Icey vs Arborgold for Snow Removal: A Snow Tool or Green-Industry Software?

The short answer

Pick Arborgold if snow is your winter season and tree care, lawn care or landscaping is the rest of your year. Its plans cover estimating, scheduling, route optimization and invoicing, its Professional plan adds job costing and material tracking, and customers can pay by card or ACH from an invoice the crew sends before leaving the site, from an emailed or texted link, or through its customer portal. It is sold on an annual contract: a twelve-month minimum, renewed automatically, with 60 days’ notice to cancel; you choose to pay monthly or annually.

Pick Icey if you work only snow and ice. Free forever up to 10 sites and 5 crew. Every feature. Paid plans are priced by sites, from $119 CAD a month for 11–35 sites, with every driver included, monthly with no contract, and you sign up yourself, with no demo call. Its per-event rate cards price plowing and de-icing as separate visits, with the salt included in the price or listed separately.

What Arborgold offers snow companies (as of October 2026)

• Contracts and work orders. Its snow removal page names one-time work orders and recurring service contracts, invoices for individual services or for contracts, and deposits and prepayment plans. Work orders and invoices can be built from the labor, equipment and materials on a job. The page doesn’t use the words per push or per event.
• Estimates from measurements. Estimates priced from square footage with cost calculators, and unlimited land measurements on every plan. Its Professional plan adds an auto-price calculator and renewals, and the snow page pitches automated renewal estimates for seasonal clients.
• Scheduling and routes. Work scheduled by available staff, equipment and territory, routes optimized with each crew’s own start location, and crews tracked by GPS in the field.
• A crew app on iPhone and Android. Its MobileCrew app puts each punch in and out on a map, so you see where and when a crew started and stopped each job. Crews record the amount applied to a job, note the weather with a tap, and have checklists, a digital notebook, photo storage and invoices they can change from the phone.
• Customers and payments. Customers can request service online around the clock, and its customer portal lets them approve proposals, see job details and their balance, and pay. Arborgold Payments takes Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express and ACH, sends invoices from the crew app before leaving the site, and has no monthly fee for payment processing.
• Accounting. It works with QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Online (you buy QuickBooks separately).
• Who and where. Established in 1994, with its address in South Jordan, Utah. Its FAQ says it can be used worldwide, in English only, with prices in US dollars.

Side by side (as of October 2026)

Where Arborgold is stronger

• One system for every season. If you prune trees, treat lawns or build landscapes from spring to fall, Arborgold keeps the same customers, crews and records when you switch to plowing. Icey is for snow and ice work only.
• Getting paid. Customers pay by card or ACH from an invoice the crew sends before leaving the site, from an emailed or texted link, or through its customer portal. In Icey you record payments by hand; card payments are not built in.
• Job costing and inventory. Its Professional plan adds job costing, material inventory and chemical tracking. Icey has no job-costing tools.
• Customers can ask for work themselves. A request-a-quote form for your website, service requests online around the clock, and a portal where customers approve proposals and check their jobs. In Icey you email each site report with a tap, or switch on a once-a-day email.
• Apps for Android too, and QuickBooks. Its MobileCrew app runs on iPhone and Android, while Icey’s Android app is still in testing, so Android crews use the web app. Arborgold works with QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Online; Icey exports a CSV file in the format QuickBooks imports.
• Years behind it. Arborgold was established in 1994. Icey is a younger product, self-serve since July 2026, with fewer reviews.

Where Icey is stronger, or simply different

• A free plan, and no contract. Free forever up to 10 sites and 5 crew. Every feature. Paid plans are monthly, so you can drop back to Free for the summer with nothing deleted. Arborgold lists no free plan, and its plans need an annual contract: a twelve-month minimum, renewed automatically, with 60 days’ notice to cancel; you choose to pay monthly or annually.
• Start today, by yourself. Sign up, add your sites and run the next storm, with no demo to book first. Arborgold starts with sales or a demo.
• Built for snow and ice only. Icey’s per-event rate cards price plowing and de-icing as separate visits, with the salt included in the price or listed separately, or you sell a seasonal contract paid in monthly instalments. Arborgold’s snow page names one-time work orders and recurring service contracts; ask how it bills a storm per push or per event, with de-icing as its own visit.
• Storm dispatch, with the forecast in front of you. Icey dispatches the whole storm from one board, with routes optimized for traffic and priority sites first, and its Weather Center shows the forecast for your service area, with a “Notify me” alert you can switch on for when the forecast crosses your snowfall trigger.
• Salt records built for de-icing. Icey logs the product and amount at every de-icing visit, per site, with the visit’s time, GPS, crew and photos, and keeps the amounts in your own records. Arborgold’s crew app records the amount applied to a job, and its snow page doesn’t mention salt, so ask how it records salt on a snow visit.
• It keeps recording with no signal. Icey’s Field Mode crew app keeps recording with no signal. The Arborgold pages we read don’t say either way, so ask before a storm in a dead zone.
• A price that doesn’t grow with your crew. Icey’s paid plans include every driver. Arborgold adds office and mobile user licences to its plan price, priced on request.

Both put a crew app, routes and invoices behind every job, so the real question is whether snow is your whole business or your winter season. See proof of service and salt tracking.

We have not run a storm on Arborgold, so we can’t tell you how its app feels on a long night. Ask Arborgold to build its demo around a real storm, and run one on Icey’s free plan, before you decide.

Who should pick which

• A tree care, lawn or landscape company that plows in winter and wants one system all year: Arborgold.
• You want job costing, inventory and chemical tracking in the same system: Arborgold.
• You want customers to pay by card or ACH, from the crew’s invoice or through a portal: Arborgold.
• Snow and ice only, with up to 10 sites and 5 crew: Icey, free, with every feature.
• You want to start today, monthly, with no contract and no demo call: Icey.
• Per-event rate cards with de-icing as its own visit, salt logs per site, and storm dispatch from one board: Icey.

Sources

• Arborgold pricing, checked October 30, 2026: the three plans and their prices paid annually or monthly, in US dollars; what each plan adds; user licences priced on request; onboarding services; the annual contract, its automatic renewal and the 60-day notice; QuickBooks Desktop or Online; iOS and Android apps; and no free plan or trial listed.
• Arborgold snow removal software, checked October 30, 2026: one-time work orders and recurring service contracts, estimates from square footage, invoices built from labor, equipment and materials, deposits and prepayment plans, automated renewals, routing and GPS, online service requests, the request-a-quote form and the crew app’s checklists and photo storage.
• Arborgold MobileCrew, checked October 30, 2026: iPhone and Android, punches put on a map, the amount applied to a job and weather notes.
• Arborgold’s customer portal and Arborgold Payments, checked October 30, 2026: proposals approved, job details, balances and payments in the portal; cards and ACH, invoices from the crew app, payment links by email or text, and no monthly fee.
• Also checked October 30, 2026: Arborgold’s home page (the industries it serves), About (established in 1994, tree, lawn and landscape companies, South Jordan, Utah), integrations (QuickBooks Online and Desktop) and GPS time tracking (crew location with job start and stop times).
• Icey Software pricing and what Icey does.