JobLogic is one of the UK’s most established field service management platforms. Founded in 1998, it has over 7,000 customers, strong compliance tooling, and more than £160 million in investment behind it. For many UK trades businesses, it’s the natural go-to when they outgrow spreadsheets and paper.
But is it the right long-term choice for your business? And how does it compare to a custom-built application designed specifically around how you operate?
This isn’t a take-down of JobLogic. It’s an honest comparison of what each approach offers, what each costs in practice, and which businesses are likely to be better served by one or the other.
What JobLogic Costs — and What You Don’t Find Out Until Later
JobLogic’s published starting price is £45 per user per month on its Standard plan. That’s the figure you’ll find on the pricing page. The Premium and Enterprise tiers — which include features like customer portals, GPS tracking, dashboard designer, and dedicated account management — are priced “on request,” meaning you need to book a demo before you can find out what you’ll actually pay.
For a five-person team on the Standard plan, you’re looking at £225 per month or £2,700 per year — before add-ons. A separate AI Summariser costs £1,000 per year. The Sage 50 integration requires a separate call to a Customer Success Manager for pricing. Custom mobile forms are gated behind the Enterprise plan or charged per form on lower tiers. Training and consultancy are paid extras on Standard and Premium — only Enterprise includes them as standard.
The contract is structured as a monthly rolling agreement, but sales teams routinely push annual billing. Crucially, JobLogic’s terms reserve the right to change pricing at any time with just 30 days’ notice — with no cap on increases and no linkage to inflation. One Trustpilot reviewer reported spending over £10,000 in a single year on a system they described as “still not usable.” Another paid nearly £4,000 for a subscription they never fully used and was refused a refund.
The value-for-money score on Software Advice sits at 3.99 out of 5 — the lowest of all measured dimensions in user reviews.
What a Custom App Costs — and What You Actually Own
A custom business application built for a trades or field service business of five to fifteen people typically costs from £10,000 to build, followed by a monthly maintenance retainer of £200–£400 covering hosting, updates, security, and ongoing development.
The key difference: you own it. No per-seat fees that rise with headcount. No uncapped price increase clauses. No features locked behind undisclosed add-on pricing. No dependency on a vendor’s roadmap. When you need something added or changed, you commission it.
For a business currently paying £225+ per month on JobLogic, the five-year cost of the subscription alone exceeds £13,500 — before training, add-ons, or price increases. A custom build starting from £10,000 with a maintenance retainer costs significantly less over five years over five years, but delivers a system built precisely for your workflow, with no renewal risk. According to Retool’s 2026 research, 35% of businesses have already replaced at least one SaaS tool with a custom build — and the economics are why.
Features: What JobLogic Does Well
JobLogic’s feature set is genuinely strong, particularly for UK building maintenance and facilities management businesses. Its standout capabilities include:
- Asset management — widely regarded as its deepest strength, with asset surveys, QR code tagging, site registers, and digital floor plan mapping via Locatrix
- Compliance tooling — F-Gas, Gas Safe, electrical certificates, water hygiene, legionella, and an extensive library of pre-built compliance forms
- Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM) — asset-level scheduling, task-driven maintenance, and contract billing
- Accounting integrations — live sync with Xero, QuickBooks, Sage 50, Sage 200, FreeAgent, and others
- Dynamic Scheduler — AI-powered job assignment based on location, skills, and availability (launched October 2025)
For businesses with complex asset registers, multi-site PPM contracts, or heavy compliance requirements, JobLogic’s depth in these areas is hard to match with an off-the-shelf alternative.
Features: Where JobLogic Falls Short
The mobile app is the most consistent complaint across Trustpilot, Capterra, and G2. Users report crashes, data loss, slow photo uploads (described as “close to impossible” on mobile data), random engineer logouts, and limited admin functionality. For a platform whose core value proposition is connecting field engineers to the office, this is a significant weakness.
Multiple reviewers describe features demonstrated during the sales process turning out to be paid Marketplace extras — particularly automated email reminders. Bespoke forms on lower tiers are charged per form. The customer portal and GPS tracking are Premium-only. This “sales demo versus operational reality” gap appears disproportionately in one-star reviews and is the primary source of dissatisfaction among churned customers.
JobLogic’s own CEO has noted their biggest competitor is “the humble pen, paper and spreadsheet” — which is telling. Many of the businesses they serve are still running basic processes, and JobLogic’s feature depth can become overwhelming rather than helpful for smaller teams.
Features: What a Custom App Delivers Instead
A custom application doesn’t try to do everything. It does exactly what your business needs — no more, no less. That sounds like a limitation; in practice it’s an advantage.
When we built a custom application for CME Heating, a busy London heating and plumbing company, we replaced every paper form and manual process with a single system built around their exact workflow. Weekly timesheets generated automatically every Sunday. Van inspection logs. Mileage tracking. Holiday requests with automatic allowance validation. Automated Tuesday reminders for any engineer who hadn’t submitted. The office team stopped chasing paperwork. No mobile app crashes because the interface was built specifically for how their engineers work in the field.
For Luelle Property Group, coordinating contractors across multiple residential renovation sites, we built role-based access so contractors see only their own jobs, three-channel notifications (email, SMS, push), structured compliance document collection built into the submission workflow, and a management dashboard with real-time portfolio oversight. No WhatsApp threads. No spreadsheet chasing. No features they don’t use.
The businesses that benefit most from custom builds are those whose processes don’t fit neatly into a generic platform — where the workarounds required to make off-the-shelf software fit are costing more in time than the subscription saves in setup. You can explore more on our custom business apps page.
The Lock-In Question
JobLogic’s monthly rolling contract is more flexible than several competitors, but the annual billing push from sales, the uncapped price increase clause, and the potential for data extraction costs on exit all create dependencies that are easy to underestimate at the point of signing.
Reviews describe a consistent pattern: the sales experience is strong, the onboarding is mixed, and businesses that want to leave find the process difficult. One Capterra reviewer described taking legal action after JobLogic refused to cancel despite the system delivering “zero usable value.” Another was sent a sales upsell email about data export costs rather than a cancellation confirmation.
With a custom application, there is no lock-in. You own the code. You own the data. If you want a different developer to maintain it, you can. If the business changes significantly, you commission the changes. The difference between bespoke and off-the-shelf software is ultimately a difference between ownership and tenancy.
Which Is Right for Your Business?
JobLogic is likely the better choice if:
- You run a mid-market business with 15–50+ staff
- Asset management and PPM are central to your operation
- You need extensive UK compliance forms out of the box (F-Gas, Gas Safe, electrical)
- You want a proven platform with a large user base and active development
- You’re comfortable with per-seat pricing and annual billing
A custom business app is likely the better choice if:
- You have a team of 5–20 people with a specific workflow that generic platforms don’t handle well
- You’re spending £400+ per month across software and still relying on workarounds
- You’ve received a price increase notification or are nervous about the next renewal
- Mobile reliability is critical and you’re frustrated with app performance
- You want software that adapts to your business rather than the other way around
If you’re weighing up the options, our guide on when to replace your SaaS stack with a custom application is a useful starting point, as is our post on the real cost of business app subscriptions.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is JobLogic Worth the Money?
For mid-market businesses with 15–50+ staff and complex asset management or PPM requirements, JobLogic’s feature depth can justify the cost. For smaller teams or businesses with simpler workflows, the per-seat pricing, paid add-ons, and training costs often make it poor value — reflected in its 3.99/5 value-for-money score on Software Advice.
Can JobLogic Increase Its Prices?
Yes. JobLogic’s terms reserve the right to change pricing at any time with 30 days’ notice. There is no cap on increases and no linkage to inflation. This is a material risk for any business budgeting long-term on a per-seat model.
How Much Does a Custom App Cost Compared to JobLogic?
A custom application for a 5–15 person trades business typically costs from £10,000 to build with a £200–£400/month maintenance retainer. At £45/user/month on JobLogic Standard, a ten-person team pays £5,400 per year — meaning a custom build pays for itself in two to four years, with no price increase risk thereafter.
What Happens to My Data If I Leave JobLogic?
JobLogic’s terms confirm you own your data, but access is contingent on full payment of all fees. There is no explicit data export guarantee, and some users have reported being quoted costs for bulk data extraction on exit. Negotiate data portability provisions explicitly before signing.
Does a Custom App Include Compliance Features Like JobLogic?
Yes — any compliance requirements specific to your business (Gas Safe documentation, electrical certificates, vehicle inspection checklists, risk assessments) can be built directly into a custom application’s workflow. The difference is that they’re built around your exact process, not a generic template library.
How Long Does It Take to Build a Custom App?
Most custom applications for trades businesses take 8–16 weeks from sign-off to launch, depending on scope and complexity. We work in structured phases with clear milestones and acceptance criteria at each stage.
