What HVAC shops need from a CRM
The customer list in a ten-year-old HVAC shop is worth more than its trucks, and most shops barely use it. A good HVAC CRM is less about contact management and more about knowing when each customer is going to need you next.
That starts with equipment at the address. Model, serial, install date, refrigerant type and the last tech's notes should sit on the property record. When the house sells, the equipment record stays with the address and the new owner becomes a lead with a known system.
From there, the CRM should give you a few working lists without anyone building a spreadsheet:
- Aging equipment. Every system past a cutoff age, sorted by neighborhood, for replacement campaigns before peak season.
- Members due for renewal. Who renews in the next 60 days, who's on autopay and who needs a call.
- Members who haven't had their tune-up. Owed visits are a liability and a missed chance to find repairs.
- Unsold estimates. Replacement proposals from the last 90 days with no decision, with the value and the tech who wrote them.
- Lead source. Which ads, listings and mailers produced booked jobs, not just calls.
Communication sits on top: on-my-way texts, appointment reminders, review requests after the job and a message thread the office can see. A customer who gets a text with the tech's photo before he arrives is easier to sell an agreement to.
Two HVAC wrinkles catch generic CRMs. Landlords and property managers own many addresses but are one billing contact, and the tenant is the person who lets the tech in. Commercial customers have a facilities contact, an accounts payable contact and a store manager at each site. Your CRM needs to keep those people separate on one account.
None of this works if the data never gets in. The CRM is only as good as what techs record on the first visit: the data plate photo, the model and serial, the filter size and a one-line note on condition. Make those required fields on the job checklist, and spot-check a few jobs a week for the first month. Shops that skip this end up paying for a CRM and still selling replacements from memory.
How the picks compare
The real split is whether you have people whose job is selling.
If the owner and office manager do the selling, Housecall Pro is the best fit. Service plans and the proposal tool on MAX cover memberships and replacements, review requests and online booking come with every plan, and the price is published. Jobber is the alternative if your bigger problem is follow-up discipline rather than HVAC-specific tracking: its automated quote follow-ups and client hub are excellent, but it treats agreements as recurring jobs.
If you have CSRs and comfort advisors, ServiceTitan's advantage shows. CSRs booking with full history, memberships and unsold estimates all in one record, and reports a sales manager can actually run a meeting from. A shop doing a lot of replacements can recover the cost through close rate and average ticket, but only if somebody works the lists every week.
FieldEdge suits agreement-heavy shops that want service agreements at the center and a tight QuickBooks link. Workiz suits shops whose growth comes from paid leads and who want to see revenue by source.
Running more than one trade? Our guide to contractor CRM tools covers the picks across every trade we review.
What to look for before you sign
- Check the property record. Can one customer have several addresses, and does equipment attach to the address rather than the person?
- Import your equipment data. Ask whether install dates and model numbers carry over from your old system. Without them, the aging-equipment list is empty.
- Build an aging-equipment list in the trial. If you can't filter by install date in a few clicks, replacement campaigns won't happen.
- Look at unsold estimate tracking. You want open proposals by age and value, with the tech's name, not a search box.
- Test renewal reminders. Set up a sample member and see what the system does 60 days before renewal.
- Price the add-ons. Pipeline, marketing, phones and AI answering are separate on most platforms. Add them to the monthly number before you compare.
- Confirm you can export everything. Customers, equipment, agreements and history, in a format you can take to another system.
What it costs
Prices are as of October 2026, billed annually. CRM features usually come with the field service plan, but the HVAC-specific ones sit on upper tiers.
| Shop size |
Housecall Pro |
Jobber |
ServiceTitan |
| 1 user |
MAX $299/mo for service plans (Basic $59 without) |
Connect $99/mo, plus Pipeline $49 |
Rarely sold at this size |
| 5 users |
MAX $299/mo |
Grow $229/mo, plus Pipeline $49 |
Third-party est. $1,225 to $2,500/mo |
| 15 users |
MAX with 7 extra users, about $544/mo |
Grow $399/mo, plus Pipeline $49 |
Third-party est. $3,675 to $7,500/mo |
ServiceTitan figures multiply a third-party range of $245 to $500 per tech per month and exclude implementation, Marketing Pro and Phones Pro; none of it is published by the vendor. Jobber's Marketing Suite adds $99/mo if you want its campaign and review tools. FieldEdge and Workiz are quote only.
The bigger number is what the list is worth. Say you have 200 members and 400 non-member customers with systems over 12 years old. Converting even a small share of that second group into replacements in a year pays for any plan on this table many times over.
