Looking for a Buildertrend alternative you actually own?

Teams comparing construction management platforms — tools like Buildertrend and the wider per-seat category it belongs to — usually do it for three reasons: the bill grows every time they hire, their project data sits on someone else's cloud, and they pay for a feature surface built for companies ten times their size. ProjectDone PMS is the alternative built on the opposite model: a complete construction PMS that installs on your hosting, for one flat annual license.

The arithmetic that starts the search

Per-seat construction platforms commonly publish prices in the €15–40 per user per month range. For a 25-person firm, that model compounds like this — pure arithmetic on those published price ranges, not a claim about any specific vendor's quote:

Model	25 people, 1 year	25 people, 3 years	Where your data lives
Per-seat SaaS at €15/user/mo	€4,500	€13,500	The vendor's cloud
Per-seat SaaS at €40/user/mo	€12,000	€36,000	The vendor's cloud
ProjectDone PMS Standard	€999	€2,997	Your own hosting

SaaS rows are illustrative arithmetic on commonly published per-seat ranges — your actual quote from any vendor will differ. The ProjectDone row is our published price, verifiable on the checkout page.

What changes when the software is yours

Your data stops travelling. Projects, timesheets, invoices and client details live in a database on your hosting — shared hosting or VPS, PHP 8.2 + MySQL. Nobody else holds a copy.
Hiring stops raising the software bill. Standard covers 25 users for €999/year. Crew number 26 is a published per-seat add-on, not a plan jump.
You can verify what you run. Every release ships with a SHA-256 manifest, and licenses are cryptographically signed to your domain and seat count.
No lock-in by design. Your data stays readable and exportable. If you ever stop renewing, your records remain on your server — they were always there.

Coverage for a contractor's actual week

Projects & tasks — multi-site portfolio with progress, priorities, deadlines and attachments.
Timesheets — field hours with rates and an approval flow, so Friday payroll is a review, not a reconstruction.
Invoices & estimates — line items with draft → sent → paid status, multi-currency, AIA-style progress billing.
RFIs & change orders — owner, due date, status. The two margin-eaters, out of the inbox.
Materials & equipment — stock costing, usage history, site assignments, maintenance dates.
HSE / safety — incidents with severity, photos and corrective actions.
Roles & audit log — admin, PM, worker, client portal, accountant; every action in a hash-verifiable trail.

Where ProjectDone is not the right alternative

Honesty beats a conversion: if you want a vendor-operated cloud with zero IT involvement, a marketplace of hundreds of third-party integrations, or a free tier you never pay for, a self-hosted system is not that. ProjectDone needs a hosting home (any PHP + MySQL host works, and the installer checks everything before it touches the database) and someone at your firm who can say "this is our server." For most 5–100 person firms that's a one-afternoon decision — but it's a real one.

Thirty seconds of proof beats this page

The demo is a live installation with seeded construction data — three projects, ten tasks, timesheets, invoices. The login is printed on the page. No signup, no call, no credit card. For the full self-hosted story, read own your PMS.

Walk into the live demo → See pricing (€999–4,999/yr)