Who it suits.
And who it doesn't.
Gaffer is one price for the whole platform, which means the honest question is not what it costs but whether a business your size will use enough of it. Here is what each size gets, and the four cases where we would tell you to keep your money.
On your own
- Quotes go out from the van instead of waiting for the evening, which is usually the difference between winning the job and being second.
- Certificates are issued on the phone before you leave, so there is no pile to work through on Sunday.
- Invoices carry a Pay Now link, and the chasing happens without you having to be the one who asks.
You will not use the dispatch board, the staff map or most of the team features. That is fine — they are not costing you extra — but if all you want is to raise an invoice, a £10 invoicing app will do it and you should use one.
Two to ten on the tools
- One board for the week, so the office stops relaying jobs by phone and the engineers stop ringing in for the next address.
- Everything an engineer does on site — photos, forms, signatures, time, materials — lands against the job while it is happening.
- Renewals, review requests and follow-ups run in the background, which is roughly the work of a part-time administrator.
- Unlimited users, so the eleventh person costs the same as the second.
This is the size Gaffer is built for, and the size that gets the most out of it. If your team already lives in a system that works, the case for moving is the paperwork and the automation, not the calendar.
Several branches, or a franchise
- Branches keep their own jobs, teams and numbering, with reporting across the whole business.
- Roles and permissions scoped per branch, so a manager sees their own operation and not everyone else's.
- The API and outbound webhooks, for the systems you already run alongside this.
- White-label portals, so the customer sees your brand and never sees ours.
Multi-branch, white-label and API access sit on the Enterprise plan rather than the self-serve ones. Talk to us before you buy: we will tell you honestly whether you need it, and most businesses under about fifteen people do not.
Four reasons not to buy this.
Every software company has a list like this. Most of them keep it internal.
Gaffer is built around a job at an address. If your work is remote or entirely in a workshop, most of what makes it good is wasted on you.
The field app is Android, and in testing. iPhone users have the full web app in a mobile browser, which works — but if your crew are all on iPhones and you want a native app now, wait for us.
If you need an invoicing app and nothing else, this is more system than you want. The price is fair for the whole platform and poor value for a tenth of it.
Switching costs real time even when the import is clean. The case has to be worth that, and "this one is newer" is not.
If one of those is you, say so on the way past — support@rungaffer.com. We would rather lose the sale than have the refund conversation in a month.
Run one real job through it.
Not a demo, not a sandbox. Take a job you are actually doing this week, put it through the trial from enquiry to paid invoice, and see whether the paperwork took less time than it does now.
14 days, no card, all 58 trade packs switched on. If the answer is no, you have lost an afternoon and you will know exactly why.
Still not sure?
Tell us the size of the team and what you run on now, and we will tell you whether this is worth your afternoon. Support is a person, not a chatbot.
Founding members: first 100 businesses get 50% off every paid plan, for as long as they stay subscribed.