The Best Christmas & Permanent Lighting Estimating Software for Installers in 2026

If you install Christmas lights, permanent holiday lighting, or both, you already know the real cost of running a lighting business isn't just labor and materials — it's the hours you lose every week to quoting, tracking, and organizing jobs with tools that were never built for this industry.

A notebook doesn't calculate pricing tiers for you. A generic spreadsheet doesn't turn into a professional estimate you can email a customer in thirty seconds. And a standalone Christmas light estimating tool — while useful — still leaves you manually tracking which jobs are quoted, which are sold, and which crew still needs a schedule.

That gap is exactly why LightHawk exists: a single platform built specifically for Christmas lighting and permanent lighting contractors who want to design, estimate, schedule, and track every job without stitching together five different tools.

The Real Problem With Most Holiday Lighting Software

Search for "Christmas light installer software" or "holiday lighting business software" and you'll find plenty of tools that do one piece of the puzzle well. Some are decent estimating calculators. Some are generic CRMs not built for seasonal lighting work at all. Almost none of them handle the full lifecycle of a lighting job — from the first customer photo to the final scheduled install.

That forces most installers into a familiar, frustrating workflow:

• A separate estimating tool or spreadsheet for pricing
• A notebook, whiteboard, or second spreadsheet for tracking which jobs are sold
• A calendar app that has no connection to any of it
• Manually re-typing customer information into three different places

Every one of those handoffs is where leads get dropped, jobs get double-booked, and installers lose hours they'll never get back during their busiest season of the year.

What LightHawk Actually Does Differently

LightHawk is Christmas lighting design software and permanent lighting estimating software combined into one job-tracking platform — not three separate products bolted together, but a single workflow built specifically around how lighting contractors actually work.

📸 Photo Mockup Design
Upload a real photo of a customer's property and lay out rooflines, ground lights, garland, wreaths, bows, bushes, and trees directly on the image — in both day view and night view. Customers see exactly what they're buying before you ever touch a ladder. For a lighting installer estimate app, this single feature is often the difference between a customer who has to imagine the finished product and one who's already sold on it.

⚡ 1-Click Quick Estimate
Sometimes you don't need a photo — you need a number, fast. Enter your measurements directly and generate a professional, branded estimate in under a minute, whether you're standing in the customer's driveway or sitting at your kitchen table at 10pm during peak season.

📋 Job Tracker
This is the piece a standalone Christmas lighting estimating tool simply can't give you. Every estimate you create is automatically saved and moves through Quoted → Sold → Installed → Removed, so you always know exactly where every job — and every customer — stands. No more re-entering data into a second spreadsheet just to keep your season organized.

🗓️ Job Scheduling
Once a job is sold, schedule it with a single click. LightHawk keeps a running list of what's on the calendar and what still needs a date, with Google Maps built directly in for route planning between installs — genuinely useful whether you're running a two-week Christmas season sprint or managing permanent lighting installs across the whole year.

💰 Flexible Pricing Tiers
Set your own labor and material rates for roofline lighting, ground lights, wreaths, bows, garland, and bush lighting — for both Christmas lighting and permanent trim lighting. Update your numbers once, and every future estimate calculates automatically using your own pricing, not a generic industry guess.

📄 Professional, Branded Estimates
Every estimate can carry your logo, your contact information, your notes, and next-year pricing — ready to print or email straight from the platform. It's the difference between a quote that looks like it came from a business, and one that looks like it was scratched out on the back of a receipt.

Built for Christmas Lighting and Permanent Lighting

One thing that sets LightHawk apart from most holiday lighting software on the market: it isn't limited to a single season. Whether you're running a traditional Christmas lighting business that's slammed for eight weeks a year, or you've expanded into permanent, year-round lighting installs, LightHawk's pricing tiers, estimating tools, and job tracker work the same way for both. You're not buying seasonal software and hoping it stretches to cover a year-round business model — it's built to do both from the ground up.

Why Installers Are Upgrading From a Standalone Estimator

A standalone estimator — including our own Pro Estimator — is a genuinely useful entry point. But it's estimating only. There's no visual design tool, no job tracking or sales pipeline, no scheduling, and your estimates live completely separate from your customer list. You're still running your actual season out of a spreadsheet, even if the math on each quote is accurate.

LightHawk is the upgrade path for installers who've outgrown that setup:

• Photo mockup design plus instant estimating
• A full job tracker — Quoted, Sold, Installed, Removed, Scheduled
• Built-in scheduling with Google Maps route planning
• Every estimate automatically saved to the right customer
• One login that runs your entire lighting season, start to finish

Built By a Real Installer, Not a Software Company Guessing

LightHawk wasn't designed by a software team trying to break into the holiday lighting industry. It was built by Jeff Jerina, who's personally sold, managed, and installed over 2,500 Christmas lighting and permanent lighting projects since 2001. Every pricing tier, every calculation, and every workflow inside LightHawk comes from real jobs, real customers, and real money on the line — not a guess at what installers might need.

"I spent years watching contractors lose jobs because their holiday lighting quotes looked like they came from a spreadsheet, then lose track of those same jobs once the season got busy. I built LightHawk to fix all of that — one tool that handles the design, the estimate, and the job itself, from quoted to installed."
— Jeff Jerina, Founder & CEO, Christmas Lights by Design

Founding Member Pricing — $197/Year, Locked In for Life

Right now, LightHawk is offering founding member pricing to the first 20 customers: $197/year, locked in for as long as you stay subscribed — compared to the regular price of $249–$299/year once those spots are filled.

That includes:

• Photo mockup design with instant estimating
• Full job tracker and built-in scheduling with Google Maps routing
• Custom pricing tiers for every material and service
• Branded, printable, emailable estimates
• No download required — works on any device, right in your browser

There's no contract. LightHawk is billed annually, and you can cancel anytime.

Ready to Run Your Whole Season From One Tool?

If you're still bouncing between a spreadsheet, a notebook, and a separate estimating tool every time you quote a job, LightHawk is built to replace all of it with one simple workflow — design, estimate, schedule, and track, in a single login.

Get LightHawk HERE — $197/year

Not ready to buy yet? Grab a free 15-minute demo HERE and Jeff will personally walk you through exactly how it works. 

Ready to Learn More?

👉 Schedule a Free Discovery Call with Jeff here

Call or Text Jeff directly at 469-569-9246.