JobQuote IQ vs Bead Board
These two agree on a lot: flat pricing, no per-seat fees, no ERP bloat. The split is what the shop does all day. JobQuote IQ grew up around machine shops and desk quoting. Bead Board grew up around welding shops and a phone in the truck.
Updated August 2026
Quick answer
Buy JobQuote IQ if machining or sheet-metal estimating is the core of your quoting and you want quotes pushed into QuickBooks Online. Buy Bead Board if you run a 1-10 person welding shop and need the job board, photos, hours, and quoting on your phone, including with no signal. JobQuote IQ's Shop plan is $149 a month; Bead Board is $99 flat. Both are unlimited users.
Side by side
JobQuote IQ pricing, plans, and feature scope sourced from jobquoteiq.com in August 2026. Not to be confused with QuoteIQ (myquoteiq.com), a separate home-services CRM.
Buy JobQuote IQ if this sounds like you
JobQuote IQ is a serious tool with a philosophy we respect: three screens, flat pricing, no bloat. It is the better buy when:
- Machining or sheet metal is the core of the business and welding is one process among several. Their quoting is built around that work, with outside services and per-diem support for on-site jobs.
- You want accepted quotes pushed into QuickBooks Online instead of entering invoices by hand.
- You are at the 10-15 person end where their sweet spot starts and ours ends.
- Quoting happens at a desk. A web-only tool with no phone apps costs you nothing.
If that is your shop, they are at jobquoteiq.com and the extra $50 a month is buying you the QuickBooks push.
Buy Bead Board if this sounds like you
- Welding is the business. Quotes are line items and material markup off your price list, not machining process estimates.
- The job lives on a phone: quote from the truck, photos of the joint before and after, clock in from the floor. JobQuote IQ has no phone apps; this is where the two products stop being comparable.
- You work in metal buildings and rural sites where signal dies. Bead Board is offline-first and syncs when coverage returns.
- You want your own board columns, hours against the estimate, and the "owed to you" number without asking your bookkeeper.
- $99 beats $149, and neither of us will ever charge you per seat.
Questions from shops weighing JobQuote IQ vs Bead Board
Is Bead Board cheaper than JobQuote IQ?
For a shop, yes. As of August 2026, JobQuote IQ is $149 a month on the Shop plan (unlimited users) and Bead Board is $99 flat, so $50 a month, $600 a year. For a one-person shop the gap flips: their Solo plan is $79 for a single user, $20 less than Bead Board. Both run 14-day free trials with no card.
Does JobQuote IQ have a mobile app?
No. JobQuote IQ is web only, built around quoting at a desk, and it works fine in a phone browser for status updates. Bead Board ships native iPhone and Android apps that work offline: board, photos, time tracking, and quote PDFs from the truck. If your shop runs from a phone, that is the deciding difference.
Which one handles welding quotes better?
They quote differently. JobQuote IQ builds quotes from materials with markup, labor hours, and outside services, with a machine-shop lean. Bead Board quotes welding line items off a saved material price list with your markup baked into customer prices, lets you duplicate a past job to quote repeat work, and makes every line you ever quoted searchable. Try the same real quote in both trials.
Does Bead Board sync with QuickBooks like JobQuote IQ does?
No. JobQuote IQ pushes accepted quotes into QuickBooks Online one-way on the Shop plan and up. Bead Board generates invoice PDFs and you enter the number in QuickBooks yourself. If that push is worth $50 a month to your bookkeeping, JobQuote IQ wins that column fair and square.
Also worth reading: Tradify (all-trades software) • welding spreadsheet • QuickBooks for the shop floor • free welding quote calculator • welding job quoting software.