How to actually choose
The one test that predicts everything: take a real, awkward week from your own schedule, the one with a sick cleaner, a last-minute booking and an invoice query, and put it into each product during their free trial. Count how many times you type the same client name, and check whether an invoice can come out of a completed job without re-keying anything.
Feature lists are close to useless for this decision. Every product in this category schedules jobs and stores clients. What differs is the shape of the workflow, and you only feel that shape under load.
The three categories you are choosing between
Products marketed at cleaning companies fall into three groups, and half the confusion in this market comes from comparing across them as though they were alternatives.
- General field service platforms (Jobber and similar) serve many home service trades. Broad, mature, good integrations. You configure them into cleaning rather than finding cleaning assumed.
- Workforce and deskless team apps (Connecteam and similar) solve scheduling, time tracking and communication for staff. Strong at that, but they do not invoice, hold client records or produce compliance evidence.
- Cleaning-specific platforms (CleanFlo, ZenMaid and similar) assume the trade. The question then becomes which market they assume, ZenMaid is built for US residential maid services, CleanFlo for UK cleaning companies handling both domestic and commercial work.
What UK-specific actually means
It is not a marketing line. In practice it is four concrete things, and each one is either handled by default or handled by you.
- VAT at 20% on cleaning services, shown net and VAT per line, with your registration number on the invoice.
- BACS payment details: sort code, account number and a unique reference, because most UK commercial clients pay by bank transfer, not card.
- Health & safety documentation: COSHH assessments, site-specific RAMS and training records that commercial clients request during tenders.
- UK employment costs, the 12.07% holiday accrual, employer National Insurance and auto-enrolment pension that make an employed cleaner cost 25–32% more than their wage.
If your work is entirely domestic and cash-in-hand simple, none of this matters much. The moment you win an office contract, all four do. Our free calculators cover the maths behind the last one, and the contracts guide covers the documentation.
Compare pricing models, not today's price
Most products in this market charge per user in tiers. That is a perfectly normal model, but it means your software cost rises every time you hire, which is the one thing a growing cleaning company does constantly.
CleanFlo charges £9.99 a month with unlimited staff, clients and locations, which is flat as you grow. For a two-person operation the difference is small. Model it against your likely headcount in two years rather than today's, and the comparison usually looks different.