If you run a pest control company and you've started shopping for software, you've probably got four names rattling around in your head: GorillaDesk, Briostack, FieldRoutes, and PestPac. Maybe a sales rep from one of them called you last week. Maybe your tech quit because the app kept crashing on his route. Either way, you're here because the system you've got (or the spreadsheet you've got) isn't cutting it anymore.
This isn't a "best of" listicle. It's what we tell owners who call us trying to decide between these four, plus where a leaner option actually makes more sense.
The real cost of picking wrong
Before we get into feature comparisons, let's talk about what a bad software decision actually costs a pest control business, because it's bigger than the subscription fee.
- Missed callbacks: A lead that doesn't get touched within 5 minutes converts at roughly 10x the rate of one touched an hour later. If your CRM doesn't route and score leads automatically, your front desk is the bottleneck, and every missed call is a competitor's new customer.
- Scheduling chaos: Techs driving back and forth across town because routing isn't optimized costs the average 2-truck operation $300 to $600 a month in fuel and wasted labor hours.
- Admin drag: Owners tell us they spend 8 to 12 hours a week just chasing invoices, re-keying estimates, and manually texting customers because the system they bought "does everything" except the one thing they actually need.
- Contract lock-in: Several of the big platforms require annual contracts and charge setup or migration fees if you leave. We've seen termination costs range from $500 to $3,000 depending on data volume and integrations.
None of that shows up on the pricing page. It shows up three months in, when you're trying to figure out why revenue isn't moving even though you're "using software now."
How the four stack up
Here's the honest version, not the sales deck version.
GorillaDesk
Built for small to mid-size pest and lawn companies. Decent scheduling, mobile app is serviceable, pricing is more approachable than the enterprise players. Weak spot: reporting is thin, and their automation features feel bolted on rather than built in. Good if you're under 5 trucks and just need to get off paper.
Briostack
Pest-specific, strong on route optimization and chemical/compliance tracking, which matters if you're in a state with heavy regulatory reporting. Weak spot: the interface feels dated, and customer support response times have been a recurring complaint in user reviews. Pricing isn't published, you negotiate it, which usually means you're paying more than you think.
FieldRoutes
Formerly PestRoutes, now owned by ServiceTitan. Powerful, built for scale, great if you're running 15+ trucks with a call center behind it. Weak spot: it's expensive (plan on $400 to $1,000+/month depending on size plus onboarding fees that can run into the thousands), and it's overbuilt for a 3 to 8 truck operation. You'll pay for enterprise features you'll never touch.
PestPac
The oldest name on this list, owned by WorkWave. Deep feature set, especially for larger multi-location pest companies with complex billing needs. Weak spot: the UI feels like it was designed in 2010 because large parts of it were. Techs complain about the mobile app. Implementation timelines run long, we've heard 6 to 10 weeks from owners who switched.
Where the gap actually is
Here's the thing none of these four will tell you: they were all built as scheduling and dispatch tools first, with lead management bolted on as an afterthought. That made sense ten years ago when the hard problem was routing trucks. Today the hard problem is competing for leads against five other companies all running Google ads in the same zip code.
If your software can schedule a job beautifully but can't tell you which of your 40 open leads is about to go cold, you're optimizing the wrong end of the funnel. This is where a lot of pest control owners get stuck: they buy a $300/month platform for dispatch, then bolt on a separate $200/month tool for texting, then pay another few hundred for a website chatbot, and none of it talks to each other.
That's the gap we built to close. /crm is a free AI-powered CRM, lead pipeline, job tracking, estimates, and AI lead scoring in one system, so you're not stitching together three subscriptions just to know who to call back first. No seat fees to start. You add paid modules only when you actually need them, not because a sales rep bundled them in to hit quota.
We say "free" and mean it in the way that matters to an owner: you can run your pipeline, track jobs, and send estimates without a credit card on file. Compare that to signing a 12-month Briostack or FieldRoutes contract before you've even tested whether the workflow fits your crew.
Side-by-side numbers
| Platform | Starting cost (approx monthly) | Contract required | Best fit | Lead scoring / AI routing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GorillaDesk | $49 to $99 | Month to month available | 1 to 5 trucks | No |
| Briostack | Custom quote, often $150 to $300 | Usually annual | Compliance-heavy states | No |
| FieldRoutes | $400 to $1,000+ | Annual, plus onboarding fee | 15+ trucks, call centers | Limited |
| PestPac | $200 to $600+ | Annual | Multi-location enterprise | No |
| Corex CRM | Free to start | None | 1 to 20 trucks | Yes, built in |
Numbers are approximate and based on publicly available pricing and user-reported figures as of this writing, vendors change pricing often and most of them don't publish it, which itself tells you something.
The step-by-step for making this decision
- Count your trucks, not your ambitions. If you're running 2 to 8 trucks, you almost never need FieldRoutes-level infrastructure. Buy for where you are, not where you hope to be in five years.
- Audit where leads actually die today. Pull your last 60 days of inbound calls and web form fills. How many got a callback within 10 minutes? If it's under 70%, that's costing you more than any dispatch inefficiency.
- Ask every vendor for their real churn and support numbers. Not the marketing page, ask a rep directly: "What's your average support ticket response time?" Get it in writing if you can.
- Test before you sign anything annual. If a platform won't let you run a free or month-to-month trial with your actual data, that's information. /crm lets you start without a contract specifically so you can stress-test it against a real week of calls before committing to anything paid.
- Check what happens to your data if you leave. Export formats, migration fees, and notice periods vary wildly. Get this in writing before signing, not after.
- Price the whole stack, not just the headline tool. Add up what you're actually paying across scheduling, texting, review requests, and a website chatbot. Compare that total against a single platform that includes an AI receptionist and CRM together.
Where you might still want one of the big four
We're not going to pretend Corex is the right fit for everyone. If you're a 20+ truck pest company with a dedicated call center and a full-time ops manager who lives inside dispatch software all day, FieldRoutes' depth of routing logic and PestPac's enterprise billing features might genuinely be worth the price. Briostack's compliance tracking is legitimately strong if you're doing heavy commercial chemical application work in a state like California with strict reporting requirements. Don't switch just because a blog post told you to.
But if you're a 1 to 10 truck operation and your actual bottleneck is "leads come in and nobody follows up fast enough," none of those four platforms solve that problem better than a system built around lead response from day one.
What this looks like for a typical shop
A 4-truck pest control company we talked to was running GorillaDesk for scheduling and a separate texting tool for follow-up, paying about $340/month combined, and still missing close to a third of inbound leads because nobody was watching two separate inboxes. They moved their lead pipeline onto a single system with built-in scoring and automated follow-up texts. Within the first month, callback time on new leads dropped from an average of 47 minutes to under 6. That's not a hypothetical, that's the kind of gap that exists when scheduling tools and lead tools live in separate apps.
If you want to see how this fits specifically for pest operators, including route-day workflows and seasonal demand spikes, our pest control industry page walks through it in more detail.
FAQ
Is GorillaDesk or Briostack better for a small pest control company?
If you're under 5 trucks and don't have heavy compliance reporting needs, GorillaDesk is generally the cheaper and simpler option. Briostack makes more sense if you're in a state with strict chemical application reporting requirements and need that built into the workflow.
Why is FieldRoutes so much more expensive than the others?
FieldRoutes (owned by ServiceTitan) is built for scale: call centers, multi-region operations, complex commission structures. You're paying for infrastructure most small and mid-size pest companies don't use. It's a strong platform, it's just priced for a different size of business.
Can I switch from PestPac or Briostack without losing my customer history?
Usually yes, but it depends on export format and how clean your data is. Get the export terms in writing before you sign a cancellation notice, and budget time for a manual cleanup pass. Most migrations we've seen take 2 to 4 weeks done properly.
Do I need a separate CRM if I already have dispatch software?
Not necessarily, but check whether your current platform actually scores and routes leads automatically, or whether it's just a calendar with a contacts list attached. That distinction is where most pest companies are quietly losing revenue.
Whatever you decide, don't let a sales rep's demo be the only test you run. Pull your own numbers, run a real trial, and make sure whatever you pick is solving the problem you actually have, not the problem their pricing tier wants to sell you. You can see how the modules fit together, including pc, vr, and ro, before deciding what you actually need to pay for.