Why We Built Our Own Contractor Software (After Trying Everything Else)

Most contractor software is built by tech companies that have never pulled a permit or argued with a building inspector. We know because we tried all of it before we built our own. Jobkore exists because a licensed general contractor in Oregon spent 20 years in web development, got into construction, and could not find a single tool that matched how contractors actually work.

Every tool we tried and what went wrong

Before Jobkore was a product, it was frustration. The founder, Steve Reinhardt, is a licensed GC who spent two decades building websites and web applications before getting into the trades. When it came time to run estimates and invoices for his own contracting work, he did what anyone would do: he looked at what was out there.

The results were discouraging. The simple tools (Joist, Invoice Simple, generic invoicing apps) were too basic. Flat line-item lists with no sections, no way to handle scope changes, no intelligence in how estimates were organized. They worked for a handyman doing half-day jobs. They fell apart on a $40,000 remodel with multiple phases.

The serious tools (Jobber, Housecall Pro, JobTread) were built for a different problem. Scheduling, dispatch, route optimization, CRM pipelines, marketing automation. Powerful features, genuinely useful for a company with office staff and multiple crews. But a solo contractor or small crew paying $169 to $349 per month for software where they only open the estimate and invoice tabs is not getting value. It is subsidizing features they will never touch.

The gap was not between simple and complex. It was between shallow and deep. No tool offered a deep, focused experience for the core workflow: estimate professionally, handle scope changes, invoice, get paid, keep books in sync. That workflow is 90 percent of what most small contractors need. Everything else is overhead.

What we saw that nobody was building

Three things were missing from every tool we evaluated. Not as nice-to-haves, but as fundamental parts of how contracting actually works.

Change orders with a real paper trail. Scope changes happen on virtually every job. A client asks you to add a circuit. The demo reveals rotten subfloor. A permit requires an upgrade. Every one of these changes needs to be documented, priced, approved separately, and invoiced on its own. No tool we tried handled this. Most did not even acknowledge it existed. We talked to contractor after contractor who had lost money on scope disputes because the only record was a text message. We built change orders as a core feature, not an add-on, not a premium tier, because it is not optional in this industry.

Estimates organized the way contractors think. A contractor does not think in a flat list of 47 line items. They think in phases: site prep, rough-in, finish work. The estimate should reflect that. Sections, subtotals, logical groupings that the client can follow and the contractor can price accurately. We built sectioned estimates because that is how real estimates work on real jobs.

Spanish from the beginning. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Hispanic workers make up over 30 percent of the construction workforce. Walk onto any job site in Texas, California, Florida, or Oregon, and you will hear Spanish. Yet not a single competitor offers a fully bilingual product. Not Jobber. Not Joist. Not Housecall Pro. We built Jobkore bilingual from day one because pretending the trades are English-only is ignoring reality.

Building it differently on purpose

When you come from inside the industry, you make different decisions than a VC-backed startup chasing growth metrics.

One plan at a fair price. We set Jobkore Pro at $19 per month with everything included. No feature tiers. No paying $32 per month to unlock change orders. No paying $169 per month to get QuickBooks sync. Every contractor gets QuickBooks sync, online payments, Hank AI, change orders, and bilingual support at the same price. We did this because the tiered pricing model that dominates this market is designed to extract maximum revenue, not serve contractors well.

No markup on payment processing. Stripe charges 2.9% plus $0.30 per card transaction and 0.8% for ACH. That is what you pay with Jobkore. No additional fee. No per-transaction surcharge. Some competitors add 0.5 to 1 percent on top of the processor's rate, which on $10,000 in monthly payments costs you $50 to $100 extra per month. We think the subscription should cover the software and the payment processor should cover the payments. Those are two different services.

AI that helps with the boring part.Hank AI does not write your estimates for you. It organizes them. Describe the job, upload your field notes or photos, and Hank structures everything into sections and line items. You set the prices. You adjust the scope. Hank handles the tedious part of translating a site visit into a professional document. We built it this way because contractors told us the worst part of estimating is not knowing the numbers; it is the 30 minutes spent typing everything out.

What we got wrong (and fixed)

We would be dishonest if we pretended we got everything right the first time. We did not.

Early on, we over-indexed on features and under-indexed on mobile. Contractors do not sit at desks. They work from trucks, on ladders, between jobs. Every screen that required too many taps or too much scrolling on a phone was a screen that needed to be rebuilt. We went through multiple rounds of simplifying the mobile experience before it felt right.

We also learned that contractors do not want AI to make decisions for them. Our early Hank prototype tried to suggest prices and scope. Contractors hated it. They know their numbers. They know their market. What they wanted was a tool that saved them time on data entry, not one that second-guessed their expertise. That feedback reshaped Hank into what it is today: an organization tool, not an estimation tool.

Why this matters to the person reading this

You do not need to care about our story. You need software that works for how you run your business. But the reason we are telling it is that how software gets built determines what it prioritizes.

Software built by a tech company with $50 million in VC funding prioritizes growth, upsells, and feature volume. That is not evil; it is the incentive structure. Software built by a contractor who could not find the right tool prioritizes the workflow that contractor needed: estimate fast, handle changes, invoice, get paid, sync books, move on to the next job.

We are not the right tool for everyone. If you manage 15 people and need dispatch and route optimization, look at Jobber. If you need enterprise job costing with Gantt charts, look at JobTread. If you need the absolute simplest invoicing possible and nothing else, Invoice Simple works.

But if you are a solo contractor or small crew who needs professional estimates, change orders, online payments, QuickBooks sync, and bilingual support at a price that does not eat your margin, we built this for you. Literally. Because we needed it ourselves.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who built Jobkore?

Jobkore was founded by Steve Reinhardt, a licensed general contractor in Oregon who spent 20 years in web development before getting into construction. He built Jobkore after trying every major contractor tool on the market and finding none that matched how small contractors actually work.

Why is Jobkore different from other contractor software?

Jobkore was built by a contractor, not a tech company chasing growth metrics. That means change orders are a core feature, estimates use sections like real job proposals, the entire product is bilingual, and everything is included at one price instead of being locked behind tiers.

How much does Jobkore cost compared to Jobber and Joist?

Jobkore Pro is $19 per month with everything included: estimates, invoices, change orders, QuickBooks sync, AI organization, payments, and bilingual support. Jobber Connect starts at $169 per month. Joist Elite is $32 per month. Both lock features behind higher tiers that Jobkore includes at one price.

Does Jobkore have scheduling and dispatch features?

No. Jobkore focuses on estimates, invoices, change orders, payments, and QuickBooks sync. If you need scheduling, dispatch, and route optimization for multiple crews, tools like Jobber or Housecall Pro are better suited for that workflow.