LightQuoter Alternative for Installers: What Free Costs

LightQuoter costs $0 a year plus 2 percent of every payment you collect through Stripe, or $497 a year to make the fee 0 percent. On a $100,000 season collected by card, the free plan costs $2,000. GlowBid Core is $299 a year at the founding price, adds a platform margin under 1 percent on deposits collected through it (not 2 percent), and measures from a photo you own instead of a satellite trace.

Written by the GlowBid founder; prices checked on each vendor's site on September 7, 2026. I run a permanent lighting company in Ottawa. I have no quarrel with LightQuoter and I will give them full credit where it is due. Every LightQuoter number below is linked to the page it came from.

What free costs by season size

The 2 percent is LightQuoter's platform fee only. Stripe's own processing, 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per card payment, applies on top of it on every plan and applies to GlowBid's Stripe deposits too. Cash and cheque payments carry no LightQuoter fee. Their own page puts the break-even for Pro at about $25,000 collected, and I agree with their math.

The short comparison

What LightQuoter does well

Credit first. LightQuoter is the most complete free workflow in this trade. Address in, footage out, mockup, per-foot quote, signature, deposit, calendar, routes, takedown, renewal queue, review requests. All of it for $0 up front, with no user limit and no quote limit. For a first-season shop with no cash, that is a real gift, and their line that you owe nothing until a customer pays you is true.

The quote builds from your per-foot rate and the traced footage. That is closer to how GlowBid works than any other tool I have compared, and it is the right idea. Their satellite page also explains roof pitch honestly: it says a 10/12 gable edge can be 30 percent longer than it looks from above, and it asks you to enter the pitch so the geometry corrects. Most tools skip that.

Their renewal tools are good for a seasonal shop. One click clones last year's quote, and you can build 1, 2 and 3-year tiers into a quote. Their content is dated and bylined, which is more than most of the field manages.

Where does the footage come from?

This is the first real difference. LightQuoter's footage comes from clicking points on a satellite view: enter the address, the satellite view loads, click along the roofline. GlowBid's footage comes from a run you draw on a photo you took standing in the driveway, scaled from something you know the length of, like a 16 ft garage door or a tape measurement.

Both are estimates. Ours says so on every quote. The difference is what you can see. From above, a gable is a line; from the driveway it is a triangle with two edges you will install on. Ground runs, trees, the porch fascia under a roof overhang and the jump across a garage return are all things a photo shows and a satellite view mostly does not. Every GlowBid measurement also carries a source tag (reference-scaled or manual) and a confidence level, and any run angled away from the camera gets a warning to enter the real length from a tape.

What does tracing satellite imagery mean under Google's terms?

I want to be careful here, so I will only say what I can show. LightQuoter's satellite page does not name the imagery provider. I do not know whose imagery it is or what licence covers it, and I am not saying they break any rule.

What I can show is the rule we designed around. Google's Maps Platform Terms of Service (section 3.2.3, last modified August 26, 2026) lists things a customer "will not" do. Under "No Creating Content From Google Maps Content," the first example is to trace or digitize building outlines from the satellite base map. Under "No Scraping," the examples include storing or rehosting Google Maps content outside the service. Street View images are named in that list.

So if a tool draws lights on a Street View image and keeps that mockup, or traces a roofline on Google's satellite view and turns it into footage, those are the clauses a lawyer would read first. Whether they apply depends on the provider and the licence, which is why I will not guess about anyone else's setup. What I did was build GlowBid so the question never comes up: the Street View preview is live and display only, we never store it, we never measure it, and the canvas accepts only photos you own. Our Street View and satellite measurement rules page goes deeper.

The same house, quoted in GlowBid

A one-storey bungalow, seasonal C9 job. You upload the front photo, set the scale from the 16 ft garage door, and draw four runs: the roofline, two peaks and a ground run along the walkway. Priced on GlowBid's default rate card (installers set their own):

GlowBid's default rate card also adds a 15 percent peak premium ($48.60 on this house). It is switched off in this example so the numbers stay round; you set it on your own rate card.

The 30 percent deposit is $506.70 on Stripe. On LightQuoter's free plan, if the full $1,689 is paid by card, the platform fee on that one job is $33.78, before Stripe's own $49.28. Sixty of those jobs in a season is $101,340 collected and $2,026.80 in platform fees, which is more than six years of GlowBid Core at the founding price. You can price your own house in the free roofline tool before you believe me.

Pricing, honestly

If you collect under about $15,000 a season by card, LightQuoter free is cheaper than GlowBid Core, and by a lot at the low end. If you take most payments in cash or by cheque, the fee barely touches you. Between $15,000 and $25,000 the two are close. Above $25,000 you are choosing between LightQuoter Pro at $497 and GlowBid Core at $299 founding ($499 regular). Pro on GlowBid, with the pipeline CRM and automated follow-up, is $499 founding ($899 regular, $119 a month). Ultimate, with the production board and crew app, is $699 founding ($1,299 regular, $169 a month). Founding pricing is for the first 100 companies and holds while the subscription stays continuous. See founding pricing.

When LightQuoter is the right call

Choose LightQuoter if you are a seasonal-only shop in your first or second year with no budget, if most of your customers pay cash or cheque, or if you need crew scheduling, route optimization and a takedown calendar this November. GlowBid's CRM is on Pro and the crew side is on Ultimate, and the full product opens November 1, 2026. If you need routing today, they have it and we do not. That is a fair reason to stay.

Moving from LightQuoter to GlowBid

1. Export what you own. Your customer list, your photos and your per-foot rates. There is no importer for LightQuoter data and I will not pretend one is coming.

2. Try the canvas first. The free roofline measuring tool is the GlowBid canvas without a login. Drop a photo, set the reference length, draw the runs, see the footage and the lit mockup. If the reference method feels right, the product will too.

3. Enter your rate card. Per-foot by run type (roofline, ridge line, peak, jump, ground, tree) and product line (track, no-track, C9 seasonal), premiums, add-ons, minimum job, deposit rule, tax. Fifteen minutes if you have the numbers. Our per-foot pricing guide helps if you do not.

4. Quote the next five houses in both. Nothing to cancel on the free plan, so there is no risk in running both for a week.

5. Keep whichever one you reach for on November 14.

Mistakes I see measuring from above and from photos

• Trusting a gable from above. The overhead line is the shortest that edge will ever look. LightQuoter's own page says up to 30 percent short on a 10/12. Fix: enter the pitch there, or draw the two edges on a photo here.
• Missing the ground run. Walkway and garden-bed runs do not exist from a satellite. Fix: photograph the yard and draw them.
• Forgetting the jump. The dead run across a garage return or between two rooflines is labour and product. Fix: draw it as its own run type and price it.
• Runs angled away from the camera. A side eave in a front photo reads short. Fix: use the foreshortening warning, tape it, type the real length.
• Stale imagery. New builds and re-roofs show up late in any overhead view. Fix: a photo from today is never stale.
• Skipping the buffer. Order to the drawn footage and you will be one strand short on a Saturday. Fix: the optional materials buffer, default 10 percent, your choice and shown on the quote.

None of that is a knock on LightQuoter. It is what any installer learns in one season, and it is why every GlowBid measurement says where it came from.

The pitch

LightQuoter gives you a whole workflow for free and charges you a slice of what you collect. GlowBid charges a flat founding price and gives you one canvas where the drawing, the footage, the bill of materials and the price are the same object, built from a photo you own. If the fee math above lands under $300 a season for you, stay where you are. If it does not, the founding price is open to the first 100 companies, the trial is 7 days with no card, and the free tool is open now.