Quick Answer
Payaca is the only one of the three built specifically for renewables. If you install solar, heat pumps, batteries or EV chargers, it handles MCS handover packs, DNO submissions and multi-tech proposals out of the box. ServiceTitan is the enterprise giant, brilliant for 20-plus engineer HVAC firms with deep pockets, but it carries no MCS workflow and the UK presence is thin. Commusoft sits in the middle, strong on plumbing and heating, with renewables a growing line, and AI scheduling on the way. Pick Payaca for clean-tech focus, Commusoft for mixed gas-and-renewables shops, ServiceTitan only if you are already 40-plus engineers and primarily HVAC.
Table of Contents
- At a glance
- Why renewables FSM is different
- Pricing: what you actually pay
- Payaca: built for clean-tech
- ServiceTitan: enterprise muscle
- Commusoft: the heating-led contender
- AI features compared
- MCS and DNO compliance
- Head-to-head comparison
- What installers are saying
- Recommended videos
- Frequently asked questions
- My verdict
Payaca
ServiceTitan
CommusoftAt a glance
Three platforms. Three very different stories. Payaca was built in Bristol for clean-tech installers and nothing else. ServiceTitan is the US heavyweight, built around HVAC dispatch boards and call centre operations. Commusoft has been a London-based heating-and-plumbing platform since 2006 and is now pushing into renewables.
What follows is the comparison I would do for a mate setting up a heat pump and solar firm tomorrow. Pricing first, then the platform itself, then the bit nobody else covers properly: MCS compliance and the DNO submission process that decides whether your job actually gets paid.
Renewables installs are not gas boilers. The customer journey is longer, the paperwork is heavier, and the funding is conditional on certificates that have to be in the right place at the right time. The platform you choose has to understand that or you end up taping it together with spreadsheets and shared inboxes. For broader context on the kit involved on a modern job, see our guide to battery storage and home energy systems.
Why renewables FSM is different
A gas boiler swap is fundamentally a one-day job with a Gas Safe certificate at the end. A 4kW solar PV install with an 8.2kWh battery and a back-up EV charger touches four different MCS standards, a DNO application, and three or four different finance partners depending on whether the customer is paying cash or stacking the Boiler Upgrade Scheme on top of an ECO4 grant. The FSM has to track the whole chain or the job stalls.
That is the bit US-built platforms miss. ServiceTitan is excellent at dispatch and revenue ops, but it was built around the call centre HVAC model where a tech turns up, fixes a unit, takes payment, leaves. Renewables is more like a small construction project. Site survey, design, DNO submission, install, commissioning, handover pack, MCS certificate, then the funding application. Each step has its own paperwork and approval window.
Payaca was designed around that lifecycle. Commusoft is bolting it on. ServiceTitan is, in the UK at least, not really in this race. That is the through-line you need to keep in mind as we go through pricing and features.
What MCS actually covers
The Microgeneration Certification Scheme is the UK quality mark for small-scale renewable tech. Standards MIS 3001 covers solar PV. MIS 3005 covers heat pumps. MCS 023 covers battery storage. Without certification you cannot claim Boiler Upgrade Scheme grants or Smart Export Guarantee payments, which means most customers will not hire you. Your FSM platform either helps you produce the paperwork or it does not.
Pricing: what you actually pay
None of these platforms publish a simple price list. That is the trade. Here is what I have pieced together from each vendor's pricing page and from independent reviews.
| Tier | Payaca | ServiceTitan | Commusoft |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry | £299/mo (Accelerator, 12-month new business) | £200+/tech/mo | £59/mo (paid) |
| Mid tier | £999/mo (annual) or £1,199/mo (monthly) Growth, 25 users | £300+/tech/mo Essentials | Custom (Customer Journey or Field Automation) |
| Enterprise | Custom Scale tier (50+ users) | £400+/tech/mo Works plus £5k to £50k implementation | Custom |
| Implementation fee | £1,500 one-off (Growth) | £5,000 to £50,000+ | Included in setup |
| UK pricing transparency | Published | Sales call only | Partial (entry only) |
| Contract length | Annual | 12 months minimum | 12 months contracted (rolling top-ups available) |
A real-world example. A six-engineer heat pump firm running Payaca Growth pays roughly £999 per month on annual billing. The same firm on ServiceTitan, assuming the lower £200 per tech rate, lands at £1,200 per month plus the implementation lump sum. On Commusoft, depending on the tier, you would expect £400 to £700 per month for a similar headcount based on the publicly reported £59 entry and reviewer estimates of £100 to £150 per user on the upper tiers.
The implementation tax
ServiceTitan's headline subscription is rarely the real cost. Independent reviews report typical implementation fees from £5,000 at the low end up to £50,000 for larger contractors, plus 6 to 12 months to fully onboard. For a £500k turnover renewables firm that is the equivalent of taking on another part-time admin. Worth it if you are scaling past 20 engineers. Painful if you are a four-person crew.
Payaca: built for clean-tech
Payaca's website tells you the story before you click anything. The hero copy talks about solar, heat pumps, batteries and EV chargers. The integrations talk about EasyPV, Heatpunk and OpenSolar. The compliance section talks about ENA Connect for G98 and G99 DNO submissions. This is software built by people who understand what an MCS install actually involves.
The standout feature, and the one I have not seen properly replicated anywhere else, is the multi-tech proposal. Most quoting tools force you to send three separate quotes if a customer wants solar plus a battery plus an EV charger. Payaca builds one proposal with good, better, best packages and lets the customer pick options. The funding tracking is built in too, so the BUS grant for a heat pump and an ECO4 contribution for insulation sit on the same job record.
The AI assistant, called Dave, sits on top of all of that. Dave can generate a compliant quote in minutes by pulling from the equipment database and matching it to the customer's roof survey. It is not perfect, the design tools like Aurora and OpenSolar are still better for the physics, but for the commercial side of the proposal it saves real time.
What Payaca does well
- Multi-technology proposals (solar, battery, heat pump, EV) on a single quote
- MCS handover packs auto-generated with custom HTML templates
- DNO submissions via ENA Connect with real-time approval tracking
- Design tool integrations: EasyPV, OpenSolar, Heatpunk
- Customer portal that handles quote acceptance, finance applications, document signing
- Published UK pricing on their website
- Accelerator tier specifically discounted for new MCS-registered businesses
Where Payaca falls short
- The dispatch board is functional but does not match ServiceTitan's depth
- Service contract management is lighter than Commusoft
- Not the right fit for traditional gas-only firms; the renewables features are wasted
- SMS at 4p per message is billed on top of the subscription
Best fit
A solar, heat pump, battery or EV-focused installer with 2 to 50 engineers. Strongest fit if you are MCS-certified and stacking BUS or SEG funding into your customer proposals.
ServiceTitan: enterprise muscle
Let me be straight about ServiceTitan. It is a brilliant product. The dispatch board is the best in the category. Titan Intelligence, their AI layer, does serious things with call recording, ad attribution and revenue forecasting. If you are running a 50-plus technician HVAC firm in California, this is your platform.
In the UK, and specifically for renewables, the story is more complicated. ServiceTitan does not have a dedicated UK page that holds up to scrutiny. Their core domain returns 404 errors on UK-targeted URLs. There is no MCS workflow. There is no ENA Connect integration. There is no BUS grant funding tracker. The platform was built for US residential service contractors and the UK renewables installer simply was not the persona it was designed for.
The pricing tells you who the customer is. £200 to £500 per technician per month, plus an implementation fee that independent reviewers report between £5,000 and £50,000. That is enterprise pricing. For a 12-engineer firm you are looking at over £4,000 per month before implementation. As one Reddit user in the HVAC trades community put it, you end up only getting the bare features from it because the team is scared to dive in and learn.
What ServiceTitan does well
- The dispatch board is the best-in-class option for complex multi-engineer ops
- Titan Intelligence for call tracking, ad attribution, revenue forecasting
- Marketing Pro, Phones Pro, Pricebook Pro add-ons give serious commercial firepower
- Reporting and analytics are deeper than either UK competitor
- 70-plus pre-built integrations including major US accounting platforms
Where ServiceTitan falls short for UK renewables
- No MCS handover pack generation
- No DNO submission workflow
- No BUS or Smart Export Guarantee funding integration
- UK support presence is thin compared to Commusoft or Payaca
- Implementation takes 6 to 12 months according to multiple independent reviews
- Pricing is opaque; you need a sales call to get a real number
Not for small renewables crews
If you are under 10 engineers and primarily installing solar or heat pumps, ServiceTitan is the wrong tool. You will pay enterprise prices for features designed around a different business model and miss the MCS-specific automation you actually need.
Commusoft: the heating-led contender
Commusoft has been around since 2006, based in London, and has grown into one of the largest UK trades platforms with 10,000-plus users by their own numbers and 15,000-plus customers according to independent reviewers. Their tagline now reads "the number one plumbing, heating and renewables software" and you can see they are working hard to move into the clean-tech space. We covered their wider market position in our Commusoft vs BigChange vs Job Logic comparison.
The platform itself is strong. The customer journey workflow is polished. The mobile app works offline. The service contract module, used for boiler PPM and annual heat pump servicing, is the deepest of the three. AI:den, their AI copilot, is currently in the "coming soon" stage but the foundation is there.
For a firm that already runs gas, heating and a growing renewables line, Commusoft is a comfortable bet. The renewables features are not as deep as Payaca, but if 70% of your work is still boilers and 30% is heat pumps and solar, having both in one platform with a proven customer journey workflow is useful.
What Commusoft does well
- The customer journey automation is the most polished of the three
- Service contract and PPM management is deep and battle-tested
- UK support team is well-regarded; 4.7/5 on Capterra across 209 reviews
- AI-powered route optimisation already in production
- Strong Xero and GoCardless integrations for UK accounting and payments
- 15 years of UK trades market knowledge baked into the workflow
Where Commusoft falls short
- Renewables-specific compliance is still bolted on, not native
- No published MCS handover pack templates as standard
- Pricing transparency is poor above the £59 entry tier
- Some users report rigid contract terms; reducing user counts mid-contract is difficult
- AI:den copilot is still "coming soon" rather than live
Best fit
Mixed plumbing, heating and renewables firm with 6 to 100 staff who want one platform across the gas and clean-tech sides of the business.
AI features compared
Every FSM vendor is putting "AI" on the box now. The honest version of the picture, as of mid-2026, looks like this.
Payaca has Dave, an AI assistant that integrates with MCP servers and can generate compliant quotes from a stored equipment database. It is the most mature of the three for renewables-specific work. Dave can take the customer's roof survey output from EasyPV, match it to a battery and inverter combination, and assemble a multi-option proposal in minutes. It will not do the structural design, that is still the surveyor's job, but it handles the commercial paperwork well.
ServiceTitan's Titan Intelligence is the broadest. It does call transcription, ad attribution scoring, dispatch optimisation and pricebook recommendation. None of it is renewables-specific. If you are running a busy call centre with 20 dispatchers, this is gold. If you are a five-person heat pump firm, you are paying for features you will not use.
Commusoft's AI:den is on the roadmap. The intelligent scheduler is live and uses AI to optimise routes around technician skills, shift patterns and travel time. The full copilot is still tagged "coming soon" in their own materials, so factor that into a decision.
| AI capability | Payaca | ServiceTitan | Commusoft |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI proposal generation | Yes (Dave) | Pricebook recommendations | Roadmap |
| Route optimisation | Map-based with route engine | Best-in-class | Live (intelligent scheduler) |
| Call transcription | No | Yes (Phones Pro) | No |
| MCS compliance automation | Native | None | Partial |
| DNO application automation | ENA Connect | None | None |
| Ad attribution and marketing AI | Limited | Marketing Pro | Limited |
MCS and DNO compliance
This is where the comparison gets decisive for UK renewables installers. MCS certification is not legally required to install solar PV or a heat pump, but it is required for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, Smart Export Guarantee payments and almost every funding scheme the customer will want to use. No MCS, no grant. No grant, no sale.
The certification itself is not a one-off. You need a Nominated Technical Person for each technology, an annual surveillance audit, ongoing compliance with the relevant standard (MIS 3001 for solar PV, MIS 3005 for heat pumps), membership of a consumer code like RECC or HIES, and proof of submission of every install to the MCS database. The FSM platform either helps with that workflow or you build it in spreadsheets.
The DNO submission timing trap
For any solar PV install over 3.68kW per phase, you need a G99 application to the Distribution Network Operator before commissioning. Submit too late and you cannot energise. Submit too early and the customer's design might change. The platform that manages this submission window inside the same job record saves real money. Payaca's ENA Connect integration handles it. ServiceTitan does not touch it. Commusoft handles the workflow but the submission itself is still manual.
Payaca is the only one of the three with a documented MCS workflow. The platform auto-generates customer declarations, commissioning certificates and handover packs linked to the project record. Custom field templates let you tailor the documentation to your scheme membership (NICEIC, NAPIT, MCS direct). Commusoft can do this with custom forms but you build it yourself. ServiceTitan has no path through it at all. For installers thinking about how technology can extend day-to-day capacity beyond the FSM itself, our piece on 3D printing for trades is worth a read.
Head-to-head comparison
The longer feature-by-feature breakdown, with the deciding factors for a UK renewables firm picked out.
| Feature | Payaca | ServiceTitan | Commusoft |
|---|---|---|---|
| UK published pricing | Yes (£299 to £1,199) | No | Partial (£59 entry) |
| MCS handover packs | Native | None | Build your own |
| DNO submissions | ENA Connect built in | None | Manual workflow |
| Multi-tech quoting (solar + battery + HP + EV) | Single quote | Separate proposals | Separate proposals |
| Design tool integrations | EasyPV, OpenSolar, Heatpunk | Generic | None native |
| Dispatch board depth | Good | Best-in-class | Good with AI route engine |
| Service contract and PPM | Light | Strong | Deepest |
| Mobile app offline mode | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| UK support team | UK based, Bristol | US based, thin UK presence | UK based, London |
| AI proposal generation | Dave (live) | Pricebook only | Roadmap |
| Xero integration | Native, certified | Indirect | Native |
| Best fit team size | 2 to 50 | 20-plus | 6 to 100 |
| Implementation time | 2 to 4 weeks | 6 to 12 months | 4 to 8 weeks |
The TL;DR table
Payaca wins on renewables-specific features. ServiceTitan wins on dispatch and enterprise reporting. Commusoft wins on UK customer journey workflow and service contract management. None of them is a perfect fit for every renewables firm, but the right answer for most UK clean-tech installers is Payaca or Commusoft, not ServiceTitan.
What installers are saying
I have stayed away from invented quotes for this one. Every comment below is from a verified review on Capterra or a publicly indexed forum thread. If a Reddit thread did not exist, I have not put one in.
Recommended videos
Payaca Workflow Demo: A Core Process for Renewable Installers
Payaca
From Site Survey to Client Handover
Payaca
How to Use Payaca Field Service App
Payaca
How Technology Transformed Our Business with Commusoft
Commusoft
How Commusoft Helps Us to Grow
Commusoft
ServiceTitan Demo, Review and Tutorial 2026
Independent reviewer
Top 5 Tips for ServiceTitan's Dispatch Board
ServiceTitan
New Workflow Mode: Quick A/C or Heat Pump Service
Payaca
Frequently asked questions
Technically yes. The platform is cloud-based and the core scheduling, dispatch and CRM features work fine. The catch is the UK-specific compliance layer. There is no MCS workflow, no DNO submission integration, and the implementation team is US-based. If you are a large HVAC firm running mostly servicing and reactive work, it can be made to fit. For a renewables installer, the gaps will hurt.
Yes. They have a dedicated commercial solar workflow with project management features for C&I jobs. The Scale tier is built for franchises and larger enterprise operators who need data warehouse sync and dedicated industry consulting.
Both. The intelligent scheduler with AI route optimisation is live and works. AI:den, the broader copilot they advertise, is still in development at time of writing. Worth asking the Commusoft team for a current release date if AI is a deciding factor for you.
It generates the handover documentation and commissioning certificates linked to the project. The MCS certificate itself is issued via your certification body's portal (NICEIC, NAPIT or the MCS database directly). Payaca pulls the data together so you are not copy-pasting between systems.
£299 per month gets you everything in the Growth tier for 12 months, capped at 25 users, with two funded support sessions. The catch is eligibility: 8 or fewer employees, the business has to have been incorporated within the last 24 months, and you must be MCS-registered. It is specifically designed to support new clean-tech businesses getting off the ground.
Payaca handles BUS grants natively inside the multi-option proposal so the £7,500 air source heat pump grant appears as a line item the customer can see. Commusoft handles it with custom fields and forms. ServiceTitan does not have BUS-specific workflow at all. For BUS applications you still submit through Ofgem's installer portal, but Payaca and Commusoft track which jobs are pending, approved or paid.
Plan for 2 to 4 weeks of overlap with any of them. Payaca's onboarding is typically the fastest. Commusoft is methodical and includes a structured training programme. ServiceTitan's implementation runs 6 to 12 months according to multiple independent reviews, so factor that into both cost and timing if you are considering a move.
My verdict
For most UK renewables installers, the answer is Payaca
If you primarily install solar, heat pumps, batteries or EV chargers, Payaca is the platform built for the way you actually work. The MCS handover pack generation, DNO submissions via ENA Connect, multi-tech proposals and the AI quoting assistant solve problems the other two do not even acknowledge.
Commusoft is the right answer for mixed gas-and-renewables firms
If you are 70% boilers and 30% heat pumps, the deeper service contract and PPM tooling, plus the polished customer journey workflow, will serve you better than a renewables-specialist platform. The trade-off is building your own MCS templates with custom fields.
ServiceTitan only makes sense at scale
Below 20 engineers, ServiceTitan is expensive overkill with the wrong feature focus. Above 40 engineers, mostly HVAC, with a serious office team to drive adoption, the dispatch board and reporting may justify the price. Renewables-only firms should look elsewhere.
One last thought. The renewables installer market in the UK is growing fast, the regulatory bar is rising, and the FSM choice you make now will shape how you scale over the next three years. Pick the one that handles MCS and DNO natively if that is the core of your business. Pick the one that handles service contracts well if reactive servicing and PPM is half your revenue. The platform should fit the work, not the other way around.
