Theseattax.
Every time you hire, your software bill goes up. Every new tool you add, the same people get charged again. Per-seat pricing turns growth into a penalty, and trade businesses feel it more than anyone.
Here is how most software for trade businesses is priced. One login, one price. Two logins, two prices. Hire a new estimator, add a seat. Bring on a second office person, add a seat. Give the crew leads access to the schedule, add a few more.
It sounds fair. You pay for what you use.
It isn't fair. It's a tax on growth.
The math nobody does
A per-seat price looks small on the pricing page because it is shown one seat at a time, for one tool.
Nobody runs a trade business on one tool. The CRM charges per seat. The texting tool charges per seat. The scheduling app, the estimating tool, the proposal tool and the crew app usually do too. The same six people get charged six times.
Then add the connectors. Getting the tools to talk to each other is often its own line item, because the companies that sell them know the stack only works when it is glued together.
Johnathan Westbrook, who runs Carolinas Best Roofing in Greensboro and co-founded SayDoo with me, put it simply the first time we talked about it: everything is by the seat, and every tool wants to sell you the next tool.
Why the trades feel it most
A software company with fifty desk workers can absorb a per-seat bill. Every seat is a full-time screen user.
A trade business is different. Half the people who touch the software use it for ten minutes a day. The crew lead checks today's jobs. The roofer adds three photos. The owner glances at what got collected.
Per-seat pricing charges the ten-minute user the same as the person who lives in the screen all day. So owners start rationing logins. The crew lead shares a password. The photos go in a group text instead of the job file. The records get worse, and the software gets blamed for it.
When pricing makes people avoid the system, the system stops working.
The hidden cost is the glue
The biggest cost of a stack of seat-priced tools doesn't show up on any invoice. It is the hours somebody in your office spends moving information between them.
The lead comes in on one tool and gets retyped into the CRM. The signed estimate gets retyped into the scheduler. The finished job gets retyped into the invoicing tool. Every retype is a chance for a wrong phone number, a missed follow-up or a job that never gets billed.
You are paying for the software, and then paying a person to make the software work.
What to look for instead
When you shop for software, ask three questions.
Does the price change when I hire? If yes, the vendor makes more money when you grow, whether or not they helped you grow.
How many tools does this replace? One login that does the job of eight is cheaper than eight cheap logins, even when its sticker price is higher.
What happens to my data if I leave? If the answer is anything other than "you take all of it, whenever you want," you are renting your own business back.
How we price SayDoo
We decided early that SayDoo would never be priced by the seat. Hiring should never raise your software bill.
You pay once to have your console built, $2,500, $4,500 or $7,500 depending on how much we set up for you, and then a monthly care plan that starts at $99 and keeps it running. Every package gets every screen. Your whole team gets a login. The AI runs on your own account at cost.
Grow the crew. The bill stays the bill.
Full pricing is at trysaydoo.com/pricing.
Shawn Keding is the co-founder and CEO of SayDoo, an AI console for trade businesses, built inside a working roofing company in North Carolina.