THE SHORT ANSWER
On a one-tech Florida route of 59 weekly pools billed $143.70 a month, card autopay fees run a median $4.87 a month for each pool paid by card, 2.4 times the $2.00 a pool the same vendors charge for their software. That is the median of the 4 vendors that publish both a price and their processing rates, read from their own pages on Oct 30, 2026. Bank draft costs a median $1.63 per pool.
Key findings
$4.87 vs. $2.00
At the 4 vendors that publish their rates, a card payment costs $4.47 to $5.14 per pool (median $4.87); the same vendors’ software costs $2.00 per pool.
$191
Moving from card to bank draft saves up to about $191 a month per route, if every customer now pays by card. The median ACH fee is $1.63 per pool, $3.24 less than card.
$1,200 vs. $279.99
At 10 techs and 600 pools, per-pool pricing costs $1,200 a month while the cheapest per-user plan costs $279.99: 4.3 times apart.
3 of 11
3 of 11 route and field-service products publish no price at all (4 if Housecall Pro is counted). All 4 U.S. pool-specific products publish theirs.
20–29%
The headline price is often not the monthly bill: annual billing is 20–29% cheaper where it is offered, and extras sit in the fine print, such as a $20 monthly payments fee or $25 a month for QuickBooks sync.
Method: list prices from the vendors’ own pages, applied to one route
On Oct 30, 2026 we read the pricing pages of the pool-specific route software products we found and of the general field-service suites that sell to pool and other route businesses, plus QuickBooks Online as the accounting-only baseline. For each plan we recorded the price, the billing unit, users included, extra-user price, setup fee, contract terms, payment-processing rates and what the plan includes, with a full-page screenshot and the nearest Internet Archive snapshot of the same page. Processing rates come only from the vendor’s own pricing page or help center.
Which plan. For each product and company size we take the cheapest plan that holds the techs and the pools, that the vendor does not explicitly hold back route optimization from, and that includes automatic card payments where the vendor gates them. A product is route-capable when it has a public U.S. price and its plan used passes this rule. Prices are the monthly-billed list price after any introductory promotion. The choices:
| Product | Plan used | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Skimmer | Scaling Up | The cheaper Getting Started plan is marketed for 0–49 pools and lacks route optimization |
| Pool Brain | Single plan | $50 base + $65 per active tech; office users included |
| Pool Office Manager | Single plan | $125 first user + $25 per user; we count users = techs |
| PoolDial | Single plan | $2 per serviced pool, $40 minimum |
| Jobber | Connect, by users | Core ($49) gates automatic payments and QuickBooks to Connect and up |
| ServiceMonster | Basic / Grow / Premier | Smallest tier that holds the users |
| Service Autopilot | Pro / Pro Plus | Startup ($49) lacks route optimization; annual contract only |
| Housecall Pro | Basic / Essentials / MAX | Low confidence: not read from the vendor page (bot check) |
| QuickBooks Online | Simple Start | Accounting only, as a baseline; no routes or chemistry |
Cost per pool. Subscription ÷ pools. Processing per pool = rate × $143.70 + per-transaction fee, capped where the vendor caps it. A monthly payments fee is spread over the route’s pools and shown separately.
| Assumption | Value | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly price per weekly pool | $143.70 | Report No. 05 base route (median of 41 Florida route listings) |
| Pools on a one-tech route | 59 | Report No. 05 base route (58.09, rounded up) |
| Pools per tech for the size grid | 60 | Round number for 1, 3 and 10 techs |
| Users | = techs | Owner and office seats extra where a vendor charges them |
| Payments | 1 per pool per month | All on card autopay, or all on bank draft (ACH); 50% and 25% card in section 04 |
| Price | monthly-billed list | After intro promotions; annual price shown separately |
Coverage: 13 products, 34 plans, one day
The frame is the pool-specific route software we found, the general field-service suites that sell route and billing software to small U.S. service companies, and one accounting package as a baseline. 13 products, 34 plans and 42 price points (Jobber prints each plan at several user counts). PoolTrackr is an Australia and New Zealand product: its prices are not in U.S. dollars, so it is listed here and left out of every cost figure.
7 products are route-capable as defined in section 02 (a public U.S. price and a plan used that the vendor does not explicitly hold back route optimization from): Skimmer, Pool Brain, Pool Office Manager, PoolDial, Jobber, ServiceMonster, Service Autopilot. For two of them the pages do not confirm route optimization for the plan used: Jobber Connect (its pool page says “Optimize routes” without naming a plan) and ServiceMonster Basic (it lists dispatch that can “create routes”, and its page is written for cleaning businesses). Without those two, the one-tech median is $118 a month ($2.00 per pool), unchanged, and the gap between the dearest and cheapest route software is $1.42 per pool.
Housecall Pro is shown in the cost tables at low confidence. Its live pricing page served a bot check to our browser; an earlier capture the same day showed a plan finder and “Book a demo” for tailored pricing, but no plan price. Its prices here come from two 2026 third-party pricing pages (source 5).
| Product | Type | Plans | No price | What the page shows |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pool Brain | Pool | 1 | 0 | All plans priced |
| Pool Office Manager | Pool | 1 | 0 | All plans priced |
| PoolDial | Pool | 1 | 0 | All plans priced |
| Skimmer | Pool | 3 | 1 | Top tier by quote only |
| Housecall Pro | Field service | 3 | 0 | Not verified on vendor page |
| Jobber | Field service | 4 | 0 | All plans priced |
| QuickBooks Online | Accounting | 4 | 0 | All plans priced |
| Service Autopilot | Field service | 4 | 1 | Top tier by quote only |
| ServiceMonster | Field service | 3 | 0 | All plans priced |
| FieldPulse | Field service | 1 | 1 | No price published |
| ServiceTitan | Field service | 3 | 3 | No price published |
| Workiz | Field service | 3 | 3 | No price published |
PoolTrackr counted in the 13 products but not in the 12 U.S. products. QuickBooks, the accounting baseline, is not one of the 11 route and field-service products. Workiz mentions an annual discount but no price. FieldPulse sells seats for a contract term by quote.
Card fees on autopay cost more per pool than the software
Medians of the same 4 vendors that publish their rates: software at one tech and 59 pools, fees on one payment of $143.70 per pool per month. The 7 route-capable products have the same software median, $2.00 per pool.
Source: Vendor pricing pages and fee schedules, Oct 30, 2026; report No. 05 base route.
Card processing at every vendor that publishes its rates costs more, for a pool paid by card, than the vendor’s software costs per pool. The percentage drives the gap: 2.9% to 3.4% of $143.70 is $4.17 to $4.89 before the per-transaction fee, while a per-pool software price is a flat $2.00. Bank draft costs about 1% plus a small fixed fee, about $1.63 per pool.
| Vendor | Card | Bank draft | Software | Card | ACH | Pay fee | Card fees, route |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skimmer | 3.4% + $0.25 | 1% + $0.25, cap $10 | $2.00 | $5.14 | $1.69 | – | $303 |
| Pool Brain | 3.2% + $0.25 | 1% + $0.25, cap $15 | $1.95 | $4.85 | $1.69 | $0.34 | $306 |
| PoolDial | 3.2% + $0.30 | 1.1% | $2.00 | $4.90 | $1.58 | – | $289 |
| Jobber | 2.9% + $0.30 | 1% | $2.36 | $4.47 | $1.44 | – | $264 |
| Housecall Pro * | 2.59% | 1% | $1.34 | $3.72 | $1.44 | – | $220 |
Per pool per month, one tech, 59 pools; “Card fees, route” assumes every pool pays by card. “Pay fee” is a monthly payments fee spread over the route. Skimmer: 2.9% + $0.25 plus “0.5% for keyed or recurring transactions”; applying that 0.5% to autopay is our reading of Skimmer’s wording, which does not say so outright. Without it Skimmer’s card cost is $4.42 per pool and the four-vendor median $4.66. Jobber’s rates were read from its pricing page with a fetch tool after the page blocked our browser. * Housecall Pro: “as low as 2.59%”, no per-transaction fee stated; ACH rate from third-party sources only. Low confidence; not in the medians.
Difference in dollars per pool per month, one-tech route.
Source: Ruberio analysis of vendor list prices and rates.
How much depends on how many pay by card
| Paying by card | Processing per pool | × software | Card fees, route | Share of profit | Saving via ACH |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100% | $4.87 | 2.4 | $288 | 19% | $191 |
| 50% | $3.25 | 1.6 | $144 | 9% | $96 |
| 25% | $2.44 | 1.2 | $72 | 5% | $48 |
Share of pools paying by card; the rest pay by bank draft. Medians of the same 4 vendors. “× software” = processing per pool ÷ software per pool. “Saving via ACH” = moving the card payers to bank draft. Share of modeled profit: card fees ÷ route profit. Processing per pool = card share × $4.87 + the rest × $1.63. It stays above the $2.00 software price as long as more than 11% of the pools pay by card. Route profit: report No. 05 base route with the median software price, $1,543 a month.
Report No. 05 left processing out of its route model. With the median software price added ($118 a month), that route keeps $1,543 a month before the owner’s pay; if every customer paid by card, card fees would take $288 of it.
Passing the cost on. Some owners pass card costs on to the customer, through a surcharge on card payments or a discount for paying by bank draft. Card-network rules and state law limit how you can do that, and they differ by state and by card type, so ask your payment processor first. This is not legal advice. At least one route software vendor builds it in: Pool Brain’s fee schedule says “The current surcharge-enabled percentage processing rate is 3.0%.”
Per-pool and per-tech prices split apart as a company grows
Software cost per pool per month at 60 pools per tech, monthly-billed list prices. “Per pool” is Skimmer (Scaling Up) and PoolDial, which price the same at these sizes.
Source: Vendor pricing pages, Oct 30, 2026.
Two pricing models sell the same job. Skimmer and PoolDial charge per serviced pool, so the bill grows with the customer list and the cost per pool never falls. Pool Brain and Pool Office Manager charge a base plus a fee per tech; Jobber, ServiceMonster and Service Autopilot sell tiers by user count. With those, the cost per pool falls as each tech carries more pools. Among the pool-specific products at 10 techs the monthly bill runs from $350 to $1,200.
| Product | Pricing model | 1 tech | 3 techs | 10 techs | Per pool at 10 | Annual, 1 tech |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skimmer | per pool | $120 | $360 | $1,200 | $2.00 | – |
| PoolDial | per pool | $120 | $360 | $1,200 | $2.00 | – |
| Pool Brain | base + per tech | $115 | $245 | $700 | $1.17 | – |
| Pool Office Manager | base + per tech | $125 | $175 | $350 | $0.58 | – |
| Jobber | tiers by users | $139 | $199 | $299 | $0.50 | $99 |
| ServiceMonster | tiers by users | $99.99 | $199.99 | $279.99 | $0.47 | $79.99 |
| Service Autopilot | tiers by users | $199 | $499 | quote | – | annual only |
| Housecall Pro * | tiers by users | $79 | $189 | $399 | $0.67 | $59 |
| QuickBooks Online | flat (accounting) | $38 | $38 | $38 | $0.06 | – |
Monthly-billed list prices, users = techs, 60 pools per tech (60, 180 and 600 pools). “Quote” = the size needs a plan without a published price. Annual = monthly equivalent when billed yearly. * Low confidence (secondary sources). Processing, add-ons and sales tax excluded.
The price on the page is not the whole bill
Every product below has at least one cost that the headline price leaves out. These are the ones each vendor states on its own pricing or fee pages. One is our reading rather than the vendor’s words: that Skimmer’s extra 0.5% for “keyed or recurring transactions” applies to card autopay.
| Product | What the headline price leaves out |
|---|---|
| Skimmer | Our reading: card autopay counts as "recurring", so +0.5% on top of 2.9% + $0.25 (Skimmer does not say so outright) |
| Skimmer | CRM integrations $49/mo, Google Calendar $25/mo below Enterprise |
| Pool Brain | $20/mo payments fee; $15 per failed ACH and per card dispute |
| PoolDial | $40 monthly minimum continues in the off-season; no pause rate |
| Pool Office Manager | Every active user is a paid seat, office staff too; QuickBooks sync +$25/mo |
| Jobber | Headline prices are promotional and annual prepaid; monthly list is higher |
| ServiceMonster | Annual commitment even when billed monthly |
| Service Autopilot | Sign-up fee not published; QuickBooks and client portal priced by phone |
| Housecall Pro | Extra-user price conflicts between sources; card rate "as low as" |
Annual billing is the other gap. Where a vendor offers it, the yearly price for one tech is Jobber $99 instead of $139, Housecall Pro $59 instead of $79, ServiceMonster $79.99 instead of $99.99: a saving of 20–29%, in exchange for a year’s commitment. Jobber’s page opens on annual prepaid prices with a promotion, so the first number you see is not what a month-to-month customer pays later.
What the pricing pages say you get for pool work
| Product | Route opt. | Chem log | Dosing | Photo report | Autopay | Portal | QuickBooks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skimmer | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pool Brain | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pool Office Manager | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | – | – | +$25 |
| PoolDial | – | Yes | – | – | – | Yes | Yes |
| Jobber | Plan? | Checklist | No | Checklist | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Housecall Pro | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| ServiceMonster | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| Service Autopilot | Yes | – | – | – | Yes | Add-on | Add-on |
| QuickBooks Online | No | No | No | No | – | No | n/a |
Plan used at one tech (section 02). – = not stated on the pricing page, which is not the same as missing; ask the vendor. Checklist = built with custom checklists, no chemistry module. Plan? = listed on another page without the plan. Add-on = priced by phone. Service Autopilot’s feature table marks every column alike in the page code, so only its plan descriptions were used.
Limitations
- One day of list prices. Everything is the price a vendor printed on Oct 30, 2026. Promotions end, tiers change, and negotiated prices are not public. The Internet Archive snapshots in the sources are older than our capture and may differ; Pool Office Manager’s latest snapshot is from March 2024.
- Plan choice drives the median. Our rule picks a plan with route optimization and autopay. Taking each vendor’s cheapest plan instead gives a one-tech median of $99.99 rather than $118. Leaving out Jobber and ServiceMonster, whose pages do not confirm route optimization for the plan used, gives $118. The card-fee finding holds either way.
- The card figure is per pool paid by card. A route where most customers pay by bank draft or check pays far less in processing; section 04 shows 100%, 50% and 25% card.
- Housecall Pro is low confidence (bot check; plan prices and the ACH rate from two third-party pages, source 5, which disagree on extra-user prices). Jobber’s multi-user tiers and payment rates were read with a fetch tool; our screenshot shows only the one-user annual view. QuickBooks has no screenshot.
- Skimmer’s autopay rate is our reading. Its help center adds 0.5% for “keyed or recurring transactions”. If autopay is not recurring in Skimmer’s sense, its card cost is $4.42 per pool, still above its software price, and the four-vendor card median is $4.66 instead of $4.87.
- Processing is simplified: one payment per pool per month, no failed payments, disputes, instant payouts, card mix or surcharging. Pool Office Manager processes through Stripe “at standard rates” without printing them, so it is not in the fee comparison.
- Feature cells come from pricing pages only. “Not stated” means the page does not say, not that the product lacks it. We did not test any product.
- Not covered: the 3 products without a price, setup or onboarding costs that are quoted privately, sales tax, and the owner’s time to learn and run a system.
What an owner can do with this
Worksheet · what your software really costs per pool
| Line | Your number | Example (median) |
|---|---|---|
| A. Software subscription per month, with add-ons | $118 | |
| B. Monthly payments fee, if any | $0 | |
| C. Pools you bill each month | 59 | |
| D. Software per pool = (A + B) ÷ C | $2.00 | |
| E. Your monthly price per pool | $143.70 | |
| F. Card fee per payment = E × card % + fixed fee | $4.87 (3.2% + about $0.28) | |
| G. Bank-draft fee per payment (check the cap) | $1.63 | |
| H. Share of pools paying by card | 100% | |
| I. Processing per pool = H × F + (1 − H) × G | $4.87 | |
| J. All-in per pool = D + I | $6.87 | |
| K. Share of your price = J ÷ E | 5% |
Then check these
- Count your autopay customers by method and multiply the card ones by your card fee per payment. At the medians, that number is larger than the software bill once more than 41% of your pools pay by card.
- Make bank draft the default when you sign up a new customer, and offer card as the alternative. Ask your vendor for its ACH rate, its cap and its fee for a failed draft.
- If you want to pass card costs on, through a card surcharge or a bank-draft discount, ask your payment processor first: card-network rules and state law limit how you can do it. This is not legal advice.
- Before you switch software, compare the total per pool: subscription, payments fee and processing at your own mix.
- If you plan to grow past a few techs, price both models at the size you expect in two years: per pool and per tech.
- Ask every vendor five things in writing: the monthly price after any promotion, the contract term, setup or sign-up fees, extra seats for office staff, and any off-season minimum.
Sources and evidence
- Vendor pricing pages and fee schedules listed in the table below, read Oct 30, 2026. Prices are list prices on that date. Internet Archive snapshots: web.archive.org/web/<date>/<page>, nearest earlier capture; the full snapshot URLs are in the data file.
- Skimmer, Billing FAQ (help.getskimmer.com/article/152-skimmer-billing-faq). Accessed Oct 30, 2026.
- Pool Brain, Payment Services Fee Schedule, “Last Updated: October 3, 2026” (poolbrain.com/payment-services-fee-schedule). Accessed Oct 30, 2026.
- PoolDial, pricing page FAQ on payment processing (pooldial.com/pricing). Accessed Oct 30, 2026.
- Housecall Pro: pricing page capture of Oct 30, 2026 (plan finder, “card processing rates as low as 2.59%”). Plan prices and the ACH rate from third-party pages: FieldProxy, “Housecall Pro pricing in 2026” (fieldproxy.ai/fsm-software-pricing/housecall-pro), verified Jun 5, 2026, rechecked Oct 26, 2026; ContractorToolstack, Housecall Pro pricing (contractortoolstack.com/software/housecall-pro/pricing/), updated Sep 10, 2026. Accessed Oct 30, 2026. Low confidence.
- Ruberio Research No. 05, Pool Route Profitability Gap (October 2026): price per pool and pools per route. Accessed Oct 30, 2026.
| Product | Page | Archive | How read | Evidence file |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skimmer | getskimmer.com/pricing | 2026‑09‑16 | screenshot | skimmer-pricing |
| Skimmer fees | help.getskimmer.com/article/152-skimmer-billing-faq | 2026‑04‑18 | screenshot | skimmer-billing-faq |
| Pool Brain | poolbrain.com/pricing | 2026‑09‑13 | screenshot | poolbrain-pricing, poolbrain-1tech, poolbrain-10tech |
| Pool Brain fees | poolbrain.com/payment-services-fee-schedule | no snapshot | screenshot | poolbrain-fees |
| Jobber | getjobber.com/pricing | 2026‑10‑23 | screenshot + fetch tool for tiers | jobber-pricing |
| Housecall Pro | housecallpro.com/pricing | 2026‑10‑15 | third-party pages, source 5 (bot check) | housecallpro-pricing, housecallpro-botcheck |
| ServiceTitan | servicetitan.com/pricing | 2026‑10‑15 | screenshot | servicetitan-pricing |
| PoolTrackr | pooltrackr.com/pricing | 2026‑06‑16 | screenshot | pooltrackr-pricing |
| Service Autopilot | serviceautopilot.com/pricing | 2026‑01‑15 | screenshot | serviceautopilot-pricing |
| FieldPulse | fieldpulse.com/pricing | 2026‑10‑15 | screenshot | fieldpulse-pricing |
| Workiz | workiz.com/pricing | 2026‑10‑28 | screenshot | workiz-pricing |
| ServiceMonster | servicemonster.com/pricing | 2026‑07‑12 | screenshot | servicemonster-pricing, servicemonster-yearly |
| Pool Office Manager | poolofficemanager.com/pricing | 2024‑03‑03 | screenshot | poolofficemanager-pricing |
| PoolDial | pooldial.com/pricing | 2026‑09‑28 | screenshot | pooldial-pricing |
| QuickBooks Online | quickbooks.intuit.com/pricing | 2026‑10‑29 | fetch tool, no screenshot | – |
We keep a dated screenshot of each page (30 Oct 2026, 1,000 px wide). A “no snapshot” page had no Internet Archive capture when we checked.
About this research
Who made this
Ruberio is a Dutch design studio: Ruben designs, Sven answers every email. We're focused on websites for pool service companies and fence contractors in Florida. We ran this study because software and payment fees are part of what a pool costs to service, and a price an owner shows on a website should rest on the real cost. We don't sell routes, software, insurance or financing, and nobody named here paid for or reviewed this report. The data file (every plan, rate and source) and the scripts are available on request. If you spot an error, email hello@ruberio.com and we'll correct it and note the change.
Cite this study
Ruberio Research (2026). On a one-truck pool route, card fees cost $4.87 a month for each pool paid by card. The software costs $2.00 a pool. (No. 10). Data as of Oct 30, 2026. us.ruberio.com/research/pool-service-software-costs/
Questions
Which pool service software is cheapest?
The study compares list prices, not products. At one tech the route products cost $99.99 to $199 a month, with a one-tech median of $118 ($2.00 per pool). Promotions, negotiated prices and privately quoted setup costs are not included, and we did not test any product.
Does the card-fee figure apply to my whole route?
Only to pools paid by card autopay. If half your customers pay by bank draft, processing averages $3.25 per pool, still more than the software. With a quarter on card, card fees come to $72 a month on a 59-pool route.
Why are some vendors missing from the cost figures?
ServiceTitan, FieldPulse and Workiz ask you to request a quote, so there is no price to compare. Housecall Pro is shown at low confidence because its pricing page served a bot check, and PoolTrackr’s prices are not in U.S. dollars.
