Quick answer: If you want a Fergus alternative in the UK, Unavoidable CRM covers quotes, jobs, invoices and follow-ups, and adds an AI receptionist that answers the calls you miss on site. Plans are £29, £149 or £399 a month per business, with a 14-day free trial and no card. Fergus lists Essentials from £39 and Professional from £45 a month.
Fergus is a well-known job management app, and many UK trades firms run their work on it happily. This guide is for the ones weighing up a Fergus alternative because the jobs are under control but the phone is not, or because they want calls, quotes, invoices and chasing in one place. Every price below was read on each company’s own pricing page on 17 October 2026.
Fergus is job management software for trades businesses, with a UK site that describes it as built for the UK. Its UK pricing page lists quoting and estimating, price books, job cards, GPS tracking, timesheets, a scheduling calendar, recurring jobs, certificates, invoicing and payments, with integrations for Xero, QuickBooks and MYOB.
The Professional plan adds enquiry management, checklists and forms, job phases, tasks, purchase orders, health and safety documents and fuller reporting. That makes it a natural fit for a firm with an office, a few engineers in vans and jobs that run in stages.
Fergus lists Essentials from £39 a month and Professional from £45 a month, while Unavoidable CRM costs £29, £149 or £399 a month per business. Here are the published prices side by side, as shown on 17 October 2026:
| Plan | Listed price | What the pricing page says |
|---|---|---|
| Fergus Essentials | From £39 a month | Email and chat support. Shown at £3.90 under a “90% off til December” offer |
| Fergus Professional | From £45 a month | Phone, email and chat support, plus enquiry management, job phases and purchase orders. Shown at £4.50 under the same offer |
| Fergus Enterprise 10+ | Custom pricing | For larger teams |
| Fergus timesheet and contractor users | From £12 a month; £2 per contractor a day | For staff who only log time, and for subcontractors |
| Unavoidable CRM Solo | £29 a month | 1 user, 1,000 contacts, every feature |
| Unavoidable CRM Team | £149 a month | 5 users, 10,000 contacts, every feature |
| Unavoidable CRM Agency | £399 a month | Unlimited users and contacts, white-label for clients |
The Fergus page does not say whether its base prices are per user or include VAT, and the 90% offer carries no stated terms, so ask Fergus for a quote for your team size before you compare like with like. On our pricing page, yearly billing saves 20%.
Usage is worth checking too. Fergus lists SMS alerts at £8 per 100 texts and card payments at 1.6% plus 20p per transaction. With Unavoidable CRM, texts, calls and AI receptionist minutes are billed by the providers at their own rates and never marked up: a UK text is typically 4p to 5p, and AI receptionist minutes 10p to 15p.
Fergus does not answer your phone. Its UK pricing page does not mention call answering or an AI receptionist, and the AI features it lists are about jobs and admin. That is not a criticism of the job app; it is simply a different job.
For a one or two-van firm, though, the phone is where work is won or lost. If you are under a sink or up a ladder, the call goes to voicemail and the caller may simply ring the next firm. We explain the pattern in why small firms miss calls, and how a quick reply rescues some of them in missed-call text back.
Fergus is stronger if your work is mostly larger, multi-stage jobs run from an office. Job phases, purchase orders, timesheets with pay summary reports, health and safety documents such as SWMS, and a long list of accounting and payroll connections are the kind of depth a growing contractor needs. If you already have someone answering the phone and your pain is purely job tracking, Fergus may suit you better.
The honest trade-off: if you rely on job phases, purchase orders or safety documents, check our features page against your list first. Unavoidable CRM is built to win the work, run the jobs and get paid for UK service businesses, not to replace every tool a large contractor uses.
If you would like help bringing your contacts across, email info@unavoidablecrm.com. For other comparisons, see our ServiceM8 alternative guide, the compare page or the rest of the blog.
Yes. Unavoidable CRM has a 14-day free trial with every feature and no card needed. Fergus also lists a 14-day free trial on its UK pricing page, with no credit card required.
You can. Some firms keep the job app they know and add a standalone receptionist. The catch is running two systems: caller details land in one place and the job in another, so someone still has to copy them across.
Usually not. You can forward missed or out-of-hours calls from the number your customers already use, so nothing changes for them.
Unavoidable CRM is made by Unavoidable Studio Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 17367981, and based in Leeds.
14-day free trial, every feature, no card needed. From £29 a month per business.
Start free trial →