A plain-English look at how Repcraft and Birdeye compare on price, review-gating policy, AI response features, and the customer each one is actually built for — so you can pick the reputation stack that fits a one-truck HVAC operator instead of a 500-location enterprise brand.
Five questions a one-truck HVAC, plumbing, electrical or roofing operator actually asks before buying reputation software — answered side-by-side.
| Feature | Repcraft | Birdeye |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $50 per month per shop, flat — covers SMS, email, QR review requests, AI response drafts, sentiment analysis and the monthly owner report.+ | Quote-based. The SMB tier typically lands at $300+ per month per location once SMS credits and the listing-management add-on are included. |
| Fake-review stance | Publicly committed to verified-job reviews only. No paid placements, no incentivised prompts, no review farms — every star traces back to a closed work order.+ | Tracks industry baselines but is not a "no fake reviews" product. Their marketplace messaging has historically emphasised volume over source-verification. |
| Review-gating policy | Never gates. Every customer gets the same neutral one-tap prompt; unhappy replies route into a private feedback channel before a public star ever lands.+ | Historically relied on filtering patterns that Google explicitly prohibited in its 2024 GBP guidance — multi-location operators should expect to revisit their funnel. |
| AI response features | Built into the $50 tier. Drafts every reply in the shop's tone of voice, policy-checked before it lands in your queue — nothing goes public without you signing off.+ | AI-assisted responses are gated to higher-tier enterprise plans; the SMB tier ships a template editor and a basic inbox without tone-of-voice controls. |
| Target customer | Local service trades — single-shop and small multi-shop HVAC, plumbing, electrical and roofing operators with 1–10 trucks and one dispatcher. | Enterprise multi-location operators — dental groups, hospitality chains, retail brands, automotive dealer networks running 50–500+ locations.~ |
+ = clearly wins for trades operators · ~ = competitive · – = loses for the one-truck / small-shop buyer
A one-truck HVAC operator can actually afford the monthly bill — no quote calls, no per-location add-ons, no SMS-credit overage invoices at the end of the month.
Every verified-job review is the only review we publish. No paid placements, no incentivised prompts, no review farms — and the policy is in the public-facing terms, not buried in a sales deck.
Branded SMS templates written for the moment a tech marks the work order closed, a QR code generator built for printed and digital invoices, and a sentiment gateway that recognises a slipped-dispatch tone without you configuring rules.
A 300-location dental group or hospitality chain can roll up listings, reviews and benchmarks across the whole portfolio from one console — Repcraft is optimised for 1–10 trucks, not 300 franchises.
Bulk listing-sync, duplicate-suppression, and listing-health scoring at scale are Birdeye strengths — the day-one stack an enterprise brand expects when it signs an MSA.
Region-level and brand-level benchmark rollups with corporate-grade SLA reporting are mature at Birdeye and useful if your "shop" is a 500-location enterprise org chart.
If you run 1–10 trucks of HVAC, plumbing, electrical or roofing work and want honest reviews without an enterprise contract, Repcraft is the lower-cost, GBP-aligned answer. If you run 100+ locations across dental, hospitality or retail and need listings API + corporate reporting, Birdeye is the right call — and we will say so on a sales call.
Drop your email and we’ll let you know the moment your area opens — no sales call, no obligation.