Trusso vs. Joist: When an Estimate App Isn't Enough

Joist and Trusso get compared a lot, but they're not really the same kind of product. Joist is a document app: it makes estimates and invoices, and it does that job well for the price. Trusso is a platform for running the whole business — leads, estimates, jobs, crew, invoices, payments. So the real question isn't which app is better. It's whether documents are your actual problem.

The Short Version

• Joist's Basics plan is $10/month, capped at 5 documents per month. Pro is $17/month and Elite is $32/month — all built around a single user creating documents.
• Trusso starts at $29/month (owner plus 2 crew) with unlimited estimates, invoices, jobs and customers on every plan; Pro is $59/month for an owner plus ten.
• Joist has no lead capture, no job tracking, no scheduling, no crew clock-in, and no CRM. Trusso includes all of it, plus AI that drafts the estimate for you.
• If you're strictly solo and only send documents, Joist is cheaper and that might be all you need.

What $10 a Month Buys — and What It Doesn't

At $10–$32 a month, Joist is one of the cheapest ways to stop texting customers a bare number and start sending something professional. If that's your only gap, it closes it. (The Basics cap of five documents a month goes fast, though — most working contractors end up on Pro at $17.)

What it doesn't touch is everything around the document. The Angi lead you saw three hours late still went to someone else. The job details still live in your texts — a failure mode we covered in Stop Losing Estimates in Text Messages. The schedule is still in your head, the crew still calls to ask where they're working tomorrow, and the customer's history is still scattered across two phones. Joist doesn't claim to fix any of that. It just means a $10 subscription isn't the full cost of running your business on it.

What Trusso Does With the Same Jobs

Trusso starts before the document. Leads from Angi, Thumbtack, Yelp and Google import automatically and get answered from one inbox. The AI drafts the line-item estimate in under 30 seconds from your own rates — or from real room measurements if you scan the space with Scanstead. Win the job and it flows straight into scheduling, job photos and notes, crew clock-in, and an invoice the customer can pay by card on the spot. Every customer's full history stays in one place.

The estimate itself matters too — what's in it decides whether you win the job, and we published a checklist in 7 Things Every Contractor Estimate Should Include. Joist gives you a blank document to build it in; Trusso drafts it for you.

Where Joist Is the Right Call

Honestly: if you're strictly solo, your leads come by referral, you already know where you're working tomorrow, and the absolute lowest price matters more than saving admin time — Joist does the one thing you need for a third of the cost. Plenty of one-man operations run happily on it, and if that's you, we'd rather say so than sell you features you won't open.

The Bottom Line

Choose Joist if you only need to send estimates and invoices, and everything else about your business is already handled.

Choose Trusso if you buy marketplace leads, run (or plan to run) a crew, or you're tired of being the only system your business has. It's $29–$59/month for the whole lead-to-payment path, with a 7-day free trial on every plan. The full side-by-side is at trussoapp.com/compare/joist.