Contractor Foreman vs. Paymo

Contractor Foreman has been a great tool for managing a variety of projects, from home remodels to large-scale builds. It works especially well for keeping everything organized in one place, whether it’s estimates, schedules, or job costs.
One scenario where it’s been really useful is in managing multiple jobs at once. With several remodels and new construction projects happening at the same time, having a centralized system to track progress, store documents, and communicate with subcontractors has helped keep everything on schedule. It’s also great for estimating—being able to quickly generate and send professional proposals has made bidding much more efficient.
It’s especially well-suited for projects that require a lot of moving parts, like tracking permits and compliance documents. For larger jobs, like school construction, it helps ensure that all approvals, budgets, and schedules stay on track without getting lost in a mess of paperwork.
Where it’s less ideal is for smaller, one-off jobs where a full project management system might be overkill. If it’s just a quick repair or a simple remodel, sometimes it’s easier to just handle things manually. The mobile app could also be a bit more intuitive for on-site use, especially for field updates and quick changes.
Overall, it’s a strong tool for contractors managing multiple projects, budgets, and teams. It keeps things organized and saves time, especially on jobs that require detailed tracking and coordination.

Beautiful interface throughout, easy setup, most natural progressions are fluid and easy to use. Browser functionality allows us to use it cross-platform. Very reasonable pricing model as well. We have had a little trouble using Paymo for the entire creative process to have proofs reviewed and approved. Also, have to use external forms to have work submitted from campus.

Incentivized

• The service is top notch. You would be hard pressed to find other options with this kind of service.
• The ability to have your project flow through the modules makes it a breeze to use.
• Being able to track time as well is a key feature.

Incentivized

• The ability to code exactly what time I worked on a project enables me to bill clients more accurately and within different minimums, which besides more accurately tracking time, this has been extremely helpful as I negotiate contracts for services and offer different deals with potential clients. Some are billed to the minute, some in 15-minute minimums, and some in 20-minute blocks.
• The live reports are great, showing time spent in the minimums that I've set, while also including as much detail as I wish to share.
• I've now started just writing my notes into the tracker, which are then carried into the live reports - this eases my needing to send logs to clients, as well as helping me to keep projects on track.

Incentivized

• Security and sensitive file visibility. Users with no permissions can have access to some hidden files.
• Daily log navigation. Users now need to exit one log entirely to view or check another, resulting in a significant waste of time and reduced efficiency.
• Customization options for reports. No options to set up and automatically send reports by email to specified users.

Incentivized

• It would be really helpful if on the timer tool, they asked you to switch projects when you stop the timer, so it could fill that time in right away for you.
• I never use the 'My Tasks' because I don't fully understand how to integrate it to be useful to what our purposes are in Paymo. Some Youtube tutorials might be helpful

Incentivized

Broken promises for 3 years. I'm done waiting for basic improvements to bring the app into anything close to an industry standard

Incentivized

Overall, Contractor Foreman is a great product, and I’m sure we’ve only scratched the surface of everything it has to offer. It can be a little quirky at times, occasionally displaying a 'Bad Gateway' message, but we haven’t experienced any timeout issues in the past few months. As we continue to use it, I’m confident we’ll uncover even more ways to streamline our workflow

Incentivized

It is a complete, a bit overambitious app but with many features that are needed. I didn't need most of the features but managed to make the most of the two I was using. Also, I think it is a well-rounded app and I am considering moving some team collab there.

Incentivized

Availability was good, FUNCTIONAL availability was more spotty

Incentivized

Many times we had issues that turned out to be errors and bugs. At first, we would be told forcefully that there were no bugs, then we would document them, and we would get an acknowledgement but no apology for essentially either gaslighting us or being ignorant of their system

Incentivized

Absolutely top notch! They were always there to help and immediately. Very happy with the communication they provided and the knowledge they had of their product. I would venture to say that they are one of the best in terms of support in their space.

Incentivized

Good! Fast, excellent, speedy responses. They always wanted to know why and how they could improve on something (good on receiving feedback, too). Not that they were much needed, but my limited experience with them is good; they were really keen to understand what the problem was really about and how they could help with it.

Incentivized

Implementation was moderately difficult, it's the functionality and execution that are seriously lacking

Incentivized

There's just no comparing these two. I'm actually going to suggest we keep CE to my boss, and here's why: Clearestimates is perfect for what I just described. You have a little job that you just BOOM it's done? Put it into Clearestimates. That system does not care at all if you did it "properly." Now Contractor Foreman does so. much. more. than CE. It just does. You can do everything on CF (just not anything haha). Most businesses wouldn't need anything else, but since we're still growing, we do some handyman stuff every now and again that CE is perfect for, and we don't have to go through CF's really picky system to make sure every little tiny thing is correct

Incentivized

We still use Trello and Slack, but Basecamp and HubSpot are too much for our operation to manage or integrate. Paymo is missing some of the tracking features of HubSpot and isn't as universally used as Basecamp but we've been with them for 8 years and they seem to know what matters most to their user base

Incentivized

We had just 2 users

Incentivized

• Positive return for invoice/change order tracking
• Great price
• Prior to using Contractor Foreman we had to wait until the end to capture all change orders in one summary. Now, with the client portal, we can capture in real time and the client has visibility.
• We have been trying to reduce administration time in tracking field expenses and with Contractor Foreman our field crew can uplaod reciepts and track expenses right from their mobile phones.
• Punchlist - the punch list and To Do features are so robust we have drastically improved getting punchlists and small tasks completed in single trips without the wasted time and travel of multiple trips due to missed/forgotten items.

Incentivized

• Gives me more accurate time that I've spent on projects compared to older methods I've used.
• Has data that I can pull together, for example my boss wanted to know the percentage of time I'd spent working on projects for one client compared to everything else - I was able to give them an accurate percentage.
• Forces you to stay on top of jobs, which can lengthen the time to complete something

Incentivized