Know what every job made before the books close.
Sign-off doesn't end the job. It starts the relationship.
The six platforms integrators usually weigh up against us. What each one does, what it costs over two years where they publish it, and where each one is stronger.
Proposals first, 3.5 million products, and drawings the AI does for you.
Strength: 3.5 million+ AV and IT products with dealer pricing. Jetbot draws your schematics and rack elevations for you. Project registration with the manufacturers.
Gap: Six modules cost extra: lead pipeline, install, service, stock, the portal and AI drawings. No marketing on any plan.
Read the Jetbuilt alternativeThe UK platform wired straight into the distributors.
Strength: Live trade pricing from 200+ distributors and 6,000+ brands, across 3.5 million products, updated nightly. Unlimited office users.
Gap: Package prices aren't published, so you get your number on a call. Field users, procurement, inventory and accounting connections sit on top. No marketing on any package.
Read the WeQuote alternativeBuilt on FileMaker, with stock control and recurring billing.
Strength: Multi-location stock control, and recurring invoicing with card details on file.
Gap: Their manual has you run a Windows server. At $60 per user, per month, it adds up fast. Email marketing only, and no Xero.
Read the iPoint Solutions alternativeCloud for small to mid-size firms, System Integrator for complex engineered work.
Strength: 1.6 million products with dealer pricing. Wire path mapping with per-foot costing, and interconnect diagrams, both built into Cloud.
Gap: No marketing, on any plan. The $99 Cloud Single price becomes $159 a month with QuickBooks or Xero sync and Gold Support.
Read the D-Tools alternativeProjects and service organised by property, for AV integrators and electrical contractors.
Strength: Systems are tied to the property rather than the job, which suits ongoing service work. Stock control with barcode scanning and multiple warehouses. Its own sales CRM, proposals and published tiers.
Gap: No website, SEO or social tools listed, and the client portal is still on their road map.
Read the ProjX360 alternativeProposals first, with a 5M+ item catalogue and an AI proposal builder. Merged with D-Tools in August 2026.
Strength: 5 million+ products. Their AI Proposal Builder writes a full proposal from a walkthrough you record on your phone. Free sponsored plans for Sonos and Wesco dealers.
Gap: It stops at sales and billing: a lite CRM, no project management, scheduling or stock of its own. The app is iOS only.
Read the Portal.io alternativeMost of the regret we hear about comes down to the same few things. Ask these five before you sit through any demo and the list gets shorter fast.
A modular platform sells you a seat, then charges again for the bits your team turns out to need. CRM. Project management. Service. Stock. The customer portal. AI drawings.
So the number on the pricing page isn't the number you'll pay. Add it all up before you compare — every module a working team needs, every user, every per-record fee. A flat fee looks dearer on day one and usually isn't by month three.
Some platforms still want you running a database server. You set it up, patch it, back it up, and replace it when it dies, on your own Windows hardware.
That's fine if you've got IT in-house and you want the data on a machine you can walk up to. If you haven't, it quietly becomes somebody's second job. Ask whether the cloud version is the standard one or costs extra.
Some platforms go deep on the engineering. D-Tools and Jetbuilt will do your schematics and rack elevations properly.
Others go wide instead and run the business around the job: CRM, marketing, the customer portal, invoicing. We're in the second group, and so is part of iPoint. If your work is complex commercial documentation, go deep. If it's running the whole firm, go wide. Getting this one wrong costs months.
Most AV software handles everything after the enquiry and nothing before it. Proposals, projects, invoices, yes. Website, social, SEO, blogs, actually getting the lead in — someone else's problem.
That usually means a few more subscriptions and no clear answer to where the work came from. A couple of platforms include marketing, some sell it a tier up, most don't do it at all. Worth asking early. It's the one people notice last.
Some vendors publish every plan with the features listed. Others quote per deal, usually because the price genuinely does move with team size, modules and contract length.
Both are fair enough, but they're different to buy. Published pricing means you can work out the two-year number before you talk to anyone. Quoted pricing means you can't compare properly until you've sat through a call with all of them. If a vendor won't publish, ask for the rate card early.
Every comparison page is built from the competitor's own pricing page, checked against their public feature list and the pricing emails that turn up after you fill in a contact form. Where one of them doesn't publish pricing, like WeQuote and parts of iPoint, we say so and leave the cost blank rather than make something up. Portal.io is a proposal tool rather than a whole platform, so its page compares what each one covers rather than cost.
Where they're stronger, we say that too: Jetbuilt's 3.5 million products, WeQuote's distributor coverage, D-Tools' engineering tools.
There's no star rating and no winner badge, because the honest answer depends on your firm. Every page is laid out the same way: why people leave that platform, what moving actually involves, and where it's still the better choice. Read it, then book a demo if you want to see us against a job shaped like yours. If we're not right for you, we'd rather say so on the call.
Competitor features and pricing on this page mirror the individual comparison pages. Each of those shows the date it was last verified against that competitor's own published pages.
Can't find what you're looking for? We'll come back to you within a few hours.
Contact usThere isn't one right answer, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling. The best AV business management software for you depends on how big your team is, how much system design you do, whether you want marketing on the same platform, and whether you're happy running your own server. The six we get compared to most cover most of the sensible options: Jetbuilt, WeQuote, iPoint Solutions, D-Tools and Portal.io (one company since August 2026), and ProjX360. Read the page for whichever is closest to what you use now. Each one also says where that platform beats us.
Five questions get you most of the way. Is it a flat fee, or does the price climb as you add modules? Is it properly cloud, or are you running a Windows server? Does it go deep on drawings and wire calcs, or wide across CRM, marketing and the portal? Is marketing included, or is that four more tools? And is the price published, or do you have to ask for it? Each comparison page answers those for the platform it covers, with the two-year maths where their prices allow it.
The cheapest sticker is about $29 a month for a proposal tool with basic invoicing, but that's rarely what you end up paying. Add accounting integrations, portal access, CRM, project management and the marketing tools you'll want as you grow, and most platforms land somewhere between $150 and $450 a month for a small-to-mid team. Those are US dollars, because that's how most of them publish. Our own pricing is on the pricing page in your currency. The entry plan has every feature the bigger plans have — the difference is how many users, not what it does.
Not really. There's no free platform that does proposals, CRM, project management and invoicing properly. Some cap the entry plan, as Portal.io Lite does at 10 proposals a month for $29, and Portal.io runs sponsored free plans for Sonos and Wesco dealers. For something you can actually run the business on, expect to pay monthly. We do a fourteen-day trial with everything switched on and no card required, so you can try it on real jobs first.
Everything that isn't the install itself. Getting leads in and keeping track of them, quotes and proposals, running the projects, work orders and scheduling, invoicing and pushing it through to your accounts, a portal so the client can see what's happening, an app for the engineers, and stock control. On the more complete platforms, the marketing as well — website, SEO, social. The better ones put all of that in one place. The weaker ones do one part well and leave you to bolt the rest on.
One flat fee for the whole thing: proposals, CRM, projects, invoicing, the customer portal, stock, the marketing suite (website, Echo social media, SEO, blogs) and Bob the AI running through all of it. Nothing extra per module, no per-user surcharge, no per-record fees, no server to look after. Each comparison page sets out where that platform is stronger. What's different is the shape: the others either price it in pieces or leave half the business to other tools. Each comparison page lays the trade-off out so you can decide which bit matters to you.
Thirty minutes, side by side with whatever else you're looking at. If we're not the right fit, we'll say so on the call.
