JobNimbus vs Zuper: Exterior CRM Compared for 2026

Key Takeaways

• JobNimbus and Zuper are both current products sold under these names. The pages reviewed for this guide do not describe a rename, a merger, or a shutdown.

• The software subscription is quote-based on both sides. The Essentials plan on JobNimbus stops at 3 users and 10 automations, and a directory starting price is not the vendor's price.

• Zuper Pay publishes processing fees, including a 2.9% card-present rate. That card is not the monthly software price.

• EagleView inside Zuper is documented only on the Core and Premium plans, and offline mode has to be turned on by Zuper before a crew can rely on it.

• Keep JobNimbus when the sales board is the record you trust. Keep Zuper when the crew job is the record you trust. Add a reviewed handoff only if you truly run both.

Start with the system of record

A contractor CRM tracks the homeowner from the first inquiry through a signed estimate, and field service software assigns the crew, records the visit, and turns the finished work into an invoice. That split is the whole search. JobNimbus is built as the CRM and project board for home-exterior contractors, and its pricing page names roofing, restoration roofing, solar, gutters, and siding. Zuper is a field service platform whose roofing pages and measurement docs put the job, the visit, and the estimate in one record. You are choosing which record your office will believe when the board and the roof disagree.

TL;DR: choose JobNimbus when leads, estimates, and the sales board run the company and you can live inside the published caps; choose Zuper when dispatch, the visit, and job-level cost run the company and you will take the software price from a written quote.

Neither name has been retired. JobNimbus still sells JobNimbus, with optional Marketing and Communications bundles on the same pricing page. Zuper still sells the field platform, and Zuper Pay is a separate fee schedule for taking cards, ACH, and checks. Treat Pay as an add-on price list, not as a new name for the operating system. If a salesperson uses an older plan label, ask them to map it to the current card before you compare quotes.

Owners who type this comparison are usually past the "what is a CRM" stage. They already feel the double entry: the rep moves a lead to sold, and production still builds tomorrow's route in a group text. A wider look at field service software for construction helps if you are still deciding whether you need a field system at all. This page assumes you are choosing between these two.

Public review scores are a check on fit, not a winner's trophy. Capterra score: 4.6/5 from 482 reviews according to Capterra (2026). The same directory's pricing view lists ease of use at 4.6, features at 4.4, customer service at 4.5, and likelihood to recommend at 86%, according to Capterra (2026). Read the features mark next to the caps below. People can like a board and still outgrow the automation limit.

Who this is for

This guide is for an owner or a sales manager at a roofing or exterior company who will sign a software agreement soon. You already know the jobs: inspections, insurance supplements, material orders, crew days, invoices, and the QuickBooks handoff. You want to know which product owns which step, where the public record stops, and what you must ask on the quote call.

Use this checklist before you book the second demo.

• Name the system of record. If the sold board is what the company believes, lean JobNimbus. If the scheduled job is what the company believes, lean Zuper.

• Count the people who will log in during a storm week, including subs who only need today's work order.

• Count the other tools that must connect in month one, not the tools you might add next year.

• Write down whether crews lose signal on the roofs you actually service.

• Write down whether aerial measurements are ordered on most jobs or only on the large ones.

• Decide who may approve a customer text or a crew assignment when two systems disagree.

Red flags: You require a public per-seat software price before any sales call. You run a one-crew repair list that lives fine in photos plus a spreadsheet. You need commercial asset histories and service-contract billing that these vendors' public roofing pages do not document for your trade.

How we evaluated these tools

The weights below are a buying frame for this search, not a lab score and not a ranking badge. Sales-board control and crew dispatch sit at the top because those are the two jobs this reader is trying to stop doing twice. Measurements, phone work, and the money handoff come next because a roofing week fails when the square count, the photos, or the invoice live somewhere else. Automation headroom is heavier than the sticker because JobNimbus publishes hard caps and hides the dollars. Price clarity is still on the list because a quote you cannot reread is how a renewal surprises you.

A pass mark is the smallest public proof we asked for. One board per workflow means you can separate retail roofing from gutters without buying a second product. One same-day change path means a dispatcher can move a crew without a phone tree. One in-job measurement order means the squares land on the job someone will build. Two mobile platforms means iOS and Android, which both vendors state in public materials. One invoice plus one payment means the office can show what was billed and what was collected. Ten active automations is the smallest cap JobNimbus prints, so it is the number to beat with your real rule list. One written quote means you do not sign from a directory screenshot.

We did not invent a combined score. A product can pass measurements and fail the automation cap. Your quote should be graded against your own counts, using this table as the order of questions.

Seven buying checks, side by side

The matrix is limited to what the vendors publish or what a dated directory page states. Where a page is silent, the cell says so. Silence is a question for the quote, not a no.

Our read of that grid: JobNimbus tells you the shape of the plan and withholds the dollars. Zuper withholds the software dollars and tells you the card fees. Measurement and offline work are the clearest product split. QuickBooks is named by both, with a harder public limit on the JobNimbus side that shows up in the profile below.

The pain under the grid is the handoff. A rep marks a job sold on the board, and production still needs a crew, a start time, and a measurement before anyone loads a truck. A proposed configuration from US Tech Automations would start when a JobNimbus automation fires a webhook carrying the job name, status name, and job number. The action would look for a matching job_uid in Zuper and park anything it cannot match. The output would be a review list a dispatcher clears before a crew is assigned. You would need a JobNimbus API key, a Zuper API key, and a written field map. Custom fields do not travel in that JobNimbus webhook, so those values have to come from an export. A person still approves address mismatches. This is a proposed configuration with those prerequisites, and it depends on your review step.

Fleet dots on a truck are a separate purchase from either CRM. If the argument in the room is really about vans and drive time, read vehicle tracking for service fleets beside this page, and read how field teams cut drive time before you assume a CRM will route the day. Zuper's own scheduling pages talk about routes and territories. JobNimbus documents a mobile map of jobs and contacts. Those are not the same product as a dedicated vehicle tracker.

What the quote will and will not show

Pricing checked October 10, 2026. JobNimbus does not print a software dollar amount. Every plan button on its pricing page says to request pricing, and the FAQ says the quote depends on the plan, the user count, and add-ons. The same FAQ also describes an account price for the CRM plus role-specific project-management pricing for admin, sales, and field seats. Ask the rep to show, in writing, which seats sit inside the package and which seats add a line. Directory pages sometimes show a starting price. That figure is not on the vendor page we opened, so it is not used here.

Zuper's software subscription is also quote-based. A directory review checked on 21 Sep 2026 says pricing on request and records no free plan. Do not mix that blank subscription line with the payment fees below. Zuper Pay is a processing schedule, effective January 2025, and it is public.

Zuper Pay's Card-present fee: 2.9% according to Zuper (2025), and the same page lists card-not-present at 3.2%, ACH at 1% with a $5 cap, disputes at $15, Tap to Pay at $4 per user per month, a check deposit at $1, a bounced check at $20, a Stripe terminal at $59, and a 2% add-on on international cards. A card-file migration on that schedule is Card migration: $2,000 for up to 10,000 records according to Zuper (2025), and the same sentence on the page prices 10,001 to 20,000 records at $4,000, with a custom quote above that.

Our read: compare software quotes only to software quotes. Put processing in its own column. A low card rate does not make the subscription cheap, and a quiet subscription page does not make processing free. JobNimbus states there is no required setup or onboarding fee, while paid professional services are an optional add-on. Get that sentence on your quote so a later invoice does not rename onboarding as a service package.

JobNimbus, for the sales board

JobNimbus presents itself as one system from lead to payment for exterior contractors. Every package on the pricing page includes unlimited contacts, estimates, documents, e-sign, reports, invoices, financing options, supplier integrations, QuickBooks, and payments. The mobile app is listed on every plan. API access and webhooks are listed as unlimited on every plan. The gates are users, boards, automations, integrations, and locations.

The pricing page caps the Essentials plan at 3 users, 3 boards, and 10 automations, the Pro plan at 10 users, 5 boards, and 30 automations, the Premium plan at 19 users and 100 automations, and the Enterprise plan at 20+ users with unlimited automations. Essentials cap: 3 users and 10 automations according to JobNimbus (2026). Integrations are listed at a max of 2 on Essentials, a max of 5 on Pro, and unlimited after that. One view of the page also labels the Pro integration cell as "Max 5+," so confirm the integer on the quote. Locations are not supported on Essentials, up to 2 on Pro, up to 5 on Premium, and unlimited on Enterprise. The plan card says Enterprise includes 20+ users, while one comparison row says to contact sales for that user line. Ask which sentence controls.

The same pricing page shows App mark: 4.8 from 8,000+ contractors according to JobNimbus (2026), plus a 14-day trial with no credit card and no required setup fee. That 4.8 mark is the vendor's own app-store claim. It is not the Capterra average above, and the two numbers should stay separate when you brief a partner.

Best fit: a residential or light exterior shop whose week is won or lost on the board. Leads move, estimates go out, suppliers get orders, and invoices need to reach QuickBooks. You can stay under the cap for the tier you buy, or you are willing to step up when the fourth office user or the third integration appears. Subcontractors can be given a narrower mobile view of today's work orders, which matters if you do not want every labor crew inside the sales board.

Limitations worth stalling the signature: automated texts require the Engage add-on, and the communications bundle is marked for current customers. Text-to-pay, on the payments help page, requires both Engage and JobNimbus Payments. The webhook action can send contacts, jobs, tasks, work orders, material orders, and activity, and the help page states that custom fields are not included. The QuickBooks help page offers two-way sync, one-way import, or one-way export, and it states that expenses, work orders, material orders, and bills paid do not sync. If your bookkeeper's close depends on those records appearing in QuickBooks by themselves, this integration will not do that job. EagleView can be connected and ordered from a job, with EagleView's own support owning report delivery. Primary write-ups are the pricing page, the automation actions page, and the QuickBooks connection page.

Implementation: use the 14-day trial on a live workflow, not on a sample board. Count automations you actually want active, because a paused idea still teaches you the cap. Export custom fields before you design any outside handoff. Ask for monthly versus annual in writing, and ask for the role-based seat lines in writing. Professional services are optional. If you are migrating a storm season of photos and documents, decide who owns that copy before the trial clock ends. Users can be added or removed inside the plan limit. Crossing the limit is an upgrade, not a toggle.

Zuper, for the crew on the roof

Zuper's public roofing and field pages describe jobs, scheduling, estimates, invoices, inventory, and a mobile app for the person on the roof. The developer reference exposes jobs over an API, including job_uid and scheduled_start_time, which is the kind of id an outside handoff has to store. The product is aimed at crews who need the visit to keep moving when the office is in another tab. A broader field service shortlist is useful if Zuper's quote comes back outside your range and you still need dispatch more than a sales board. If the work you want automated is the construction handoff itself, the construction field-service automation guide frames that problem without replacing this comparison.

Editor score: 8.8/10 according to iTechGuides (2026). That figure is the site's editor score, checked with facts dated 21 Sep 2026 and a page updated 7 Oct 2026, not a count of public user reviews. The same page lists Integration count: 60+ apps according to iTechGuides (2026), names QuickBooks among them, says pricing is on request, says there is no free plan, and says offline mode has to be enabled by Zuper. The page also describes three paid tiers and uses the label Basic for the lowest one. Zuper's own measurement documentation uses Core and Premium for EagleView. Ask the quote to name the tier in Zuper's current words so you are not buying "Basic" and expecting a Core-only integration.

Best fit: an exterior company whose bottleneck is the crew day. You need a dispatcher to see jobs, a tech to update the visit, photos and notes to survive a dead spot, and the estimate to sit on the same record as the work. You will request a software quote and you will read the Pay schedule as a second contract. You order aerial measurements often enough that "which plan includes EagleView" is a make-or-break line.

Limitations: Zuper's measurement documentation says the EagleView integration is available only on the Core and Premium plans, on the EagleView help page. An admin installs it, an EagleView administrator completes the login, and EagleView requires a card on file before an order. You can link more than one measurement to a job. Edits you make on the Zuper side stay in Zuper and do not write back to the EagleView project. Removing a measurement unlinks it from the job and leaves the EagleView project in place. Offline mode is not a switch you should discover on a ridge line. The directory review and Zuper's own mobile documentation both say the company has to enable it, after which the user turns it on and downloads data until the app shows it is ready. If your lowest quote excludes Core, budget a measurement tool beside Zuper or move up a tier.

Implementation: separate three prices in the statement of work. One is the software subscription. One is Zuper Pay, using the percentages and dollar fees in the table above. One is optional card migration if you are moving stored cards, at $2,000 or $4,000 for the bands already cited. Ask Zuper to enable offline before you train, and test it on a job with the phone in airplane mode. Confirm in writing that the tier on the quote includes EagleView if you need it. API access uses a key from the developer hub, and the Get Jobs reference is the page that defines job_uid. Give that key to whoever builds the handoff, and keep a second person who can revoke it. Job costing, if you want labor codes and margin on the job, has to be enabled for the account. Do not assume the first login includes it.

One week of supplement paperwork

Use the next paragraph as a worksheet with round numbers you replace. It is not a customer story and not a measured result from either vendor.

Picture a sales desk that books 40 inspections in one week. If 25% of those inspections need a supplement packet, the office opens 10 packets. At 45 minutes of coordinator time each, 10 packets take 7.5 hours. At a loaded coordinator cost of $36 an hour, that chase costs $270 before anyone orders shingles. If the visits already live in Zuper, match each packet to job_uid and read scheduled_start_time on the Get Jobs reference before you promise a crew a return trip. Change 40, 25%, or $36 to your own week. The point is to see whether the delay is a people problem or a record that never left the sales board.

A second proposed US Tech Automations workflow would start when the job is marked invoiced. The action would compare the invoice total with the approved estimate and hold the row when the amounts differ. The output would be a morning exception list for the office manager, not an automatic text to the homeowner. Prerequisites are API or export access on the system you keep, a retry when the call fails, and a named reviewer. Because a JobNimbus webhook leaves custom fields behind, any supplement code you store in a custom field has to be mapped from an export before this check is worth trusting. The reviewer sends the customer message after the amounts match.

The do-it-yourself handoff

The real alternative for many owners is not a third product. It is Zapier, Make, or n8n between the board and the crew tool, or a small script your office maintains. Those tools can keep a run history, retry a failed step, branch when a status is unexpected, and store an audit trail, if you configure those pieces. They do not arrive knowing your statuses. You design and own observability, idempotency so a webhook does not create two jobs, escalation when a run fails after hours, access control on the API keys, and the repair when a vendor renames a field. JobNimbus already documents webhook actions for contacts, jobs, tasks, work orders, material orders, and activity. That is enough to start a zap. It is not enough to move custom fields.

A proposed US Tech Automations design would configure the same handoff with the review stop and the field map written down, including the job_uid match and the estimate-versus-invoice check. Prerequisites stay the same: both API credentials, an export for anything the webhook omits, and a person who clears exceptions before a crew or a customer is notified. Your team still approves the rules. The upkeep of retries, failed-run alerts, and key rotation is part of the configuration rather than a zap only one salesperson remembers. If you only need one status text and you are willing to babysit it, the zap is the smaller machine. If two systems must stay aligned through a storm week, the reviewed design is the one to price.

Mistakes that change the quote

• Treating a directory's starting price as the price JobNimbus will honor. The vendor page we opened has no software dollar amount.

• Buying the Essentials plan on JobNimbus and then discovering the integration cap or the missing location support in week two.

• Assuming EagleView is on every Zuper tier. The measurement page limits it to Core and Premium.

• Training crews on offline mode before Zuper has enabled it for the account.

• Forgetting that automated text and text-to-pay on JobNimbus depend on Engage, which is a separate bundle.

• Building an automation that expects custom fields inside a JobNimbus webhook. The help page says those fields are not sent.

• Adding Zuper Pay's card rate to a software budget as if it were the subscription, or ignoring it and acting surprised by the processing line.

Glossary

• Contractor CRM: the system that holds the homeowner, the lead source, the estimate, and the sales status.

• Field service software: the system that holds the job, the crew, the visit, and the closeout.

• Board: a visible pipeline of jobs or leads, capped on the lower JobNimbus plans.

• Automation cap: the count of active rules a plan allows. On JobNimbus the first cap is 10.

• Quote-based: the vendor will not show a software price until you ask, so no public dollar belongs in your spreadsheet.

• Webhook: an automatic message one system sends to another when a record changes. JobNimbus can send one. Custom fields are left out.

• Job costing: labor, materials, and price compared on a single job so margin is visible before the invoice is old.

• System of record: the one place your company trusts when two screens disagree.

Questions owners ask before they sign

Are JobNimbus and Zuper still sold under these names?

Yes. Both products are on sale under these names on the official pages opened for this guide. Zuper Pay is a published processing schedule, not a replacement name for the field software. Nothing reviewed here describes a shutdown or a rename you would have to translate before buying.

Which product fits a roofing sales team?

JobNimbus fits when the day is won on leads, estimates, supplier orders, and the board. You accept a quote, you stay inside the user and automation caps for the tier you buy, and you confirm how QuickBooks will treat work orders and material orders before the bookkeeper signs off.

Which product fits crews on the roof?

Zuper fits when the day is won on dispatch, the visit, and photos that must survive weak signal. You confirm the tier includes EagleView if you need it, you have Zuper enable offline mode before training, and you price the software from a quote while reading Pay as a separate fee card.

Why is the software price missing?

Both companies ask you to request a software price instead of printing a subscription card. Pricing checked October 10, 2026. Processing fees that Zuper Pay prints are a different bill from the subscription, and they should be lined up beside the quote rather than used in place of it.

What should a small shop verify on the smallest JobNimbus tier?

Verify the ceilings before you demo features you cannot keep. The smallest tier limits users, boards, automations, and integrations, and it does not support multiple locations. The integers are in the plan table above. Crossing any one of them is an upgrade conversation, and the dollars for that step are on the quote.

Can Zapier, Make, or n8n carry the handoff?

Yes, if your team will own the upkeep. Those tools can store run history, retry failures, branch on errors, and keep an audit trail when you build that behavior. You still own idempotency, escalation, access to the keys, and maintenance. A JobNimbus webhook will not carry custom fields, so the zap needs an export for those values the same way any other handoff does.

When should you skip an extra automation layer?

Skip it when one product already carries the path from the first call to the recorded payment. When NOT to use US Tech Automations: the vendor's own automations are the right scope if you will not keep a second system; a single zap is the right scope if you only send one message on a status change and you will maintain it; and no extra layer belongs in the stack if nobody can hold an API key and review a failed run.

The decision on the table

Pick the record you will trust on a storm Monday, then make the other tool earn its seat. If the trusted record is the sold job on a board, start with JobNimbus, map your real user and automation counts onto the published caps, and demand a written quote that separates package price from role-based seats and from Engage. If the trusted record is the crew's day, start with Zuper, demand a software quote in current tier names, confirm EagleView and offline enablement on that tier, and attach the Pay schedule so card fees are not a surprise. If you keep both, write the handoff before you migrate, with job_uid stored on the job, custom fields supplied by export, and a person who stops a bad match. For a configuration of that review step against your own statuses, see how US Tech Automations configures this.