15 Best Apps for Painting Contractors in 2024

To reduce the stress of running your painting business, manage your daily operations using Jobber. 

Jobber is the best app for painting contractors looking to improve their estimating process. No more juggling paper estimates, excel sheets, and text messages. 

Use Jobber to build quotes that let you upsell with add-ons and special service packages. When the job is done, turn your quotes into invoices in just a few clicks.

Jobber’s online booking and drag-and-drop scheduling ensures that your crews are always where they’re supposed to be. You can also send automatic notifications to your customers to remind them of the scheduled job, ensuring that everyone is on the same page.

Access important job details from a client’s property (like square footage measurements and before-and-after photos), and even automate your repeatable admin work, including quote follow-ups and visit reminders.

Whether you’re at the office or the job site, Jobber’s painting business software lets you:

• Track all material and labor costs in the same place you manage your work orders with job costing
• Schedule jobs and dispatch your crews faster with routes optimized automatically by Jobber
• Track painting job progress from start to finish
• Prep for payroll easily by tracking each painter’s work hours in the field
• Easily accept credit card payments in person and online
• Let customers access an online portal to approve quotes and pay invoices

iOS, Android, and desktop

QuickBooks Online is the best app for painters looking to strengthen their accounting processes.

QuickBooks Online adds flexibility to your finances by letting you manage invoices, expenses, income, financial reports, and payroll from any device. 

Pro-Tip: You can integrate QuickBooks Online with apps like Jobber to create an all-in-one solution and run a tighter ship.

iOS and Android

Fleetsharp is our recommendation for the best fleet management app. Use it to map out efficient routes for your crew, reduce fuel costs, and deliver better service by responding to customer calls quicker.

You can also use it to track vehicle activity, vehicle location, driver behavior (e.g., speeding), mileage, maintenance alerts, and gas levels.

Just like QuickBooks, FleetSharp integrates with Jobber to make smarter, faster scheduling decisions.

 iOS and Android

Google provides several free apps (e.g., Gmail, Google Drive, G Suite Google Docs, Google Meet, etc.)—collectively called Google Workspace—that you can use to operate all aspects of your business. From emailing clients to drafting and sending contracts, you can do it all from one central platform.

For example, Google Drive lets you create, store, and collaborate on documents in the cloud from any device.

But if you pay $6/mo, you can get more, including a business email instead of a generic Gmail one, to further impress your customers with your professionalism. 
For example, instead of your email being [email protected], you can change it to [email protected] to add legitimacy when you’re emailing clients.

iOS and Android

Communication is crucial when your team is out on the road doing a job. Slack is one of the best apps for painting contractors to communicate with their team.

Slack lets you communicate via text, audio, or video through what they call “channels.” Channels help order conversations so that the right information and people are in one place. 

For example, you could create a channel dedicated to marketing or make one for individual clients to chat about projects or special client requests.

READ MORE: How to subcontract painting jobs

This free 3-in-1 Profit Margin Calculator by Jobber comes in handy when you’re pricing painting jobs to ensure you’re making a profit.

Use it to get these three easy calculations to help you price more profitable jobs, stay on budget, and include markup in your prices:

• Operating profit margin
• Gross profit margin
• Net profit margin

Simply fill in your information to get access to the calculator webpage, then save it to your bookmarks so you can easily refer to it from anywhere, on any device.

READ MORE: Profit Margins: A complete guide for small business owners

iOS and Android

The ColorSnap Visualizer by Sherwin Williams lets you take a photo of a job environment and upload it. 

The app will then match up to eight colors against the Sherwin-Williams colors and provide details like which colors complement each other. This makes it one of the best painting jobs apps for contractors to have in their pocket.

Better yet, the Paint a Scene feature lets you use augmented reality to simply tap a wall to change its color. You can save and share your images and color choices with clients, allowing them to visualize what the end product will look like.

READ MORE: Painting equipment list: 50 must-have tools for professional painters

iOS

Similar to ColorSnap, Paint Tester allows you to take and upload an image of a room. You can then paint the walls by choosing a color from the color picker and using the Smart Paint Bucket feature to apply the colors to the wall without overlapping into other areas.

The result is a clean and professional image you can send to clients over email with your estimate.

The Benjamin Moore Color Portfolio app is the best app for painting contractors to instantly color match on the job.

This app connects to Benjamin Moore’s database and gives you thousands of paint colors to match, all from your smartphone. The app provides a video visualizer to see what the selected digital paint would look like as the final product.

After paying their invoice, your painting customers will automatically get a direct link to leave a review on your Google Business Profile for a streamlined process.

Finally, from your reviews dashboard in Jobber, you can keep an eye on your average Google rating and even respond directly to the review. You’ll also see your latest reviews and resources on how to manage your business’s reputation.

iOS and Android

Email marketing is targeted, allows you to easily stay top-of-mind, and has one of the best returns.

When you use Jobber Campaigns to create email campaigns for your painting business, you can choose from premade templates and customize them with your company branding.

After editing the email with details on your painting services, choose the group of clients you want to email—like homeowners, or business owners 

You can even select clients using tags, job history, or by a particular painting service you provided—such as interior and exterior painting.

Then, track your success over time from a simple dashboard. For every campaign you send in Jobber, you’ll see the number of customers who opened the email, clicked on a link, or converted into a job.

Mobile-friendly software

If your quoting process is inefficient and your proposals are being ignored, it may be time to invest in sales software such as Responsibid.

Responsibid helps you secure more painting contracts by:

• Empowering you to send quotes faster through your website, over the phone or email, or in person
• Allowing clients to book time slots for jobs that suits them
• Letting you send automatic follow-ups over text or email

Bonus: Responsibid integrates with many of your favorite apps like Jobber and Zapier.

iOS and Android

Canva is an easy-to-use DIY design tool. It can be used to create marketing materials such as email campaigns, painting flyers, door-to-door campaigns, business cards, and even social media images.

Canva provides templates and free painting stock images you can use for your painting marketing. You can also upload and edit your own photos, making them ideal for creating before and after shots of painting jobs to “wow” your customers.

iOS and Android

Nextdoor is a hyper-local social media network, making it the perfect app for painters to establish themselves as experts in their community. 

Its users, primarily homeowners, join to connect with locals, find businesses nearby, and talk about local events. As a painting professional, you can use Nextdoor to:

• Introduce yourself to the community
• Offer expert advice and solve customer problems by answering questions
• Respond to recommendations provided by homeowners
• Get more recommendations by sharing your Nextdoor business page on invoices and emails
• Create Nextdoor ads (sponsorships, local deals, and business posts (free))

READ MORE: Why you should advertise on Nextdoor

iOS and Android

Last on our list of the best apps for painting contractors is Angi.

Angi, formerly Angie’s List, is a lead generation platform. The app has a paid and free version, making it one of the most affordable options to find prospects.

Pro-Tip: Platforms like Angi are often hit or miss because success varies based on factors like region, services, and industry. Don’t be afraid to try other lead generation platforms if Angi isn’t working for you.

READ MORE: The best lead generation platforms for contractors

Invest in the right app for your painting business

With the right mobile app in your toolkit, managing a painting business can be as smooth as a fresh coat of paint. 

There’s no shortage of painting apps to help you run and market your painting business. But there’s no need to try them all at once.

Instead, select apps that address the biggest gaps in your business and add more to your digital toolbox over time. 
If you have any other apps you feel we should add to this list, please let us know on Facebook or Instagram.

Originally published July 2023. Last updated on November 1, 2024.