The True Cost of Per-User Pricing for Roofing Sales Teams

Per-user pricing is the default for canvassing software because it is easy for the vendor to forecast and easy to sell to a five-rep team that has not yet felt the compound cost. The problem is that roofing sales teams do not stay at five reps. They scale up for storm season, they cycle reps in and out, and by the time the operation is humming along with twenty five canvassers, the monthly subscription is quietly costing more than a junior salaried employee. Here is what the math actually looks like.

The Base Number Is Not the Real Number

Most per-user canvassing tools advertise around 79 to 99 dollars per user per month on their website, with the fine print noting that the advertised price assumes an annual contract and a minimum seat count. The actual invoice for a growing roofing team is higher, because the base number does not include any of the features a roofing operation actually needs.

Storm data overlays are usually a separate module. E-signature is a paid add-on. Form customization beyond a basic template is a paid tier. Advanced reporting is gated behind an enterprise plan. By the time a roofing team has enabled everything they need to run an actual operation, the per-user cost has drifted from the advertised 89 dollars to something closer to 130 to 160 dollars per user per month. That is before onboarding fees, which for most of these vendors run between 1,500 and 5,000 dollars one time.

Running the Math at Real Scale

Let's run the numbers at a few real team sizes using a conservative blended rate of 140 dollars per user per month. A five rep team pays 700 dollars a month, or 8,400 a year. That is not catastrophic, but it is not cheap either. A ten rep team pays 1,400 a month and 16,800 a year. A fifteen rep team pays 2,100 a month and 25,200 a year. A twenty five rep team pays 3,500 a month and 42,000 a year. That twenty five rep team is spending more on their canvassing software than many roofing companies spend on their production manager's salary.

Now layer in the hidden cost that nobody budgets for: rep churn. Storm sales teams rotate personnel constantly. Most per-user vendors lock seats to a 30 day commitment at minimum, and some lock annual contracts to the rep count peak. That means when a rep quits on a Tuesday and you hire a new one on Friday, you are paying for two seats instead of one. Over a storm season, the seat lock friction adds 10 to 15 percent to the real cost of the tool.

Why Flat Team Pricing Wins Above 10 Reps

Flat team pricing is exactly what it sounds like. You pay one monthly fee for the whole company, you add and remove reps freely, and the price does not change as you scale. The break-even point against per-user pricing is usually around ten reps. Below that, per-user is cheaper. Above that, flat team pricing is dramatically cheaper and scales better because you never have to decide whether hiring the fifteenth rep is worth the extra monthly cost.

There is also a cultural benefit. When your sales manager does not have to think about seat count before approving a new hire, they hire faster and scale through storm season without friction. Every roofing owner we have talked to who switched from per-user to flat team pricing mentioned the same thing: they did not realize how much the seat math had been slowing down their hiring decisions until they stopped having to do the math.

The Add-On Trap

The biggest reason per-user canvassing software ends up feeling expensive is the add-on trap. You buy the base tool thinking you are getting a canvassing platform, then discover that the supplement analysis is not included, the Xactimate pricing integration is a separate product, and the insurance claim tracking requires a partner integration. Every workflow that you thought you were buying turns into a separate line item on your bill.

RoofKnockers was built specifically to collapse those add-ons into one platform. Canvassing, territory management, inspection tracking, claim status, supplement analysis, Xactimate-aligned pricing, and report generation all live in the same product at one flat monthly price, regardless of team size. If your operation is north of ten reps and you are paying per seat for a tool that was designed for solar sales, the math on switching almost always works out in your favor. Run the numbers on your own team before your next renewal.