Fergus, Tradify and ServiceM8 cover most Kiwi trade businesses, and simPRO is for staged projects. Fergus is best for job costing, Tradify is the easiest start at $48 a user, ServiceM8 suits high-volume service work priced by jobs, and simPRO is the heavy end with no published price. The head-to-head table is below, then NextMinute and the fifth option the comparison sites skip. If you're here because Xero retired WorkflowMax, that transition has its own guide: WorkflowMax is gone, your next tool doesn't have to be another subscription.
At a glance:
- Tradify: easiest to learn, from ~$48/user/month.
- Fergus: best job costing and profitability reporting, from ~$53/month for its base plan, not a per-user rate.
- ServiceM8: priced by job volume with unlimited users, suits high-volume service trades.
- NextMinute: simplest option for residential construction trades, priced by crew from ~$199/month for three to nine people, free onboarding.
- None of them fit at least 90% of how you work? Build one around your own business instead.
Most tradies should buy off the shelf
If you're a sole trader or a small team and you want quotes out the door, jobs scheduled, and invoices into Xero without double entry, an off-the-shelf product will do that today, for the price of a coffee a day. Start there. Custom is for when those products keep almost-fitting and never quite get there, which I'll come back to.
Fergus vs Tradify vs ServiceM8 vs simPRO, side by side
These are the four names NZ owners compare most. Prices are NZD as published on each vendor's pricing page when I last checked (links go to the full pricing post for each). simPRO publishes none, so its figure is what NZ reviewers report, not a price list.
| Tool | NZ price | Best for | Xero sync | Where it falls short |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fergus | $53/mo Basic, $75/mo Professional; timesheet-only seats $26 | Growing crews of 2 to 15 where margin per job matters; builders and materials-heavy trades. | Built into every plan. | Steeper to learn than Tradify. Published pricing stops at ten staff, then it is a negotiated quote. |
| Tradify | $48, $52 or $62 per user per month (Lite, Pro, Plus) | Sole traders and small teams of 1 to 5 who want the easiest start. | In every tier; what syncs natively and what stays by hand. | Every logged-in person is a paid seat, and reviews cite limited reporting. |
| ServiceM8 | Free, then $29 to $349/mo by job volume, unlimited users | Field-first service trades (plumbing, electrical, HVAC) dispatching several staff to many jobs. | A Xero add-on you switch on in settings; approved invoices raise in Xero. | Job-volume pricing bites when job count is high and values are low. SMS and some add-ons are billed separately. |
| simPRO | No published price; reviewers report about $200 per user per month | Staged commercial projects, maintenance contracts across sites, stock and purchasing. | Via simPRO's Accounting Link, listed on Xero's app marketplace. | Sold as a quoted implementation. If your jobs are not projects, you pay for weight you never use. |
Fergus vs simPRO: Fergus when you want a published price and job costing for staged work; simPRO when stock, site contracts and commercial projects drive the business and you are happy to pay for an implementation. Fergus vs ServiceM8: two pricing models, one per plan and seat, one by jobs a month. Fergus suits materials-heavy and staged jobs, ServiceM8 suits dispatching staff to a lot of short service calls, and the crossover maths is here. ServiceM8 vs simPRO: ServiceM8 for lighter service work, simPRO once you need asset histories and contracts at scale. Tradify against either is in Tradify or Fergus and simPRO or Tradify.
The four that matter in NZ
I build custom tools and I resell none of these four, so the table below is a market read: what Kiwi tradies and reviewers consistently report. The part I've lived myself is the third option, further down.
| Tool | Built for | Strong at | Watch for | From |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tradify | Sole traders & small teams (1–5) | Easy to learn, tidy mobile app, strong Xero sync. The most widely used in NZ for a reason. | Reviews describe it as pricey for what you get, with limited reporting and a few scheduling-automation gaps. Bought by the UK's Access Group in October 2024, so no longer NZ owned. | ~$48/user/mo |
| Fergus | Growing trade businesses (2–15) | Job costing, progress claims and profitability reporting. NZ-built. Best when knowing your margin per job matters. | Steeper learning curve than Tradify. More than a one-person operation usually needs. | ~$53/mo (base plan) |
| ServiceM8 | Service trades (plumbing, electrical, HVAC) | Field-first workflow, dispatching multiple staff to jobs, maintenance contracts. Priced by job volume, not users. | Australian-built. The per-job pricing can bite if your job count is high but values are low. | by job volume |
| NextMinute | Smaller residential construction trades | Purpose-built for Kiwi builders, carpenters, landscapers, roofers. Simpler than Tradify or Fergus. Priced by crew, not per seat, so adding people doesn't move the bill. Free onboarding. | Fewer advanced features once you outgrow the basics, and the crew bands mean a two-person outfit pays the same as a nine-person one. | ~$199/mo (3–9 crew) |
Run the quick version: if you want the easiest thing that works, Tradify. If margin-per-job is the number that keeps you up, Fergus. If you're dispatching staff to a high volume of service calls, ServiceM8, and I've broken its job-tier pricing down in what ServiceM8 actually costs once your crew grows. If you're a residential builder who wants something simple, NextMinute, or its Australian rival Ascora if you're comparing both, covered in Ascora or NextMinute. Any of them beats running the business out of a notebook and a glovebox full of dockets. Still torn between the front two? I go deeper in Tradify or Fergus. Already running two of these and want the annual figure rather than the monthly sticker, the stack cost checker adds them up at your crew size and job volume.
What about SimPRO? And GeoOp?
Two names come up in every comment thread that aren't in the four-tool table, for opposite reasons. SimPRO is in the head-to-head above, and sits above the four-tool comparison rather than in it: a project platform for staged commercial work, maintenance contracts and stock, sold as a scoped implementation with no published pricing. If your jobs behave like projects, that's a real option, and the job-versus-project line is drawn out in SimPRO or Tradify. If they don't, it's weight you'd pay for and not use.
GeoOp now belongs in the past tense: bought by the same Access Group that owns Tradify, closed to new users, and winding down. Don't adopt it, and if you're still on it, the migration guide covers where NZ crews are landing and what to export before you cancel.
Which of the four is best for quoting?
Every job tool says it does quoting, and at the checkbox level they all do. The differences show up on the third quote of a busy Tuesday: how much of the document assembles itself, whether the material prices are this month's or last year's, and what happens to a quote after it goes quiet. Pick by what your quotes are made of.
- Fergus for materials-heavy trades: supplier price books pull live material pricing into quote lines, and deeper pricing controls sit in Professional.
- ServiceM8 for fast-turnaround service trades: automated follow-ups chase quotes that have gone quiet.
- Tradify quotes completely at its $48 Lite tier, with quote options and templates in Pro and quote reminders by text.
- NextMinute includes quoting in every crew band, so there is no tier shopping.
The feature most crews own and never switch on is follow-up automation. ServiceM8's Automation add-on and Tradify's quote reminders will send a text or email at set points after a quote goes out and stop once it is accepted or declined. Neither touches your price. If you already pay for one of these tools, check your settings before you shop for anything new. None of the four prices the job for you, and the tool that claims it can is the one to walk away from: the number depends on what the site looked like, what access will cost you in hours and what this client is like. Automate the assembly, the lookups and the chasing, and leave the number alone (nobody automates the quote). If you are in joinery, the take-off is the part these tools miss, and kitchen joinery quoting: where the hours actually go covers it. And before any of that software prices the job, you still need the photos and the address off the customer: this post covers the form that gets that upfront instead of over three phone calls.
Where every one of them leaves the same hole
They're all built for the average trade business, and in the ones I've scoped they land around 70% of the way. The remainder is the part that's yours: the way you price a job, the checklist your crew runs on site, the report your accountant keeps asking for that the product can't produce, the second app you bought because the first one couldn't do scheduling the way you work.
So you end up paying for two or three subscriptions that don't quite talk to each other, and doing the joining-up yourself. The version that costs the most hours goes like this: you measure on site, build the quote in Excel or Word, email it as a PDF, win the job, then retype the whole thing into Xero to invoice it. Every retype is time you don't have and a chance to fumble a number. If that loop is your daily reality, there's a separate guide on killing the retype into Xero. If the slow bit is earlier, getting the quote out the door in the first place, that's a different fix, covered in what automates around a quote without touching the number.
The owners I've sat with put it at 10 to 15 hours a week on admin like this, most of it after hours. You're on the tools all day, then doing quotes and invoices at the kitchen table at night. That's the cost the sticker price doesn't show.
The third option: build it around you
If the off-the-shelf tools keep almost-fitting, there's a path the comparison sites skip because they're selling subscriptions: have the tool built around how you work, on top of the Xero you already pay for.
I've done this for my own business. I built an overnight pipeline that finds and scores Canterbury leads while I sleep, one run turns 1,579 businesses into 355 worth calling, and it can't be retired, repriced or acquired out from under me. Yours would be built around your own bottleneck rather than mine, but the economics are the same shape: a bigger cost upfront, then no per-user fee climbing every year. It usually pays for itself against the subscriptions somewhere in year two or three. After that it's yours. I break the numbers down in what custom automation actually costs.
And to be clear about the cheap end of this market: you'll see offers for a "custom app in 48 hours from a few hundred dollars". Be careful. A throwaway app with no real integration into your accounting and no one to ring when it breaks usually costs you more than it saves. Built well, it connects to the tools you already run and gets handed over so you own it.
How to choose: the 90% test
One question settles it. Pick the off-the-shelf product closest to how you work and ask: does it fit at least 90% of what I do?
- Yes? Buy it today. Custom would be a waste of money. Take Tradify, Fergus, ServiceM8 or NextMinute and get on with it.
- No, it's more like 70% and the gap costs me real hours? That's the point where building around your workflow stops being the expensive option.
Who should NOT build custom
Three cases where I'd tell you not to:
- If a product fits 90% of how you work, buy it. Custom is for when everything almost-fits.
- If your processes change every few months, wait until they settle. A custom tool fits a known shape.
- If nobody in the business will own it, don't. You need one person who cares that it keeps running, even if they never touch the code.
What I'd do in your position
Run the off-the-shelf product that fits closest for a full month, with your real jobs in it. If it passes the 90% test, you're done and you've spent almost nothing. If you keep hitting the same wall and the workaround hours are piling up, that's worth a conversation. I'm Christchurch-based, and the custom layer where the off-the-shelf tools stop is the work I do. If you want the margin picture before you decide anything, Power BI against a spreadsheet for job profitability is the companion piece.
Book a free 30-minute call and I'll ask how you run jobs and give you an answer, including "just use Fergus" if that's the right one.