Search “best software for tree service companies” and the results are almost entirely vendor content: GorillaDesk’s own industry page, QuoteIQ’s own “top 8” blog post written about its own product, a handful of AI-generated listicle sites (Guideflow, Camcode, Field Service Guide) that read like the same template run through five different tree-software names, and an arborist forum thread where crews complain about whichever platform they’re currently stuck paying for. No G2, no Capterra, no SoftwareAdvice, and no large trade or consumer media outlet has published an independent comparison of this specific category. Nobody neutral has actually lined up what these five charge.
What that comparison turns up once you read past the marketing: SingleOps and ArboStar both price by the person, and the fee for a second, third, or fourth person adds up fast for a company running more than one crew. GorillaDesk instead prices by the route, not the login, so office staff who need to see the schedule don’t cost anything extra. QuoteIQ undercuts everyone at the entry tier, then gates route optimization and inventory behind a plan that costs ten times as much. And Treezi, the cheapest per-seat option on this list, refuses to sell to anyone in California, Washington, or Oregon at all.
Quick Comparison
| Tool | Entry Price | What It Buys You | The Catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| SingleOps (Granum) | $220/mo (Essential, 1 user; $200/mo annual) | CRM, estimating, scheduling, invoicing, integrated payments | +$55/mo (monthly) or +$50/mo (annual) per extra office/sales user; route optimization needs the $550/mo Premier tier |
| ArboStar | $199/mo (Starter, monthly; $149/mo annual), 1 office license + 1 crew login | CRM, e-signature estimates, offline field app, tree inventory, accounting sync | Extra crew logins run $20/mo and extra office licenses $95/mo; a 3-crew shop needs the $332/mo (or $249/mo annual) Growing tier just to log everyone in |
| Treezi | $49.99/mo per user ($41.99/mo annual) | Every feature on every plan, no gating: unlimited clients, unlimited tree inventory, QuickBooks Desktop sync, client portal | Not sold in California, Washington, or Oregon, full stop |
| GorillaDesk | $49/mo (Basic, priced per route, unlimited admin users included) | Scheduling, invoicing, estimates, basic routing, 20 built-in reports | Customer portal and online booking are locked to the $99/mo Pro tier; SMS is a separate $5/mo add-on |
| QuoteIQ | $29.99/mo (Essentials, 1 user, 500 AI credits) | Estimates, invoicing, scheduling, AI call support | Route optimization and inventory tracking don’t appear until Elite, $299/mo |
All five vendors’ own pricing pages checked directly on September 23, 2026.
SingleOps: Real Tree-Industry Depth, Billed Per Head
SingleOps, sold by Granum, is one of the two vendors on this list built specifically for the green industry rather than field service in general, and it shows in the feature list: job-site measurements and mapping, ISA-adjacent tree inventory, and map-based scheduling all live in the mid-tier Plus plan ($385/mo, or $350/mo annual). The entry-level Essential plan ($220/mo for one user) covers estimating, scheduling, client management, invoicing, and integrated payments, which is a real product, not a stripped demo.
The part worth budgeting for before you sign up: every additional office or sales user costs $55/mo on top of whichever base tier you’re on ($50/mo if you’re billed annually). A two-person office running Essential is already at $275-330/mo before touching the field side, and route optimization, automations, and business reporting don’t unlock at all until Premier, $550/mo for the first user plus $150/mo (or $125/mo annual) per additional one.
- Who should NOT buy SingleOps: a solo operator or two-crew outfit that doesn’t yet need job-site mapping or route optimization. The $220/mo entry price is real money for features you may not use for another year or two of growth.
- Who it’s right for: a tree care company with real office staff and enough crew volume that map-based scheduling and route optimization pay for themselves, and that’s comparing this against ArboStar rather than against a $50/mo tool.
ArboStar: Published Tiers, But Crew Logins Cost Extra Too
ArboStar publishes real numbers, which puts it ahead of most of the field-service vendors this site has covered in other trades. Starter runs $199/mo billed monthly or $149/mo billed annually, and includes one office license plus one crew login, e-signature estimates, an offline field app, tree inventory, and accounting sync.
The catch shows up the moment a second truck joins the business. Extra crew logins cost $20/mo each and extra office licenses cost $95/mo each, so a company running three crews with one office coordinator needs to either buy a stack of add-on logins on top of Starter or move to the Growing plan ($332/mo monthly, $249/mo annual), which bundles two office licenses and three crew logins. Beyond that, ArboStar’s Enterprise tier has no published price at all and requires a custom quote.
- Who should NOT buy ArboStar Starter expecting it to cover a multi-crew operation: one office license and one crew login is genuinely a one-truck plan. Multi-crew shops should price out Growing, or the add-on logins, before comparing the sticker price to competitors.
- Who it’s right for: a one- or two-crew tree company that wants tree-specific inventory and an offline app and is fine paying named per-seat add-on prices rather than negotiating for everything.
Treezi: One Flat Price, Zero Feature Gates, Three States Excluded
Treezi is the simplest pricing structure on this list by a wide margin: one plan, $49.99 per user per month ($41.99/mo if paid annually), and every feature is included for every user with no upsell tier at all. Unlimited clients, unlimited tree inventory with a preloaded list of 500-plus species, QuickBooks Desktop sync, a client-facing portal, and a custom URL are all standard. Companies running nine or more crews are directed to contact sales for an enterprise arrangement, but everyone below that size pays the same rate per seat regardless of which features they use.
The catch isn’t a fee at all: Treezi’s own pricing page states plainly that the product “is not available in CA, WA, or OR.” No explanation is given on the page for why those three states specifically are excluded, and support would need to be contacted directly for details. For a tree company based in Sacramento, Seattle, or Portland, that’s not a pricing consideration, it’s a dealbreaker before pricing even enters the conversation.
- Who should NOT buy Treezi: any tree service company headquartered in California, Washington, or Oregon. It’s not sold there, regardless of how attractive the flat per-user rate looks.
- Who it’s right for: a company outside those three states that wants every feature available to every user from day one, without ArboStar-style add-on logins or SingleOps-style per-office-user surcharges.
GorillaDesk: Priced Per Route, Not Per Login
GorillaDesk breaks from the per-user pattern the other tree-specific tools use. Its three tiers, Basic ($49/mo), Pro ($99/mo), and Growth ($149/mo), are priced by the number of routes or schedules running, and every tier includes unlimited admin users and mobile devices at no extra charge. A company that wants its bookkeeper, a dispatcher, and an owner all logged in simultaneously pays the same as a company with just one person watching the schedule, as long as crew/route count stays the same.
Basic covers scheduling, invoicing, estimates, basic routing (capped at 25 stops), material tracking, and 20 built-in reports. The customer-facing pieces, online booking, a customer portal, subscription billing, and e-signatures, don’t show up until Pro at $99/mo. SMS messaging is billed separately from any tier: $5/mo just to rent the number, on top of per-message credit packs.
- Who should NOT buy GorillaDesk Basic expecting customer self-booking: that’s a Pro-tier feature ($99/mo). Basic is scheduling and invoicing for the office, not a client-facing storefront.
- Who it’s right for: a growing tree company that expects to add office and admin staff over time and doesn’t want each new hire to trigger a per-seat charge the way SingleOps and ArboStar both do.
QuoteIQ: Cheapest Entry, Same Tier-Gating Pattern Seen Across Other Trades
QuoteIQ isn’t tree-specific; it’s the same general field-service platform this site covered in its appliance repair software comparison, marketed toward the “green industry” alongside the other trades it serves. Essentials starts at $29.99/mo for one user with 500 monthly AI credits, covering estimating, invoicing, scheduling, and AI-assisted virtual call support. Four more tiers step up from there: Beginner ($74.99/mo, 2 users), Pro ($149.99/mo, 4 users), Elite ($299/mo, 10 users), and Max ($699/mo, unlimited users).
The pattern is consistent with what QuoteIQ does in other trades it serves: route optimization, crew self-scheduling, and inventory tracking are all held back until Elite, a jump from $29.99 to $299/mo to get features a multi-crew tree company will likely need well before it needs ten user seats.
- Who should NOT sign up for Essentials expecting route optimization: that’s an Elite-tier feature, a roughly 10x price jump from the entry plan.
- Who it’s right for: a solo arborist or two-person crew that mainly needs quoting, scheduling, and invoicing and hasn’t yet reached the point of needing route optimization or digital inventory.
Who Should NOT Buy Any of These Five
A true one-truck operation still quoting jobs off a paper pad and a phone number doesn’t need to solve this yet; QuoteIQ’s Essentials tier costs little enough to try before committing further. A large regional operation running ten or more crews across multiple branches has effectively outgrown all five products at their published tiers and should be talking to ArboStar’s or SingleOps’ enterprise sales team, or a broader field-service platform built for that scale, rather than pricing out add-on seats one at a time.
And regardless of budget or crew count, a company based in California, Washington, or Oregon can cross Treezi off the list before comparing a single feature, since it isn’t sold there.
The same “per-user pricing multiplies fast once you’re not a solo operator” shape shows up across this site’s other home- and field-service software guides, including our towing software comparison and our appliance repair software comparison, both trades where a handful of vendors dominate the SERP and nobody neutral had already put their pricing side by side.
FAQ
Is there free software for tree service companies? Not free-forever among these five. QuoteIQ, GorillaDesk, and ArboStar all offer trial periods (14 days on most of these) to test before paying, and Treezi advertises “it’s free” to start a trial, but every one of them eventually charges from the first paid user.
Why do SingleOps and ArboStar charge per person while GorillaDesk charges per route? It’s a different bet on what drives your cost. SingleOps and ArboStar assume the number of people logging in is what scales with your business, so each additional office or crew login is billed separately. GorillaDesk bets that route count (crews actually working) is the better proxy, so it lets you add unlimited admin and office logins for free as long as your route count doesn’t grow.
Which of these works best if I have office staff who don’t do fieldwork? GorillaDesk is the clearest fit, since every tier includes unlimited admin users at no extra charge. SingleOps and ArboStar both charge a per-seat fee for every additional office or sales login, which adds up quickly for a company with more than one or two people in the office.
Why won’t Treezi sell to companies in California, Washington, or Oregon? Treezi’s own pricing page states the restriction without explaining the reason. If you’re based in one of those states and want to know why, or whether that might change, you’d need to contact Treezi’s support directly; the public pricing page doesn’t say.
Does any of these handle ISA-style tree inventory specifically, not just generic job tracking? SingleOps, ArboStar, and Treezi all advertise tree-specific inventory as a named feature (SingleOps ties it to its Plus tier and above; ArboStar and Treezi include it standard). GorillaDesk and QuoteIQ are general field-service tools and don’t market a tree-specific inventory feature the same way.
Bottom Line: Which Should You Choose?
- Solo arborist or two-person crew testing the water: QuoteIQ’s Essentials tier at $29.99/mo is the cheapest real option here, with the tradeoff that route optimization and inventory tracking wait until a much pricier Elite tier.
- Growing company that keeps adding office and admin staff: GorillaDesk’s per-route pricing means new office hires don’t trigger new per-seat charges, unlike SingleOps or ArboStar.
- Want every feature unlocked for every user with no upsell ladder, and you’re not in CA, WA, or OR: Treezi’s flat $49.99/mo (or $41.99/mo annual) per-user rate is the simplest structure on this list.
- Established multi-crew operation that wants tree-specific mapping, job-site measurement, and route optimization: SingleOps’ Premier tier ($550/mo plus per-user add-ons) or ArboStar’s Growing tier ($332/mo, or $249/mo annual) are built for that scale, with SingleOps leaning more office-heavy and ArboStar leaning more field-crew-heavy in how each prices additional seats.