The term “SaaS” is thrown around quite a bit, referring to anything from the credit card tracking tool you're nervous to check on your phone to the unread Slack channels on your work computer.

Now, the convenience of helpful cloud-based platforms has reached general contractors to a more immersive degree than ever, promising saved time and better overall management. But with the ever-growing number of general contractor software options out there, it can be tough to nail down which is best for your specific operation.

Maybe you’re a smaller GC looking for a free option, an established contractor searching for a full-fledged construction management platform so you can scale better, or simply on the hunt for a convenient cloud solution that's a bit better than the one you've had for years that's not quite cutting it.

Ideally, this list will have a definitive answer for each of those niches. Let's get into it.

What makes a piece of general contractor software worthwhile?

Before we get into our general contractor software picks, let's look at what aspects should be most important to your company.

We've delved into the path to successful tech adoption in the past, breaking down reasons for tech selection and increasing your odds of internal buy-in once you do select a tool. In this blog, we frequently drill in the notion that good technology should not only make your life significantly easier, but it should far surpass the return on investment. Tech being "worthwhile," is subjective because what could be useful for one GC could be useless to another depending on countless variables.

Your annual construction volume, your market, your project bread and butter, your employee headcount, and your overall tech-savvy are just a few factors that will influence which general contractor software will have value and ROI. Typically the larger your company is and the more complicated the projects you complete are, the more customized solution you'll need (goodbye freemium horizontal solutions).

When researching pain points, discovering software band-aids for them, and demoing different products in the vertical for the solution, you should make it a priority to find similar use case. Does another general contractor roughly your size and in a similar market find success with the product you're looking into? Will the SaaS company connect you with someone at the GC?

Reviews online aren't everything; we've spoken to users of highly rated construction software who find the tool completely broken and outdated (we won't name names). Sometimes it's worth doing first-hand discovery for what can be a large financial commitment. Again, it's all about making sure that ROI is there.

Additionally, you'll want to make sure that the new software will integrate within the rest of your tech ecosystem. Your pieces of tech should complement each other rather than overlap or suppress each other, and be "all-in-one" when possible. Hygiene product illiterate folks getting dragged by their wives for buying a 4-in-1 shampoo, conditioner, face wash, body wash doesn't have a parallel here (no offense)—"all-in-one" is a good thing in construction tech, we promise!

The 8 Best General Contractor Software

Course-of-Construction software for general contractors

Pick: Procore

Procore has built a stellar reputation in construction project management with its quality and safety features, building information modeling (BIM) capabilities, and design functions. In short, Procore allows construction companies to see their tasks in a moment’s notice, keep on schedule, and spot issues before they touch your budget or delay schedules.

According to Procore, 7 out of 10 construction project managers reduce the duration of their projects by at least three days by using their general contractor software. You can also integrate Procore with other financial management systems like Sage 100 Contractor or Viewpoint, if you prefer to stick with your current accounting platform. Their generous app marketplace touts integrations with countless other construction solutions.

We're admittedly a bit biased toward Procore because a good percentage of the Buildr development and support team are former Procore staff. This has allowed us to build industry-leading Procore integrations for CRM and Handover while seeing to the needs of our customers that also partner with Procore; we can quite assuredly affirm we know the Procore platform inside and out. For our money, there is no better course-of-construction general contractor software than Procore in the market right now.

ERP Solutions for general contractors

Pick: Sage 100 Contractor

For small to mid-sized general contractors, Sage 100 may fit your bill. It’s popular for its all-encompassing nature, covering your estimating, scheduling, project management, payroll, equipment, and even accounting needs.

Sage 100 Contractor offers a firmer handle on your estimates and more efficient job costing, giving smaller contractors some much-needed co-management. It also has a dedicated network of providers who can help out with linking the software to specific contracting tasks.

Preconstruction software for general contractors

Pick: Buildr

Buildr is a preconstruction platform that is an all-in-one customer relationship management system and workforce planning solution that unites precon teams, increases profit margins, and helps GCs make data-informed decisions. Buildr is where business development, operations, marketing, estimating, and leadership can all jump in and have a centralized platform for their precon efforts.

Note: Every pricing tier of Buildr features unlimited seats, because collaboration is integral to a well-oiled precon process.

Buildr provides everything a GC's business development team needs to win: contact management, pipeline analysis, team communication, task oversight—the whole nine. It's everything you need to ditch ‘90s Excel sheets, early 2000s CRMs, and the headaches that follow.

We wouldn't list ourselves in this list if we didn't truly believe there isn't a more user-friendly and intuitive preconstruction platform on the market. This is in part because it's what our customers vehemently tell us. Some of them have spent years trying to nail down a cloud-based CRM that was construction-specific yet still easy to use and collaborate on. Plenty of frustration and failed adoptions before they found us.

Brandon Weaver, Business Development Manager at Mint Construction, found success with Buildr after a 3-year search for a CRM: "We doubled our annual construction volume because Buildr helped our pre-con team act as a singular unit and stay locked in to our goals. We were able to focus our energy on the most profitable jobs. From the collaboration element alone, the investment is minimal because it gives my team the tools to feel empowered instead of frustrated."

Most of our clients have either graduated from spreadsheets or dumped their clunky, outdated CRM that was too complicated and required too much third party customization for true company-wide adoption. We understood most people would be coming from a different CRM, which is why we put so much painstaking effort into making the data transfer and upload process as quick and painless as possible.

Aside from client management, Buildr comes complete with workforce planning and milestone forecasting out-of-the-box, bridging the gap between operations and business development. The publicized "all-in-one" nature of the platform removes the strained communication divide that can potentially occur between multiple pre-con platforms.

Efficiency & Safety software for general contractors

Pick: HammerTech

While safety matters in every industry, construction is particularly dangerous. When we talk about "all-in-one," HammerTech hammers that notion home. They tout one platform for everything relating to compliance, safety, and risk. This safety-based general contractor software allows GCs to turn inspections, incidents, orientations, permits, labor hours, daily report data and more into Jobsite IQ that reduces incidents and insurance costs.

Said one of their customers: "We are in the middle of a complete transformation of our EHS systems, and I see the HammerTech platform as essential to our success going forward. The innovative ideas and support we have received from HammerTech will no doubt provide the solution we are looking for to propel us to our goal of world class safety systems."

Finance software for general contractors

Pick: Built Technologies

Built is general contractor software focused squarely on financial management. Simplifying billing workflows, building better payment experiences for clients and vendors, and managing lien waivers quickly. Getting bills out faster leads to faster payment, which is something every finance software promises but Built delivers on.

Built's integrations include Procore, Sage 100, DocuSign and Quickbooks. Said one of their customers: "Built has dramatically changed the way in which we create, distribute and organize waivers. I cannot emphasize enough how much time we have saved through this system."

Reality Capture and 360 Photo Documentation for general contractors

Pick: DroneDeploy & StructionSite

These two powerhouses recently teaming up makes all the sense in the world. DroneDeploy utilizes drone data to capture unlimited interior and exterior visual data. Meanwhile, StructionSite enables general contractors to capture photo documentation of their jobs in 360 degrees, automatically organized by date and floor plan location.

One of StructionSite's clients said: "We saved about $50k worth of testing and an unknown amount of the test failed, plus rework costs. Thanks to StructionSite’s site doc, that clearly showed what was installed before we framed the walls... It’s pretty priceless, you can’t put a price on what it would have taken to repair."

Digital Signature Management for general contractors

Pick: DocuSign

Punt your fax machine as far as you can off the nearest bridge—there isn't a close second on this one. DocuSign is an e-signature tool that enables general contractors to collect legally binding signatures electronically. Normally we trend toward construction-specific general contractor software, but in this case signatures are signatures.

According to one of their clients: "We expected that DocuSign Digital Transaction Management would speed contract processing and increase the number we execute per year, but the amount of improvement blew our socks off. DocuSign delivered far more dramatic results than we ever imagined.”

Post-Construction software for general contractors

Pick: Buildr

This one we can't claim bias since Buildr is the only notable post-construction general contractor software. Maintaining our seamless integration with Procore, Buildr helps small to enterprise general contractors automate the closeout process, handle warranty management, while finally building the handover package for the owner.

With ratings of 4.8/5 and up on general contractor software review sites, we've yet to hear about any other notable post-construction general contractor software. Said one of our clients, "Buildr has significantly cut my time spent on closeouts allowing me to spend more time on other responsibilities for the many hats I wear with my company. I appreciate the thought and detail put into this program and the ease of use for clients and vendors."