Joist is one of the best mobile tools on the market for solo contractors who need to send a professional estimate from their phone at a kitchen table. If that's your whole workflow, Joist is probably the right answer and you should stop reading. This comparison is for the remodeler who started on Joist, grew beyond it, and now needs an actual operations backbone — with projects, change orders, trade partners, and QuickBooks reconciliation.
Joist has earned its place. For the right user, it's the best tool for the job, and here's why:
Joist is the fastest way to go from "I need to quote this job" to "the client has signed the estimate" on a phone. You can sit at a kitchen table, build an estimate in five minutes, show it to the homeowner, get their signature, and email them a PDF — all from your phone. For contractors who write 3–5 estimates a week and need speed, nothing beats it.
Joist's free tier exists. Its paid tiers start around $13/month. If you're a one-person operation doing 5–10 projects a year, spending $199/month on MY LAURA genuinely doesn't make sense — you don't need most of what it does. Joist meets you where you are.
Joist is designed for contractors who don't want to learn software. You install the app, sign up, and five minutes later you're sending your first estimate. That's a real feature, and it's why Joist has millions of downloads.
The moment your business grows past "solo contractor with a phone" — the moment you add a second trade partner, a bookkeeper, a project manager, or more than two concurrent projects — Joist starts breaking down. It wasn't built for that. MY LAURA was.
Joist's data model is estimate → invoice. That's basically it. There's no concept of a "project" as a long-running thing with phases, status changes, documents, and history. A kitchen remodel isn't an estimate — it's a three-month operation. MY LAURA treats projects as first-class entities with their own dashboards, activity timelines, document storage, and lifecycle statuses.
Joist has invoicing but no real change order workflow. When the client decides mid-project that they want the upgraded countertops, you're either writing a new estimate or amending the invoice manually. MY LAURA's change orders are signed, timestamped, apply directly to existing invoices, and carry a full audit trail. See change orders →
Joist is built around one user. You can't meaningfully give your tile guy, your cabinet installer, and your electrician each their own view with their own assignments. MY LAURA includes a full Trade Partner Portal with iCal feeds, a dedicated view per trade showing only the details that matter to their work, and unlimited trades in the flat price. See the trade partner portal →
Joist has QuickBooks integration in its higher tiers, but it's limited. MY LAURA has two-way sync across every QBO tier, with visible sync history and manual unlink actions. When your bookkeeper reconciles the books every Friday, the difference is significant.
Joist can tell you what you billed. It can't easily tell you whether a project was profitable, how much you owe your trade partners, or what your AR aging looks like. MY LAURA has full business reports — project P&L, AR/AP, conversion funnel, Excel export. See reports →
"Joist is where you start. MY LAURA is where you go when you realize you're running a business, not just writing estimates."
| MY LAURA | Joist | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $199/mo flat | Free / $13–$40/mo |
| Target user | Remodeler running a business | Solo handyman / side contractor |
| Multi-user / team support | ✓ Unlimited team | ~ Limited |
| Projects as first-class entity | ✓ | — (estimate/invoice only) |
| Change orders with apply-to-invoice | ✓ | — |
| Trade partner portal | ✓ Unlimited | — |
| Auto-scheduler | ✓ | — |
| Client portal | ✓ | Limited |
| QuickBooks Online sync | ✓ All tiers, two-way | Higher tiers only |
| Google Drive file sync | ✓ | — |
| Project profitability reports | ✓ | — |
| AR / AP aging reports | ✓ | — |
| Purchase orders | ✓ | — |
| Mobile-first estimate creation | ✓ (web responsive) | ✓ Industry-leading |
| Learning curve | Moderate (full platform) | ✓ Near-zero |
If you're on Joist and it still works, stay on Joist. The best signal to switch is when you find yourself exporting Joist data to spreadsheets to answer basic questions about your business.
Import your Joist data, try MY LAURA for a month, and see if the upgrade is worth it. It's free to find out.