Anyone can sell a condenser in July. The HVAC companies that survive February are the ones with a maintenance base that fills the shoulder seasons and a replacement pipeline they've been warming for months. Obravetta runs the agreements, the renewals, the seasonal campaigns, the follow-up on every unsold replacement quote, and the website that brings the next one in. From $27/month.
Every other trade sells jobs. HVAC sells a relationship with a machine — one that needs attention twice a year for fifteen years and then needs replacing. That makes the maintenance agreement the most valuable thing an HVAC company owns, and the most commonly neglected.
An agreement does four things at once. It fills the shoulder seasons when nothing is breaking. It puts a technician inside the house twice a year, which is where replacement conversations actually start. It makes the customer call you rather than whoever ranks first when the unit dies in August. And it turns a one-off customer into a forecastable number.
And most shops track them in a spreadsheet, a wall calendar, or somebody's head — so renewals lapse quietly, spring tune-ups don't get scheduled until the customer thinks of it, and the replacement that was eighteen months away arrives as an emergency call to somebody else.
This is what makes HVAC software different from software for a trade with steady demand. Your year has two peaks you can't physically keep up with and two troughs that have to be filled on purpose — and the work that fills them has to be sold months earlier.
| Season | What's happening | The constraint | What has to run automatically |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spring | AC tune-ups, agreement renewals, pre-season replacements | Getting hold of every agreement holder before the rush | Renewal reminders and tune-up booking campaigns |
| Summer peak | No-cool calls, emergency replacements, premium pricing | You cannot answer the phone | Missed-call text back and 24/7 answering |
| Autumn | Heating tune-ups, furnace safety checks, quoting winter work | Re-engaging the list that went quiet in August | Seasonal campaigns to past customers |
| Winter peak | No-heat calls, after-hours call-outs, furnace replacements | Nights and weekends, in the cold | AI answering and triage by text |
| The troughs | Late autumn and deep winter thaw; mid-spring | Crews on payroll with nothing booked | Follow-up on every unsold quote, and the agreement base |
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that HVAC technicians may be on call for emergencies and sometimes work overtime or irregular hours during peak heating and cooling seasons. The software question is what happens to the calls arriving while they're doing it.
Neither of these is a software problem, but both change the conversation your software has to support. Every figure here is from the IRS and the EPA directly, cited at the bottom of the page.
The Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit — 25C — was worth up to $2,000 a year on heat pumps and up to $600 on a qualifying central air conditioner or furnace, at 30% of cost. Per the IRS, it applied to property placed in service on or after 1 January 2023 and before 31 December 2025.
For two years, "and you get two grand back from the IRS" was a closing line. In 2026 it isn't. The same $14,000 heat pump now costs the homeowner $2,000 more out of pocket than the identical conversation would have twelve months ago.
What that means operationally: the price objection got harder, so the number of touches it takes to close a replacement went up. Quotes that used to close on the second call now need a fourth. The shops that notice are the ones whose follow-up runs without them.
Under the EPA's HFC rules, compliance dates for new equipment run by subsector from 1 January 2025 to 1 January 2028, with sale and distribution restrictions following three years later — a sell-through window for stock already made. The restrictions apply only to new products manufactured, imported or installed after each date.
The EPA is explicit that existing systems can still be repaired, including replacing a condensing unit or compressor — while also noting that refrigerant and component availability may decline over time as HFCs are phased down. The allowance cap steps from 60% of baseline through 2028 to 30% from 2029.
What that means operationally: homeowners are now asking "will I be able to get refrigerant for this?" mid-quote. It's a repair-or-replace conversation with a date attached, and the contractor who explains it clearly — on the website, in the follow-up email, in the proposal — is the one who gets believed.
We're not going to pretend software solves either of these. What it does is make sure the explanation exists in writing, reaches the customer more than once, and doesn't depend on you remembering to send it in August.
Not a feature list. The actual cycle, in the order it happens — because in this trade the meaningful unit isn't a day, it's a season.
Every agreement holder due a tune-up gets a text with a booking link, staggered so you're not flooded in one week. They pick their own slot off your real calendar. The shoulder season fills itself while your competitors wait for the phone to ring in April.
Automated campaigns · Online bookingAgreements coming up for renewal trigger a sequence sixty, thirty and seven days out, by text and email, with a payment link attached. Recurring billing handles the ones who are happy to auto-renew. Nobody has to open a spreadsheet to find out whose plan expired in January.
Recurring billing · Renewal workflowsTech notes a sixteen-year-old condenser on its last season. That customer drops into a replacement pipeline with photos and the tech's notes attached — not onto a sticky note. They get a proper proposal, not a verbal "you'll need to think about replacing that."
Pipelines · Proposals with e-signatureReplacement quotes don't close on the first visit, and they close less easily now the tax credit is gone. Each one gets a text, an email with the scope and financing options, a check-in, and a last call before it expires. You don't remember to send any of it. On a replacement quote, recovering one job a year from that sequence covers the software, and it's on the $27 plan.
Unlimited automated workflowsEvery tech is on a roof. The phone rings eleven times in an hour. Missed calls get a text back within seconds from your business number; the AI receptionist takes the overflow, captures the address and the fault, states your rate, and books into the first real gap. Nothing goes to voicemail to be found at 9pm.
Missed-call text back · AI voice answeringInvoice generated off the work order, payment link texted while you're loading the van, card or bank transfer. Marking the job complete fires the review request while the house is cool again and the customer is grateful. Per Google's own documentation, more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking — so this is lead generation, not reputation polish.
Text-to-pay · Review automationA heating tune-up campaign goes to everyone who bought cooling work, plus everyone who got a quote in July and didn't proceed. Autumn is a trough you fill on purpose, from a customer list you already own, at nearly zero acquisition cost.
Email & SMS campaignsCalls arrive on tracking numbers tied to source, and Google and Facebook spend is attributed through to booked work rather than to clicks. In a trade where a single install is five figures, knowing cost-per-install instead of cost-per-click is the difference between scaling spend and guessing.
Call tracking & recording · Ad attributionOn Contractor Growth and Contractor Pro, a professional HVAC website is built for you as part of the plan — not quoted separately by an agency.
An HVAC website has two very different visitors. One has no cooling and wants a phone number in under three seconds. The other is researching a $14,000 replacement and wants to know whether you're a real company. The site has to serve both without annoying either.
That means the number and a booking button visible without scrolling, service pages for the jobs you want, your license and service area stated plainly, financing options where the tax credit used to be, and real reviews on the page.
On Contractor Starter at $27 you get the builder and build it yourself. On Growth and Pro we build it for you.
Obravetta isn't a scheduling app with marketing bolted on. It's the whole stack — and for an HVAC business it breaks into six jobs.
Published figures, sourced below.
11% growth against 40,600 openings a year describes a trade where demand is rising and labour is the binding constraint. When you cannot hire your way to more installs, the only other lever is converting more of the leads and quotes you already have — which is exactly what the follow-up automation, the agreement base and the review engine are for.
Every plan includes a 14-day free trial, month-to-month with no contract. Annual billing charges for ten months instead of twelve.
1 team member
Owner-operator. Website builder, missed-call text back, unlimited follow-up workflows, proposals, invoicing, recurring billing and review automation.
Up to 3 team members
Adds AI voice answering, a professional website built for you, and 5,000 contacts. Most two-truck shops land here.
Unlimited team members
Unlimited contacts, done-for-you setup, custom automations built for you, and job booking campaigns.
Honest note on seats: Starter is one user and Growth covers up to three. A five-technician HVAC company needs Pro at $297. We'd rather tell you that here than let you find it at checkout.
It depends which constraint is actually costing you money. If it's coordinating a large crew, carrying truck inventory, flat-rate price books and job costing to the dollar, a field service platform like ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro or Jobber goes deeper on operations than we do. If it's that your maintenance agreements lapse quietly, your shoulder seasons are empty, replacement quotes go unanswered and your Google profile has fourteen reviews, that's what Obravetta is built for — recurring billing, renewal sequences, unlimited follow-up automation, review automation and a professional website, all included from $27/month rather than sold as add-ons.
Yes, through recurring billing plus automated workflows rather than a dedicated service-agreement module. Plans bill monthly or annually on their own, renewal sequences fire at sixty, thirty and seven days with a payment link attached, and seasonal tune-up campaigns go out to agreement holders with a booking link so they schedule themselves. Being straight about the trade-off: Housecall Pro has native recurring service plans on its Max tier and ServiceTitan has purpose-built membership management. Ours is automation doing the same job, and for most shops under fifteen people that's enough — but if you run thousands of agreements with complex entitlements, a dedicated module is worth paying for.
No. The Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit, known as 25C, applied to qualifying property placed in service on or after 1 January 2023 and before 31 December 2025, per the IRS. It was worth 30% of cost, up to $2,000 a year for heat pumps and up to $600 for a qualifying central air conditioner, furnace or boiler, within an overall $1,200 annual cap for most improvements. It is not available for property placed in service in 2026. Practically, that means the price objection on a replacement is harder than it was last year, and the number of follow-up touches needed to close one has gone up. Confirm current tax rules with a tax professional — we're a software company, not an advisor.
Honestly and in writing. Per the EPA, compliance dates for new equipment run by subsector from 1 January 2025 to 1 January 2028, with sale and distribution restrictions following three years after each, and the restrictions apply only to new products manufactured, imported or installed after those dates. The EPA states plainly that existing systems can still be repaired, including replacing a condensing unit or compressor, while noting that refrigerant and component availability may decline over time as HFCs are phased down. Put that explanation on a service page and in your replacement proposal rather than relying on each technician to explain it at the kitchen table. Check the current rules at EPA directly before quoting specifics, since the schedule runs out to 2036.
With work you sold months earlier, from a list you already own. Three mechanisms do most of it: tune-up booking campaigns to agreement holders staggered across several weeks so you're not flooded; reactivation campaigns to everyone who bought cooling work in summer, sent in September for heating; and automated follow-up on every replacement quote that didn't close in peak season, because a homeowner who said "not right now" in August is a genuine prospect in October. All three run on schedule without anyone remembering to start them.
Missed calls get a text back from your business number within seconds, so the homeowner is in a conversation rather than dialling the next company. On Growth and Pro, AI voice answering takes the overflow — it answers in your business name, captures the address and the fault, states your rate, and books into a real calendar gap or escalates a genuine emergency. It matters more than in most trades because peak week is simultaneously your highest-value and least-answerable week of the year.
Google's own Business Profile documentation says local results are based on Relevance, Distance and Prominence, and states that more reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking. It also notes that replying to reviews shows customers you value their feedback. Obravetta fires a review request by text when a job is marked complete and handles replies from the same inbox as everything else. Google doesn't disclose how heavily any factor is weighted, so nobody can promise a ranking — but asking every customer rather than the ones you remember is the part you control.
Yes. Calls arrive on tracking numbers tied to a source, calls are recorded, and Google and Facebook ad spend is attributed through to booked work rather than to clicks. For a trade where one install is five figures and one tune-up is under two hundred dollars, blended cost-per-lead hides everything that matters. Seeing cost per install by channel is what lets you scale the spend that works.
No, and it's worth being straight about. We don't have a flat-rate price book module, truck inventory, parts purchasing or Manual J load calculation. Housecall Pro has flat-rate pricing from its Essentials tier, Workiz has inventory on Ultimate, FieldEdge does warehouse inventory tied to QuickBooks Desktop, and ServiceTitan is deeper than all of us on operations at scale. If those are what you're shopping for, one of them is the better fit and we'd say so.
Importing your customer list from a CSV is an afternoon, and getting missed-call text back plus the quote follow-up sequence live is the same day. The part with a real wait is 10DLC registration — the carrier approval required to send business texts in the US — which takes a few business days and applies to any platform that texts your customers. A built-for-you website takes longer because we need your photos, license details and service area. If you're reading this in March, start now rather than in May.
That's who Contractor Starter at $27/month exists for, and it's arguably where the automation pays off hardest — a solo operator has nobody covering the phone during peak week and nobody chasing quotes in the trough. The trade-offs are that Starter is a single seat and doesn't include AI voice answering or the built-for-you website; both start on Growth at $97.
Then run fourteen days with renewals chasing themselves, every missed call getting a text, and every replacement quote followed up four times. That's the test, and it doesn't need a demo call.
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Employment, projected growth, annual openings and the note on peak-season on-call hours: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025 data. The 25C Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit amounts, qualifying property and the 31 December 2025 end date: Internal Revenue Service. HFC compliance dates by subsector, the sell-through provision, the confirmation that existing systems may still be repaired and the phasedown allowance schedule: US Environmental Protection Agency. Local ranking factors and the statement that more reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking: Google Business Profile Help. Competitor feature references: Housecall Pro, Workiz, FieldEdge and ServiceTitan pricing pages. All verified October 2026. Obravetta pricing from our own pricing page.
Nothing on this page is tax or regulatory advice — confirm current tax treatment with a qualified professional and current refrigerant rules with the EPA before relying on either in a sale. Seasons, timings and job values are illustrative examples of how HVAC work typically flows, not guarantees of results. Google does not disclose how heavily any individual ranking factor is weighted, and no platform can promise a ranking outcome. Google, Jobber, Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan, Workiz and FieldEdge are trademarks of their respective owners; Obravetta is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any of them. Figures and third-party policies change — verify current details at the sources above.