Guv against ServiceM8
The honest comparison
ServiceM8 is a good product and it does things Guv doesn't. Both are on this page. If you've used ServiceM8 you'd spot a page full of ticks in about four seconds, and then you'd stop believing the rest of it.
The short version.
If what's stopping you is that your lads won't use the app, that's the thing Guv is built around, and it's built already. If it's the paperwork — quotes, invoices, chasing money — ServiceM8 has more of that finished today. All of it is being built here, and every clock icon below is something actively on the way rather than a maybe. We don't put dates on them, because we'd rather tell you what's real now than promise you a month.
What your crew touches
The half that decides whether any of this works. An app the lads won't open is worth nothing, however good the office side is.
| Guv | ServiceM8 | |
|---|---|---|
| Works with no signal Half-built houses, basements, industrial units. | ✓ Jobs, statuses and photos are saved on the phone and sync when signal comes back. | ~ Reviewers report it wants a solid connection. |
| Android done properly Most crews are on Android, not iPhones. | ✓ Built Android-first, on real Android handsets. | ~ Reviewers call the Android app "lite" next to the iPhone one. |
| Simple enough that they'll use it | ✓ Four screens on the worker's phone. Today's jobs, the job, photos, sign-off. There is nothing else to find. | ~ A big product. That's a strength in the office and a hill to climb on site. |
| Doesn't follow your lads around | ✓ Guv records where a phone was at the moment your fitter taps a stage, and only if you switch it on — so the office can see the job was started at the job. Nothing in between, nothing while the app is shut, nothing on the way home. It asks the phone for no background location at all, which is a thing your lads can check for themselves. Written into our privacy policy. | ✗ Staff location tracking is one of its features — the van on a map, all day. |
| Photos tied to the job | ✓ | ✓ |
| Customer signs on the phone | ✓ Locked once captured. | ✓ |
| Message about a job, on the job | ✓ Office and worker, per job, so it isn't in a WhatsApp thread. | ~ Strong on texting the customer; less so on talking to your own crew inside a job. |
What the office gets that they haven’t
Two rows, both about money, and both checked against what ServiceM8 and Jobber actually ship rather than assumed. Short list on purpose — a page of things nobody else does is a page nobody believes.
| Guv | ServiceM8 | |
|---|---|---|
| Extras that add themselves Out of hours, weekends, waiting time, a fuel surcharge that moves week to week. Each one on its own line, so a customer who queries it gets an answer. | ◷ Built 9 September, not released yet. You set what you charge and what makes it apply; the app works out the rest from the job’s own date and time. A percentage only ever lands on the vehicle and the miles — never on another extra — so the total is one you can reproduce with a calculator. | ~ One automatic surcharge, for travelling beyond a distance you set, and it is folded into the price rather than shown. Nothing for out of hours or weekends. Jobber has none at all — its “optional items” are things the customer ticks themselves. |
| Wiping or exporting one customer’s data Somebody rings and asks you to delete everything you hold on them. That is a right they have, not a favour, and you have a month to do it. | ✓ Tick the customers, type DELETE, and every job of theirs goes with its photos, messages, sign-off and audit trail. Export is the same screen and the same list. Admin only, and it does not touch your rounds, your staff or your company records — those are yours, not theirs. | ~ Possible, and by hand. Their own GDPR page points at seven separate help articles — delete the client, delete each job, delete the notes and attachments from each job diary. Nobody is stopping you; you are doing it one item at a time and hoping you got them all. |
| Clean air and congestion charges on the quote London’s three schemes and the seven English clean air zones, priced into the job when you book it. | ◷ Built 9 September, not released yet. Tick the zones the route crosses and the charge goes on as its own line, at the rate in force that day — a job quoted in March keeps March’s number. Each vehicle is marked compliant or not, so a van that pays nothing is charged nothing. Scotland is a warning rather than a charge, because its zones fine a non-compliant vehicle instead of charging it, and a penalty is not something to put on a customer’s bill. | ✗ Nothing. Neither does Jobber. |
What the office touches
This is where ServiceM8 is ahead, and there's no point pretending otherwise.
| Guv | ServiceM8 | |
|---|---|---|
| Bring your customers across From a spreadsheet, or an export from what you use now. | ✓ Upload the file and it works out which column is which, then shows you exactly what it's going to do before it does anything. | ✓ |
| Job board and statuses | ✓ | ✓ |
| Quoting | ✓ Raise a job as a quote, price it — one price or several for them to choose between — and send a link where they see it, pick a day and accept. That turns it into a real job on that date, with a record of who accepted, when, and how. Revising a price makes a new version and keeps the same link. Accept over the phone or on their behalf too, and the record says which. Not yet: online payment on acceptance, and quote follow-up chasing. And not yet on the phone — quoting works in the office and the customer’s page is live, but the half your fitter would use standing in front of someone is built and waiting on the next update. | ✓ |
| Invoicing and taking payment | ◷ Coming. Guv builds the invoice itself — itemised, with VAT and the reverse charge handled — and sends it. Pushing it into your accounting software is the row below, and comes after. | ✓ |
| Xero / QuickBooks | ◷ Coming. | ✓ |
| Drag-and-drop scheduling board | ◷ Built, not released yet. A column for each fitter, drag a job onto whoever is doing it. A day at a time — theirs also does a week and a month, and ours does not yet. | ✓ Genuinely one of the best things about it. |
| Automatic texts to the customer | ◷ Coming — email first, texts after. | ✓ |
| Build your own forms | ◷ Coming, and deliberately smaller than theirs: a few extra questions you can add to sign-off, not a designer for building any form. A form builder is how an app gets complicated, and complicated is why crews stop opening it. | ✓ |
| Asset and equipment records | ◷ Coming, and it covers both your own plant and the kit on a customer's site. Admin-only — nothing extra lands on your workers' phones. | ✓ |
What it costs
| Guv | ServiceM8 | |
|---|---|---|
| How you're charged | Free while it's in beta No card, no job limit. Pricing gets worked out with the trades using it, before anyone is asked to pay. | By how many jobs you do Tiered — the free tier is capped at 30 jobs a month, then it steps up. Check their site for today's numbers. |
| What sits behind a higher plan Not what it costs — what you have to move up a tier to get at. | ✓ Nothing. There is one Guv and everything in it is in it. No tier gates a feature, and there is no add-on to buy. | ~ Their own pricing page: forms and asset records need the Growing plan or above, and job costing and markup billing need Premium. Two of those are rows we are behind on further up this page — worth knowing they are not on the entry plan either. |
| Getting your data back out | ✓ Included Export every job, customer, photograph and sign-off you hold, whenever you want. | ~ The full client-list export is part of a paid add-on. |
Why the crosses are on this page
Because you'd find them in week one anyway, and then everything else on the page would be suspect too. A comparison you can't catch out is worth more than one that flatters us — and if the missing bits are dealbreakers, both of us would rather know that now than after you've moved your jobs across.
Built with a real crew, not for a market
Guv is in private beta with a UK flooring firm — on their phones, not in a case study. Every screen exists because somebody laying floors asked for it or tripped over it.
You can actually talk to us
Small enough that a request from you reaches the person who writes it, usually the same week.
Signal is not your problem
Everything the crew does works offline and catches up later. No lost photos, no "it didn't save".
Want to try it?
We're onboarding trades one at a time, and we'll move your customer list across for you — send us whatever ServiceM8 exports and we'll do the rest.
Request beta access