MagieCRM vs Housecall Pro for a 4-person plumbing shop
MagieCRM fits a plumbing shop whose field side already runs fine on a whiteboard and a shared calendar, but whose office loses track of callbacks and estimates. If your plumbers need a dispatch board and a phone app, or your customers expect texts and estimates they sign online, buy Housecall Pro. For this shop MagieCRM is $114 a month. Housecall Pro Essentials is $189, or $149 a month billed yearly.
A made-up shop.
Checked October 1, 2026.
What each costs for this shop
Housecall Pro has two price lists, general and Plumbing.
| Plan | Per month | People | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Housecall Pro Basic | $79, or $59 billed yearly | 1 user | Dispatch, estimates, price book, job costing, invoicing, payments, reviews |
| Housecall Pro Essentials | $189, or $149 billed yearly | 5 users. On the general plans, only MAX adds extra users. | Adds routes, GPS tracking of your plumbers' phones, QuickBooks sync and flat-rate pricing |
| Housecall Pro MAX | $329, or $299 billed yearly | 8 users, then $35 per extra user | Adds the sales proposal tool, recurring service plans, route optimization, Zapier and API access |
| Housecall Pro Plumbing package, Essentials | $299 for a team, or $229 for one user | 5 users, then $100 per extra user | Adds the sales proposal tool, membership plans, equipment tracking, job costing and QuickBooks sync |
| Housecall Pro Plumbing package, MAX | $649 for a team, or $349 for one user | 8 users, then $75 per extra user | Adds Pipeline, route optimization, pricing insights and API access |
| MagieCRM Starter plus 1 extra user | $114 | 3 users, then $15 per extra user | 1,000 records. Every feature. |
| MagieCRM Growth | $179 | 10 users, then $15 per extra user | 10,000 records. Every feature. |
Housecall Pro list prices on October 1, 2026. Add-ons such as Pipeline cost extra. Card fees are extra with both: Housecall Pro's start at 2.59%, and MagieCRM invoices go through your own Stripe account, so you pay only Stripe's fee.
The catch with Starter is the record limit. Every customer and job is a record, finished and recurring jobs included. At about 100 a month (60 jobs, 40 customers), this shop fills Starter's 1,000 in about 10 months, or 6 if it imports 400 past customers first. Then it moves to Growth at $179.
Year one comes to about $1,500 with MagieCRM, or $1,760 with the import. Housecall Pro Essentials is $1,788 billed yearly or $2,268 month to month, and the Plumbing package $3,588. After that, Growth is $10 a month less than general Essentials month to month and $30 more than Essentials billed yearly.
Feature by feature
| Feature | Housecall Pro | MagieCRM |
|---|---|---|
| Dispatch board | Yes. On every plan. | No. A month calendar of job dates, one plumber per job, no time slots. |
| Estimates customers approve online | Yes. | No. Track the estimate as a stage and amount, with your PDF attached. |
| Price book and flat rate | Yes. Price book on every plan, flat rate from Essentials up. | Partly. A Products & Services list, one price per item. No cost, margin, markup or job costing. |
| Recurring jobs and service plans | Yes. Service plans that charge the card come with general MAX and Plumbing Essentials, or as an add-on. | Partly. Weekly to yearly, one job per record in the tracker you link, so plan customers need their own tracker. Each is dated the first day of the period, with no time or plumber. Nobody is billed. |
| Texting | Yes. On every plan, once you register a texting number. | No. Email only. |
| Mobile app | Yes. Free on every plan, iOS and Android, in English and Spanish, with offline viewing. | No. It runs in your phone's browser and needs a signal. |
| Your own lists, stages and fields | Partly. Custom fields on jobs only, and your own board columns and statuses with Pipeline. Record types are fixed. | Yes. You name them all, customers included. |
| Automations | Yes. Texts when a job is booked, when the plumber is on the way and when it's done. Estimate follow-ups need Pipeline. | Yes. You describe them in a sentence. They send only email templates you wrote. |
| Campaigns | Yes. Email on Essentials and MAX, up to a monthly limit. Text campaigns cost extra. | Yes. Every plan, email only. |
| Notes filed on the right job | Not on its pricing page | Yes. Scratchpad, the box at the top of the To-dos card on your dashboard. |
| Autofill from a photo or PDF | Not on its pricing page | Yes. A photo of a work order or supplier quote fills in the job. |
| Free trial | Yes. 14 days, MAX features, no card. | Yes. 14 days, every feature. Card at signup, no charge until day 15. |
"Every plan" means Basic, Essentials and MAX. Housecall Pro's help center doesn't say which plans have recurring jobs, the customer portal or progress invoicing.
Where Housecall Pro is better
- Scheduling and dispatch. A dispatch board, the free field app, and routes and GPS from general Essentials up.
- Estimates on the bigger jobs. Customers sign repipe estimates online, and the sales proposal tool lays out good, better and best water heater options.
- Pricing and margins. Flat-rate pricing with margins, and job costing that shows what each repipe made.
- Getting paid. Taking a card at the job, financing for a repipe, and billing a big job in stages. MagieCRM invoices are paid online, with no sales tax, deposits or partial payments.
- A customer portal. Homeowners approve estimates, pay and see their visits. MagieCRM has none.
- Texting. Estimates and invoices go by text, and customers get a text when the plumber is on the way.
- Online booking that takes payment. Customers book and pay from Google or your website. MagieCRM's booking page takes no payment and doesn't create a job.
- Maintenance work. Recurring jobs keep their time and plumber, and service plans charge the card on schedule.
- Phone and chat support. On every plan. MagieCRM support is by email, and a person writes back within 24 hours.
Where MagieCRM is better
Your own job stages and fields
You set up your own lists, called trackers, like Customers and Jobs, and name every stage and field. Jobs here might go "New call", "Estimate sent", "Approved", "Done", "Paid", with fields for heater type and permit number. When repipes start needing permits, add a "Permit pulled" stage to Jobs, and jobs in progress stay put.
Call notes filed on the right job
Your office person types into Scratchpad: "Ruth Hagen wants the 50-gallon gas heater, not the tankless. Send the revised estimate by Wednesday." Magie, the built-in assistant, finds the Hagen job and lines up the changes for your office person to approve: heater type, a note and a Wednesday to-do.
Follow-ups you describe in a sentence
Type "If a repipe job sits untouched in Estimate sent for 4 days, add a call-back to-do," and Magie shows you the rule before it's saved. Automations email only the address on the record they run on, so set a flush reminder on Customers, 14 days before each customer's next flush date.
Email campaigns and replies
Write a series, like three emails a week apart about replacing an older water heater, and have an automation start it when a service call moves to Done. The emails go to the address on that job. Replies come back into MagieCRM, and the series can stop for anyone who answers.
Moving over from Housecall Pro
MagieCRM doesn't sync with Housecall Pro, so we wouldn't run both. To move, export customers and jobs from Housecall Pro as CSV files and upload them. Magie matches columns to fields and flags likely duplicates for you to check first. Everything you import counts toward your record limit. For a full plumbing setup, see MagieCRM for plumbers.
Questions
Is MagieCRM cheaper than Housecall Pro?
Yes, for a four-person shop. MagieCRM Starter plus one extra user is $114 a month. On October 1, 2026, Housecall Pro Essentials was $189 a month, or $149 a month billed yearly, and $299 for a team on its Plumbing package. Housecall Pro's price includes dispatch, a field app and estimates customers sign online, which MagieCRM doesn't have. Past 1,000 records you'd be on Growth at $179, which is $30 more than Essentials billed yearly.
Does MagieCRM have a free trial like Housecall Pro?
Yes, and both last 14 days. Housecall Pro's needs no card. MagieCRM's needs a card but charges nothing until day 15. Every feature works during the trial, email and campaigns included, and on day 15 the card is charged for the plan you picked, then monthly. Cancel before then and you pay nothing. After the trial ends, a cancelled account is read-only: you can sign in, look at everything and export it. Your data is kept 90 days, then deleted.
Does MagieCRM sync with QuickBooks?
No, and no Xero sync either. Payments sit in your own Stripe account, and records export to a spreadsheet any time. Housecall Pro syncs with QuickBooks Online on Essentials and MAX.
Try it with your own jobs
Email support@magiecrm.com with any question, and a person writes back within 24 hours.
Try it free for 14 daysHousecall Pro checked October 1, 2026: housecallpro.com/pricing, housecallpro.com/industries/plumbing-software, and its help center on billing and add-ons, e-signatures on estimates, texting numbers, inbox texting, text notifications, recurring jobs, managing recurring jobs, service plans, Campaigns, Pipeline, custom fields, customer portal, card rates and import and export. If you spot something wrong on this page, email support@magiecrm.com.