TradesWork vs GorillaDesk (2026): route businesses vs service shops

This is our product compared with GorillaDesk, so weigh it accordingly. The honest headline: for most pest control, lawn care and pool route businesses, GorillaDesk is the better choice. It's built around recurring routes, it handles pesticide records that TradesWork doesn't, and it costs a fraction of what TradesWork does. GorillaDesk facts below come from its pricing page and help center, checked October 15, 2026.

Where TradesWork fits is a different kind of shop: HVAC, plumbing and electrical companies of roughly 3 to 50 techs whose day is service calls, maintenance visits and replacement sales rather than a fixed list of stops.

Where GorillaDesk is stronger

Routes. Routing is in every GorillaDesk plan, limited to 25 stops on Basic, with Drive Matrix routing on Pro and drive time plus Best Available Time on Growth¹. TradesWork plans a service day and lets you re-plan with a tap, but it doesn't do route-day scheduling for recurring stops. If your techs run the same streets every month, that gap matters every single day.

Pest and lawn compliance. GorillaDesk's Material Usage add-on lets you keep master lists of materials with EPA registration numbers, target pests, treatment methods, units, areas and dilution, records them on each job, and prints them on invoices and work orders to meet state requirements². Pro adds device tracking and barcoding for bait stations, plus a device tracking report¹³. TradesWork has no chemical or pesticide log.

Price. GorillaDesk's pricing calculator, checked October 15, 2026, shows these monthly prices¹:

A six-tech TradesWork shop pays $474 a month on Essentials or $594 on Pro, billed annually. Only users assigned to a schedule need a paid GorillaDesk seat, and crews riding together can share one, so a two-person pest crew counts once¹.

Seasonal flexibility. Monthly GorillaDesk accounts can be frozen for a seasonal break, with no setup fees or contracts¹. TradesWork is month-to-month too, but has no freeze option.

Where TradesWork is stronger

Service and replacement selling. TradesWork builds good, better and best options from your price book on the tech's phone, shows a monthly payment under each, and flags old units and repeat repairs as replacement opportunities for your comfort advisors. GorillaDesk's dynamic estimates, estimate packages and sales pipeline sit on its Growth plan¹, and they're designed around route services.

Equipment and HVAC records. TradesWork keeps the history of each unit at each location, a refrigerant log tied to each tech's EPA 608 number, leak repair deadlines and warranty claim tracking. If you're an HVAC shop, those records are the job.

Memberships built for service shops. On Pro and up, TradesWork membership dues bill themselves, failed cards are retried with an update link, maintenance visits come due on schedule, and member pricing applies on estimates automatically. GorillaDesk handles recurring invoices and Stripe or Square subscriptions well, which suits route billing. The difference is the member price on a repair estimate and the visit-due list for a maintenance agreement.

A tech app that works with no signal. TradesWork Field keeps saving estimates, notes, photos, forms and time with no signal, on iPhone and Android, in English and Spanish.

Phones included. TradesWork includes missed-call text back and caller pop-ups, and the AI plan adds an AI receptionist, in early access. GorillaDesk sells texting as a $5-a-month number plus prepaid SMS credits¹, and its help center lists AI agents for calls and texts⁴.

Day to day

Office. GorillaDesk's day centers on the route calendar and recurring jobs. TradesWork centers on the dispatch board and the phone: the caller's history, open jobs, balance and membership appear before you answer, and website, Angi, Thumbtack and referral leads land in one inbox.

Techs. Both have iPhone and Android apps. GorillaDesk's app records materials, devices and check-ins along a route. TradesWork walks each visit step by step (arrive, diagnose, show options, do the work, wrap up), and techs can talk instead of type.

Owners. GorillaDesk lists about 40 reports, each exportable to Excel or CSV³. TradesWork reports show the jobs behind each number and let you ask plain-English questions of your own data.

Mixed shops: the hard case

The hardest version of this choice is a mixed shop. A pest company adds HVAC duct work, or a plumbing shop picks up a water treatment route with monthly salt deliveries. The honest answer depends on where the money is.

• Routes are most of your revenue: stay on GorillaDesk. Its route tools, per-route price and chemical records are hard to give up, and TradesWork won't replace them.
• Service and replacements are most of your revenue: TradesWork fits the core of the business better. Run the small route as recurring maintenance visits on memberships, knowing you'll plan those days by hand on the board rather than with route optimization.
• It's close to even: don't switch yet. Two systems for two lines of business can be cheaper than forcing one tool to do work it wasn't built for.

Questions to ask in each trial

Both products offer a free trial, so use it on a real week of work.

Ask GorillaDesk: how many routes will we need in a year and what will that cost; which features we need sit on Growth rather than Pro; how SMS credits will add up at our volume; how equipment or system records would be kept for HVAC or plumbing jobs.

Ask TradesWork: how we'd plan a recurring route day without route optimization; how we set up our maintenance customers as memberships, since they are created fresh rather than imported; what we lose by not having a pesticide log; what the AI receptionist does with after-hours calls.

Switching from GorillaDesk to TradesWork

There's no dedicated GorillaDesk importer in TradesWork. What you get is the general spreadsheet importer:

• Customers: GorillaDesk exports your customer list from Customers, then the Action button, then Export⁵. Drop that file into TradesWork, map the columns on screen, check the preview, and each customer comes in with its service address.
• Price list: if you keep your services and prices in a spreadsheet, it imports with a name and price per row.
• History stays in the archive: jobs, invoices, payments and material usage come out of GorillaDesk's reports as Excel or CSV files³. TradesWork doesn't import them from GorillaDesk, so keep those files as your record.
• Cards are re-collected: GorillaDesk takes payments through Stripe or Square¹. Stored cards don't transfer through an export, so customers on autopay re-save a card from their TradesWork link.

The full plan is in migrating from GorillaDesk to TradesWork, and every export is listed in how to export your data from GorillaDesk.

Which should you choose?

GorillaDesk if you run pest, lawn, pool or other recurring routes, you need chemical logs and device barcoding, or you want the lowest monthly cost. That's most route businesses.

TradesWork if you're an HVAC, plumbing or electrical shop with 3 to 50 techs, your revenue comes from service calls, memberships and replacements, and you want equipment records, selling on the tech's phone and phones with an AI receptionist in one product. If you do both, for example HVAC plus a pest route, be careful: TradesWork won't run the route side well today.