The Home Services AI Stack Checklist
One page, printable: the exact stack for an HVAC, plumbing, electrical, or roofing company — which tools, in which order, what each costs this month, and what to skip. Below is the stack itself, in the open. The full checklist — per-step picks at three shop sizes with the October 2026 prices plugged in, the Monday-morning rollout order, and the intake script — is the email version, and it goes to subscribers of the free weekly brief.
Before anything: the foundation (free, an afternoon)
- Call forwarding rules written down. When does the office line roll over — after how many rings, and to whom? Every AI answering setup starts here, and most shops have never written it down.
- Google Business Profile current. Hours, service area, services, phone. Several AI tools learn your business from this profile and your website — stale in, wrong answers out.
- Your field-service software is the system of record. Jobber, ServiceTitan, or Housecall Pro holds the schedule. Every tool below is judged by one question: does the booking land there, or in a second place somebody has to check?
The stack, in order
- Answer — an AI receptionist on the overflow and after-hours calls first. Not a rip-and-replace: forward the calls nobody picks up, keep your humans on the ones they catch. Budget doors: Upfirst from $24.95/mo, Rosie from $49/mo, Goodcall from $79/mo — or the add-on already inside your software (Jobber's is $29/mo). Prices checked October 2026; the full comparison table is in the emailed checklist.
- Qualify — one intake script, whoever (or whatever) answers. Name, address, the problem, urgency, membership/plan status, best callback number. The script is in the emailed checklist, written so an AI, an answering service, or a new office hire all ask the same five things.
- Book — the appointment lands on the real schedule. Dispatch-board booking (Sameday, Avoca, the platform-native add-ons) beats calendar booking beats a texted link, in that order — and the price differences between those three are in the checklist's cost table, at solo / 5-tech / 20-tech sizes.
- Estimate — job details captured before the truck rolls. The receptionist's intake is the estimate's head start. Roofers: photo-based measurement (Hover, from $999/yr) turns the site visit into a priced, signable proposal. In-home trades: your FSM pricebook already does this step — the checklist flags where owners pay for it twice.
- Invoice — inside your FSM, full stop. No new tool. If a vendor tries to sell you a second invoicing system, that's the skip list introducing itself.
- Review — a request that fires off the paid invoice, automatically. NiceJob ($75/mo flat) triggers from Jobber or Housecall Pro. Manual "please review us" texts from a tech's phone are not a system; this is the step that compounds into next year's calls.
The skip list (the part that saves you money)
- Skip any AI tool that can't tell you where the booking lands. "We integrate with your CRM" is not an answer. Board, calendar, dashboard, or text — make them say which.
- Skip outbound AI calling until inbound works. Dead-lead revival is step two of the business, not step one. A shop that misses live calls doesn't have a follow-up problem; it has an answering problem.
- Skip enterprise platforms at low call volume. If you're under roughly 150 calls a month, the $449+/mo and quote-only tiers are buying capacity you don't use yet. Start metered, graduate on evidence. (Guidance, not gospel — your call log outranks us.)
- Skip paying for a listing's opinion of itself. Any directory that charges vendors to be "Featured" above the honest order — the big one charges $437 — is selling the ranking you're reading. Ours doesn't, and says so on every page.
Get the full checklist by email
The complete one-pager: per-step tool picks at solo / 5-tech / 20-tech sizes with October 2026 prices plugged in, the total monthly cost of the stack at each size, the Monday-morning rollout order (what to switch on first, second, third), and the five-question intake script. It arrives with your first issue of the free weekly brief — the same brief where the hands-on verdicts for every tool on this page land first.
One email a week after that. Unsubscribe anytime. Prices in the checklist are re-checked monthly; when one changes, the checklist changes and the brief notes it.
Trade-specific versions
The stack above is the shared spine. The checklist is published per trade — the HVAC version weights summer-rush overflow and no-heat emergencies; the plumbing version weights water emergencies and dispatch windows; roofing weights measurement and storm response. Tell us your trade when you subscribe and the right version is the one that shows up.
Browse the home-services directory → · Read the booking deep-dive →