For painting contractors
For painting contractors: fewer wasted walkthroughs, and follow-up on every bid you send.
You can't answer the phone from a ladder, and an exterior bid you sent in February is easy to lose track of by April. When you miss a call, Mainline Systems answers with a greeting in your shop's name and sends you the transcribed voicemail. Web customers request a walkthrough window you confirm in the app, and your bid gets follow-up emails until the customer approves, declines, or asks a question. We set it up and tune it for your crew, and then it runs automatically.
A day on the tools
Where the work slips away.
You can’t be on the tools and on the phone at once. These are the moments that cost painting contractors jobs.
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The phone rings while you're cutting in a ceiling or up on a ladder. By the time you climb down, the homeowner has called the next painter on the list.
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You drive across town to walk a house and find out they wanted one bedroom done this weekend.
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Exterior bids go out in winter and early spring, then sit. The homeowner meant to decide, the weather turned, and the job went to whoever followed up first.
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Homeowners text 'how much per room?' and expect a number before you've seen the walls. If you guess, you either lose the job or lose money on it.
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The job looks great, you pack up and leave, and nobody asks the customer for a review.
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Last year's exterior customer could use touch-up before the rain, and nobody reminds them you exist.
The same day, with Mainline Systems running
It's a Tuesday in March. You're two coats into a stairwell, and your phone rings twice in an hour. The first caller hears your greeting and leaves a voicemail: two-story exterior, built around 1962, peeling on the south side, wants it done by July. You get the transcript by email, call back at lunch, and set Thursday at 4. Because the house is pre-1978, you plan for lead-safe work before you go. The second caller's voicemail asking 'how much for three bedrooms?' lands in your inbox to call back. After the walkthrough, you upload your bid from your phone and it goes to their proposal page. They don't answer, so short follow-up emails go out on day 1, 3 and 7. Twelve days later they tap Approve.
How it helps
What Mainline Systems handles for painting contractors.
It runs on the number you already have. It never quotes a price and never diagnoses a problem. Those go to you.
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Missed-call recovery in your shop's name
An honest greeting, a recorded and transcribed voicemail, and an alert email to you. Texting turns on once carrier approval clears.
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Leads in the customer's own words, sorted for urgency, so you know whether it's interior, exterior, cabinets or a deck before you call back.
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No prices and no opinions about the surface in any message. Pricing questions come to you.
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A proposal page where the customer can view your bid, approve it, decline it, or ask a question. Upload the estimate you already write from your phone. An options builder (walls only; walls and trim; walls, trim, and doors) is coming in December.
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Bid follow-up emails on day 1, 3 and 7 that stop as soon as the customer approves, declines, or asks a question. It never invents a deadline or a discount.
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Confirmation, day-before and same-day reminder emails before the walkthrough and before the crew arrives.
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A review request to every customer you mark done
The same email and the same link for everyone.
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Included
About a year after the job, customers you mark done who have an email on file get a short check-in email in your name: how's the paint holding up, anything else on their list, and the same review link everyone gets. Touch-up and new-project requests come straight to you.
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A Customer File for each job with the address, your proposals and notes (jot down colors, sheens and products), so next year's touch-up starts with the right paint.
Built by a tradesman
Built by a tradesman who’s been in your boots.
Mainline Systems was built by someone who’s worked in the trades, not a software company. We won’t pretend to know your trade better than you do: the system never diagnoses, never quotes a price, and sends every technical question to you. What we do know is the part every trade shares: the phone ringing while your hands are full, and the bid that goes quiet because nobody followed up.
Jobs it’s set up for
Set up for the work you actually do.
We tune the list to what your shop takes on. A typical starting point:
- Interior repaint (single room, multiple rooms, whole house)
- Exterior repaint (siding, trim, fascia/soffit), by number of stories
- Cabinet painting/refinishing (kitchen, bath)
- Trim, door, and baseboard painting
- Ceiling repaint, including textured/popcorn ceilings
- Deck and fence staining/sealing
- Small drywall patch and touch-up before paint
- Pre-sale / move-out / rental turnover repaint
- New construction or remodel paint (often via a GC)
- Wallpaper removal and paint
- Accent walls and specialty finishes
- Pressure washing and prep
- Exterior caulk and touch-up maintenance
What painting contractors ask us
Will it quote prices per room or per square foot?
No. Pricing questions come to you. No dollar figure goes into a customer message except on the proposal you send.
Will it tell a homeowner whether their paint has lead in it?
No. It never tells anyone their paint does or doesn't contain lead, and it never says it's safe to sand, scrape, or pressure-wash. If a homeowner mentions sanding or scraping old paint, or paint chips around children, the lead is flagged and you're alerted so you can call them.
Most of my exterior work is seasonal. Does this help in the off-season?
Partly. Bids written in winter get the same day 1, 3 and 7 follow-up so they don't go quiet, every job stays in the Customer File, and about a year after each job you mark done, customers with an email on file get a short check-in email in your name asking how it's holding up and whether anything else is on their list.
Can I offer options like walls only versus walls and trim, or do I have to use your template?
Today you upload the estimate you already write, with whatever options you put on it, and the customer can approve, decline, or ask a question from the same page. A built-in options layout is coming in December.
Who gets asked for a review?
Every finished customer, the same way. When you mark a job done, everyone gets the same review-request email with the same Google review link. Nobody is screened out first, and nobody is offered anything for a review. If someone is unhappy, you also hear about it privately so you can make it right.
I'm a one- or two-person crew. Is this worth it?
Small crews often have nobody to answer the phone during the workday. Mainline Systems catches the call, flags what's urgent, lines up the walkthrough request, and handles the follow-up, and you decide which jobs to walk. It's month-to-month, so you can judge it on your own calls.
Other trades we work with
Free Revenue Recovery Audit
See what your own phone is dropping.
The Revenue Recovery Audit is a 3-minute look at your own missed calls and reviews. No pitch deck, no obligation. If there’s nothing leaking, we’ll tell you that.
If it doesn’t put recovered jobs on your calendar in the first 30 days, you don’t pay the next month. Simple as that.
Month-to-month. No contract. Free audit, no obligation.