CoatHQ vs Jobber, feature by feature
We left prices off this table on purpose. Prices in this market move fast, and a number we post today could be wrong by spring. Compare what each tool does and how it bills users. Then get a current quote from both.
| Capability | Jobber | CoatHQ |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduling & invoicing | Strong, mature | Strong |
| Multi-trade flexibility | Yes | Coating and concrete only |
| App marketplace | Deeper | Fewer, by design |
| Materials inventory | Not found (Jul 2026) | On Pro, multi-location |
| Job costing / margin | Upper tier | On Pro, per job and per sq ft |
| Crew KPIs / leaderboard | Not found | On Pro |
| Material planned from the quote | No | On Pro, with shortage flags |
| Built for coating | No | Yes |
| User model | Per seat | Unlimited users on every plan |
We checked the Jobber rows against Jobber's own published docs on 2026-07-26. "Not found" means we couldn't confirm it in that review. It doesn't prove the feature is missing.
Where Jobber is the better buy
Four real ones. None of this is faint praise.
- More than one trade. Lawn care on Monday and coating on Wednesday? Jobber covers both. We cover one.
- Years of polish on booking. Quoting, scheduling and getting paid have been sanded smooth. That polish is real and people stay for it.
- A deeper app marketplace. If you need a specific accounting or marketing connection, Jobber probably already has it.
- It's a known quantity. Lots of shops run it. There is training material everywhere, and support has heard your question before. That has real value, and leaving it costs you something.
Where CoatHQ pulls ahead
All of it comes from one idea. A coating job is not a service call. It is a crew, a cure window and a few hundred dollars of resin and flake per floor.
The quote knows what the floor will eat
Square footage goes in. The quote carries cost price on every line, so you see margin before you send it. On Pro, material planning works out the products and quantities the job needs, adds a 10% overage, reserves that stock when you schedule, and flags a shortage while there is still time to fix it.
Stock lives per location, vans included
On Pro you track on hand, reserved and allocated per location, with a ledger behind every movement. When material walks off a job you can see where it went. A spreadsheet never tells you that.
Margin per square foot
On Pro, direct cost is real material cost plus labor hours times labor rate. You get it per job and per square foot. Per square foot is the number that travels, because it lets you put a 480 sq ft garage next to a 2,400 sq ft shop floor and learn something.
The crew becomes a number
Clock in and out on the phone with a GPS stamp. On Pro that turns into revenue per hour, gross profit per hour, labor cost percent, attendance and a board the crew can see. Pay prep runs on whatever structure you already use. Your accountant still files the taxes.
Put one finished job through both
Bring a floor you already closed and what you think it made. Twenty minutes, and you'll see material, labor and margin per square foot.
Sign up nowHow the two bill you
This is the difference people feel first. Jobber bills per seat. Every CoatHQ plan carries unlimited users.
A coating crew grows for summer and shrinks in January. On a per-seat bill, every installer you add is a cost you have to think about. So owners share logins. Once logins are shared you can't tell who did what, and knowing that was the point of buying software for the crew.
Our prices are posted. You can read them on the pricing page without booking a call. Grow sells the work, Pro runs the shop, and both carry unlimited users. When you price Jobber, price the tier that has job costing on it, not the entry plan.
Moving from Jobber to CoatHQ
The honest version. Contacts come over by CSV import and duplicates get caught on the way in. You rebuild open jobs and quotes by hand, which goes quicker than it sounds once your line-item library and quote templates are in. You build a floor once, then reuse it.
Closed history is the hard part of any move, with any vendor. Most shops export it, keep the file and start clean. Reporting runs from the switch date. Backfilling two years of job costs that were never tracked right is work that buys you nothing.
Which one should you pick?
Short and blunt.
- Pick Jobber if coating is a sideline next to your other trades, or you need a connection only its marketplace has.
- Pick CoatHQ if coating is the work. One truck or ten. Nothing falls through, the material is sorted before the crew is on the slab, and you can say what last month's garages made.
- Either works if a calendar and an invoice is all you ever want from software. Pick on price then, and on which one your office manager likes.
One more test that settles it fast. Ask each vendor to show you margin on one finished job, on screen, with no export. The answer to that question is the whole comparison.
Frequently asked questions
CoatHQ vs Jobber: which one should a coating shop pick?
Pick Jobber if you run more than one trade and mostly need to book work and get paid. Pick CoatHQ if coating is the work, at one truck or at ten, and you want material and margin in the same place. The split is the trade, not the calendar. Both handle a calendar well.
Does Jobber track materials and job margin?
We read Jobber's own published docs on 2026-07-26. We found no materials inventory module, and job costing sat on a higher tier. Check with Jobber before you decide. Vendors add features all the time, and you want the current answer either way.
How does CoatHQ bill users compared with Jobber?
Jobber bills per seat, so the bill goes up when you hire. Every CoatHQ plan carries unlimited users, so installer six, ten or twenty costs nothing extra. Our prices are posted on the pricing page. When you price Jobber, price the tier that has job costing on it.
Can I move my data from Jobber to CoatHQ?
Contacts come over by CSV import, and duplicates get caught on the way in. You rebuild open jobs and quotes, which goes faster than it sounds once your line-item library is in. Closed history is the hard part of any move, so most shops keep an export and start clean.
Is CoatHQ just Jobber for coating?
No. The overlap is the calendar, the quote and the invoice. The rest of CoatHQ is built around what a floor consumes and what a crew produces. That means coverage math on the quote, stock held per van, margin per square foot, and a crew board. Jobber solves a different problem well.