Holiday Home Concepts costs $1,080 a year for Christmas lights or $1,560 a year with permanent lights, or $129 and $169 month to month. You get a visual editor, a measuring tool, a price calculator and a proposal page. You do not get a signature, a deposit or an invoice. GlowBid does the design, the measurement, the price, the e-signature and the Stripe deposit on one canvas from $299 a year at the founding price, opening November 1, 2026.
Written by the GlowBid founder; prices checked on each vendor's site on September 7, 2026. I run a permanent lighting company in Ottawa, so I am not neutral, and I have tried to be fair anyway. Both Strandr and LightQuoter already have a two-column page on this query. This one has three columns, because the real question is not "HHC or the cheap one" but "which of these gets me from a photo to a paid job."
|
Holiday Home Concepts |
Strandr |
GlowBid |
| Price |
$1,080/yr or $1,560/yr with permanent; $129 or $169/mo |
$197/yr |
$299/yr Core founding ($499 regular), $69/mo |
| Trial |
7 days |
7 days |
7 days, no card, plus 30-day money-back |
| Mockup on your photo |
Yes, visual editor, background replacement, animated previews on the top plan |
Yes, about two minutes per house |
Yes, the drawn runs render the lights on the same photo |
| Measuring |
Measuring tool inside the editor |
Separate free tool (Inchr), numbers carried by hand |
Same canvas; the drawn run is the measurement |
| Source and confidence tag on each measurement |
Not listed |
No |
Yes, plus a foreshortening warning |
| Price on the proposal |
Price calculator and materials estimate |
No |
Rate card by run type and product line, premiums, add-ons, minimum job |
| Permanent lighting |
On the $1,560 plan |
Yes, same tool |
Yes, track and no-track lines with per-jump and per-peak charges |
| E-signature |
Not listed |
No |
Yes, SHA-256 fingerprint on the signed document |
| Deposit and invoices |
Not listed |
No |
Stripe deposit; invoices with a payments ledger |
| Pipeline and follow-up |
Not listed |
No |
Kanban with Takedown and Re-book stages, automated follow-ups (Pro) |
| Multi-year lease agreements |
Not listed |
No |
Yes; a signed lease creates each season's install and takedown jobs |
| Crew side |
Not listed |
No |
Production board, work orders, photo-gated checklists (Ultimate) |
| Phone at the door |
Desktop, laptop, tablet; limited on cell |
Browser on PC, Mac, tablet |
Installable web app, iPad first, runs on a phone |
"Not listed" means the feature is not on HHC's pricing page or home page today. Both LightQuoter and Strandr say the same in their own comparisons. If HHC adds it, I will update this table.
What Holiday Home Concepts does well#
HHC measures and prices, and that puts it ahead of most design tools. The plans list "Measuring Tool and Price Calculator" on both tiers, and the home page promises to "Measure As You Design" and give instant material estimates with a one-click proposal carrying your company name, logo and the customer's design. That is the right idea. A mockup with a price on it closes more jobs than a mockup alone, and HHC understood that before most of the market.
Background replacement is genuinely useful for a daytime photo of a house with a neighbour's truck in the driveway. Animated previews on the top plan let a homeowner see a chase pattern instead of imagining it. Unlimited projects on both tiers means you are never rationing designs in November.
The trial is honest at 7 days, and the software runs in a browser with nothing to install. If you are on a desktop or tablet and you like the editor, there is nothing wrong with the design half of HHC.
Where the seams are#
The gaps are the same on every design tool, and HHC is not different in kind, only in price.
The proposal is the end of the line. Everything on HHC's plan list ends at "Customizable Proposal Page." A signature, a deposit, an invoice, a pipeline and a takedown job are not on it. LightQuoter's page calls out the missing e-signature, payment collection and scheduling; Strandr's does not claim HHC lacks them, but does not say they exist either. So the proposal goes out as a document and the money comes back by phone, e-transfer or a link from another app.
The price is the price. $1,080 a year, paid up front, for the seasonal plan. The permanent plan is $1,560. Strandr's page works it out as $883 to $1,363 more a year than Strandr, and that math is right. If you need the measuring and the calculator, you are paying $1,080 for design plus estimating. If you only use the editor, you are paying $1,080 for a mockup.
Desktop first. HHC's own pricing page says the software "offers limited functionality on cell." The homeowner is standing in the driveway with a phone in her hand. That is where I want to quote.
No source on the measurement. HHC measures, which is good. But a measurement from a photo is an estimate, and I want the quote to say where the number came from and how sure the tool is. Nothing on HHC's site mentions that, and it is the thing that keeps an installer out of an argument on install day.
None of this makes HHC a bad tool. It makes it an expensive design-and-estimate tool with nothing after the estimate.
Is Strandr the answer, then?#
Strandr is the cheap answer, and for some shops the right one. $197 a year, 7-day trial, mockups in about two minutes. I wrote the Strandr comparison with the same rules as this page, and the short version is the same: Strandr does one thing well.
What it takes away from an HHC user is the number. Strandr does not measure inside the app; Inchr is a separate free tool, and Strandr's own guide has you export the numbers "for reference" and place the lights by hand in a second upload. Strandr does not price. If you left HHC to save $883 a year, you saved it, and you are back to a spreadsheet for the quote. That is a fair trade for a mockup-only shop and a bad trade for anyone who bought HHC for the calculator.
The same house in GlowBid#
Take a two-storey with a 112 ft front roofline, two gables and a garage. Type the address and a live Street View preview shows you which house you are looking at. That preview is display only; we never store it or measure from it, because Google's terms do not allow it and neither do ours. You upload your own photo of the front, set the scale from the 16 ft double garage door, and draw the runs: roofline, two peaks, two jumps.
The drawing is the measurement. Each run carries a source tag (reference-scaled here) and a confidence level, and a run angled away from the camera gets a "may read short" warning so you type the tape length instead. The drawing is also the price, straight from your rate card. Using GlowBid's default permanent track card (every installer replaces these with their own numbers):
| Line |
Footage |
Rate |
Amount |
| Roofline |
112 ft |
$25/ft |
$2,800.00 |
| Peaks (two gables) |
36 ft |
$28/ft plus 15% peak premium |
$1,159.20 |
| Jumps (two) |
14 ft |
$12/ft |
$168.00 |
| Wi-Fi controller |
1 |
$250.00 |
$250.00 |
| Subtotal before tax |
|
|
$4,377.20 |
| Deposit to book (30%) |
|
|
$1,313.16 |
The quote PDF goes out with the drawing, the footage by run, that table, a scope block and the disclaimer that photo measurements are estimates confirmed on site. The homeowner signs on her phone, the signed document gets a SHA-256 fingerprint, the $1,313.16 deposit lands through Stripe, and the balance invoice is waiting for install day. Change the drawing and the footage, the bill of materials and the price change together. You can price this house in the free tool right now; the canvas is the same one.
Pricing, honestly#
|
Year one |
What you get |
| Holiday Home Concepts, Christmas Lights |
$1,080 (annual) or $1,548 (12 months at $129) |
Editor, measuring, calculator, proposal |
| Holiday Home Concepts, with Permanent Lights |
$1,560 (annual) or $2,028 (12 months at $169) |
The above plus permanent module and animated previews |
| Strandr |
$197 |
Mockups; measuring in a separate free tool |
| GlowBid Core, founding |
$299 ($499 regular, or $69/mo) |
Measure, draw, rate card, quote PDF, e-signature, Stripe deposit, invoices, texting |
| GlowBid Pro, founding |
$499 ($899 regular, or $119/mo) |
Core plus pipeline CRM, follow-up sequences, quote-view tracking |
| GlowBid Ultimate, founding |
$699 ($1,299 regular, or $169/mo) |
Pro plus production board, crew app, work orders, sign-off |
The founding price holds while your subscription stays continuous, and there are 100 founding places. Billing is in USD at launch. If you are on HHC's permanent plan today, GlowBid Ultimate with the crew side is $861 a year less at the founding price and still $261 less at regular. If you only want a mockup, Strandr is the cheapest seat on this table and you should take it.
When to stay on Holiday Home Concepts#
Stay if you sell from a desk, on a big screen, and the visual editor is the reason your close rate is what it is. HHC has had years to build its palette and its background tools; we are new, and the editor is where a new tool shows its age first. Stay if animated previews are a real part of your pitch. Stay if your signing and payments already live in an app you like and the proposal is all you need from the design side.
Stay on the fence if your season is small. A shop doing 20 quotes a year on HHC's seasonal plan is paying $54 a proposal, and the founding price only matters if you switch before the 100 places go.
Moving from HHC to GlowBid#
An afternoon, not a project.
1. Your photos are yours. That is the only input GlowBid needs, and the only thing worth moving. There is no importer for HHC projects and we will not pretend one is coming; a designed house in HHC is a picture with lights on it, and re-drawing it in GlowBid takes a few minutes and gives you footage the picture never had.
2. Start in the free tool. The free roofline measuring tool is the GlowBid canvas without a login. Drop a photo, set a reference length, draw the runs, read the footage. If it feels right, the product will. The measuring guide covers picking a good reference and what to do about runs that angle away from the camera.
3. Move your calculator numbers into the rate card. HHC's price calculator already made you write down what you charge. GlowBid asks for the same numbers by run type (roofline, ridge line, peak, jump, ground, tree) and product line (track, no-track, C9 seasonal), plus premiums, per-jump and per-peak charges, add-ons, minimum job, deposit and tax. Fifteen minutes if the numbers exist.
4. Send one real quote. Pick a house you have already quoted in HHC and quote it again in GlowBid. Compare the footage. Then send the GlowBid one, because it can be signed and paid from the same link.
5. Cancel HHC when the trial ends, not before. Their annual plan is billed up front, so time the switch to your renewal date. Ours has a 30-day money-back window; nobody needs to lose a year of HHC finding out.
- Switching in the second week of November. Move in September or in January, when a lost afternoon costs nothing.
- Re-drawing every house in the library on day one. Re-draw the ones that are quoting this season; the rest can wait for the renewal call.
- Copying HHC's calculator figures without checking them against last year's invoices. Any tool prices from the card you give it. Give it the real card.
- Skipping the scale step because the old tool "just knew." Every photo tool needs one known length. A door or a garage door is fine; a guess is not.
- Trusting a photo measurement on a run that angles away from the camera. Type the tape length; the confidence tag will tell you which runs to check.
- Sending the first GlowBid quote without your own clauses on it. The sample wording ships as a starting point, not legal advice, and your rate card page is where you replace it.
If you want the design and estimating half of HHC and the signing and paying half it does not have, that is what GlowBid is, at less than a third of the price. See founding pricing, or start with the free tool and see if the canvas feels like yours. The seven-tool comparison is there if you want the wider field.
