19.5%
Of complaints are crashes and freezes — larger than the next two themes combined, and universal across every app measured.
By the numbers
41%
Of Salesforce Field Service reviews mention reliability. Workiz 34%, ServiceTitan 32%, and even the best sits at 11%.
How this was measured
Reviews rated one to three stars were collected from the Apple App Store across four English storefronts and from Google Play, deduplicated by review ID. Apps were selected for having a real paid tier, so every complaint comes from someone who had already paid.
Each review was tagged against a 23-theme complaint taxonomy using pattern matching on its title and body. Percentages are computed only over substantive reviews — 60 characters or more — because a review reading “Terrible” carries a rating but no diagnosable complaint and would otherwise deflate every rate.
Reliability is the whole story
Crashes, freezes and “it doesn't work” account for 19.5% of substantive complaints — more than missing features, and universal rather than concentrated. Every app measured with 100 or more substantive low-star reviews falls between 11% and 41%.
“Adding photos is a chore because they refuse to use the Google selector and use some other weird thing that doesn't give you access to any of the Photos app features… so you have to scroll through and pick one at a time.”
Jobber · 1★ · 56 votes
“Often times I'll attempt to upload pictures and it won't do it, OR it'll say it won't upload when it actually did and I end up uploading duplicates.”
Buildertrend · 1★ · 17 votes
“Screens refresh when I'm typing paragraphs, completely deleting what was typed.”
ServiceTitan · 1★ · 11 votes
“As a technician this app is, on average, the worst part of my day.”
Jobber · 1★ · 24 votes
Complaint themes
| Theme | Share |
|---|---|
| Reliability — crash, freeze, doesn't work | 19.5% |
| Missing feature | 11.2% |
| Billing & cancellation | 8.3% |
| Customer support | 7.0% |
| Complexity / onboarding | 6.8% |
| Price & value | 6.3% |
| Team & permissions | 5.8% |
| Photo & attachment handling | 3.6% |
| Offline & connectivity | 1.7% |
Dissatisfaction by app
Share of App Store reviews rated one to three stars.
| App | 1–3★ share | Reviews |
|---|---|---|
| Salesforce Field Service | 41.0% | 217 |
| Workiz | 34.2% | 155 |
| ServiceTitan Mobile | 31.9% | 596 |
| Simpro Mobile | 26.1% | 111 |
| Buildertrend | 20.3% | 349 |
| Jobber | 19.5% | 472 |
| Housecall Pro | 13.9% | 410 |
| Joist | 11.1% | 334 |
What this study cannot tell you
Unmatched reviews
41% of substantive reviews were not matched by the taxonomy — idiosyncratic one-off narratives. The miss rate is roughly uniform across apps, so comparisons hold, but every percentage here is a floor rather than a true rate.
Whose voice this is
App store reviews over-represent the daily user. Buyers complain on G2, Capterra and in churn calls; those sources block automated collection and are not represented.
No recency weighting
A complaint from 2021 counts the same as one from last week. Some cited failures may already be fixed.
Uneven store coverage
Some apps are iOS-only in practice, so their low-star share is computed from Apple data alone.
We're building against this data
Crewproof — A field service job app for small trades crews, built around reliability and trustworthy photo upload rather than feature count. The waitlist is on the home page.