District Research

Field service & trades software

The highest dissatisfaction of any niche measured, and the thesis we had to abandon.

1,589low-star reviews
7apps measured
48%avg 1–3★ share
0.11payer pressure

What people complain about

Share of substantive low-star reviews carrying each complaint. A review can carry several.
ComplaintShare
Reliability — crashes, freezes, “doesn’t work”21.0%
Missing capability13.2%
Team & permissions9.3%
Billing & cancellation7.6%
Customer support7.4%
Complexity & onboarding7.2%
Slowness7.0%
Ads & upsell pressure6.0%
Price & value3.8%

Dissatisfaction by app

Share of that app’s App Store reviews rated one to three stars. Apps with enough reviews to measure.
App1–3★ shareReviews read
ServiceTitan Mobile82%162
Housecall Pro: Field Service58%547
Jobber Field Service Software31%822
Joist: Estimate Invoice Maker23%561

In their words

“Don't switch from the free version. Lost a bunch of quotes and invoices when I made the switch. It took 2 weeks to get the issue resolved. Ended up having to remake a bunch of invoices. With that and not really liking the platform layout I decided to cancel. I emailed and asked for a cancelation and a refund since I couldn't use the app for half of the month, THEY CHARGED ME AGAIN. They don't do refunds and it's an absolute nightmare to cancel. DO NOT PURCHASE.”

Jobber: Field Service Software · 1★ · 229 votes

“Has some absolutely great features! Issues on what can be accessed from screens. Schedule views an issue. Working from tabs, you're constantly losing work half done and need to go back to. Color coding only in one area. When appointments are confirmed, no way to tell unless you click on the appointments... Don't get me wrong, better than what we had in automation, so saves office hours. Please work on it. Call us, will help nc.”

Jobber: Field Service Software · 3★ · 125 votes

“Love the desktop version for sure however the app not so much. Unable to move things on schedule or see full month at once when talking to clients while in field looking for availability and this has cost me a few jobs. Also when I open a attachments and picture in notes the only way out of it is to force close out of app and restart. Finally being the owner of the business and on the go all the time the access for an administrator is about as useful as a new hire field tech access.”

Jobber: Field Service Software · 2★ · 60 votes

“As technician this app is, on average, the worst part of my day. It's slow, clunky, unintuitive and even if I have nearly full bars and 5G it often won't connect. EDIT: In response to the jobber tech support team: your product is bad and you should feel bad. Also, they're adding AI to an already unreliable product. this app lacks the power to support ai and will get worse as a result.”

Jobber: Field Service Software · 1★ · 24 votes
Worth building — and built

This niche passed every gate: the pain is measurable, it recurs across vendors, and the people complaining are the people paying. We built Crewproof against it.

What this study cannot tell you

  • About 41% of substantive reviews are not matched by the taxonomy, so every percentage here is a floor, not a true rate. The miss rate is roughly uniform across niches, so comparisons between them still hold.
  • App-store reviews over-represent the daily user. Buyers complain on G2, Capterra and in churn calls, and those sources are not represented.
  • No recency weighting: a complaint from 2021 counts the same as one from last week, so some cited failures may already be fixed.
  • Coverage is uneven between stores; where an app is iOS-only in practice its share is computed from Apple data alone.