Arrively vs Jobber: Scheduling vs Full Field Service

TL;DR

Use Arrively if you charge a predictable per-visit price and scheduling is your bottleneck. Use Jobber if you need quote → invoice → payments in one place. They're not competitors — they're built for different businesses.

Two Different Tools for Two Different Businesses

Arrively and Jobber are often compared as if they're alternatives. They're not. They solve different problems and target different kinds of work.

Jobber is a full field service platform. You quote the work, the customer approves the quote, it becomes a scheduled job, you complete it, it becomes an invoice, the customer pays. Jobber covers that entire pipeline plus CRM and reporting. It's been building toward that since 2011, and it does it well — which is why it's the right tool for plumbers, electricians, HVAC techs, handymen, and other trades where pricing depends on materials and scope.

Arrively is a scheduler for mobile service pros who already know what each visit costs. Groomers, mobile detailers, cleaners, junk removal, pressure washers, pet sitters, notaries, dog trainers — a flat-rate, per-visit business where the real daily problem isn't paperwork, it's fitting more jobs into a day without breaking drive time. No quoting. No invoicing. No CRM. Just scheduling, drive-time awareness, customer self-booking, automated reminders, and gap-fill when someone cancels.

If you need a quote → invoice pipeline, Jobber is the right answer. If you charge the same price every visit and scheduling is where you're bleeding time, Arrively is the right answer. The rest of this post helps you figure out which one you are.

Pricing: The Biggest Difference

This is where the gap is widest.

Jobber:

• Core: $39/month (1 user)
• Connect: $119/month (up to 5 users)
• Grow: $199/month (up to 15 users)
• Additional users cost extra on every plan

Arrively:

• Trial: 20 jobs free, no credit card
• Pay-as-you-go: $0.49/job, no monthly fee, 1 user
• Growth: $49/mo with 150 jobs included ($0.25/job overage), 3 users
• Pro: $149/mo with 600 jobs included ($0.15/job overage), unlimited users
• No contracts, switch or cancel anytime

Let's put real numbers on it. Say you're a 3-person mobile detailing team running 80 jobs a month.

On Jobber Connect, you're paying $119/month plus any per-user add-on fees. On Jobber Grow, it's $199/month.

On Arrively's Growth plan, those 80 jobs sit inside the included 150, so you pay a flat $49/month — three techs, no per-user surcharge. Even pay-as-you-go comes in under Jobber: 80 jobs at $0.49 each is $39.20/month. If you grow past 300 jobs/month, Pro ($149/mo with 600 included) still undercuts Jobber Grow by $50 and includes unlimited users.

The pricing shape matters too. Jobber charges by the size of your team. Arrively lets you pick: no monthly fee on PAYG for sub-100 jobs/mo where Jobber's $39 base doesn't make sense, or a flat tier that matches your volume. Either way, drive-time aware scheduling is included.

Scheduling: Arrively's Core Advantage

Both tools let you drag jobs onto a calendar and assign them to time slots. But Arrively's scheduling does something Jobber's doesn't: it knows how long it takes to drive between jobs.

When you book a 1pm job in one part of town, Arrively checks actual drive time to your next appointment and blocks the travel window. If a customer tries to self-book a slot that would require you to teleport across the city, that slot doesn't show as available.

This sounds like a small thing. It's not. Double-bookings and late arrivals are the #1 source of lost revenue and bad reviews for mobile service businesses. Drive-time awareness prevents both automatically.

Jobber's scheduling is solid for assigning and viewing jobs, but the travel-time calculation is something you still need to do in your head or ignore entirely (and pay for it later with angry customers).

Arrively also syncs with your phone calendar, so personal appointments and kids' soccer games block out time without you manually entering them.

Where Jobber Wins: Quoting, Invoicing, and CRM

This is where you need to be honest about what your business needs. If the answer is "I need to send professional quotes, convert them to invoices, collect payments, and track all my customer interactions in one place" — Jobber is genuinely good at that.

Jobber's quoting workflow: Create a quote, send it to the customer, they approve it online, it converts to a job on your schedule, you complete the work, it converts to an invoice, the customer pays online. That's a clean pipeline.

Jobber's CRM: Full customer profiles with property details, job history, communication logs, and notes. If you're doing recurring maintenance for hundreds of properties, this matters.

Jobber's invoicing: Professional invoices with online payment, batch invoicing, and integration with QuickBooks and Xero.

Arrively doesn't do any of this. It's not trying to. The philosophy is that a great scheduler paired with your existing invoicing tool (QuickBooks, Wave, FreshBooks, or even a simple Square invoice) is better than a mediocre version of everything in one package.

If you're spending more time on paperwork than scheduling, Jobber might be the right call.

Customer-Facing Features

Both tools give your customers a way to interact with your business digitally, but the approaches differ.

Arrively offers self-booking pages where customers pick an available time slot that already accounts for your existing schedule and drive time. Customers also get automated SMS and email reminders before their appointment. When someone cancels, Arrively's gap-fill feature can automatically reach out to customers with upcoming appointments to offer the earlier slot.

Jobber offers client-facing portals where customers can request work, approve quotes, view their upcoming jobs, and pay invoices. Jobber also sends appointment reminders and has an online booking feature.

Jobber's customer features are broader — customers can do more things. Arrively's are more focused on the booking experience and making sure customers actually show up.

Ease of Use

Arrively takes about 15 minutes to set up. Enter your service area, set your hours, and you're booking. The mobile app is built for pros working one-handed between jobs — leash in one hand, phone in the other.

Jobber has more to configure because there's more to the platform. Setting up your service catalog, quote templates, invoice settings, and CRM fields takes time. Budget a day or two to get it dialed in. Their support team is helpful during onboarding, and they have extensive documentation.

This isn't a knock on Jobber — it has more settings because it does more things. But if you just want to schedule better starting today, the setup time matters.

Team Size and Scale

Arrively is designed for teams of any size. The scheduling features work at any scale, and the product is optimized for the contractor who is also the dispatcher. Growth includes 3 users and Pro is unlimited, so your second and third techs don't trigger per-user fees — pick the plan that fits your volume and bring the whole team.

Jobber scales from 1 to 50+ people. If you're at 3 techs today and plan to be at 15 in two years, Jobber grows with you. It has team management features, GPS tracking, performance reporting, and workflows that make sense at that scale.

If you know you're staying lean — and a lot of successful contractors do — Arrively's simplicity is an asset. If you're on a growth trajectory and need one platform to carry you from 3 to 30, Jobber has more runway.

Feature Comparison Table

Feature	Arrively	Jobber
Drive-time scheduling	Yes	No
Customer self-booking	Yes	Yes
SMS/email reminders	Yes	Yes
Cancellation gap-fill	Yes	No
Phone calendar sync	Yes	No
Quoting / Invoicing	Not supported — use Jobber or a dedicated invoicing tool	Yes (Jobber wins here)
CRM	No	Yes
Online payments	No	Yes
Per-user pricing	No	Yes
Annual contract required	No	No
Free tier	20 jobs free	14-day trial

Which One Should You Pick?

Choose Arrively if:

• You charge a predictable per-visit price (grooming, detailing, cleaning, junk removal, pressure washing, pet sitting, notary, dog training, etc.)
• Your biggest daily pain is scheduling, double-bookings, or late arrivals
• You have a separate invoicing tool (QuickBooks, Wave, Square) or don't need invoicing at all
• Drive-time awareness would solve your #1 daily headache

Choose Jobber if:

• You quote jobs based on materials and labor (plumbing, electrical, HVAC, handyman, appliance repair, etc.)
• You need quoting, invoicing, payments, and CRM in one tool
• Your admin/paperwork burden is as big a problem as scheduling
• You want a mature platform with a large integration ecosystem

There's no wrong answer. They solve different problems for different businesses. If you're on the line between them, the simplest test is this: when a new customer calls, do you give them a price over the phone without thinking, or do you need to see the job first? If the price is automatic, Arrively. If the price depends on the job, Jobber.

See the full breakdown on our Jobber comparison page, or check out Arrively's pricing to see what it would cost for your volume.