Free Electrical Certificate Software: What You Actually Get (And When You Need to Upgrade)

You’ve just finished a rewire on a three-bed semi in Leeds. It’s gone 6pm, you’re stood in the van with a headtorch, and now you need to knock out an EIC before you can invoice. Sound familiar?

Every electrician hits the same wall eventually: do you keep bashing out certificates on a free template, or is it time to pay for proper electrical cert software? The honest answer is — it depends what “free” is actually costing you. And most sparks don’t work that out until they’ve lost a weekend to a corrupted spreadsheet or a client chasing a Minor Works cert that’s gone missing.

This is the bit nobody explains properly, so let’s sort it.

What “free electrical certificate software” actually means

Search for free electrical certificate software and you’ll mostly land on three things: a PDF template from a trade body, a basic app with a free tier capped at a handful of certs a month, or a spreadsheet someone’s cousin built in 2019. None of these are software in the sense of running your business — they’re digital paper.

Free tiers usually give you:

• A fillable EIC, EICR or Minor Works form (BS 7671 compliant, in theory)
• Basic client and property details you type in every time
• A PDF you can email or print
• No cloud backup, or a very limited one
• No scheduling, no invoicing, no reminders tied to the certificate

That covers a sole trader doing the odd cert alongside install work. What it doesn’t cover is anyone doing EICRs regularly, anyone with a second van, or anyone who’s ever had a client ask “can you resend that certificate from March?” and had to dig through folders.

Free eicr software free tiers exist because vendors want you in the funnel — they know once you’ve got 200 certificates sat in their system, you’re not switching easily. That’s a fair trade if you go in with your eyes open.

Where free software genuinely falls over

We hear the same three complaints from electricians who’ve outgrown the free tier.

The certificate cap bites at the worst time. You’re three EICRs into a busy landlord-compliance month and the app tells you you’ve hit your free limit. Now you’re either paying mid-job or reverting to a paper form for the last one — which then needs re-keying later anyway.

No link between the certificate and the job. The cert lives in one app. Your invoice lives somewhere else. Your diary’s a third thing. So when a landlord rings asking whether their EICR’s overdue, you’re checking three places to answer one question.

Nobody’s chasing the renewal. A domestic EICR is valid for 5 years (or 3 for a change of tenancy), and a commercial one’s often annual or per your risk assessment. Free software rarely tracks that for you — it just produces the document and leaves the renewal date as your problem. Multiply that across 150 landlord properties and you can see how jobs get missed.

None of this makes free tools bad. It makes them a starting point, not a system for running an electrical firm with certification obligations.

Certificate software vs field service software — different jobs

This is where people get muddled. A lot of what’s marketed as “electrical certification software” is exactly that and nothing more — it produces compliant certificates and stores them. It’s not trying to schedule your day or chase your invoices.

Clik Compliance is a good example — built specifically for regulated certificates across electrical, gas and fire. Their published pricing is Entry at £20/user/month for 5 certificate templates and up to 30 certificates a month, and Advanced at £25/user/month for 12 templates and up to 80 certificates a month, with Comprehensive available on request. That’s solid if certificate volume and template variety are your main headache and you already run diary and invoicing elsewhere.

EasyCert takes the opposite approach — a one-off licence rather than a subscription. EasyCert Pro is £174.95 as a perpetual licence for one PC, and EasyCert Mobile is £224.95 one-off, adding iOS/Android to the desktop version. No monthly fee is genuinely appealing if you’re a sole trader who just wants BS 7671, BS 5839 and BS 5266 certs done on a desktop and doesn’t need it tied to a wider job workflow. Worth noting the annual Customer Care renewal is sold separately and isn’t priced on their page, so budget for that as an unknown before you commit.

Tradify, by contrast, is a full job management tool — quotes, scheduling, invoicing — priced per user at £34 (Lite), £37 (Pro) or £44 (Plus) a month. It’s not primarily a certification tool, so if BS 7671 certs are the main pain point, you’re paying for a lot of scheduling muscle you might not need yet.

The question to ask yourself isn’t “which is cheapest” — it’s “am I trying to solve a certificate problem or a whole-business problem?”

When it’s actually time to upgrade

You don’t need to upgrade the day you go over a free limit. But a few signals mean it’s time to stop patching:

• You’re doing more than a handful of EICRs a month and re-typing the same landlord/property details each time
• You’ve had a client chase a certificate you couldn’t find quickly
• You’re tracking renewal dates in your head, a diary, or a spreadsheet nobody else checks
• Your certificates live in a different place to your invoices, so every “has this been paid?” question takes three taps to answer
• You’re taking on apprentices or a second electrician and need certs signed off and stored somewhere everyone can see

If none of that’s true yet, stick with the free tier — genuinely. No point paying for headroom you’re not using.

How Hero AI fits into the day-to-day

Here’s the thing about certificate software on its own — it solves the paperwork, but it doesn’t answer your phone, chase the invoice for the job the cert was attached to, or notice that a domestic customer’s EICR falls due in six weeks.

Hero365 isn’t a certificate template tool — it’s your AI staff running the rest of the shop around the certification work. Hero AI answers your calls when you’re up a ladder mid-EICR and books the job straight onto your diary. It drafts a Good/Better/Best estimate from a quick voice note after you’ve spotted three consumer units that need upgrading during an inspection. And once the job’s certified and done, Hero AI chases the invoice — so a completed EICR turns into money in the bank rather than a PDF sat in a folder waiting for someone to remember to bill it.

If you’re already juggling Clik Compliance or EasyCert for the certs themselves, that’s fine — Hero AI handles what those tools were never built to do: the calls, the diary, the money.

We’ve written before about the diary side of this in our guide to electrician scheduling software and billing, and if landlord compliance is your bread and butter, our piece on CP12 landlord gas safety certificates covers the same renewal-chasing problem from the gas side.

Don’t let a missing cert cost you the job

Free electrical certificate software will get a sole trader through the first year or two. But the moment certificates, invoicing and your diary start living in three different places, you’re spending your evenings doing admin a proper set-up would handle in the background.

Start with Hero365’s pricing — Hero AI’s from £19.99 a month for the AI Concierge that answers and books your calls around the clock, no per-seat fees to worry about as you take on more electricians. Or have a browse of our free tools if you just want to see what a proper electrical set-up should include before you commit to anything.

If you’re constantly missing calls while you’re stood in someone’s consumer unit cupboard, that’s the bit to fix first — have a look at how Hero AI never misses another call and go from there.