The picks
- PoolDial — Best for a one-truck company that plans to grow: every feature, $2 a pool, a receptionist that answers while you’re at a pool
- Pool Service Software (PSS) — Best free start: every feature free to 10 properties, $49.99 a month to 50
- Paythepoolman — Best if billing is eating your evenings: $65 flat for one truck, built by a pool contractor
- PoolTrac — Best if you run commercial pools alongside residential: $1 per visited pool, $30 minimum
- Pool Brain — Best once you hire your third tech
#1 Pick
PoolDial
- $2 per serviced pool per month, $40 minimum. Every feature, unlimited users.
- Routes, chemistry and LSI dosing, invoicing and autopay, QuickBooks Online and Xero
- AI phone receptionist and a company website included on every account
PoolDial is the one I’d put a one-truck company on. It is built in Phoenix for companies running 30 to 300 pools, and the pricing is one number: $2 a pool a month with a $40 floor. Twenty pools costs $40. Fifty costs $100. There are no tiers, no per-tech fee, and nothing held back for a bigger plan.
Why I picked this
The feature that decides it for a solo operator is the phone. When you run one truck, you are the tech, the office and the salesperson, and the calls that come in while you’re elbow-deep in a filter are the leads you lose. PoolDial includes a 24/7 AI receptionist that answers, takes the job details and sends you a summary. Skimmer sells the same thing as a $99 a month add-on. On PoolDial it is part of the $40.
The second is that it covers the parts of the business a one-truck company hasn’t built yet. Every account gets a website with online booking, a customer portal where clients see their service history and photos instead of calling you at 9 pm, and quotes that turn into work orders and then invoices. The field app logs readings, calculates LSI and suggests dosing, and works offline.
Third, it is priced so you never have to leave. Per-pool pricing stays linear as you add techs, since users are unlimited, and it imports data from Skimmer and Pool Brain if you ever go the other way. The founder still answers support himself, so when something breaks on a Saturday the reply comes from the person who can fix it.
The tradeoff is the floor. $40 a month is real money at 12 pools when PSS is free to 10, and the product is built for the 30-to-300 range, so under that you are paying for capacity you don’t use yet. If you want the cheapest possible start, go to the next pick and come back when you have 30 pools and a phone that rings while you work.
Key features for one-truck companies
- AI receptionist: Answers calls, books jobs and sends you a summary, included on every account
- Per-pool pricing: $2 a pool, $40 minimum, unlimited users, no tiers
- Chemistry: Readings, LSI calculation, dosing suggestions, per-pool history
- Billing: Invoicing, autopay, online payments, QuickBooks Online and Xero sync
- Website and booking: A company website and online booking included
- Field app: Offline mode, checklists with photo proof, GPS
Skip this if…
- You are under 10 pools and want to pay nothing. PSS is free at that size.
- You want a product with a long trail of public reviews to read first. Pool Brain and PoolTrac have far more.
- You already run two or three trucks on Skimmer or Pool Brain and it works. Switching costs you a season of habits for savings you may not feel.
#2 Pick
Pool Service Software (PSS)
- Free with all features up to 10 properties
- $49.99 a month for 11 to 50, $99 for 51 to 100, then $0.95 a property
- Routes, jobs and quotes, invoicing with Stripe, LSI calculator, GPS, visit reports
PSS is what most people find first, because it ranks at the top for the category name and because the free plan is real. Up to 10 properties you get the whole product: route optimization, quotes and jobs, web invoices and payments, an LSI calculator, GPS and before-and-after photos on the visit report. It runs on iOS, Android, Windows and the web.
Why I picked this
If you have six pools and a day job, this is the answer. The free plan is not a trial, and the $49.99 plan that covers you to 50 properties is the cheapest paid tier on this page for a route that size. Above 100 properties the per-property price drops to $0.95, which stays under PoolDial and Skimmer all the way up.
The product is deeper than the price suggests. Multi-day jobs, a shopping list built from what you dosed, equipment records per pool, and a visit report that goes to the customer with photos are all in the free tier. It is also one of the few with a Portuguese interface, if that matters for your crew.
The tradeoff is that it is a small company with a small support operation. The recurring complaint from pool pros online is slow support and awkward data export when they outgrow it. The interface looks its age next to PoolDial. And because it prices by property rather than by pool, a client with a pool and a spa on one property is one unit, which works in your favor.
Key features for one-truck companies
- Free plan: All features to 10 properties, no card required
- Routing: Optimization, estimated hours per day, pause and move routes
- Jobs and quotes: Quote approvals, drag-and-drop scheduling, photos on the invoice
- Chemistry: LSI calculator, dosage costs per stop
- Reports: Visit reports to the customer with photos and readings
Skip this if…
- You want someone on the phone when something breaks. Support is the weak spot.
- You plan to be at 150 pools in two years. Exporting out later is the complaint you’ll have.
- You want a customer-facing website or online booking. PSS does the route and the office, not the storefront.
#3 Pick
Paythepoolman
- $50 a month base plus $15 per tech. One truck is $65 flat, any number of pools.
- Batch billing, autopay, ACH, Apple Pay and Google Pay, late fees and statements
- Built by a pool contractor with 13 years on a route. Privately owned, 10+ years in.
Paythepoolman was started by a pool contractor in Riverside, California, after 13 years of finishing a route and then sitting down to do the billing. The product is built around that problem. You bill every customer in one pass, cards and bank accounts are on file, invoices go out by text, and overdue accounts line up for one-tap reminders. Everything else, routes, GPS, bids, a branded customer app and payroll, was added afterwards.
Why I picked this
The pricing favors the owner-operator who is past 50 pools. At $65 a month for one truck with no per-pool charge, it is cheaper than PoolDial from about 33 pools up and cheaper than Skimmer from the first pool over 49. A second tech costs $15, not $65.
The company says it is privately owned by the people who built it and has kept the same base price for ten years, which is a specific promise in a category where the biggest player just took $74 million of outside money. Weekday phone support is free and staffed by people who have cleaned pools, which matches what its reviews on the app stores keep saying.
The tradeoff is that it is billing software that grew a route around it, not the other way round. Route optimization is there, chemistry logging is there, but if you want LSI dosing guidance and water chemistry as the center of the product, PoolDial and Pool Brain take that more seriously. Payment processing fees are on top of the subscription, as they are everywhere on this page.
Key features for one-truck companies
- Billing: One-pass batch billing, autopay, ACH, late fees, statements, invoices by text
- Flat pricing: $50 plus $15 per tech, no per-pool charge
- Routes and GPS: One-click optimization, tech tracking
- Bids and leads: Repair bids with approval, lead capture
- Support: Free weekday phone support
Skip this if…
- Water chemistry is the heart of how you sell. The dosing tools are lighter here.
- You are under 30 pools. PSS is free or $49.99, and PoolDial is $40 to $60.
- You want a website or a receptionist bundled in. Paythepoolman does the back office, not the front door.
Honorable mentions
#4
PoolTrac
- $1 per visited pool per month, $30 minimum, 30-day trial
- Started in 2008 by a pool management company owner and his IT consultant friend
- Chemical calculator, equipment lists, offline logging, customer notifications
PoolTrac is the old guard of this list. John Pyle ran a residential and commercial pool management company and Justin Olson ran the IT firm that supported it, and in 2008 they turned the record-keeping system into a product. It still shows: the strength is the log. Every chemical addition, every photo, every GPS-verified start and finish, with the kind of audit trail a commercial account or an HOA board asks for. The company says it tracks 350,000 pools.
Choose this if: You service apartment complexes, HOAs or hotels where someone will ask for the records, and you want the cheapest per-pool price with a $30 floor.
Skip it if: You want a modern interface, a customer website or anything to do with marketing. PoolTrac is a logbook with routing and billing attached, and it is proud of it.
#5
Pool Brain
- $50 a month base plus $65 per field tech. Office users free. One truck is $115.
- Founder Adam Beech ran a 35-truck pool company for 15 years
- Guided tech workflows, per-body-of-water history, automated filter-clean scheduling
Pool Brain is what the big independents run. America’s Swimming Pool Company, the franchise, chose it for its locations, and so did National Pool Partners. Adam Beech built it after 15 years scaling a 35-truck company in Phoenix, and it is designed to make a new tech do the stop the way the owner would: guided checklists, dosing calculated per body of water, filter cleans scheduled automatically, and a route that reorders itself. I found no outside investors.
Choose this if: You are about to hire techs you can’t personally watch, and you’d rather pay $65 a tech than lose a customer to a missed filter clean.
Skip it if: You are the only tech. $115 a month for one truck buys you controls you don’t need yet. Start on PoolDial or PSS and move here when the second truck turns into the third.
What a one-truck operator actually pays
Published list prices on 30 October 2026, subscription only. Card processing fees are extra everywhere. Skimmer and Pool Brain are included because you will compare against them whether I list them or not.
| Software | 10 pools | 50 pools | 100 pools | How it’s priced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSS | $0 | $49.99 | $99 | By property; $0.95 a property above 100 |
| PoolTrac | $30 | $50 | $100 | $1 per visited pool, $30 minimum |
| PoolDial | $40 | $100 | $200 | $2 a pool, $40 minimum, every feature |
| Skimmer | $49 | $98 | $200 | $1 a location to 49 on Getting Started; $2 on Scaling Up, which is where routing and LSI live |
| Paythepoolman | $65 | $65 | $65 | $50 base plus $15 a tech |
| Pool Brain | $115 | $115 | $115 | $50 base plus $65 a tech |
Three things fall out of the table. Under 10 pools, PSS is free and nothing else is close. From about 35 pools, a flat per-tech price beats per-pool, which is why Paythepoolman sits where it does. And the per-pool tools are not interchangeable at the same price: at 50 pools PoolDial and Skimmer both cost about $100, but PoolDial’s includes the receptionist and the website, and Skimmer’s adds $99 for the phone.
Add-ons worth pricing before you pick: Skimmer charges $0.029 a service text on the entry plan, $99 a month for AI Phone, and $150 for its marketing suite. PSS and Paythepoolman have no add-on tiers. PoolDial has none.
What about Skimmer
Skimmer is the default. It says 30,000 pool pros use it, it ranks for every term in this category, and if you ask in a Facebook group you will be told to use it. I didn’t rank it, and the reason is a rule I apply to every one of these pages: I don’t feature companies owned by private equity or a roll-up. Skimmer took $74 million in growth capital from Mainsail Partners in October 2024 and in 2026 started buying pool-builder software companies. That doesn’t make it bad software. It is the point in a company’s life where I’ve watched pricing drift up and attention drift toward the enterprise accounts, and for a one-truck company that is the wrong bet to make with your route data.
For a solo operator, the specifics matter more than the rule. The $49 Getting Started plan does not include route optimization, the LSI and dosing calculator, quotes or job scheduling. Those are on Scaling Up, which is $2 a location, the same as PoolDial, before you add $99 for the phone. Where Skimmer is still the right call: you’re past 1,000 pools and need enterprise controls, you want the LaMotte and Orenda integrations, or you’re buying an existing route that already runs on it and the customers are used to the service emails.
When Jobber or Housecall Pro is the right call
Jobber and Housecall Pro advertise on every pool search and a lot of pool companies run on them. They are general field service tools, priced per user, and they are good at quoting, scheduling and invoicing any kind of job. What they don’t do out of the box is the pool part: there is no water chemistry log, no LSI dosing, no per-body-of-water history, and no service report with readings and photos the way the tools above send it.
Pick one of them if pool service is one of several things you do. If you also do decking, equipment installs or general repairs, a job-based tool fits better than a route-based one. Pick one too if you already have a year of history in it and it works. Otherwise, a pool-specific tool costs the same or less and does the thing your customers are actually paying you for.
How to choose
Choose PoolDial if you plan to be at 50 or more pools, you lose calls while you work, and you don’t have a website yet. That’s most people reading this.
Choose PSS if you’re under 10 pools, or you want the cheapest paid plan to 50 and you’re comfortable without phone support.
Choose Paythepoolman if you’re past 35 pools, billing is the job you hate, and you want a flat bill that doesn’t move when you add a tech.
Choose PoolTrac if commercial accounts are part of the route and the audit trail is what sells you.
Choose Pool Brain if the third tech is on the way and you want the software to enforce how a stop is done.
Questions I’d answer before signing up for any of them
- How many pools will you have in 18 months? Price the tool at that number, not today’s. The table above is built for it.
- Who takes the call when you’re in the water? If the answer is voicemail, the receptionist is worth more than any routing feature.
- Can you get your data out? Ask for a sample export before you load 80 customers in. This is the complaint that comes up most when people switch.
- Does it sync to the accounting you already use? Every tool here syncs QuickBooks Online. Only PoolDial lists Xero.
- What are the card fees? They are separate from the subscription everywhere, and at 3% they will be a bigger line than the software by the time you’re at 50 autopay customers.
What pool service software should actually do for one truck
Most of the pitches in this category are built for a dispatcher watching ten trucks on a map. You don’t have a dispatcher. For one truck, the software earns its fee in five places:
It logs the water and tells you what to add. Readings per visit, LSI calculated for you, dosing suggested, and a history per pool so the green one in July has a record behind it.
It proves you were there. A service report with readings and photos that reaches the customer before they get home. This is what stops the “did you come today” calls.
It gets you paid without a second job. Cards on file, autopay, invoices that send themselves, and a sync to QuickBooks so your accountant isn’t retyping.
It puts the stops in order. Route optimization and offline mode, because half of your pools have no signal in the equipment pad.
It answers the phone, or at least books the job. Online booking, a customer portal, and ideally something that picks up when you can’t.
What doesn’t belong on this list: pool design and builder software (Pool Studio, JobTread and the like) and the general contractor apps. They solve different problems for different companies, and the sites that lump them together with service software have not run a route.
How I chose
I looked at pool-specific software from independently owned companies where the people who built it still run it. No private equity, no roll-ups. I priced every product from its own pricing page on the date above and worked out the bill at 10, 50 and 100 pools, because the vendor comparison tables each pick the one route size where they win. Where a company doesn’t publish its pricing model clearly, I’ve said so.
Nobody paid to be here, and there are no affiliate links or referral fees. I know the founder of PoolDial personally. I’ve spent enough time talking with him about the product and the business to have conviction that he is reliable and building this for the long term, and that is part of why it sits at the top. The links to PoolDial carry a tag so I can see whether this page sends him anyone. If a listing on this page is ever paid, it will say so on the card.