Why solo operators are leaving Jobber in 2026.
Jobber's pricing trajectory over the past few years has steadily moved upmarket. The roadmap leans harder into upselling Connect ($139–$199/mo) and Grow ($199–$399/mo) tiers, the "Core" plan keeps getting features moved to higher tiers, and the per-user fees ($29/user/mo above the included seats) stack faster than ever. The product that originally won loyalty from solo tradies has slowly turned into the kind of mid-market field service platform that the smallest operators outgrow paying for.
The other Jobber complaint that comes up in r/Contractor threads almost weekly: per-SMS charges. Jobber's customer messaging uses traditional SMS — you pay per message sent, on top of your tier. A busy plumber sending appointment confirmations and "on-the-way" messages can add $30–60/month in SMS fees alone, before counting any of the per-user upcharges. That cost is invisible until your monthly invoice arrives.
Decker takes a different bet. Trades already live on WhatsApp — every plumber, electrician and HVAC tech has it open on their phone all day. So Decker is WhatsApp-only, no SMS. Your customer carries the conversation in WhatsApp where they already are, you don't pay per-message fees to a third-party SMS gateway, and customer reply rates are higher because nobody ignores a WhatsApp from a tradesperson the way they ignore SMS. Combined with $19/month flat and no per-user fees, this is the structural shift behind every "I switched from Jobber to Decker" pre-order we've collected.
If you're a solo plumber, electrician, HVAC tech or handyman who started on Jobber when it was actually built for you, and you're now paying $200+/month for software that has drifted toward franchise-scale operations, Decker is the move. The headline number ($19/mo, locked for life as a founding customer) is the total — no add-on tiers being designed in the background to "convert" you into the next price bracket.