Three genuinely different products answer this search, and their prices run from free to $1,800 a book. Two of the vendors that look like competitors on the results page turn out to be the same company.
The short answer
Flat rate pricing software is a price book plus a way to present it. The three product shapes differ in who writes the book and what happens when you stop paying.
- A book you buy. A one-off purchase, often delivered as a spreadsheet. You own it, you maintain it, and it does not expire.
- A book you rent. A subscription to a pricing platform, usually with the option of buying professionally built task lists on top.
- A book inside the platform. The pricebook module of a field service platform you were buying anyway.
What the three shapes publish
Every figure read from the vendor’s own page on 9 August 2026.
| Product | Shape | Published price | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aptora Flat Rate Simple | A book you buy | $999 list, currently $499 | One-off purchase. Microsoft Excel, around 3,300 pre-built tasks |
| Flat Rate Plus Online, Forever Free | A book you rent | Free | 5,000 flat rate task items, custom books, card processing included |
| Flat Rate Plus Online, Premium Plus | A book you rent | $49.99 a month, or $420 a year | The annual figure is described as three months free |
| Professionally built books | Content, either shape | $1,800 each | HVAC/R, plumbing, or electrical. Landscape lighting is free. 15% or 25% off for all three |
| The New Flat Rate | A book you rent | From $99 a month per technician | Stated in the FAQ. How it scales above the starting tier is not published |
| ServiceTitan pricebook | A book inside the platform | Not published | Three named tiers, no figure against any of them |
The professionally built books are the row most likely to be missed. At $1,800 each they cost more than three years of the subscription they sit on, and they are the part that determines whether the product is usable on day one.
The spread is the finding. A shop can spend nothing, or $499 once, or $420 a year, or $1,800 for content, or $99 a month per technician — for products that all answer the same search. None of those is the cheap version of another.
Two vendors that are one company
This is worth knowing before you count your options.
The pricing page at flatratesoftware.com — Flat Rate Plus Online — gives sales@aptora.com as its sales contact. Aptora Corporation also sells Flat Rate Simple from aptora.com, and its navigation links to Flat Rate Plus Online as its own offering. Both appeared on the same results page for this search.
A buyer counting apparent alternatives on that page would count one too many. This is not hidden and it is not wrongdoing — it is a company with two products at two price points, which is ordinary. It is worth noticing only because a results page presents every entry as an independent option, and the number of genuinely independent options is one of the things a shortlist is supposed to establish.
The add-ons that change the total
Flat Rate Plus Online publishes its add-ons, which is more than most vendors in this cohort do. They also change the arithmetic considerably.
| Add-on | Published price | What it does to a small shop |
|---|---|---|
| QuickBooks integration | $499 initial, then $29 per user per month | For three users that is $499 up front and $1,044 a year — more than the base subscription |
| Export data option | $10 per user per month | Getting your own data out is a paid feature. For three users, $360 a year |
| Professionally built book | $1,800 each | The largest single number in this category, and the one that makes it usable |
The export line deserves a moment. Paying monthly, per user, to export your own pricing data is a real cost of leaving, and it should be counted when the product is bought rather than when it is left.
Costs that only appear at the exit are the standard trap in this market, and they are covered generally in switching platforms and onboarding fees.
Choosing between the three shapes
Four questions.
- Do you already run a field service platform? If yes, price its pricebook module before buying anything separate. Two systems holding two versions of your prices is the worst outcome available.
- Who will maintain the book? If the answer is nobody, rent rather than buy, and pay for a maintained one.
- How many technicians present prices? Per-technician pricing scales with headcount and per-company pricing does not. The New Flat Rate publishes a starting figure of $99 a month per technician but does not publish how it scales above that tier, so the monthly total for a six-technician shop is not a number this page can honestly produce. Ask the vendor for it in writing, and compare it against a per-company seat model knowing the two are not doing the same job.
- What happens to your prices if you stop paying? Ask it in those words. A book you bought stays yours. A hosted book may not, and the export fee above is a hint about how that conversation goes.
How pricing at the door actually works once a book exists — and why the presentation matters as much as the number — is in quoting on site. If the search that brought you here was really about drawings rather than a price book, the split is explained in plumbing estimating software.
What this page cannot tell you
- What The New Flat Rate costs above the starting tier. The vendor publishes a starting figure in an FAQ and states that plans scale with trades and support, without publishing the scale. A per-technician price with an undisclosed scale cannot be totalled for a real shop.
- How long Aptora’s $499 sale price lasts. Not published. The $999 list price is the figure that survives the promotion.
- What ServiceTitan’s pricebook costs. Not published, like everything else on that page.
- Whether any of these books are any good. Task coverage, labour-unit realism and how often content is revised are questions about the product in use, and this site has not operated any of them.
One marketing claim on these pages is deliberately not repeated here. One vendor headlines a specific annual revenue increase per truck. It is unsourced on the page, it is a claim about an outcome in someone else’s business, and printing it would lend it an authority it has not earned.
Sources
- Flat Rate Plus Online (Aptora Corporation) — primary vendor pricing page, read
- Aptora Corporation — primary vendor pricing page, read
- The New Flat Rate — primary vendor page, read
- ServiceTitan — quote gated confirmed, read
- Housecall Pro — primary vendor pricing page, read
- Google US, read first-hand — observed serp, read
Vendor pricing changes without notice. Every figure above carries the date it was read. If a vendor’s current page disagrees with this one, the vendor’s page is right and this one is stale — and that is a bug worth reporting.
