Exceptional Software for any Business

It's saved us time in setting up our routes, estimates, jobs, remembering recurring jobs, basically any issues you are having with your business you will likely find a remedy with Service Autopilot.

Pros

This software has an entire arsenal of capabilities of the software compared to the cost. Its a small investment for a product that saves time and money in a ton of ways. We started with a program exclusively for lawncare which we were using to do all kinds of service work and it wasn't cutting it for us.

Cons

it takes an investment of your time in the beginning to figure out exactly what is going to work for you in terms of the features. If you don't use the support that SA offers it can be overwhelming. But take the time to invest in learning the software and it will work out in the end.

SA Autopilot client for years

It was great the first 1 1/2 years, then the customer service issues hit and made us less excited about the software. The pricing change was the last straw for me. We still use the software for a small portion of our business but honestly just waiting for a better option to come our way.

Pros

The features of the system and integration with other software

Cons

The customer service made me feel like our account wasn't a priority. They also removed with tiered pricing without notice. When I inquired why our pricing was higher, I was told about the tiered pricing and because it only affected a few clients, they intentionally didn't notify us about the change.

Too many issues

We were very excited to get started with a package that is seemed like it would be a powerful tool to reduce our office work. It has reduced our office work but I am not sure that it has done so more than another service would have. SA required us to modify the way we interact with our clients because of errors in the SA database. Every communication we send from SA has to be tested 2-3 times. For example we sent an email last year using merge fields. It was a supposed to look like a super personalized email from the owner to each client. We tested everything multiple times using test accounts. When we sent the email out in bulk it showed up as "Dear [fname]" There were about 15 merge fields in this email that failed. SA support created a ticket that we are still waiting to hear back about more than 18 months later. That is just one example of the daily frustration with SA. Now we feel like we are stuck because we have invested so much into the program and modified the way we bill our services to work around the SA problems. We do not want to expose our clients to more change but something has to be done differently.

Pros

There are lots of intended features. The vision for the software includes the ability to do many powerful things. Automations is a great way to reduce the burden on office staff.

Cons

There are too many problems. We have reported literally hundreds of issues that are still not resolved. The customer service staff make a ticket but nothing ever gets fixed. On a daily basis we have dozens of things we have to check because SA does not consistently record information correctly or consistently records it incorrectly. There does not seem to be a quality control team at SA. Recently they attempted to have very hyped up live broadcast about some new features being released and even that failed to work correctly. I just found it humorous that SA consistently fails at ensuring a quality experience for their users and this proved my point.

This program breaks down over time

BEWARE!!!!!! I own a lawn and tree fertilizing company. I have used this software for the past 3 years. We were extremely pleased with Service Auto Pilot for the first 2 years. It worked great and helped us tremendously with getting the business organized and up & running. Unfortunately over the past year I feel the software has done the complete opposite. With the constant updates there is some serious issues with the code the system is running. My balances on the invoices are off (which I have contacted them about several times over the past 5 months and they agree and confirm there is an issue) and even worse the jobs that are supposed to pop up for service are not. I have customers calling asking where we have been. There were always some small problems before with routing and just general things you need would be compromised. I once thought overall the site was a solid 4-4.5 stars out of 5 and a fair price. At this time however I DO NOT recommend this software! Check back once they get all the bugs worked out. The good thing is they made it easy to export your clients and leave. UPDATE September 21 2016. None of the issues I have been experiencing have been resolved and even more issues are popping up. Soon as season is over I will be leaving this company UPDATE 10/24/2016 I was told my issues were looked at by the development team and that they were some deep routed issues that would take a long time to fix. However the company has stopped updating me of the progress and it seems they have left my account for dead. There are even more issues popping up and it has become almost impossible to work with this software. I think what happens is after using the program for multiple years there is too much code interacting with itself and jumbles things all up. You may be wondering why I am still using it. That's because my business is seasonal and I was just hoping to get through the year before I went through all the work of inputting my customers into another service software program.

Pros

I loved its ease of use and how easy it was to teach my workers how to use it. It also has tons of extras that really come in handy when it comes to managing all aspects of business

Cons

I hate that it imploded on itself after using it for multiple years.

Quite a Learning Curve, but an All-in-one Solution?

Service Autopilot (SA) is the hub of the entire business as it contains all lead, client, and employee information.  All the business’ services are scheduled and dispatched through Service Autopilot.  The technicians use the SA app to receive their jobs notes and punch in and out of their jobs.  Cleaning estimates and invoices are distributed through SA.  We use the reporting feature to pay Sales Tax and keep our eye on Key Performance Indicators.  SA is our Customer Relationship Management tool used for email marketing and chat messaging.  We also use automations in Service Autopilot to send reminders before cleanings, after-job quality surveys, and client onboarding emails. 

Pros

Service Autopilot is the hub of the entire business as it contains all lead, client, and employee information.  The automations are a huge step up for productivity and ease of systems.

Cons

Service Autopilot is not easy to use or set up. It is less intimidating if you are the kind of person that likes to jump into a new software and just poke around. There are so many aspects that even once you know the basics, there is always something to tweak in the workflow. Unfortunately, after SA was purchased by Clearent (a credit card merchant) a couple of years ago, the customer service and general functioning has gone downhill. There are often slow days (everything slow to load) while working in the software that make it unusable for a period of time. They also have a closed API and so don't integrate with other programs. There is a version 3 in the works for a couple of years now (always beta, not complete), but it seems less intuitive and worse laid out than version 2.