Tradify vs Jobber vs Invoice2go.

Kids in bed. Brew gone cold. You’re hunched over the laptop building an invoice for a job you finished nine hours ago, on software you paid good money for specifically so this wouldn’t happen.

If that’s you, you’ve probably already tried one of the big names. Maybe Tradify. Maybe Jobber. Maybe Invoice2go. Maybe all three. And here you are anyway.

So before we compare anything, the honest question: why are you still the one doing this?

What the job actually needs

Strip it back. A one-van trader needs four things to run the money side of the business:

1. A quote out fast — before someone else gets the job.
2. An invoice out faster — before you forget.
3. The money chased in — without you having to be the bad guy.
4. The books kept straight — so MTD isn’t a December panic.

That’s the whole list. Notice what’s not on it: a CRM. A staff rota. A sales pipeline. A GPS fleet tracker. An AI receptionist. You’re one van and maybe a lad — not a 15-seat firm with an office to feed all that.

Here’s the thing most software gets wrong: it sells you the 15-seat firm and leaves you to be it.

The four jobs, and who actually does them

Prices as listed on each vendor’s own site in August 2026.

Read across the chasing row. That’s the one that decides whether software actually gives you an evening back, and it’s the one every tool in this category treats as a premium feature.

Where the big tools leave you holding the admin

Tradify is built for proper firms — scheduling, CRM, team management, the lot. Genuinely good if you’re running crews and vans and stock. But for a solo trader it’s £34 to £44 a month per head (£408–528 a year), there’s real setup time before it earns its keep, and reminders sit further up the tiers with SMS metered at 10p a message on top. Then each invoice still takes fifteen or twenty minutes on an app that’s a fiddle on site.

“Tradify has everything I don’t need and makes everything I do need complicated. I spent more time managing the software than managing my business.”

— electrician, Yorkshire

Invoice2go is the cheap one, and credit where it’s due — £11.99 a month is less than half what we charge, and if all you want is a tidy invoice off your phone it does that. We’re not going to pretend otherwise.

But look at what you’re still doing yourself. The chasing? Still you. The receipts? Still not filed properly. The MTD prep? Still taking some evenings away. It’s an invoicing app, honestly labelled — and the invoice was never the hard part.

Different price tags, same ending: the software does a slice, and you do the rest — usually at 10pm.

And then there’s Jobber — a cracking app for a business you haven’t got

Jobber’s the one that comes up most after Tradify, and it’s genuinely well made. Plenty of trades rate it:

“I don’t work late or at weekends catching up on paperwork or doing endless quotes anymore, and that’s down to Jobber.”

— Jobber user

Fair enough. But take a proper look at what you’re signing up for, because there are a few things the slick demo skips over.

It bills you in dollars. Jobber’s a North American company, and it shows on the invoice. The entry plan is $49 a month for a single user — around $24 if you hand over a year up front — and that’s before the exchange rate and your card’s FX fee have their say. Extra users are $29 each. Climb the tiers and you’re at $139, then $199 to $499, then $499 to $699 a month.

“Pricing has become so confusing you’d need a phd to figure it out, along with squeeze tactics to get you into more expensive plans.”

— Jobber user

The good bits live upstairs. Automated client reminders — the thing that would actually chase your money — don’t appear until the $139 Connect tier. Below that, chasing is still you. And there’s a row of bolt-ons besides: a Receptionist at $29 a month, a Pipeline at $49, a Marketing Suite at $99. You came for invoicing and left with a shopping list.

And it wasn’t built for a UK van. That’s the thing. The reviews from British trades are full of the same gaps:

“Completely missing basic features in the UK. No SMS reminders. No Stripe integration. It would massively benefit from GoCardless too.”

— UK electrician, app store review

“You could include an option for WhatsApp, not email only. Most people are on WhatsApp, so sending bookings by email just delays the job.”

— Jobber user

Read that last one again. Jobber’s own customers are asking it to work like WhatsApp. That’s not a dig at Jobber — it’s a brilliant tool for a 10-van outfit in Texas. It’s just telling you what UK trades actually want, and it isn’t a forty-feature platform priced in dollars.

The bit nobody puts on the pricing page

Look past the monthly fee and add up what these actually cost you.

All three leave you chasing the money, because sending the invoice was never the hard part. Getting paid is. Add the training time, the setup weeks, the tier upgrades, the evenings rebuilding invoices, and the headline subscription is the small number.

And the pattern is well understood across the trade by now. Most one-van traders would take simple over comprehensive every time. A lot of them abandon job-management software within months — almost always during the setup and the training, rarely after actually using it. Nearly everyone would rather pay one flat price than juggle tiers, bolt-ons and a rate that jumps in month seven.

And they work on a phone, on site, with their hands full — not at a desk. The tool should too.

So we built it into the chat you already live in

The Back Office isn’t another app to download. It’s WhatsApp — the one already open on your phone, or Telegram if that’s your one — with someone called Jan running the back office behind it.

You send Jan a voice note from the van: “Fixed John Smith’s boiler, £200.” A proper itemised invoice comes back in seconds, VAT sorted. Customer goes quiet? Jan can do the chasing. Snap a photo of a receipt and it’s filed, neat, ready for the accountant. And your books stay in order all year, so MTD isn’t a scramble.

One price for all of it: £29 a month, flat. In pounds. The price you see is the price you pay.

Nothing clever. Just WhatsApp — or Telegram — and Jan doing the admin so you don’t have to.

“Does it actually stick, though?”

Fair question — everyone’s tried an app they abandoned. Retention is the number we watch hardest, and it’s the one we’re proudest of, for a reason that isn’t clever: there’s nothing to stick with. You were already in the chat.

Take one electrician who did the full tour. Five months on Tradify before he gave up — too much app for one van. A poke at Jobber, until the dollar pricing and the tier maze put him off. Eight months on an invoicing app — cheaper, still fiddly, still him chasing the money a month later. Then The Back Office, and he’s still here.

His admin went from about three quarters of an hour a day to a few minutes. The money started coming in faster because, for the first time, he could get his quote in first. His software bill dropped from a stack of subscriptions to £29 flat.

A few honest answers before you ask

Give it your next job

You didn’t learn your trade to spend your evenings on invoices. So don’t.

Send your next finished job to The Back Office on WhatsApp. Get a proper invoice back in seconds. Let Jan chase the money while you get on with the work — or with your evening.

Where these figures come from

Every number in this guide is linked to its source below, with the date we checked it. Rules and prices change — if you are reading this a long way from the date at the top, check the originals.

• Tradify UK pricing £34 / £37 / £44 per user per month, 14-day trial, SMS metered at 10p per message — tradifyhq.com/uk/pricing
• Jobber Core $49, Connect $139, Grow $199–499, Plus $499–699, extra users $29 each, annual prepaid Core around $24, Receptionist $29, Pipeline $49, Marketing Suite $99, and “All prices in USD” — getjobber.com/pricing/
• Automated client reminders first appearing on the Connect tier — getjobber.com/pricing/
• Invoice2go £11.99 per month — invoice2go.com
• The Back Office Solo £29 per month inc. VAT, flat, with quoting, invoicing, chasing and receipt capture included — thebackoffice.uk
• Making Tax Digital for Income Tax live from 6 April 2026 for qualifying income over £50,000 — GOV.UK: gov.uk/guidance/check-if-youre-eligible-for-making-tax-digital-for-income-tax

Customer quotes are from trades who have used these products, lightly anonymised. Vendor pricing checked 14 August 2026 — check current pricing before you buy.