Jobber vs Plenum:
Different tools for different goals.

Built for Different Ambitions

Jobber serves 200,000+ service professionals across 60 industries. Landscapers, dog walkers, window cleaners, and HVAC contractors all use the same platform.

The Tradeoff: Generalist approach creates simplicity but sacrifices vertical depth. Basic scheduling and invoicing works for any business, which means it optimizes for none.

The platform launched in 2011 targeting solo operators moving off spreadsheets. New users can create their first job in 15 minutes. But growth exposes limitations:

• No clustering intelligence
• No compositional pricing
• No property-centric data model
• Manual scheduling costs 20-30 hours per week at 10-15 trucks

1What Jobber Does Well

Jobber excels at onboarding simplicity:

• Interface uses familiar consumer app patterns
• Technicians adapt in hours, not days
• Mobile app handles basic offline functionality for viewing jobs and adding notes
• QuickBooks integration is mature and reliable

For small shops where the owner runs both operations and accounting, this tight integration saves hours each week.

2Where Plenum Adds Vertical Power

We built Plenum specifically for HVAC, plumbing, and electrical contractors:

Compositional Pricebook: Atomic items combine into bundles. Change a labor rate once, and all 400 bundled services update automatically. Jobber requires manual updates to each line item.

Clustering Engine: Runs during booking, scoring each time slot based on existing route density. Generates 30-40% less drive time compared to manual scheduling.

Rebate Automation: Pull AHRI certification data from rebate.blue, match equipment to utility programs, and auto-generate submission forms. Saves 2-3 hours per install.

3The Property-Centric Difference

Jobber organizes data around customers. A property manager with 50 buildings becomes 50 customer records or one customer with messy notes about locations. Equipment tracking gets confused because units are tied to people instead of properties.

Plenum Approach: Separates customers from properties from equipment. One customer owns multiple properties. Each property has multiple equipment units. Service history follows the physical asset. When properties change owners, service records stay with the location.

4Migration Process

Moving from Jobber takes 3-5 days for most operations:

• Jobber exports CSV files for customers, jobs, invoices, and quotes
• We handle technical import, mapping to our property-centric structure
• Data cleanup: duplicate customer entries, inconsistent address formats
• We validate data quality before import, flagging issues for your team

5Pricing Structure

Jobber: $49-129/user/month depending on plan tier. Core scheduling starts at $49, but you need the $129 tier for route optimization and advanced reporting. A 12-user shop typically pays $1,200-1,500/month.

Plenum: $999/month for core platform with 5 technicians included. For a 12-tech shop, that's $999 plus 7 additional techs at $199/month each with Rebate Gate ($1,393), totaling $2,392/month.

ROI: Routing efficiency alone adds one extra job per tech per day, generating $3,000-5,000/month in new revenue. See plenum.pro/pricing for details.

6Best Fit Analysis

Stay with Jobber if:

• You run 1-5 trucks doing mostly service calls
• Need multi-industry support for side businesses
• Prioritize low monthly costs over efficiency gains

Switch to Plenum when:

• You cross 8-10 trucks and routing becomes a daily bottleneck
• You start doing replacement installs and need rebate automation
• Technicians work in areas with spotty coverage and need true offline capabilities
• You're outgrowing generalist tools but not ready for enterprise complexity