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CRM for Contractors
Most contractors do not lose work on price. They lose it in the four days between someone asking for a quote and anybody following up.
A CRM is where those people live so that stops happening. This page covers what a contractor CRM does, how the main options differ, what the free ones cost you in time, and what Phanz charges. There are trade-specific guides below for construction, roofing, HVAC and landscaping.
What a Contractor CRM Does That Job Software Does Not
A CRM holds the people who have not hired you yet. Job management software holds the work you already won. Both are useful and they do different things, which is why a lot of contractors end up with both.
Your scheduling tool knows about the kitchen remodel starting Monday. It does not know about the eleven homeowners who asked for a price in the last two months and never heard from you again. That second list is what a contractor CRM is for, and those people have already told you they want the work done.
The parts that matter for a trade business are simple: every lead lands in one place no matter how it arrived, every quote has a follow-up sequence attached to it, and every missed call gets answered by text before the caller dials the next number.
Pick the Guide for Your Trade
The job is the same everywhere, but the timing is not. A roofer is racing a storm, an HVAC company is racing a heatwave, and a landscaper is selling the same customer again every spring. Each guide below covers the workflow, the software people usually compare, and what it costs.
- Construction CRM for builders, remodelers and subcontractors, and how it sits alongside Buildertrend or Procore
- Roofing CRM for estimate follow-up, storm season and reviews, compared with JobNimbus, AccuLynx and Roofr
- HVAC CRM for emergency calls, tune-up reminders and maintenance renewals, compared with ServiceTitan and FieldEdge
- Landscaping CRM for seasonal rushes, recurring maintenance and winning last year's customers back
How Phanz Compares With HubSpot, Jobber and Housecall Pro
HubSpot
HubSpot is a sales CRM built for sales teams. The free tier is genuinely good at storing contacts and deals, and the paid tiers are where the automation lives. For a contractor the gap is the phone. Your leads call, and HubSpot was designed around email and web forms, so you end up adding a texting tool on top.
Jobber and Housecall Pro
Both are field service platforms. They quote, schedule, dispatch, invoice and take payment, and they do it well. Both charge per user, so the price climbs as you add office staff and techs. Neither one is built to chase a lead who asked for a price and went quiet, which is where most contractors lose the most money.
Plenty of Phanz customers keep their field service tool and use Phanz in front of it. One wins the job, the other runs it.
Phanz
Phanz covers the front end: your website, your lead forms, your phone number, the CRM those leads land in, and the text and email follow-up that runs on its own. It does not do takeoffs, scheduling boards, job costing or crew timesheets, and you should not buy it expecting those.
Free CRM for Contractors, and What Free Actually Costs
Free CRMs are real software. HubSpot, Zoho and Bitrix24 will all store your contacts at no charge, and if your only problem is that leads live in three notebooks and a phone, a free tier fixes that today.
You pay for it in time instead. Free tiers do not send texts, so the follow-up is you, at nine at night, working from memory. They do not answer a missed call, so the homeowner who rang while you were under a sink calls someone else. A contractor who forgets two $4,000 jobs a month has paid far more than any subscription on this page.
The honest test is this: if you will actually do the follow-up by hand every week, take the free tier and keep your money. If you know you will not, pay for something that does it whether you remember or not.
A Buying Checklist Before You Pay For Anything
Run any tool you are considering, including this one, against the list below. If it fails more than two, keep looking.
- Does it text? Trade leads call and text, and email-only software loses them.
- Does something happen automatically when you miss a call?
- Can you set a quote follow-up once and have it run on every future quote?
- Is pricing per user, and what does it cost when you add two office staff?
- Is there a setup fee, a contract, or a cancellation window?
- Does it ask for reviews after a job without you remembering to?
- Can you export your contacts if you leave?
- Does it duplicate something you already pay for?
What Phanz Costs
The DIY plan is $98/mo with no setup fee. That is the whole platform: website and landing pages, CRM, calendars, missed call text back, email and SMS automation, review requests and payments. You build it, and you can message our team when you get stuck.
Done-For-You is $547/mo, or $4,997 a year, which works out around $416/mo. We build the site, write the automations, set up your number and hand it over running. Your site is live in about 3 business days.
Cancel anytime on either plan. If you drop from Done-For-You to DIY, everything we built stays live and you keep running it. Full breakdown on the pricing page.
CRM for Contractors: Common Questions
What is the best CRM for contractors?
It depends on which half of the job you need help with. If your problem is scheduling crews, dispatching and job costing, a field service tool like Jobber or Housecall Pro fits. If your problem is leads going cold before you ever get to schedule them, you need a CRM with follow-up built in. Phanz is the second kind, at $98 a month for the DIY plan.
Is there a free CRM for contractors?
Yes. HubSpot, Zoho and Bitrix24 all have free tiers, and they are real CRMs. The catch is that the free tier stores contacts but does not text them. You end up doing the follow-up by hand, or paying for an SMS tool and a form tool and connecting them yourself. That is the cost of free for most contractors: a few hours a week and the leads you forget.
Is Jobber a CRM?
Jobber includes CRM features. It stores clients, job history and notes, so for a lot of contractors it is the only client database they need. It is built as field service management first, so quoting, scheduling, invoicing and dispatch are the strong parts, and marketing follow-up on leads that have not booked yet is the thin part.
What does a contractor CRM cost?
Most tools in this space charge per user and land between $50 and $300 a month for a small crew, with setup and onboarding fees on the bigger platforms. Phanz is $98 a month for the DIY plan with no setup fee, or $547 a month if you want us to build and run it for you.
Do I need a CRM if I only run two or three jobs at a time?
You need one the moment you are quoting more work than you are winning. If you can remember every open bid and every person who called, you are fine. Once you are sending more than about ten estimates a month, the ones you forget to chase cost more than the software.
Can a CRM work for subcontractors and independent contractors?
Yes, and it matters more for subs than most people think. When your work comes from a handful of GCs and builders, the CRM is where you track who sent you what, which relationships are cooling off, and which invoices are still open.
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Put Every Lead in One Place
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