FieldCoat vs SimplyWise (2026): a $30 estimator and a painting operating system are different tools

Prices checked August 21, 2026 against SimplyWise's public pricing page. If they change, tell us and we'll fix this page.

SimplyWise Cost Estimator is $29.99 a month for every trade at once — roofing, painting, landscaping, flooring, plumbing, house cleaning. Snap photos, get an AI cost estimate, send a PDF, all in one app, with their receipt scanner and mileage tracker thrown in. For a one-person operation that mostly needs a number and an invoice, that's honestly a lot for the money, and this page won't pretend otherwise.

The comparison worth making is a different one: what happens after the number. I've spent 13 years in the paint industry on the distributor side, and FieldCoat is what I built for the painters on the other side of the counter — so read this knowing it's mine, and hold both products to the same test at the bottom.

The 30-second version

SimplyWise is a multi-trade AI estimator for one person: photo-to-estimate, a LiDAR room scan, AI before/after visuals, PDF proposals, invoicing, work orders. One plan, $29.99/mo or $239.99/yr, 7-day trial. It estimates any job the way a smart generalist would.

FieldCoat is a painting business's operating system: rooms measured with iPhone Pro LiDAR (benchmarked against a builder's actual floor plan: within 0.1%), blueprints read from their printed dimensions, photos labeled ESTIMATED with a range, gallons priced from the paint's technical data sheet at YOUR production rates — then the bilingual proposal, the e-signature, the same-day deposit at 0% platform fee, the crew work order that hides pay rates, and the job tracking, in one flat plan. From $49/mo — no per-user fees, no modules, no onboarding fee.

One estimates jobs. The other runs a painting company.

Whose numbers, exactly?

Every AI estimator can produce a plausible number. The question a contractor lives or dies on is whose costs that number reflects.

A generalist app estimates from generic cost data — what a roofing square or a painted wall "usually" costs. Useful ballpark; nobody's margin. FieldCoat prices from your numbers: your labor rates, your crew's production rates, your paint products with their actual spread rates off the technical data sheet, your markup. Two painters bidding the same room in FieldCoat get different numbers — because their businesses are different. That's the point.

And on measurement, FieldCoat splits honesty into three explicit classes the app enforces: measured (the LiDAR scan — the only thing ever called measured), read (blueprint takeoff from printed dimensions), and estimated (photo-derived, labeled ESTIMATED with a visible range, silent rather than guessing when the photo can't support a number). When both apps say "LiDAR," ours shows you the benchmark: floor area within 0.1% of the builder's plan. Run your own tape-measure test on both — that test is why FieldCoat exists.

What the $30 doesn't cover

SimplyWise's one plan is genuinely ungated — but it's one seat, one generic pipeline, in English. The parts of a painting business it doesn't reach:

• The close. FieldCoat proposals are e-signed from the customer's phone with the deposit paid the same day — 0% platform fee from us on top of standard processing.
• The crew. Multi-seat with strict estimator scoping, and work orders that never leak pay or price to the crew.
• The customer who speaks Spanish. FieldCoat is bilingual end to end — the app, the proposal, the consent language, everything the customer sees. Más de la mitad del oficio habla español.
• The color conversation. Tap a wall in the customer's own photo, show the paint color, and let them approve colors from their phone — logged, time-stamped, applied to the estimate.
• The paint itself. A 57-product catalog with TDS coverage math, sheens, substrates, primer logic, per-door and per-window pricing.

Where SimplyWise is genuinely strong

• The price. $29.99 all-in (or ~$20/mo annual) with no feature gating is the cheapest credible AI estimator we've verified. For a solo handyman-style operation across trades, it's a fair deal.
• The bundle. Receipts, mileage, and an AI receptionist ride along — real utility for a one-truck business at tax time.
• Breadth. If you genuinely work five trades, one generic estimator beats five specialized ones you won't pay for.

Feature by feature

Where their public pages don't state something, the table says so — verify on their site rather than trusting any comparison table, including this one.

The honest bottom line

If you need a fast generic number across several trades for $30, SimplyWise is a fair tool and we won't pretend otherwise. If painting is the business — if the number has to be YOUR number, the proposal has to close the same day, the crew has to get work orders, and half your customers speak Spanish — that's not a $30 problem. It's the problem FieldCoat was built for.

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Try FieldCoat free — 3 real estimates, every feature, no credit card. Made for painting professionals by a paint expert with 13 years in the industry. Patent pending. English y Español. Start free →

FieldCoat is a product of FieldCoat LLC. SimplyWise is a trademark of its owner; all pricing quoted from their public pricing page on the date above.