ServiceTitan is built for the 200-truck operation with a call center and a dispatch board that never stops moving. If you run three trucks, or eight, or fifteen, you have probably sat through the demo, watched the feature list scroll past, and then heard the part that ends it — the per-technician pricing, the implementation fee, and the weeks of onboarding before you send your first invoice. That is not a knock on the software. It is the wrong-sized software. If you are shopping for a ServiceTitan alternative for small business, the question is not "what does less" — it is "what covers the work a sub-20-tech shop actually does, without the enterprise tax."
The real cost gap: per-tech pricing plus setup and onboarding
ServiceTitan does not publish a flat number, and we are not going to invent one for it — check their current page for what they quote you. But the structure is public and consistent: you pay per technician, that base sits well above what a small shop budgets for software, and it typically comes with an implementation or onboarding fee plus a multi-week setup before the system is live. Add a seat, the bill goes up. Add a slow winter, the bill does not come down.
Mortar is three flat plans, and the price does not move when you add a person to a seat you already pay for. Solo is $39/month for one seat. Core is $99/month for five. Suite is $179/month for fifteen. Seats are included in the plan — there is no per-technician line item, so the tech you hired in March does not raise your bill in April.
Flat vs per-tech
Per-technician pricing punishes the exact thing you are trying to do — hire. On a flat plan the number you signed up at is the number you pay whether the seat is full or empty, so growing the crew is a hiring decision, not a software-budget decision.
Self-serve at $39 vs a sales call to start
The other cost is time. Getting onto an enterprise platform means a sales call, a scoping conversation, an implementation timeline, and training before the first quote goes out. That is the right process for a company standing up a call center. It is a lot of runway for an owner who just wants to send a signable estimate this afternoon.
Mortar is self-serve. You sign up, import your contacts from a vCard or spreadsheet, and build a quote the same day. There is no sales call to start and no implementation fee. Start free, run one real job through it end to end, and decide with your own numbers in front of you instead of a slide deck.
What a shop under 20 techs actually uses (and what it doesn’t)
The enterprise feature list is long because it has to serve a call center, a marketing department, and a fleet-management team. A small shop touches a fraction of it. Here is the fraction that matters, and it is the fraction Mortar is built around:
- Quote to cash — contacts, estimating with e-sign, invoicing, and payments on your own Stripe. Every Mortar plan includes this, plus a lead and job board (Pipeline). You never buy the ability to get paid as an add-on.
- Dispatch — scheduling and recurring/subscription service, dispatched to your crew’s phones, plus the contact form you embed on your own site. This is on Core and Suite.
- Books and marketing — cash-basis bookkeeping with bank import (OFX/QFX), lead attribution, campaigns, review requests, and follow-ups, plus white-label documents with no Mortar footer. This is Suite.
What you don’t get: a call center suite, fleet telematics, or a configurable pricing engine tuned for hundreds of technicians. If you need those, that is the honest signal you have outgrown this comparison. Most shops under 20 techs never touch them.
Dispatch and estimating without the enterprise tax
The daily loop for a small shop is quote, schedule, do the work, get paid. Mortar runs it on one shared record so nobody re-types a total or an address. You build the estimate from a price book with your loaded costs baked in. The customer opens one link, picks options, and signs on their phone. The signed quote becomes the scheduled visit, dispatched to a tech who sees it on their phone the moment it’s scheduled or moved. The invoice is generated from the quote that was already signed — not re-keyed — and the payment posts to your books the moment it clears.
Payments land in your own connected Stripe account. Mortar never holds your money — card or bank draft (ACH) settles directly to you. Stripe’s standard processing fee applies, and that fee is Stripe’s, not ours. Walk the full lead-to-paid path in what a field service CRM should actually do.
Your field tech never sees your margins
Permissions are per person, product-wide — not a plan upsell. A field tech sees the job, the address, and the schedule but not the margin, the finances, or the settings. The office runs the numbers, the crew runs the work.
Recurring maintenance plans on your own Stripe
For a lot of shops the real money is in the work that repeats — the HVAC maintenance plan, the mowing route, the quarterly service agreement. On Mortar that runs on the same rails as everything else: weekly, biweekly, or monthly charges on the customer’s saved card or bank draft, so the plan bills itself instead of you chasing it. Recurring billing is part of Dispatch, which lives on Core — it is not held back for a top tier.
Because it settles to your Stripe and books cash-basis on the same data that runs your pipeline, the recurring revenue shows up in a real P&L, not a separate spreadsheet you reconcile by hand. The mechanics are in how to bill recurring service customers.
When ServiceTitan is still the right call
This is a comparison, not a hit piece. ServiceTitan is enterprise field service management software, and for an enterprise it earns its price. If you run a call center with dedicated dispatchers, a fleet you manage with telematics, a marketing team that needs deep campaign tooling, or dozens of trucks that need a pricing engine configured to the technician — that scale is the entire point, and a $39-to-$179 flat plan is not built for it.
The line is roughly where a full-time dispatcher and a marketing hire show up on the org chart. Below that line, most of the enterprise machinery is cost you carry and don’t use. Above it, the machinery is the reason you bought the software. Pick the tool whose shape matches your shop.
Is Mortar cheaper than ServiceTitan?
Almost certainly for a small shop, yes. Mortar is three flat plans — Solo $39, Core $99, Suite $179 per month, with 1, 5, and 15 seats included and no per-technician fee. ServiceTitan uses per-technician pricing plus a setup fee and starts with a sales call. We won’t quote ServiceTitan’s number — confirm it on their current page — but the pricing structures are built for different-sized businesses.
How is ServiceTitan priced per technician?
ServiceTitan does not publish a public flat rate; its pricing is quoted per technician and typically layers in an implementation or onboarding fee. Adding a tech adds to the bill. Mortar prices per plan instead — the seats are included, so a new hire on an existing seat does not change what you pay. Always verify current pricing on the vendor’s own page.
Can a shop under 20 techs run everything on Mortar?
For the quote-to-cash loop, dispatch, recurring plans, cash-basis books, and review requests — yes. What Mortar does not do is the enterprise layer: call-center tooling, fleet telematics, and a per-technician pricing engine. If you need those, you have likely outgrown this comparison.
How long does setup take compared to ServiceTitan?
Mortar is self-serve: sign up, import your contacts, and send a signable quote the same day — no sales call, no implementation fee. Enterprise platforms run a scoped onboarding that takes weeks before you are live. The trade-off is depth for speed, and for a small shop speed usually wins.
Building Mortar — the all-in-one CRM for service businesses. One shared record, one number behind every job.