The honest bit first
Let's be fair about this one, because ServiceM8 earns it.
Unlimited users on every paid plan. Fully published pricing at every tier: the only vendor in this whole comparison set with no "contact us" anywhere. A free plan. Genuinely lovely field interactions: swipe an enquiry right to convert it to a job, put the word "Photo" in a checklist and the camera opens itself. For a busy service business doing lots of short jobs on iPhones, ServiceM8 is very hard to beat on value.
A few things eventually push people off it, and they're structural.
The one difference that matters
ServiceM8 gives you four statuses and asks you to work the way it works. Service Ninja takes your workflow as it is.
Quote, Work Order, Completed, Unsuccessful. That's the whole lifecycle and it isn't customisable. Everything more specific, like waiting for a part, waiting on the landlord's approval, booked for the return visit, gets modelled in Queues or Categories bolted on the side. The recurring complaint in reviews isn't a missing feature, it's "that's just how it works."
Service Ninja's statuses and boards are yours to configure, in your language, and the job screen itself is built from cards you add, remove and reorder. Because no two trades work the same way.
Side by side
| Service Ninja | ServiceM8 | |
|---|---|---|
| Custom job statuses | Configure your own | Four fixed statuses |
| Custom fields on a job | Configurable job card | Not without add-ons |
| Priced by jobs you create | Never. Priced per user | Job credits: 30 / 50 / 150 / 500 / 1500 per month |
| Unlimited users | Per user | On every paid plan |
| Forward an email, get a job | Full extraction | Inbox enquiry, swipe to convert |
| Follow-up work books itself at completion | ||
| Multiple visits on one job | Each with its own priority | Multiple bookings |
| NZ certificates: CoC, ESC, CoV, RoI | In the plan, with the sign-off rules enforced | Electronic Forms, Growing plan and above. Not NZ-specific |
| Connect an AI assistant to your data | Assistant and MCP connector | |
| Asset management | Not built | Growing plan and above |
| Take a card payment on site | Not built | |
| SMS to customers | Not built | Capped per plan, overage per message |
| Dispatch board with drag-to-schedule | Team calendar | Staff-column dispatch board |
| "Action Required" attention list | Not built | With inline reasons per job |
| Free plan | 1 user, 30 jobs/month |
Competitor detail and pricing captured from their published documentation on 1 August 2026.
Two things Service Ninja does that ServiceM8 doesn't
Doesn't charge you for being busy.
ServiceM8 prices on job credits, not seats: 30 a month on Free, 50 on Starter, 150 on Growing, 500 on Premium. One credit per job card. That's a genuinely clever model for a ten-person team and a punishing one for a busy solo operator, who can end up paying several times what a larger business pays. It's a recurring complaint in reviews. Service Ninja charges per user and never counts your jobs.
Lets you name your own statuses.
Four statuses, locked. Everything else lives in Queues and Categories, which are good primitives but are a workaround for a lifecycle you can't edit. If your business has a state called "waiting on the electrician's inspection" or "parts on order from Ideal", you should be able to put it on the board.
Where ServiceM8 is still ahead
Price, by a mile, for a team.
Unlimited users at $79-$149 a month against our $640 for ten people. If licence cost is what decides this, ServiceM8 wins and it isn't close.
Pricing transparency.
Every tier published, no contact-us anywhere, pro-rata credit when you change plans, no lock-in, 14-day trial with no credit card. That's better than most of this market and better than a lot of what we do.
A free tier.
One user, thirty jobs a month, $0.
Action Required and job highlights.
A single list meaning "these jobs need a human right now", with the reason shown inline: unread customer reply, expired queue, unread mention, without opening the card. It turns a job board into a to-do queue. We think it's the best idea in the product and we don't have it.
The dispatch board.
Staff columns, drag a job onto a time to schedule it, drag it onto a person's icon to dispatch it urgently.
Asset management, electronic forms, proposals, on-site card payments.
All shipped, all on the higher plans. Not built here.
SMS.
Included up to a per-plan cap. We haven't built it.
iOS polish.
Ten-plus years of it.
Don't switch if
- You're a small team and the monthly licence cost is the deciding number. Ours is higher.
- You need on-site card payments or asset management.
- Your job volume is low enough that the $29 Starter plan covers you.
- You're happy inside four statuses. Genuinely. If the lifecycle fits, the simplicity is a feature, not a limitation.
Price, side by side
ServiceM8's published New Zealand pricing, captured 1 August 2026. Note: their NZ page prints a bare "$" with no currency label and shows figures identical to the Australian page, so whether it's NZD is unverified. Service Ninja prices are plus GST.
| Service Ninja | ServiceM8 | |
|---|---|---|
| Priced on | Users | Jobs created per month |
| 1 user, low volume | $100/month | $0-29/month |
| 5 users | $340/month | $79-149/month |
| 10 users | $640/month | $79-149/month |
| Busy solo operator, 200 jobs/month | $100/month | $149/month (Premium) |
| Job volume cap | None | Yes. This is the pricing axis |
| Setup fee | $0 | $0 |
Read that table honestly: ServiceM8 is cheaper than us for almost every team. The one place the model turns is a high-volume small operation, where you end up on a plan sized for a business four times yours. If that's you, the numbers get closer than they look.
The gaps are published, not buried.
Card payments, asset management and a dispatch board are all things ServiceM8 has and we don't. They're on this page, in their column.
See what's built →Questions people ask
Will I get charged more if I have a busy month?
No. Service Ninja is priced per user. Create as many jobs as you like.
Can I have more than four job statuses?
As many as you want, named whatever you call them.
Can I bring my ServiceM8 data across?
Yes. Migration is a paid service we run for you, quoted per business.
Is ServiceM8 bad?
No, it's very good, and this page says so several times. It's rigid and it's iOS-first by design. If neither of those bites you, stay.
Comparison accurate as at 1 August 2026, from publicly available documentation and pricing. Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we will fix it.