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// Compare

AV business managementsoftware, compared.

Six platforms most AV integrators shortlist next to Specifi. Honest pricing, real feature breakdowns, the working math on what each actually costs over two years.

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// The shortlist

Six honest comparisons,audited line by line.

D-Tools

Engineering-led design and proposals for mid-to-large commercial integrators.

Strength: Largest dealer-priced product library (1M+), deepest system-design tools, mature service-management module.

Gap: No marketing surface at any tier. The $99 Cloud Single sticker is not the working floor: add QuickBooks/Xero and Gold Support and the bill climbs fast.

Read the D-Tools alternative

Portal.io

A proposal-first platform with the largest product catalog in AV and an AI proposal builder.

Strength: 5M+ product catalog, AI Proposal Builder generates a full proposal from a phone-recorded site walkthrough, strong Snap One dealer-program integration.

Gap: Not a full operating platform: no CRM, no full project management, invoicing is a per-record add-on. iOS-only mobile app.

Read the Portal.io alternative

iPoint Solutions

Self-hosted private-cloud platform with mature inventory and recurring-invoicing depth.

Strength: Decades-refined multi-location inventory and recurring invoicing with stored payment methods.

Gap: Default architecture asks you to run a Windows database server. $60/user/month adds up. No marketing surface, no Xero.

Read the iPoint Solutions alternative

WeQuote

The UK distributor-integrated quoting platform of choice.

Strength: 100+ UK distributor integrations with live stock and nightly price updates. SNAGG field app with offline capability.

Gap: Quote-cap pricing model that scales the bill with deal volume. Modular operating layer (WorkHub, Procurement, Inventory) sold as Premium-only add-ons.

Read the WeQuote alternative

Jetbuilt

Proposal-first platform with a 3.4M-line product library and AI-generated drawings.

Strength: 3.4M product database, Jetbot AI Drawings auto-generates schematics and rack elevations, manufacturer project-registration flow.

Gap: Modular pricing. CRM, install, service, stock, portal, and AI drawings are all paid add-ons on top of an Enterprise seat. No marketing tools at any tier.

Read the Jetbuilt alternative

ProjX360

Location-based project and service management for estate-heavy ongoing-service businesses.

Strength: Location-based architecture (systems tied to properties, not projects), sophisticated inventory with barcode scanning and virtual warehouses.

Gap: Positioned as the project layer of a three-tool stack (D-Tools SI + Portal.io + ProjX360). No published pricing. No marketing or CRM surface.

Read the ProjX360 alternative
// What to look for

Five questions thatdecide the shortlist.

Most software-purchase regret in AV traces back to one of the same five gaps. Run a candidate through each before the demo and the shortlist resolves itself.

  1. 01

    Modular pricing, or one flat fee?

    A modular platform sells you a base seat then charges for each capability your team turns out to need: CRM, PM, service, inventory, portal, AI drawings. The seat sticker is misleading because it shows the slim-tier price, not the working floor with the add-ons your team will hit by month three. Run the total: every module a real team needs, every user, every per-record fee. A flat-fee operating platform is more expensive on paper at the entry point and cheaper in practice once the stack is honest.

  2. 02

    Cloud-hosted, or your own server?

    Some platforms still default to a database server you provision, patch, back up, and replace on your own Windows hardware. That can be the right choice if you have IT capability in-house and want your data on a machine you physically control. For most small-to-mid integration firms it is operational overhead disguised as a feature. The browser-and-mobile cloud model removes the IT layer entirely; ask the vendor whether their cloud option is the default or an upsell.

  3. 03

    Engineering depth, or business breadth?

    Engineering-led platforms (D-Tools System Integrator, Jetbuilt with Jetbot AI Drawings) ship deep system-design tools, wire calculations, interconnect diagrams, and rack elevations. Business-led platforms (Specifi, parts of iPoint) ship CRM, marketing, customer portal, and invoicing. If your work lives in complex commercial engineering documentation, depth wins. If your work lives in running the whole business end to end, breadth wins. The wrong axis costs months of tool-fit pain.

  4. 04

    Marketing on the platform, or stitched in?

    Most AV business software ships the back office (proposals, projects, invoicing) and leaves the front office (website, social media, SEO, blogs, lead capture) to four other tools. That gap is the silent cost of the typical AV software stack: integration tax, data drift, attribution fog, and Monday-morning spreadsheet rebuilds. A platform that ships marketing as part of the same flat fee collapses that surface into one place. Ask whether a candidate platform has marketing at all, then ask whether it is one tier up or included.

  5. 05

    Pricing on the website, or a sales call?

    Vendors who publish every tier on the pricing page with every feature called out at every level have made one choice: they trust you to evaluate price and decide on your own time. Vendors who hide pricing behind a contact form have made a different choice: they want to qualify you and price the deal to what they think you can pay. Neither is dishonest, but the second creates an asymmetry of information that lasts the whole sales cycle. Specifi publishes every tier; some competitors do not. That alone tells you something about how the relationship will run.

// How this hub works

No marketing fluff.Every claim sourced.

Each comparison page is built from the live pricing page of the competitor on the date listed in the page doc-block, cross-referenced against the public feature matrix and the integrator-facing pricing emails that land in the inbox after the contact form. Where a competitor does not publish pricing (ProjX360, parts of iPoint), we say so on the page and leave the cost-of- ownership cell empty rather than guess. Where a competitor beats Specifi on a specific capability (Jetbuilt's 3.4M product database, WeQuote's UK distributor depth, D-Tools' engineering tools), the page names that explicitly. We are not in the business of misrepresenting our competitors and the brand voice rule is hardcoded into the editing pass: if a line would not survive a conversation with the competitor's CEO at a CEDIA booth, it gets cut.

What you will not find on these pages is a star rating, a marketing-driven "winner" badge, or a "free trial" pressure CTA. Each one is structured around the same three blocks: why integrators leave the competitor in question, what migration to Specifi actually looks like, and where the competitor is still the right call for the right firm. Read the comparison, then book a demo if you want to see Specifi running on a deal shaped like yours. If we are not a fit for your business, we will tell you on the call.

// Questions integrators ask

Picking the rightAV platform.

Can't find what you're looking for? Get in touch and we'll get back to you within a few hours.

What is the best AV business management software in 2026?
There is no single right answer for every integration firm. The best AV business management software for you depends on the size of your team, the depth of system design you do, whether you want to run marketing on the same platform, and whether you are comfortable hosting your own database server. The six platforms compared on this hub (Specifi, D-Tools, Jetbuilt, WeQuote, Portal.io, iPoint Solutions, ProjX360) cover most of the credible options for AV integrators. Read the spoke page for the platform closest to your current setup; the brand-voice rule on every page is to tell you when Specifi is not the right call.
How do I compare AV proposal software?
Five questions resolve most shortlists. First, is the pricing flat-fee or modular? Modular sticker prices hide the working-floor cost. Second, is it cloud-hosted or does it ask you to run a Windows server? Third, does it ship engineering depth (drawings, wire calcs) or business breadth (CRM, marketing, portal)? Fourth, is marketing on the platform or stitched in from other tools? Fifth, is the price published or hidden behind a sales call? Each comparison page on this hub scores all six competitors against those axes, with the working-floor math attached.
What is the cheapest AV business management software?
The cheapest sticker price in this space is around $29 a month for entry-level proposal-only tools, but that sticker rarely reflects the working bill. Once you add invoicing per-record fees, accounting integrations, customer-portal access, CRM, project management, and the marketing tools every growing firm needs, the working floor across the major platforms lands in a similar band of $150 to $450 a month for a small-to-mid integration team. Specifi publishes every tier on the pricing page; the cheapest tier (Individual) is $149 a month with every feature included at the same level as the Team and Company tiers, the difference being the number of users.
Is there free AV business management software?
There is no credible free AV business management platform that ships proposals, CRM, project management, and invoicing in production. Some platforms offer a free entry tier with severe caps (e.g. Portal.io Lite at 10 proposals per month). Some offer a sponsored free plan tied to a specific dealer program. For a real working tool, expect to pay a monthly subscription. Specifi offers a fourteen-day free trial with full access to every feature, no credit card required, so you can evaluate it against your real workflow before committing.
What does AV business management software actually do?
It handles the parts of an AV integration business that are not the install itself: lead capture and CRM, proposals and quotes, project management with work orders and scheduling, invoicing and accounting sync, customer portals for client-facing project visibility, mobile apps for field technicians, inventory tracking, and (on the more complete platforms) marketing surfaces like website hosting and social-media tools. The best platforms collapse all of that into one place; weaker platforms cover one corner of it well (proposals only, project management only) and leave the rest to other tools.
How is Specifi different from the platforms it competes with?
Specifi runs the entire business on one flat fee: proposals, CRM, project management, invoicing, customer portal, inventory, the marketing suite (website, Echo social media, SEO, blogs, managed services), and Bob the AI across the stack. No per-module up-sells, no per-user surcharges, no per-record fees, no Windows server. Most competitors in this comparison are stronger than Specifi on a specific axis (system-design depth, product-library size, UK distributor depth, location-based architecture, recurring invoicing). None of them currently ship the full operating-platform surface at a single flat fee with marketing included. The trade-off lives on each spoke page so you can pick the axis that matters most to your business.

See Specifi live.

A 30-minute side-by-side with the platforms you're shortlisting. If we are not the right call we will tell you on the demo.

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