Fergus vs Commusoft for Builders: Job Costing & Pricing Compared

If you’re a building firm juggling several live jobs and a rotating mix of subcontractors, the choice between Fergus and Commusoft usually comes down to three things: how each prices contractor users, how each tracks job costs, and how each handles invoicing once a phase of work is done. Here’s what each vendor’s own site shows today.

What each one costs and offers

Area	Fergus	Commusoft
UK pricing shown today	Essentials from £39/month, Professional from £45/month, Enterprise 10+ on request [1]	Not published; three tiers — Go Paperless, Customer Journey, Automation — priced individually [3]
Contractor / subcontractor billing	Contractor users at £2 per user per day [1]	Daily licences billed per day used, aimed at subcontractors [3]
Job costing	Job Phase feature tracks time, cost and profit phase by phase [2]	Automated real-time cost tracking against a target budget [4]
Invoicing	Invoices from quotes, phases or quick-billing; Fergus Pay for card/QR payment [2]	Deposits, parts invoicing, final invoice, consolidated monthly and contract invoicing [4]

Fergus publishes its UK prices on its own site: Essentials starts from £39 a month and Professional from £45 a month, with a custom Enterprise plan for firms of 10 or more staff [1]. That page doesn’t say whether the £39 and £45 figures are billed per user or as a flat fee for the whole account, so a two-person team and a ten-person team on the same Essentials plan could end up paying very different real amounts for the same headline price [1]. Commusoft’s own plans page names three tiers instead — Go Paperless, Customer Journey and Automation — but does not publish a GBP figure for any of them, and pricing depends on which licence type and tier you choose after talking to its sales team [3].

Job costing: phases vs real-time tracking

For job costing, Fergus’s builder pages centre on a Job Phase feature that splits a build into stages and tracks time, cost and profitability phase by phase, rather than only at the level of the whole job [2]. That’s aimed squarely at a multi-stage build, where you want to know if the groundwork phase made money before the roof goes on, not just whether the finished job did.

Commusoft’s job-costing pages describe automated, real-time tracking that pulls labour hours from digital timesheets and materials costs from purchase orders, then compares the running total against a target cost and revenue figure you set up front [4]. The emphasis on Commusoft’s page is a live view of margin as the job runs, rather than a breakdown by build phase.

Managing subcontractors

On subcontractors, Fergus prices a Contractor User at £2 per user per day, sitting alongside your own team on the same job cards so you can track cost per trade and keep documents attached to the right job [1][2]. Commusoft’s equivalent is a daily licence, billed each month based on the number of days actually used, which its own plans page recommends specifically for subcontractors rather than full-time staff [3]. Neither vendor goes much further than that on subcontractor-specific tooling: Commusoft’s job-costing page mentions “subcontract spend” in a single customer quote, but does not describe a dedicated subcontractor-management workflow beyond the daily licence itself [4].

Invoicing and getting paid

Fergus builds invoices from quotes, job phases, quick-billing or a blank sheet, and adds Fergus Pay so a customer can pay by card or QR code straight from the invoice [2]. Commusoft offers deposit invoices, parts invoicing and a final invoice on completion, plus consolidated monthly invoicing and contract invoicing for customers on recurring agreements, with online payment links sent by email or SMS [4]. That split matches how each product is pitched: Fergus’s invoicing sits close to the job and its phases, while Commusoft’s stretches further into ongoing commercial contract billing.

Which one if…

• You want a GBP price you can see today: Fergus states one on its own pricing page [1]; Commusoft’s page does not [3].
• Your subcontractor headcount changes week to week: Fergus bills contractor users at £2 a day and Commusoft bills its daily licences the same way, by the day rather than a full monthly seat [1][3].
• You’re running a multi-stage build and want profit visibility stage by stage: Fergus’s Job Phase costing is built around exactly that structure [2].
• You run recurring commercial contracts alongside one-off jobs: Commusoft’s consolidated and contract invoicing is aimed at that mix [4].

What to do next

Neither pricing page tells you which billing model actually costs less for your specific mix of employed staff and subcontractors — Fergus’s per-user tiers plus £2-a-day contractors, or Commusoft’s per-licence quote plus daily subcontractor licences [1][3]. Loomwork Ai runs a short paid audit that maps your current job-costing and invoicing workflow against both platforms before you commit to either.