Compared with ServiceM8
ServiceM8 and How’s the Job: what each is for, and using both
Updated
ServiceM8 is job management software for trades and services: scheduling, quoting and invoicing, payments, forms and more, run from a phone. How’s the Job does one small thing, for free: it gives your customer a single link where they can follow the job, with your photos and updates in order. One runs the business; the other keeps the customer in the picture while the work goes on.
What ServiceM8 is for
On its UK site, ServiceM8 calls itself smart job management for trades and services, and lists job management, scheduling, quoting and invoicing, invoice payments, electronic forms, a phone system, asset management, online booking and accounting integrations. Its mobile apps are described as a way to create jobs, schedule work, communicate with clients, send quotes and invoices, and take payment on site.
Its feature overview runs much longer than that, from time tracking and dispatch maps to reports and add-ons. It is a full system for running the day-to-day of a trade business.
What How’s the Job is for
How’s the Job covers one thing: showing your customer how the job is going. You add the job, post photos and short updates from your phone, and text your customer one link. It does not do quotes, invoices, scheduling, payments or GPS, and it doesn’t send messages itself; you send the link from your own phone.
The link opens in any phone browser, with no app and no account. Your customer sees a three-step progress bar in your trade’s words, then every photo and update, newest first, and the page refreshes itself when you post. Here is an example job page.
What your customer sees
ServiceM8’s feature overview describes a good deal that reaches the customer. It lists on-the-way messages that text clients an estimated arrival time, Track My Arrival so clients can follow your progress towards their address, booking confirmations, links that let clients pick a time, online quote acceptance, and emails and texts to clients saved against the job card.
How’s the Job is about what happens once you are there, and especially on jobs that run over several days. The customer gets one page for the whole job: the photo of the joists before the floor goes down, the note that the tiles arrive Thursday, and the moment it moves to Complete. They can forward it to anyone who needs to see it, and nobody has to scroll back through texts to find it.
Using both together
Keep booking, quoting, scheduling and invoicing in ServiceM8, and let its on-the-way messages do what they are built for. Add longer jobs to How’s the Job as well and text the customer the link on day one; the progress photos you would have texted one at a time go on the job page instead.
There is nothing to connect. How’s the Job doesn’t read from ServiceM8 or write to it, so nothing needs setting up and nothing can clash. Adding a job takes a few taps. For ideas on what to post and when, see our guide to photographing work that gets covered up.
When you don’t need How’s the Job
If your work is mostly single-visit call-outs, ServiceM8’s arrival texts, booking confirmations and messages from the job card may already answer everything your customers ask. A separate job page adds little to a visit that is over in an hour.
A job link is worth adding when the work runs over days, when much of it ends up out of sight, or when the customer isn’t there to watch: bathroom and kitchen refits, rewires, roofs, extensions and garden builds.
What it costs
How’s the Job is free for tradespeople, with no card needed, and always free for your customer. ServiceM8’s UK pricing page lists a free plan for one user with a monthly job limit, and paid monthly plans above it, priced excluding VAT, with a 14-day free trial. Check its pricing page for the current limits and figures.
The small print
How’s the Job is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by ServiceM8. ServiceM8 is a trademark of its owner. What this page says about ServiceM8 describes its public website as of October 2026; the pages we relied on are listed below.
See an example job page for what your customer gets, or get started. Other comparisons: all of them in one list.
How’s the Job is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by ServiceM8. ServiceM8 is a trademark of its owner.
Sources
What this page says about other products comes from their own public websites, checked on .