What hiring your first person does to trade software costs

For a sole trader, many job-management products look broadly similar because the headline price is one monthly number. The difference appears when someone else needs a login. A per-user product usually doubles cleanly. A role-based product may add a cheaper field seat. A job-volume product may add the person for nothing once you are on a paid tier. A single-user entry plan can force a jump to a team plan, so the bill rises by more than the cost of one extra seat.

That means a useful comparison cannot be just 'one user versus two users'. A first-year apprentice who only needs assigned jobs and timesheets is not the same software requirement as an office manager who needs quoting, invoicing and customer data. The tables below separate those cases wherever the vendor publishes enough detail to do so.

• ▸We used current public monthly list pricing where the vendor publishes it. Where a price is expressed per month but billed annually, that billing condition stays visible.
• ▸The starting point is a plausible one-person setup on the vendor's public entry route. This is not a cross-vendor price ranking; each row only measures the change inside that product.
• ▸First field worker means a second person who needs their own login for assigned jobs, schedule/site information and basic field activity. Where the vendor sells a restricted field/timesheet/crew role, we use that cheaper legitimate role and state the limitation.
• ▸First full-access/admin user means a second person who needs the normal business workflow rather than a restricted field-only seat.
• ▸If adding the person also forces a plan upgrade with extra features, we label it 'tier change'. The increase is real to the buyer, but it is not a pure seat charge.
• ▸Temporary promotions and negotiated/enterprise quotes are excluded. VAT treatment is shown because several providers publish prices on different VAT bases.

This is the cheapest legitimate route we could verify for a second person who needs their own operational access. It is where role-based pricing makes the biggest difference.

This scenario is different because a cheap crew or timesheet role is not enough. The second person needs the ordinary quoting, invoicing, customer or business workflow. Checker is left out of this table because its public page prices sub-users but does not establish that a sub-user has the same access as the account owner; we would rather leave a blank than call that a full admin seat without evidence.

• ▸Per-user products are predictable: Tradify, Joblogic and Workever broadly double when a second equivalent user is added.
• ▸Single-user starter plans can create the sharpest first-hire cliff. Powered Now moves from £28 Business to two £32 Professional users; Gas Engineer Software moves from a £19 single-user Starter plan to two £25 Core users.
• ▸Role-based pricing can make a field worker much cheaper than an office user. Fergus can add a Timesheet User from £12, grafter.ly includes two crew in its £25 base price, and HiveSuite includes two crew in Solo.
• ▸Job-volume pricing breaks the normal headcount rule. ServiceM8's paid tiers have unlimited users, so once the business is already paying for enough job capacity, adding another person can cost £0 in licence fees.
• ▸A big percentage increase does not automatically mean bad value. Several of the largest jumps also unlock a different feature tier or a much larger user allowance. That is exactly why this is a pricing-architecture study, not a cheapest-to-most-expensive league table.

Price the software at the team shape you expect in twelve months, not just the business you have today. If the next hire is an apprentice or field operative, check whether a restricted crew/timesheet login is enough. If the next hire will quote, invoice, schedule other people or see financial data, price a full user instead.

Then check the non-seat limit that can move the bill anyway: monthly job allowance, feature tier, annual commitment, add-ons and VAT. A product can be cheap for headcount and expensive for job volume, or the other way around. The useful number is the whole workflow cost at your real usage, not the homepage price.

YourTradebase, CertBox, TradePA and Eworks were not forced into the numeric tables where their current public pricing did not let us map the first extra login cleanly enough. We have asked for clarification on the ambiguous cases. They can be added later if the role and price transition becomes directly verifiable.

We also excluded quote-led enterprise products and time-limited promotional prices. The point of this page is a repeatable public-data comparison a small UK trade business can check for itself, not a snapshot built around sales quotes that another reader cannot reproduce.