The ServiceTitan Exodus: Why 34% of ContractorsAre Evaluating Alternatives

In 2019, ServiceTitan was the aspirational platform. If you ran a serious HVAC shop, you were either on it or working toward it. The brand carried a signal: this operator is professional, growth-minded, data-driven.

In 2026, that signal has gotten complicated.

A software platform that costs $259,000–$353,000 annually for a 30-tech operation, takes 12–18 months to fully implement, and routes non-critical support tickets into a 3–5 day response queue is no longer the obvious choice for every contractor. And the market is responding. Industry surveys in 2025–2026 show 34% of current ServiceTitan users actively evaluating alternatives — not casually browsing, but running RFPs, attending demos, and in some cases mid-migration.

What's driving it, what the alternatives actually look like, and how to think through the decision — that's what this article is about.

What's Driving the Evaluation Wave

The Cost Breakdown Most Contractors Don't See Coming

ServiceTitan's licensing starts reasonably — around $398/month for a very small shop on a base plan. The sticker shock comes from what gets added as you grow:

• Core platform license: $398–$898/month depending on tier
• Per-tech fees: $65–$95/tech/month as you scale
• Marketing Pro add-on: $400–$800/month
• Phones Pro (call tracking): $300–$600/month
• Dispatch Pro: $200–$400/month
• Implementation services: $15,000–$40,000 one-time
• Ongoing training and support fees: $200–$500/month

For a 30-tech operation using a full stack of ServiceTitan add-ons, total annual cost lands between $259,000 and $353,000. That's before considering the internal IT time required to maintain integrations, the productivity loss during the 12–18 month implementation window, or the cost of retraining staff when ServiceTitan releases major UI updates.

For a shop doing $4M in revenue, that's 6.5–8.8% of top-line revenue going to a software platform. At $8M revenue, it's 3.2–4.4%. The math gets better as you scale — which is exactly why ServiceTitan works well for 50+ tech operations and becomes harder to justify for 15–25 tech shops.

What a Fair Comparison Looks Like

The mistake most contractors make when evaluating alternatives is comparing feature lists. That's the wrong frame. The right question is: what does your operation actually need, and what does it cost to get just that?

Here's an honest breakdown by shop size:

The Migration Difficulty Scale

Every contractor who has switched FSM platforms will tell you the same thing: it was harder than they expected. Understanding why helps you plan for it honestly.

Data migration is the first hurdle. Your customer history, job records, equipment data, and agreement portfolio all need to move. Most platforms offer migration tooling, but the quality varies widely. Housecall Pro and Workiz have reasonably clean import tools for standard ServiceTitan exports. Enterprise platforms like Service Dynamics typically assign a dedicated migration team.

Team retraining is the second hurdle — and the one most contractors underestimate. Your CSRs, dispatchers, and techs have muscle memory built around ServiceTitan's UI. Expect 4–8 weeks of reduced productivity during the transition window regardless of how good the new platform is. Budget for this explicitly.

Integration rewiring is the third. If you've built your operations around ServiceTitan's integrations with your phone system, marketing tools, financing providers, or accounting platform, each of those connections needs to be re-established with the new platform. This is where timelines slip.

Rule of thumb: whatever your vendor quotes for implementation time, add 40%. Whatever they quote for cost, add 25%. Plan for the worst and celebrate the best.

When ServiceTitan Is Still the Right Answer

This would be an incomplete article without saying this clearly: ServiceTitan remains the most feature-complete FSM platform available. For the right operation, it's worth every dollar.

ServiceTitan makes sense if you are:

• Running 30+ techs with genuine multi-location complexity
• Scaling aggressively and need a platform that won't become the ceiling at 50 techs
• PE-backed or acquisition-minded — institutional buyers recognize and value ServiceTitan infrastructure
• Deeply integrated into ServiceTitan's marketing, financing, and reporting ecosystem after years of use
• Getting genuine ROI from advanced features like dynamic pricing, capacity planning, or the ServiceTitan marketplace

If none of those describe your current situation, you have a real conversation to have with yourself about whether you're paying for a platform you've grown into or one you're still growing toward.

The Decision Framework: 5 Questions to Ask Before You Switch

Before you commit to any platform change, get honest answers to these five questions:

What North Texas Contractors Are Actually Doing

In conversations with DFW HVAC operators in early 2026, a few patterns have emerged:

Shops in the 8–15 tech range are the most actively evaluating. Many got onto ServiceTitan during a growth phase and are now steady-state — not scaling fast enough to justify the full platform cost, not using the advanced features that justify the top tiers. Workiz and Housecall Pro are the most common destinations for this group.

Shops in the 15–30 tech range are more split. Some are doubling down on ServiceTitan — leaning into Marketing Pro, Phones Pro, and the capacity planning tools that genuinely differentiate it. Others are doing a hard cost-benefit analysis and finding that Workiz or a custom-configured simpler stack costs 40–60% less for 80% of the functionality they actually use.

Shops over 30 techs are largely staying put. The switching cost is too high, the integration complexity too significant, and the enterprise alternatives aren't meaningfully cheaper once you factor in implementation.

A Word on the Data Question

One concern we hear consistently from DFW contractors considering a switch: “What happens to my historical data?”

ServiceTitan allows data exports, but the format isn't always clean or complete. Customer history, job notes, and agreement records export reasonably well. Equipment history and custom fields are more variable. Before committing to any migration, request a full export of your current ServiceTitan data and validate that the new platform can ingest it correctly. Do this before you sign the new contract.

Vendors who won't let you validate data import before signing are a red flag.

The Bottom Line for DFW Contractors

ServiceTitan is not going anywhere, and it's not a bad platform. It's a very good platform for a specific type of contractor — one large enough to absorb the cost, complex enough to need the features, and growth-oriented enough to justify the infrastructure investment.

If that's not you today — if you're running a tight 10–20 tech operation, using 60% of the platform, paying six figures annually, and watching support tickets sit for 3 days — you have a legitimate reason to evaluate your options.

Do it carefully. The switching cost is real. But so is the cost of staying on a platform that no longer fits.