Jolly Lights Alternative: Free Sketch to Priced Quote

What is Jolly Lights, actually?#

Two iPad apps from the same small developer, and I checked because the pages ranking for this query do not say. Wrinkle-free Games, LLC publishes Jolly Lights, a free photo editor that lets you "decorate your favourite photos with strands of holiday lights," with adjustable bulb size, colour, spacing and placement, holiday frames, animation timers and export as a still, a GIF or a 10-second video. It is at version 2.0.9 from September 8, 2024, with 4.4 stars from 54 ratings.

Jolly Lights Professional is the installer version: warm white, cool white and sun warm white bulbs, greenery backdrops on strands for garland, shrub nets, pillar wraps, overlay mode for wreaths, bows, Moravian stars, starbursts and lawn inflatables, a catalogue editor so you show only what you sell, lighting package alternatives per scene for the upsell, folders and searchable notes. Version 3.0 shipped September 19, 2025; 4.2 stars from 19 ratings. It is free to download and needs the All-Access subscription to use.

Both are designed for iPad and also run on Macs with an M1 chip or later. Neither is offered for Android, iPhone or the browser. The developer's feature list mentions no measuring, no pricing, no quotes and no payments, and I am not going to invent any. Strandr's page on Jolly Lights says it will not make claims it cannot verify, which is fair; LightQuoter's calls it a sketching tool, which is also fair. Here is what I can add: it is a decent one.

What Jolly Lights does well#

It is the cheapest way to show a homeowner their own house lit up, and for a lot of one-truck shops that is the whole sales pitch. The free app costs nothing. The Professional overlays are the widest decoration set I have seen in a mockup tool: wreaths, bows, garland, inflatables, the things homeowners point at on the neighbour's house. The catalogue editor means the rep on the driveway sees only the products you stock. Package alternatives per scene let you show the roofline-only version beside the full-house version without redrawing. On an iPad with a pencil, in the customer's driveway, it is quick.

At $149.99 a year, Professional is cheaper than Strandr's $197 and a fraction of GlowBid Core. If you sell on the picture and price, sign and collect somewhere you already like, that is money well spent.

Where the sketch stops#

Every problem an installer has with Jolly Lights is the same problem: the strand is a picture.

No footage. The strand you draw has no scale behind it. The app does not know the eave is 48 feet, so it cannot tell you how much cord to order or what to charge. Footage still comes from a tape, a laser, or a separate measuring tool, and you carry the number over by hand.

No price. There is no rate card in it, no per-foot math, no minimum job. The homeowner looks at the picture and asks "how much," and the answer comes from a spreadsheet or your head.

No quote, no signature, no deposit. What comes out is an image, a GIF or a video. A homeowner who loves the picture is still not a booked job until they sign something and pay something, and that happens in another app.

iPad only. Your helper with an Android phone cannot open it. Your office laptop cannot open it unless it is an Apple silicon Mac. The homeowner cannot open a project link; they get a picture in a text.

The mockup and the material list are two different things. If the picture says roofline plus two peaks and the order was written from a tape measurement two days earlier, they disagree more often than you would think, and November is when you find out.

When to keep Jolly Lights#

Keep it if the picture is what closes your jobs and everything after the picture already works. A shop doing 30 seasonal installs with a quoting tool it likes, a signing app and e-transfer for deposits does not need to change that to get a better mockup; the Professional overlays cover greenery, bows and inflatables that GlowBid does not draw today, and I would rather say so than have you find out after switching. Keep the free one if you are a homeowner, or an installer trying the idea for a season before buying anything.

Move on when you are opening three apps to get from a photo to a signed deposit, or when the footage on the order and the runs on the picture have disagreed once too often.

The same house in GlowBid#

A bungalow with a 60 ft front roofline, one gable and a walkway. You upload your own photo (Street View shows on the address search as a live preview only, never stored or measured), set the scale from the 16 ft double garage door, and draw the runs: roofline, two peak slopes, two jumps. That drawing is the measurement, with a source tag and a confidence level on each run. It is also the price, on GlowBid's default seasonal C9 card; installers set their own. You can price this house in the free tool right now.

That is the line a picture cannot draw for you: the minimum. A 60 ft bungalow prices at $719 by the foot, and the truck, two people and a ladder day cost more than that, so the card bumps it to $1,500 and shows the adjustment as its own line so the homeowner sees why. The quote PDF carries the drawing, the footage by run, that table, and a note that the measurement is photo-based and confirmed on site. The homeowner signs on their phone, the deposit goes through Stripe, and the job is on the calendar. How the rates were set is in our per-foot pricing guide.

Moving from Jolly Lights to GlowBid#

An afternoon, not a project.

1. Your photos are the only input. They are in the iPad Photos app and they are yours. Jolly Lights exports flattened images with no run data, so there is nothing to import and we are not promising an importer.
2. Start in the free tool. glowbid.io/tools/roofline-measure: drop a photo, set the reference length, draw, see the footage and the lights. No login until you export. The photo rules that make the drawing measure as well as look right are in our mockup guide.
3. Rate card in 15 minutes. Per-foot rates by run type and product line, premiums, add-ons, minimum job, deposit, tax. If you have been pricing from a spreadsheet, it is a copy job.
4. Quote the next house in both. Where the Jolly Lights picture looks better, tell us. Where GlowBid saved the re-typing, you will know.
5. Cancel the subscription when you are sure. Apple lets you turn off auto-renewal any time; our money-back window is 30 days.

Mistakes when moving off a sketch app#

• Sending the picture with no number on it. The homeowner forwards it to a spouse, who asks what it costs. A mockup that carries the price gets a yes or a no; one that does not gets a "let me think."
• Ordering material from the tape and selling from the sketch. When the two were made on different days they disagree, and November is when you find out. Order from the drawing that the customer signed.
• Skipping the scale step. A sketch never needed one, so it is easy to forget. Every measuring photo needs one known length; a door or a garage door is fine, a guess is not.
• Trusting a run that angles away from the camera. It reads short in any photo tool. Type the tape length when the confidence tag flags it.
• Quoting the bungalow by the foot and forgetting the minimum. A 60 ft roofline at $8 is $480, which does not cover a truck and two people for a morning. Put the minimum job on the card before the first quote goes out.
• Switching in the second week of November. Move in September or January, when a lost afternoon costs nothing.

Pricing, honestly#

Free against free: Jolly Lights costs nothing and stops at the picture; GlowBid's tool costs nothing, measures, and stops at the export. Paid against paid: Jolly Lights Professional is $149.99 a year for overlays and a catalogue; GlowBid Core is $299 a year at the founding price, $499 regular or $69 a month, for the drawing, the footage, the rate card, the quote PDF, e-signature, the Stripe deposit and invoicing, with a 7-day trial, no card, and 30-day money-back. Pro at $499 founding adds the pipeline and follow-up texts; Ultimate at $699 adds the crew side. The full product opens November 1, 2026, and the founding price locks while the subscription stays continuous. If a picture is all you need, Jolly Lights is the cheaper picture. If you want the picture, the feet and the dollars to be one thing, that is what we built.