Tradify vs Pro-cess: An Honest 2026 Comparison from a UK Trade

Anyone running a trade business in the UK has come across Tradify. It's been around since 2013, originally out of New Zealand, and it's become one of the default recommendations when somebody asks "what software should I use for my plumbing business" on a Facebook group. There are reasons for that, and they're worth being honest about.

I'll be upfront. We make Pro-cess, so I've got skin in this game. But I've also used Tradify for actual jobs at a previous business, and I've spoken to enough people who've moved between the two to give you a fair comparison rather than a sales pitch dressed up as a blog post.

If you're choosing between Tradify and Pro-cess for your UK trade business in 2026, here's what's actually different.

What Tradify does well

Credit where it's due. Tradify is a polished product. The mobile app is solid, the user interface is clean and intuitive, and they've got the basics genuinely nailed. Quotes look professional, scheduling works the way you'd expect, invoicing flows through to Xero, Sage or QuickBooks with minimal fuss.

If you're a sole trader or two-person operation doing reactive maintenance work, you can be up and running on Tradify in a couple of days. Their support team is responsive. The forms feel right. There's nothing fundamentally broken.

The price point starts at £34 per user per month on their Lite tier (verified May 2026). They run a 14-day free trial with no card required. If somebody asked me "what's the safe choice for a one-van operation that just wants the basics", Tradify is a perfectly defensible answer.

They've also got the bits you'd expect: automated service reminder emails (their "Tradify will do it for you!" boiler-service nudges are good), CIS-compatible invoicing that exports straight to Sage, electrical and gas safety certificates, purchase orders, and a decent QuickBooks integration. None of that is missing.

Where it falls short for UK businesses

Here's where the honesty bit kicks in. This isn't us slagging off a competitor; it's just what users tell us when they migrate over.

Email tooling is reminders only. Tradify will automatically email customers when their boiler service is due, two weeks ahead. That's brilliant for the specific use case of repeat servicing. But there's no broader email marketing tool: no campaign builder, no segmentation by customer type or job history, no AI-generated copy, no Mailchimp-style newsletter flows. If you want to nudge old customers when you've got gaps in the diary, run a seasonal promotion, or send a "we now do X" announcement, you're using a separate tool and rebuilding your contacts list.

The customisation is limited. Quote templates, invoice layouts, branding options are relatively fixed. You can change colours and logos but you can't really change the structure or add custom fields without going to enterprise pricing. If your business has any non-standard quirks, you'll feel the constraints quickly.

No customer-facing booking page. Tradify has an enquiry form ("Easily capture customer enquiries and quickly convert them into jobs", per their own marketing) but customers can't go to a public link, see your real availability, and book themselves into your diary. They have to send an enquiry which you then convert manually. In 2026, with customers expecting to book everything from haircuts to restaurants online, the conversion gap matters.

No route optimisation. If you've got two or more vans out, you're planning routes manually or on Google Maps. Their scheduling is drag-drop allocation, not optimised routing.

No GoCardless or direct debit. Card payments through Stripe are supported. If you want to collect by direct debit (cheaper fees, less chasing for recurring service contracts), you're integrating something separate.

Domestic Reverse Charge. We couldn't find DRC documented on Tradify's UK feature pages as of May 2026. If you're a construction business that needs DRC handled natively, ask Tradify support directly to confirm before you commit. Don't take our word for it; their team will know better than us.

The reporting centres on jobs. Tradify shows you what you've invoiced, what's outstanding, and per-job costing. For broader business analytics like customer lifetime value, engineer utilisation, or which customer segments are most profitable, you'll need to export and slice it yourself.

What Pro-cess does differently

We built Pro-cess specifically for UK trade and service businesses, and the design choices reflect that.

Customer self-booking is core. Every account gets a public booking page (yourname.pro-cess.co.uk/book/yourbusiness) that you can share on Facebook, your website, your van, business cards. Customers see your real availability and book themselves in. The appointment lands in your diary automatically with all the details you need. This single feature replaces about ten phone calls a week for most businesses.

Email marketing built in. Send service reminders automatically based on previous job dates (so far, the same as Tradify). Plus campaign builder, customer reactivation flows, seasonal promotions, customer segmentation. There's an AI assistant that drafts the emails for you in your brand voice if you want, or you can write them yourself.

UK-native VAT and CIS. Domestic Reverse Charge is handled automatically when you tag a job as DRC. CIS deductions for subcontractors are calculated and tracked properly. VAT calculations include the standard 20%, reduced 5%, and zero-rated work without you having to think about it. HMRC-compliant invoices come out of the box.

Route optimisation for multi-van teams. Drop your jobs into the planner and it'll work out the most efficient sequence and route for each engineer. Built for UK postcodes, traffic patterns and the tendency of UK rural addresses to have terrible satnav coverage.

GoCardless plus Stripe. Card payments go through Stripe (same as Tradify). For recurring contracts and service plans, GoCardless direct debit is built in: lower fees, less chasing, automatic collection.

Per-trade customisation. Plumbers see "callouts", flooring fitters see "fittings", window cleaners see "rounds". The UI adapts to your trade rather than making you adapt to a generic interface. We've got 33 industries supported with terminology that matches what your engineers actually call things.

Proper modules for bigger operations. District Four CRM for project work (Gantt charts, snag lists with photo annotations, client portals), Procurement for purchase orders and supplier management, Tender Portal for distributing work to your subcontractor network. None of this exists in Tradify at any tier.

Honest pricing from £20 per user per month. Cheaper than Tradify on the entry tier, with all the modules included rather than upsold separately.

Where Tradify might still be the better choice

I said I'd be honest. There are scenarios where Tradify is the right answer:

Single-trade sole traders who want the bare minimum. If you're a one-man-band electrician who just needs quotes, scheduling, invoices and a service-reminder nudge once a year, and you don't care about marketing or self-booking or any of the rest of it, Tradify will do everything you need and nothing more. The simplicity is genuinely a virtue for some people.

International operations. Tradify supports Australia, NZ, US and UK with localised settings. We're UK-only and proudly so. If you've got operations across multiple countries, Tradify makes more sense.

Heavy Sage users with specific CIS workflows. Tradify's Sage and CIS-invoicing flow is mature. We sync to Sage too but their integration has had a long head start. If your accountant lives in Sage and you don't want to change anything, that's worth considering.

Where Pro-cess is the better choice

Anyone doing residential work who wants to grow. Self-booking, broader email marketing, customer reactivation are growth tools that go beyond Tradify's reminder-only approach. If you want more jobs without doing more marketing manually, we win.

Multi-trade or multi-van operations. The route optimisation, multi-staff appointments, and team management features scale better than Tradify's. We've got customers running 8-engineer teams on Pro-cess.

Construction businesses dealing with full CIS or DRC workflows. The UK-native VAT handling and DRC flagging is a genuine differentiator vs Tradify's invoice-export-to-Sage approach.

Anyone who wants insight rather than just records. Our reporting tells you which job types make money, which customers are most valuable, which engineers are most productive, beyond just per-job costing.

Migration: how hard is it actually?

Real talk on the switching question, because this is what stops most people moving even when they know they should.

We migrate every customer's data for free. Send us a CSV export from Tradify (they'll give you one if you ask) and we'll have customers, jobs, quotes and invoice history loaded into your new account within 48 hours. Your historical data stays intact.

The actual go-live takes a weekend if you're doing it yourself, less if we're doing it with you. Most customers run both systems in parallel for a fortnight while everyone gets used to the new one, then archive Tradify and don't look back.

How to actually decide

Here's the test that cuts through all of this. Spend an afternoon writing down the five things you spend the most time on each week. Then trial both products against those specific tasks and see which one makes them faster.

For most UK trade businesses doing residential work, that test ends with Pro-cess winning on at least three of the five tasks, usually four. If you're a true one-man-band who only wants the basics, Tradify might come out ahead.

Either way, both have free trials with no card required. Try them. Don't take my word for it, don't take Tradify's word for it. Build a quote, schedule a job, send an invoice on each one and see which feels right.

Start a 14-day Pro-cess trial (no card needed) or see the full Tradify comparison with a feature-by-feature breakdown. If you've got specific questions about migrating, drop us a line and we'll give you a straight answer.

Tradify feature claims in this post verified 10 May 2026 against Tradify's public UK marketing pages. Competitor features and pricing change frequently - please check Tradify's current site before deciding. If you spot anything you think is out of date, email [email protected] and we'll review.