If you work in construction, you know Procore. It is the 800-pound gorilla of the industry. It’s on every major job site sign, and it seems like every time you go to a trade show, their booth is bigger than the building itself.
There is no denying that Procore is powerful software. If you are building a hospital, a stadium, or a 40-story high-rise, it is a fantastic tool. It handles complex RFI workflows, submittals, safety logs, and distinct permissions for hundreds of stakeholders.
But what if you aren’t building a stadium?
What if you are a General Contractor doing $2.5M to $10M a year in revenue? What if your “team” is you, a project manager, and an office administrator?
For businesses of this size, Procore often feels like buying a commercial airliner just to fly to the grocery store. It is expensive, it is complex, and you end up paying for thousands of features you will never use.
If you are a custom home builder or a mid-sized GC looking for a cheaper alternative to Procore, you aren’t looking for “less quality.” You are looking for “right-sized.”
Here is why moving away from the Enterprise giants might be the smartest financial move your construction business makes this year.
The biggest complaint we hear from GCs leaving Procore is not that the software is bad—it’s that the ROI simply isn’t there for residential or light commercial projects.
Procore historically uses a pricing model based on your annual construction volume. That means as you grow and land better jobs, your software bill goes up—even if your headcount stays the same. For a company running on the tight margins of residential construction, being penalized for growth is a tough pill to swallow.
“Buying” Procore is just the first check you write. Implementing it is a different beast. Because the software is designed for mega-projects, setting it up requires serious training. Many small GCs find themselves paying thousands in implementation fees, or worse, paying for a subscription that sits unused for six months because nobody has the time to watch 40 hours of training videos.
Procore pitches itself as an all-in-one solution. But ask yourself: Do you actually need an enterprise-grade “Submittal Registry” for a custom kitchen renovation? Do you need a rigid “RFI workflow” that requires four different approvals, or do you just need to text the architect and save the screenshot to the project folder?
When you pay for Procore, you are paying for the code that runs billionaires’ projects. If you aren’t using that code, you are effectively subsidizing the companies that do.
When we look at General Contractors in the $1M–$15M range, the needs are remarkably consistent. You don’t need “Enterprise Resource Planning.” You need to execute four core tasks efficiently:
If a piece of software can handle those four things well, everything else is just bells and whistles.
We built Bid Bench specifically for the contractor who is growing out of Excel but refuses to pay the “Procore Tax.” We stripped away the complexity of commercial heavy civil construction and focused entirely on the workflow of the mid-sized General Contractor.
Here is how we compare on the features that actually matter to your bottom line.
In Procore, managing bids is a rigorous process. In Excel, it’s a nightmare of copy-pasting.
Bid Bench takes a different approach. We focus on speed to budget.
Construction document control is vital, but it shouldn’t require a degree in library sciences.
This is the biggest differentiator.
It is natural to worry that paying less means getting a “cheap” product.
In the world of software, “expensive” often equals “legacy.” Procore was founded in 2002. They have millions of lines of code to maintain. They have hundreds of salespeople to pay.
Modern software (like ours) is built on newer, more efficient technology. We can build features faster and host them cheaper than companies that started twenty years ago. You aren’t paying for “lower quality”—you are paying for lower overhead.
We value honesty. We aren’t the right fit for everyone. You should probably stick with (or switch to) Procore if:
You are the perfect fit for our platform if:
Software should speed you up, not slow you down. If you find yourself working for your software rather than your software working for you, it might be time to look for an alternative.
You can run a highly professional, profitable, and organized construction company without spending a fortune on enterprise tools.
Ready to see how simple budgeting and bidding can be? Start your free trial of Bid Bench today and see why GCs are making the switch.