ServiceYak vs ServiceM8
ServiceM8 meters the work you do and sells much of its functionality as separate add-ons. ServiceYak caps nothing and ships one plan with everything in it. Here's where the two genuinely differ — including the things ServiceM8 does better.
ServiceM8 and ServiceYak, side by side
ServiceM8 is a well-built Australian product with a long track record in dispatch-heavy service work, and it does one thing neither we nor most of this market can do at all: it works offline. For a business whose crew regularly loses reception, that isn't a feature comparison, it's the answer.
The two differ most in how they're put together. ServiceM8 meters your work — every plan carries a monthly job cap, from 30 jobs at the bottom to 1,500+ at the top — and delivers much of its functionality as separate add-ons, roughly fifty of them. ServiceYak caps nothing you do and has one plan with everything in it.
This page doesn't compare the two on price, and that's deliberate. The pricing models aren't comparable in a way a table would represent honestly — theirs is a flat rate with unlimited users, ours is per seat — and which one is cheaper depends entirely on your crew size and your job volume. Both prices are published. Put them side by side against your own numbers rather than ours.
They meter the work; we don't
Every ServiceM8 plan carries a monthly job allowance, published on their pricing page and checked in August 2026: 30 jobs on the free plan, 50 on Starter, 150 on Growing, 500 on Premium, and 1,500+ on Premium Plus. Go over and there's a seven-day grace period before overage terms apply.
That's a coherent way to price software — you pay in proportion to how much you use it. It also means your busiest month is the month you find out, and the first thing a job cap does in practice is make somebody in the office think twice about creating a job card for a small call-out. Work that doesn't get a job card doesn't get scheduled, photographed, checklisted or invoiced properly.
ServiceYak has no cap on quotes, jobs or invoices. Win a hundred more jobs this month than last and nothing about your subscription changes. The only monthly allowance anywhere in ServiceYak is on AI, because AI runs on compute we pay for every time it's used — and that's an allowance on requests, not on your work.
One plan against roughly fifty add-ons
ServiceM8's add-on directory lists around fifty separate add-ons. Plenty of things that come with every ServiceYak seat are add-ons there — from their own directory, checked August 2026:
- Forms, Job Costing and the Advanced Reporting Pack
- Recurring Jobs & Reminders, Proposals and Job Templates
- Supplier Invoice Import, Bundles, Tasks and Asset Management
- Online Booking and Automated Timesheet Sync
- The accounting integrations themselves
Most of those add-ons don't publish a price and some of them are free, so we're not claiming they all cost extra — we haven't checked what each one costs and neither, probably, have you. The difference is architectural, not financial: their capability is assembled from parts you install, ours arrives whole. Whether that's better depends on whether you'd rather pick exactly what you want or not have to think about it.
On the ServiceYak side that means job costing, recurring jobs and reminders, job templates and kits, timesheets, enquiry forms, 16 reports and the Xero and QuickBooks sync are simply in the plan. There is nothing to install and nothing to decide.
The same app on iPhone and Android
ServiceYak is one product across phone, tablet and desktop, and the iOS and Android apps do the same things. There's no desktop-only capability that forces a job back to the office, and no platform where a feature quietly isn't there. Clock on and off, take photos, work the checklist, build and send a quote, raise the invoice — all of it, on either phone.
Two specifics worth testing rather than taking our word for: your crew gets a push notification the moment a job is assigned to them, and the calendar has a month view as well as day and week.
If your crew is split across iPhone and Android — and most Australian crews are — install both apps during both trials and have the Android half of the team run a real job end to end. Do that with any job app you're shortlisting, including ours. Platform parity is the kind of thing that's easy to claim in a feature table and obvious within a day of actual use.
What ServiceM8 does that we don't
More than on any other page in this set, and one of these is permanent.
- Offline. ServiceM8 works without a connection and ServiceYak does not. This isn't a gap we're working on — it's a settled product decision, so don't wait for it. Reception drops in switchboard rooms, roof cavities, basements and half of regional Australia. If that's your working day, that is a real and sufficient reason to choose them.
- MYOB. They integrate with MYOB; we sync with Xero and QuickBooks only. If your BAS comes out of MYOB, this comparison is effectively over.
- Calendar integration. They sell External Calendars and Calendar Import add-ons. ServiceYak has no Google Calendar or iCal feed at all — if your day is run out of a Google Calendar that other people also write to, they can join those up and we can't.
- Unlimited users on a flat rate. Their paid plans don't charge per person; ours does. For a large crew doing a modest number of jobs, their model suits you and ours doesn't. That's worth working out with your own numbers before anything else on this page.
Feature comparison
| Feature | ServiceYak | ServiceM8 | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Caps on the work you do | None — unlimited quotes, jobs and invoices | 30 / 50 / 150 / 500 / 1,500+ jobs a month by plan | Your busiest month is the one you least want to be rationing job cards in. |
| What's in the plan | One plan, everything in it | Functionality unbundled across roughly 50 add-ons | Assembled from parts you choose, or arrives whole. Both are defensible. |
| Job costing | Included | Add-on | Knowing what a job cost is how you price the next one. |
| Recurring jobs and reminders | Included | Add-on | Repeat work is the cheapest work you'll ever win. |
| Reporting | 16 reports, four suites, included | Advanced Reporting Pack add-on | Knowing which jobs made money shouldn't be a separate install. |
| Accounting sync | Xero and QuickBooks, included | Xero, QuickBooks and MYOB, as add-ons | They reach MYOB and we don't — if that's your ledger, it decides this. |
| Compliance forms | Limited — job and visit checklists, not regulation-seeded | Forms add-on | If you need a signed SWMS off a template, check both carefully. |
| Calendar feed | ✗ — no Google Calendar or iCal feed | External Calendars and Calendar Import add-ons | If your day runs out of Google Calendar, they can feed it and we can't. |
| Offline access | ✗ | ✓ | Reception drops in switchboard rooms and roof cavities. This is their strongest row and a settled gap on ours. |
| User model | Per seat | Unlimited users on paid plans | A big crew doing modest job volume suits their model, not ours. |
| Mobile | Full app on iOS and Android, same features on both | iOS and Android apps | Worth running a real job on both platforms in both trials. |
| AI meeting summaries | Record on site, get a sendable recap | ✗ | The site walk-through writes itself up. |
| Free trial | 30 days, no card | 14 days, no card | A month of real work tells you more than a fortnight. |
Rows marked ServiceM8 wins are the ones where they beat us outright. Their column was checked in August 2026.
Switching from ServiceM8
One ServiceM8-specific thing to do before anything else: list the add-ons you've installed. That list is your real requirements document, and it's the fastest way to find out whether ServiceYak covers what you actually use.
- Write down every add-on you've enabled. That list is what you're actually running, as opposed to what you think you bought. Check each one against ServiceYak before you go further — some are in our plan, and some, like the calendar feeds, have no equivalent here at all.
- Settle the offline question first. If your crew works out of range regularly, stop here. We don't have an answer to that and we're not going to have one. Better to find that out on this page than three weeks into a migration.
- Export before you cancel. Client list and job history out while the subscription is live. Afterwards it's a support ticket, if it's possible at all.
- Rebuild rates and line items first. That's the asset that makes quoting fast, wherever it lives. Load your kits and templates before you quote anything real.
- Reconnect the books and test one invoice end to end. Connect Xero or QuickBooks, raise one real invoice, and check it lands on the right account before you trust it with a month's work.
- Move at a quiet point in the year. Not in your busiest month, and not in December.