Sprinklerly vs Joist for irrigation contractors

Facts checked 2026-10-19

Short answer: Joist is the better choice, and the cheaper one, if you are a solo contractor or a very small crew who needs estimates, invoices and payments on your phone. Sprinklerly is worth a look if you run scheduled service days with several customers a day and want records built around zones, controllers and backflow tests. Joist's own site says it leaves out dispatching and employee tracking on purpose.

Where Joist is the better choice

Price. Joist lists Basics at $10 per month, Pro at $17, Elite at $32 and Run at $100, shown at a 30% introductory $70. Sprinklerly's planned general-availability prices start at $79 per month. Joist is cheaper at every tier, though it does a narrower job.
Getting paid. Joist lists online payments, deposits and milestone payments and Tap to Pay on every plan, and the estimate-to-invoice workflow is its core product. Sprinklerly has price-book estimates and invoice records, but it is not a payments suite.
Mobile apps. Joist has iOS and Android apps and a web app. Sprinklerly is a web app that installs to a phone's home screen; there is no native app.
QuickBooks. Joist lists QuickBooks sync from the Pro plan up. Sprinklerly does not sync with QuickBooks. It writes files of your payments and invoices that you import yourself.
Extras for a solo business: expense tracking by receipt photo, change orders, review requests, homeowner financing and an AI receptionist add-on from $49 per month are listed on Joist's pricing and features pages. Sprinklerly has none of these.
A free trial you can start today. Joist offers 14 days with no credit card. Its free plan is no longer available.

Where Sprinklerly may fit better

Scheduling a day of service calls. Sprinklerly's unit of work is a service area day on a map: a circle with a date, arrival windows and a capacity per window that cannot be booked past, even by two people at once. Joist lists visit scheduling only on its Run plan, and says it does not include dispatching.
Crews and routes. Sprinklerly assigns several technicians to a job with one crew lead, and lets a dispatcher order a day's stops with real drive times and warnings. Joist's site describes its product as free of "big-business features like dispatching and employee tracking".
Irrigation records. Sprinklerly keeps a controller, zone and component tree for each property, with warranty flags, and backflow tester certifications with expiry and test results. Joist's pages list landscaping and plumbing among its industries and describe no irrigation-specific records; that is not a claim that it cannot store notes about them.
Contractor insurance. Joist's Elite plan lists adding license and insurance to documents. Sprinklerly tracks credential expiry and sends a certificate-of-insurance packet as a generated PDF, leaving out any expired document. Joist's site does not say whether it tracks expiry.

Joist pricing, checked 2026-10-19

As shown on Joist's monthly toggle: Basics $10 per month for up to 5 documents a month; Pro $17 per month for unlimited documents and clients, line items and document photos, and work orders; Elite $32 per month, adding license and insurance, change orders and business reports; Run $100 per month at list, shown with a 30% introductory price of $70, adding job organization and visit scheduling. Annual billing is listed at two months free, and the 14-day trial needs no credit card. Source: Joist pricing page. Prices change; confirm on their site.

Sprinklerly is free during early access for contractors who sign up by December 31, 2026, with no credit card required. Planned prices at general availability are Starter $79, Pro $149 and Growing Crews $249 per month, locked in for early-access accounts, with 30 days notice before any charge. See pricing. The scope is not like-for-like: Joist is an estimating and invoicing app, Sprinklerly is scheduling and records.

What Sprinklerly does not do

No native iOS or Android app, no QuickBooks sync (an import file only), no Tap to Pay, no expense tracking, no AI receptionist or review requests, no payroll or live crew GPS, and route planning is manual with real drive times and warnings, not automatic optimization.

Using both

Some contractors will reasonably keep Joist for quoting and getting paid and use Sprinklerly for the schedule and the irrigation records. Nothing connects the two, so expect to enter a customer in each.

Start free Free during early access for sign-ups by December 31, 2026, no credit card required. Planned prices at general availability are $79, $149 and $249 per month, locked in for early-access accounts.

Sources

Joist pricing page, read 2026-10-19: plan prices, annual discount, 14-day trial, add-on.
Joist: official information page, read 2026-10-19: platforms, QuickBooks sync, positioning on dispatching and employee tracking. It dates its own prices to April 2026, and where it differs from the pricing page this page uses the pricing page.

Sprinklerly is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Joist. Joist is a trademark of its owner and is named here only to identify the product being compared. Competitor details come from its public website, read on 2026-10-19, and may have changed; confirm with the vendor. The Sprinklerly features described are those currently shipped in the product.