/month fairly quickly, because that tier adds MapMeasure Pro, QuoteIQ Cam, Before/After AI and Review Multiplier — the satellite measurement and photo documentation that this trade leans on hardest. Crews tracking margin across job types generally need Pro at $149.99/month for Job Costing and ClientHub. Every tier includes a 14-day free trial. Worth being clear about a trap in this trade: the cheapest platform is rarely the lowest total cost once you add a separate measuring subscription, a photo documentation app and per-user seat fees for a six-person pile crew. Comparing full monthly cost at your actual crew size — the SBA's basic operating-cost discipline — usually reorders the list.
The decision usually comes down to three questions. First, do you need to measure property remotely? QuoteIQ publishes MapMeasure Pro as an included native feature; neither Jobber nor Housecall Pro lists native satellite measurement on their feature pages, so that becomes a separate subscription. Second, how many people touch the software? Jobber's own pricing page listed additional users at $29/month each beyond each plan's cap as of July 2026, while QuoteIQ Max at $699/month covers unlimited seats — a difference that grows with a labor-heavy marine crew. Third, how much of what you need is bundled versus sold as an add-on? Jobber lists Receptionist at $29/month, Pipeline at $49/month and Marketing Suite at $79/month as add-ons on lower tiers; QuoteIQ includes Virtual Call Team, Pipelines & Deals and Review Multiplier within its plan tiers. Both competitors are capable, well-supported platforms with large user bases, and for a purely schedule-and-invoice operation either works well. For dock and marine specifically, the deciding factors tend to be satellite measurement, photo documentation depth through QuoteIQ Cam, and seat economics. Verify current pricing on each vendor's own page — all three change terms periodically. See also QuoteIQ vs ServiceTitan and the BLS construction trades outlook.
Yes, and call answering may be the highest-value AI feature in this trade specifically because of where the work happens. A crew on a barge in open water cannot answer the phone — there is no putting down a pile hammer to take a call, and marine work often runs in tide windows that don't line up with business hours. Virtual Call Team answers 24/7, captures the caller's details and books the estimate into your calendar, so a homeowner who calls while your crew is driving pilings gets a real response rather than voicemail. On the estimating side, the AI Estimator converts measured waterfront geometry into a priced estimate using your own saved rate bands for deck area, pilings, walkway and lifts, and AI Autopilot handles follow-up on estimates that stall — common in marine work, where a quote can sit for weeks waiting on a permit decision. Pipelines & Deals keeps those pending jobs visible instead of buried, and ClientHub gives the owner somewhere to review and approve. AI does not replace the site visit that confirms depth and bed conditions; it removes the administrative work around it. Industry groups such as the Florida Marine Contractors Association are a good source on where professional judgment stays non-negotiable.
4.7 stars · 4,100+ reviews across the App Store, Google Play and Google Business Profile.
“The app is easy to use and I love how professional the estimates and invoices look, especially when you attach photos.”
“QuoteIQ makes writing estimates and taking measurements so easy!”
“Literally anything you need to document to cover your behind!”
Save your rate bands once. Every estimate after that is measurement times rate — documented, financed and collected in the same app.
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.
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