BuildOps is built for commercial contractors and names five trades on its pricing page: HVAC and mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire and life safety, and refrigeration. Foodservice equipment is not among them. Roopairs is built for commercial kitchen, refrigeration and HVACR equipment service, and organizes the business around the equipment record. Roopairs has a plan called ROO Parts that is free to use, covering purchase orders, pricebook and inventory. Both are commercial products, so the usual residential-versus-commercial argument does not settle this one.
The short version
| Roopairs | BuildOps | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Commercial kitchen, refrigeration and HVACR equipment service | Commercial contractors. Their pricing page names HVAC and mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire and life safety, and refrigeration |
| Equipment records | The equipment is the record. Manufacturer, model, serial, service history, location history and warranty agreements sit on the unit itself | An asset record per unit. Technicians capture nameplates, photos and checklists on any device, offline included, and it syncs to the asset record, job history and service agreement |
| Purchase orders | A full module for purchasing parts from your suppliers, created against the job and the equipment | Purchasing tied to jobs, with three-way matching: a purchase order created in the field flows to a material receipt and then to a vendor bill |
| Parts inventory | Parts inventory across the warehouse and every van, with minimum and maximum threshold alerts | Materials ordered, tracked and received against the job. On QuickBooks Online, inventory stays outside the accounting integration |
| Manufacturer warranty jobs | Manufacturer warranty and non-warranty billing paths built in, running through one dispatch board | Warranty work is billed as a service agreement to the building owner, alongside time and materials, fixed price, progress, AIA pay applications and milestone billing. Manufacturer claims run outside the product |
| Facilities management portals | Built to work with third-party facilities management software, so portal jobs arrive as work rather than as re-keying | Work is brought in through their own commercial contractor workflows rather than through a named facilities management portal connection |
| Accounts payable, paying bills | A Bills module. Create and track the bill in Roopairs, and it syncs to QuickBooks where it is paid | Purchase order receipts map to either a purchase order or a bill in QuickBooks, with line-level product, description, quantity, rate, amount, customer and class |
| Planned maintenance contracts | Recurring job series held against the equipment record rather than the customer | Service agreements held against the asset record, with service agreement billing as one of six billing types |
| QuickBooks | An integration sync with QuickBooks Online or Desktop covering thirteen record types, including bills, credit notes, journal entries and customer merges | QuickBooks Online and Desktop, with a different setup path for each. Customers, invoices, payments and orders stay in sync |
| Integrations | Built for the commercial kitchen channel: manufacturers, parts distributors and facilities portals working from the same equipment record | A partner library across commercial contracting trades |
| Free trial | Free ROO Parts plan | None published. Their pricing page says most contractors start by booking a demo |
| Pricing | Free ROO Parts plan covering purchase orders, pricebook and inventory, then per user pricing for the full suite of modules | Not published. “BuildOps pricing is tailored to each contractor’s operation” with “no one-size-fits-all number”, built around headcount, trades and back-office tools |
* The BuildOps column is drawn from their own pricing, platform and integration pages, read in August and September 2026. Where something is described as not named, that is a statement about what those pages say rather than a claim about what the product cannot do.
Roopairs is built for the equipment in the kitchen, not the systems in the building
BuildOps names refrigeration among the trades it serves, alongside HVAC and mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire and life safety. That is commercial work, and it is close to this trade.
The distance is what the technician is standing in front of. Building refrigeration and a kitchen full of cooking equipment are different populations of equipment with different owners, different warranties and different parts channels.
A fryer, a combi oven, a dish machine and an ice machine belong to the operator or to a lease, carry factory agreements from several manufacturers, and are replaced on a cycle the building never sees.
Roopairs is organized around that population. The equipment is the record, and the manufacturer, model, serial, service history, location history and warranty agreements sit on the unit, with maintenance contracts attached there rather than to the account.
Roopairs runs the factory claim and the operator invoice on 1 board
Commercial contracting work and foodservice equipment service collect money differently, and that is the practical difference between these two products.
A mechanical contractor bills a building owner or a general contractor. A kitchen equipment service company bills an operator, a manufacturer or a facilities platform, often for work done on the same visit.
Roopairs treats the factory claim as a native billing path next to the ordinary invoice, with coverage held on the equipment record so it is known before dispatch.
Portal work gets the same handling, because national account jobs arrive through ServiceChannel, Corrigo, Ecotrak or OpenWrench rather than by phone, and Roopairs is built to work with third-party facilities management software.
What service companies in the trade say
“I chose Roopairs because they are the only service software specific for restaurant equipment service companies, so I highly recommend ROO for anyone working in commercial kitchens.” — Martin Turner
Where BuildOps fits
BuildOps is a serious commercial platform and it is worth being specific about who it is right for. Their pricing page names HVAC and mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire and life safety, and refrigeration, and it prices around the number of people who need it, the trades you run and the back-office tools you depend on. That is a product for a commercial contractor with several trades under one roof.
The billing spread makes the point. Time and materials, fixed price, progress billing, AIA pay applications, service agreement billing and milestone billing is the list a mechanical contractor doing project work and service work needs, and most field service products carry two of those six.
Refrigeration on that list is real, and it means BuildOps and Roopairs will meet in some deals. Foodservice equipment is a different trade from all five, which is a statement about who they built for rather than about what their software could technically hold. A contractor maintaining the mechanical systems of a building is doing different work from a company that services the fryers, combis and walk-ins inside it.
The pain starts around your third or fourth tech, and it is cheaper to switch before it does. If your third van is mostly kitchen equipment rather than building systems, that is the moment the two products start pulling in different directions. ROO Parts is free, so the parts side can be tested on real jobs first.
Choose Roopairs if
Cooking and warewashing equipment is most of the work. Fryers, combis, ice machines and dish machines, where the parts and the procedures come from the equipment manufacturer rather than from a building system.
Manufacturers pay part of your revenue. Factory claims with their forms and their timelines, running next to billable work instead of beside it in a spreadsheet.
Your customers are operators and chains. One account with many sites and a long equipment list, where the serial number is the thing that gets asked about.
Choose BuildOps if
You run several commercial trades under one roof. HVAC and mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire and life safety in the same buildings is exactly the shape BuildOps prices for, and a single-trade product will not absorb that.
Project billing matters as much as service billing. Progress billing, AIA pay applications and milestone billing are named on their pages, and a contractor doing construction work alongside service needs all three.
Roopairs brings the accounts, and the equipment list is rebuilt per unit
Clients, locations, contacts and the parts list come across as part of setup, with a full migration available as a quoted service for larger operations.
Leaving a commercial contracting platform has a particular shape, because the data is usually organized around projects and sites.
- Sites become equipment lists. What was a site with systems becomes a site with named units, each carrying its own model, serial and coverage. This is the longest part and the one that pays off first.
- Agreements move down to the unit. A service agreement written at building level has to be expressed as named equipment at named sites at agreed intervals.
- Project structures do not come with you, and anything mid-project is worth finishing where it started.
Overlap both products across one month end. Reconnecting the accounting side early is what keeps that close quiet.
What each one costs
Neither product publishes a figure above the free plan, and it is worth saying that plainly rather than pointedly. BuildOps writes that pricing is “tailored to each contractor’s operation” with “no one-size-fits-all number”, and that most contractors start by booking a demo. Their plans are built around headcount, the trades you run and the back-office tools you depend on.
Roopairs’ ROO Parts plan is free and covers purchase orders, your pricebook and your inventory. The full suite of modules is priced per user per month.
The useful comparison is therefore not a monthly figure. It is how many of the trades and billing types you are paying for that you actually run.
Also worth reading
- How Roopairs and Jobber compare for kitchen equipment work
- Service software built to manage purchase orders and inventory
- Roopairs, the future of restaurant equipment software and parts distribution
FAQ
Does BuildOps cover commercial kitchen equipment?
Their pricing page names HVAC and mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire and life safety, and refrigeration. Foodservice is not among the trades it lists, which is a statement about what that page carried in August 2026 rather than a claim about the product's capability.
Is refrigeration the same thing as foodservice equipment service?
They overlap and they are not the same work. Building refrigeration and a kitchen full of cooking and warewashing equipment differ in who owns the equipment, which manufacturers carry the warranties and where the parts come from.
What does BuildOps cost?
No figure is published. Their page says pricing is tailored to each contractor's operation with no one-size-fits-all number, built around the number of people who need it, the trades you run and the back office tools you depend on. Roopairs quotes per user above its free plan.
Which one is better for a mechanical contractor?
BuildOps, on its own terms. A contractor running mechanical, electrical, plumbing or fire and life safety alongside refrigeration is the operation it was built around, and that breadth is worth real money there.
How does Roopairs handle factory warranty claims?
As a native billing path rather than a workaround. Warranty and non-warranty jobs run through one dispatch board, and the agreement with the manufacturer sits on the equipment record so coverage is settled before a technician is assigned.
Can Roopairs take work from facilities platforms?
Yes. It is built to work with third-party facilities management software, so tickets from the platforms national accounts use arrive as work rather than as re-keying.
The 1 kitchen that tells Roopairs and BuildOps apart
Take a single visit to one restaurant where the technician touched a walk-in and a fryer, one covered by a factory agreement and one not, and ask each vendor to run it to both payments.
Then ask for the service history of that fryer by serial number, every visit since it was installed. Bring both to a product tour.
See how Roopairs can help your service business scale
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