For painting companies
Surfacely is estimating software for painting companies — built around the three things that decide whether a job was worth doing: getting the enquiry, measuring it properly, and pricing it so it makes money.
Free to start — and it prices every job on your rates, never ours.
The short version
Every estimating platform starts once you already have the measurements. Surfacely starts before that — so the job is roughly measured, and both of you have decided, before anyone drives anywhere.
Every screen it happens on is below — folded away until you want it.
Try it free →Every screen that follows
Four stages, twenty-two screens, captured against a live database. The company and the address are invented; every measurement, rate and total is what the software actually calculated. Open whichever stage you want to see.
01
The part no other estimating platform does — sent after a call, or sitting on your own website so it works while you're up a ladder. Either way, the cheapest way there is to find out whether a job is worth your time.
See the 11 screensStep 1
An enquiry comes in. There are two visits in a painting job and this replaces the first one — the drive out to find out what the job is and whether it is even yours, days out and half a day gone. Instead you fill in three fields and send a link, by email or copied and texted yourself.
The second visit — the one where you actually measure it — still happens on every job you take on. It is further down this page.
At the desk
Step 2
That is the whole thing. No account for them to create, nothing to install, nothing to print. It works on whatever phone is already in their hand.
At the desk
Step 3
Your logo, your colours, your company across the top: "Walk Fernbrook Painting Co. through your place." As far as the homeowner is concerned this is your software. Surfacely never appears.
The alternative is one tap away too — "Just send my details for now" — so a reluctant homeowner still becomes a lead rather than a bounce.
On the phone, on site
Step 4
No jargon and no arithmetic — nothing they can get wrong. Inside it asks for a room; outside it asks for an aspect — the front of the house, the eaves, a deck, a fence. Then a photo, and which surfaces are being painted. Questions a homeowner can actually answer standing in front of it.
On the phone, on site
Step 5
Rough is the point. It is not a survey and it does not pretend to be — it is enough to tell a small job from a big one, and it comes to you with photos attached.
On the phone, on site
Step 6
Three tiers, in the homeowner's own words, under a line that does the most important job on the page: "This is a starting range, not a quote. Your painter sets the real price once they see the job."
You are never bound by it, and the homeowner has been told that before they ever contact you.
On the phone, on site
Step 7
Access and scaffolding. How much preparation is really needed. Repairs underneath. Lead paint and asbestos. Big colour changes. Every one of them named, with "your painter will confirm them on site."
This is the expectation-setting conversation you would otherwise have to have yourself, on the phone, every time.
On the phone, on site
Step 8
This is the part that matters. Before you spend a minute on it you can see the photos, where it is, how big it is, and what the range deliberately excluded. You review, and you refine.
Pass, and you have spent thirty seconds. Take it on, and you go and measure it properly with their scope already loaded.
At the desk
Step 9
Every invite you have sent, and where it got to. A homeowner who has gone quiet is a follow-up you can actually make, instead of an enquiry you assume went cold.
At the desk
Step 10
"Measure your own place and get an honest starting range you can send to a painter." Someone who lands on your page at ten at night can start right there, instead of filling in a contact form and waiting for you to call back.
It is your page, so the scope comes back to you — nothing routed, brokered or sold.
On the phone, on site
Step 11
Same rooms, same surfaces, same photos, same starting range with the same exclusions spelled out. What reaches you is a real scope in Surfacely's own format — which is why you can turn it into a priced quote the same day rather than the same week.
On the phone, on site
02
This is where you actually walk it and measure for real — starting from the rooms and photos they already sent, not a blank page.
See the 3 screensStep 12
Ceilings, doors, baseboards, walls, windows — each carrying its own area, hours and coat count. The bar at the bottom keeps a running total for the room: 15.7 hrs, 5 gallons.
On the phone, on site
Step 13
49′3″ for the first run. Add another and it totals as you go. In the US and Canada the grid takes feet and the inches come off their own row; everywhere else it is metres and a decimal point. Either way, no converting in your head and no arithmetic on the back of a business card.
The keypad changes with your country, so nobody is doing unit maths on site. Storage is metric underneath either way; you never see it.
On the phone, on site
Step 14
Six areas, all six done — 81.7 hrs and 16 gallons. Every surface measured rather than guessed. This is the scope the price gets built on.
On the phone, on site
03
At the desk, with the measurements already in. The part that decides whether the job was worth doing.
See the 5 screensStep 15
Not your wage — your loaded cost. Wages plus on-costs: tax, insurance, leave. Surfacely shows you where your number sits against what painters near you pay, and every quote you send prices off it.
Not sure? Enter your crew — painters, apprentices, casuals, subbies — and it blends them into one rate.
On the phone, on site
Step 16
Scaffold on the front facade. Three weeks of project management. Surfacely flags what the measurement implies and will not price the job until you have said yes or no to each one — running cost impact in view the whole time.
Two findings here. Neither is optional to answer; both are optional to charge.
At the desk
Step 17
$52/hr cost at 45% margin makes a $94.55/hr sell rate and 43.2% GP across the job. Change either number and the client-facing document on the right updates as you watch.
Sell prices are always derived from cost, never stored — so a rate change can never leave a stale price behind.
At the desk
Step 18
A cover photo of their own house, an executive summary, and the scope of work broken down by area — in your colours, under your logo, the same identity they saw on the measuring link.
At the desk
Step 19
One link. No login, no PDF to download and squint at. Once a quote is accepted it locks — from there, changes are variations, measured and priced the same way.
On the phone, on site
04
The half most quoting tools stop before — and the only half that tells you whether the price was right.
See the 3 screensStep 20
Three on site, eight hours each, three quarters of the way through. About thirty seconds at knock-off.
On the phone, on site
Step 21
Labour 62% — on track. Materials 85% — watch. You find this out with a week left, not at the end when the money has already gone.
At the desk
Step 22
Quote total, invoiced, paid and outstanding in one panel. Job complete, paid in full, nothing left on the table — and the estimate-versus-actual sits behind it, ready for the next quote.
At the desk
FAQ
Nothing, to start — and it is a real free tier, not a trial dressed up as one. Two seats, your first five buildings, extending to ten the moment you win a job through it. No card, and never a fee per lead, per quote or per job. After that it is a flat monthly plan by team size, not a cut of what you quote.
Better than you would think — because it only asks what a homeowner can actually answer: name the room, snap a photo, pick the surfaces, put a rough size to it. It never pretends to be a survey; the screen they see says "this is a starting range, not a quote" before it shows a single number. Rough is the point. It just has to be enough for you to judge the job.
No — and it was never trying to. It replaces the drive you make to find out whether a job is worth measuring, not the measuring itself. You still walk every job you take on. The difference is you arrive already knowing it is real, with the rooms and photos they sent instead of a blank page.
Never. There is no marketplace, no bidding war, no per-lead fee, and nobody is buying or selling your name. The public link lives on your own website or your own Facebook page — so whoever measures found you first, and what they send back is yours alone.
Entirely yours. Your loaded labour cost, your production rates, your prep rates, your material margins, your minimum-job rules — every number in the calculation is one you set. Surfacely's only job is the arithmetic, done the same way every time, by everyone on your team who quotes.
That is exactly what the last stage is for. Log actual hours and materials as the job runs, and it shows you precisely where the estimate missed and by how much — not a feeling that you underquoted, a number. Your tenth quote beats your first because the first nine actually taught you something.
And then it compounds
This is one loop, not five features. What a job actually cost you is what sharpens the quote after it — and you only get that by taking the work through to the end.
Set your rates once, then either send a measuring link or walk a room yourself and price it on your own numbers. The fastest way to judge it is on a job you already know the answer to.
Free to start, and your rate card is yours from the first quote — nothing here prices a job on our numbers.
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