Projects vs Buildertrend
Buildertrend does a lot. Most builders use a fraction of it — and pay for all of it.
Buildertrend is a deep, client-portal-first platform for residential builders. If you want every module and a heavy client portal, it delivers. If you want to run the job fast without paying for or learning the rest, Projects is the lighter way.
Switch to Projects if…
- You're paying for modules and a client portal you barely open.
- You want a price you can read and a plan you can leave monthly.
- Your crew wants a fast native iPhone app, not a heavy web tool.
- You'd trade breadth for speed — fewer screens, opened more often.
Stay on Buildertrend if…
- A full-blown client portal with selections, warranties, and bids is central to how you sell.
- You rely on built-in lead/CRM and proposal workflows as your front office.
- Your team is already trained up and the breadth genuinely earns its keep.
We'd rather you pick the right tool than churn in a month. The honest answer is above; the detail is below.
Buildertrend's pitch is breadth: pre-sale CRM, bids and proposals, a client portal, selections, scheduling, budgets, and more — a lot of software for a residential builder.
The cost of breadth is weight. You pay for the whole suite whether you use it or not, the interface carries every module at once, and the price climbs by tier. For a lot of builders, most of it goes unopened.
Projects takes the opposite bet: the parts you touch every day — tasks, schedule, money, plans, photos, your sub book — made fast and native, on the phone and the web. Less surface, opened far more often.
If you'd rather run the job than run the software, that's the trade Projects is built for.
Comparison reflects our reading of each product for small-to-midsize builders, as of writing. Buildertrend is a capable product — see where it wins below.
Where Buildertrend is the better call.
No tool is right for everyone. Here's where they have us.
Client portal & selections
If a polished homeowner portal with selections, approvals, and warranty tracking is core to your sales, Buildertrend has years of depth there.
Front-office CRM & proposals
Built-in lead management, bids, and proposals can run your whole pre-sale pipeline — Projects stays focused on running the job, not selling it.
Breadth in one place
If you genuinely use the full suite, having it under one roof is worth something. We'd rather do less, faster.
Where Projects wins.
A price you can read — and leave
$39 per office seat (your field crew is free), or free to start, cancel anytime. No big annual commitment, no tier math to get the feature you need.
Speed you feel
Opens in seconds, navigates instantly, ~100KB of JavaScript on the web. Less to load, less to learn, more days it actually gets used.
A real iPhone app for the field
Native and offline-first — it keeps working in a basement or at the framing stage and syncs when you're back in range.
The money answer, instantly
Contract, spent, and margin the moment you open a job — no digging through modules to find out if you're making money.
Switching is the easy part.
Start free and run one live job in Projects alongside Buildertrend — no migration required to try it. Export your numbers to CSV whenever you want; your data stays yours. Move the rest over when you're ready, and we'll lend a hand.
Run your next job on it — free.
Start in five minutes. Keep your old tool running until you don't need it.