On-Screen Takeoff vs Houzz Pro: Which is a better fit?

Jeffrey E.: My name's Jeff. I'm a senior estimator. I give On-Screen Takeoff a five out of five, qualified. For more reviews like this, click below. Before On-Screen Takeoff, I was like a lot of old dinosaurs. I used plans and magic markers. It worked, it worked well, as long as you had a big table and a lot of place to put paper. Eventually what I realized is that On-Screen Takeoff essentially is a digital magic marker, and it allowed me to not only mark it all, keep it all in one place without a big pile of paper, but actually attach scopes to it as well. It was a natural. I got lucky. I chose On-Screen Takeoff because the company I was working with had it on the computer already. So I decided to start using it and fell in love with it because it was a natural progression from using magic markers on paper to using magic markers on a digital screen. The biggest problem I had at the time was a small screen. Once I had a bigger screen, it was fun. It was actually easy to do. Getting started with On-Screen Takeoff was actually really easy. For somebody who hadn't really done any kind of takeoff program before, their tech help was fantastic. They walk you through things. Their tutorials were good. But really the learning curve isn't that steep with it. It's fairly easy to figure out how to put a magic marker on a digital screen. It wasn't too long, maybe four weeks before I was completely up to speed on it. On-Screen Takeoff is a great program if your company is used to using magic markers and paper still. It will bring you in the digital world, and it will do it fairly painlessly even if you've got estimators that have been there for 25, 30 years. I'm in my 60s and I learned this pretty easily. It's a fantastic on-ramp to the digital world. If you're not paying attention to the digital world, you're going to get left behind.

Chris P.: Hi, I'm Chris. I'm the owner of Modified Kitchen and Bath. I rate Houzz Pro five out of five. So previously, I've used a software called CostCertified, which was good but it wasn't full-featured like the Houzz Pro. Houzz Pro has quite a few options. It has a lot of different segments to it so you're checking a lot of boxes. The reason we chose Houzz Pro was first of all was the cost. Second of all, it allowed us to have a built-in website right on the Houzz Pro setup. It also gave us the opportunity to estimate right from their system, and just was very full-featured for what we were paying. I would say it was very easy to get started with Houzz Pro. Once he got signed up, they made it extremely simple. And even putting the website together, it was probably the easiest I've ever worked on. My recommendation would be Houzz Pro would be a great solution if you're a small to medium-sized company and you're looking for an all-in-one feature set that also includes the ability to manage your website and do your estimates all in one system.