Search this question and you get vendor lists ranked on design quality and price. Those lists are answering a real question, just not the one that costs solar installers the most money.
Solar is the rare trade where the sale is not the end of the pipeline. In HVAC, a signed job is completed that week. In solar, a signature starts a queue: permitting with the AHJ, interconnection with the utility, financing approval with a lender. Weeks pass, controlled by people who do not work for you.
Almost no solar CRM comparison ranks tools on whether they can see that stage. That is the gap worth choosing on.
The short answer
| If you are | Start with | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Design-led, accuracy matters | Aurora ($159 to $259 per user) | LIDAR-assisted modelling, NEC validation, full design lifecycle |
| Scaling a sales team fast | OpenSolar (core app free) | No per-seat cost, interactive proposals, built-in CRM |
| Drowning in operations, not design | An operations CRM alongside either | Design tools do not dispatch crews or chase permits |
| Stuck between signature and install | Whatever reports that stage live | This is where solar cash actually stalls |
The first three rows are what the listicles cover. The fourth is the one that decides whether you can forecast.
The two-tool problem, stated plainly
Design engines and operations CRMs are built for different jobs and neither is trying to be the other.
Design and proposal engines model roofs, run shading analysis, size systems, produce interactive proposals and handle financing options. Aurora leads on modelling accuracy with published per-user pricing. OpenSolar covers design, sales and project workflow with a built-in CRM at no cost for the core app, which is why it spreads quickly across large teams.
Operations CRMs run the business after the yes: scheduling, crew dispatch, job costing, invoicing, review requests.
The common industry pattern is to pair one of each. That pairing is reasonable. The problem is that the seam between them is where jobs go missing, because each tool believes the other one owns the record.
Watch out
The most common solar reporting failure is not a missing feature. It is that the design tool thinks a deal is won, the operations tool thinks the job has not started, and nothing owns the eight weeks in between. Nobody is lying. There is simply no system of record for the stage where the money is waiting.
What to actually choose on: the four reports
Ignore feature lists. Ask any tool to produce these four live, in your own data, during the demo. If the answer involves exporting to a spreadsheet, the tool does not report it, and you will be doing that export every week forever.
1. Jobs by pipeline stage, including post-signature stages. Not just lead, quoted, won. You need signed, permit submitted, permit approved, interconnection submitted, interconnection approved, scheduled, installed, inspected, PTO. If the pipeline ends at "won", it cannot see most of your working capital.
2. Days stuck, by stage. The count is not enough. Twelve jobs awaiting interconnection means nothing until you know three have been waiting nine weeks. This is the report that turns a queue into an action list.
3. Cost per acquired customer, by lead source. Requires a source stamped on every job at creation and carried through to install. Without it you cannot rank channels honestly, which we go through in how much do solar leads cost.
4. Signature to install conversion. What share of signed contracts become installed systems, and how long the median takes. This is the number that makes your revenue forecast real, and it is the one we lean on in how many solar leads do I need per month.
We build the operations layer around the stage most solar tools ignore: what happens between the signature and the install. If you want to see those four reports running on your own pipeline before deciding anything, that is what the demo is.
The tier trap
Per-user pricing interacts badly with how solar teams are actually staffed.
Solar carries high sales headcount relative to installed volume, and turnover in commission-only sales roles is significant. A tool at $159 per user per month is inexpensive across six people and materially expensive across thirty, and the thirty-person version is exactly the configuration a growing installer arrives at.
This is a large part of why OpenSolar spreads the way it does: a free core removes the seat-count penalty on a team that changes shape every quarter. Weigh that against the operations coverage you then have to add elsewhere, rather than treating free as free.
Where custom becomes the honest answer
Most installers do not need a custom build, and anyone who tells you otherwise before understanding your workflow is selling. Configure what exists first.
Custom becomes defensible in three specific situations:
Interconnection tracking that matches your utilities. If you operate across several AHJs and utilities with genuinely different milestone sequences, generic pipeline stages force you into a shape that hides delay.
Financing milestones tied to billing. Solar payments are usually milestone based, and dealer fees and progress billing rarely map cleanly onto tools built for single-invoice trades.
Multi-crew scheduling against equipment lead times. Four to six week equipment lead times plus crew availability is a constraint problem, and most scheduling modules assume the materials are already in the van.
If none of those describe you, configure an existing tool and spend the difference on lead generation.
The demo script
Take this into every vendor call. It takes fifteen minutes and it is more informative than any comparison page.
- "Show me every signed job that is not yet installed, grouped by what it is waiting on." Watch whether the stages already exist or have to be invented on the call.
- "Which of those has been waiting longest, and how long?" If this needs a manual filter, it will never be run on a Tuesday morning.
- "Show me cost per acquired customer by lead source for last quarter." Most tools cannot, because nothing stamped the source at creation.
- "What percentage of signed contracts installed, and what was the median gap?" This is the forecasting number.
- "Show me how a proposal from Aurora or OpenSolar arrives here, and what happens if the system size changes after signing." Change orders are where the two-tool seam breaks.
Note which questions get answered with a live screen and which get answered with a roadmap.
The checklist
- Do not choose one tool to do design and operations. Choose the pair, then choose the seam.
- Insist on pipeline stages that continue past "won" through permitting, interconnection and PTO.
- Require days-in-stage reporting, not just counts.
- Stamp a lead source on every job at creation, before you need the report.
- Model per-seat cost at the headcount you expect in a year, not today.
- Check that progress billing and deposits map to your accounting, since solar rarely bills once at the end. Ask specifically how deposits and milestone payments sync, since one-way integrations are common.
- Consider custom only when interconnection, financing milestones or crew scheduling genuinely do not fit, and configure first.
The tool that wins is not the one with the best roof modelling. It is the one that can tell you, on a Monday, which eleven signed jobs are not moving and who is holding each one up. For a comparison of where operations software and CRM genuinely differ in this trade, CRM vs field service software for solar covers the split.