Honest comparison
HandsHQ is a genuinely good tool - but it's built for mid-to-large contractors with dedicated health and safety staff, and if your team is under ten people you're almost certainly paying for scale you don't use. This page is about downsizing from HandsHQ, not upgrading to it. The Site Book is the closest like-for-like for small builders at flat-rate pricing. Haspod is the right downsize if you want a template library. RAMS Pro suits teams who only need the RAMS half. CDM Wizard is a free fallback. Evalu-8 and Procore are ruled out - same enterprise problem you had with HandsHQ.
The closest HandsHQ alternative for UK small builders is The Site Book — flat £30/month with the full CDM suite and no sales-demo gate. Haspod is the template-library downsize if you prefer hand-editing. RAMS Pro suits teams who only need the RAMS half. CDM Wizard is the free fallback. Avoid Evalu-8 and Procore — both are enterprise tools with the same pricing and onboarding problem you had with HandsHQ.
Reviewed
Based on publicly available vendor pricing and documentation reviewed 2026-04-15.
Pricing, fit, and feature coverage side by side.
| Feature | The Site Book | Haspod | RAMS Pro | CDM Wizard |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | from £30/mo | £799/yr (annual upfront) | Free; GBP15-45/mo | Free |
| Team size | 1–50 | 1–50 | Small-mid | Any -learning tool |
| Best for | Small-to-mid UK builders (1–50 users) who need a full CDM pack -RAMS, CPP, COSHH, site inductions, toolbox talks -without paying enterprise per-seat prices. | Small-to-mid UK businesses (sole trader up to ~50 users) that prefer browsing a 790+ template library and customizing by hand, and are comfortable with annual-only upfront commitments. Documents / Training / Talks are sold as separate annual subscriptions or bundled in the Pro Plan. | UK contractors who want AI RAMS on a low monthly tier, with COSHH, inductions, inspections, toolbox talks, and other modules from Pro upward. | Builders learning the basics of CDM 2015 who want a free checklist-style walkthrough before committing to paid compliance tooling. |
| Not ideal for | New product (launched 2025) -smaller customer base and shorter track record than established tools like HandsHQ. | Annual-only billing with no monthly option and no automatic renewal -every plan requires a £799+VAT upfront commitment for 12 months, which is a heavy lift for sole traders testing the product. | Document and back-office user limits apply on the lower tiers, so growing teams need to watch usage and plan fit. | Does not produce site-ready RAMS, CPP, COSHH, or method statements -it's a learning tool, not a document generator. |
| RAMS | AI-generated, site-specific, edit in-browser. | Via template library | AI RAMS generator with monthly limits. | |
| CPP | Full Construction Phase Plans -not just RAMS. | Template | Pro/Enterprise module. | Basic CPP checklist, not a document generator. |
| COSHH | Template | Pro/Enterprise add-on module. | ||
| Method statements | Template library | |||
| Site inductions | Workers sign from their phone. | Training Plan add-on | Pro/Enterprise add-on module. | |
| Worker cert tracking | Training matrix on Pro/Enterprise. | |||
| Incident log | Accident records on Pro/Enterprise. | |||
| Permits to work | Template only | |||
| Site diary | Site logbook present in the app bundle. | |||
| Subcontractor tracking | Engineers and client contacts. | |||
| Toolbox talks | Talks Plan add-on | Pro/Enterprise add-on module. | ||
| PCPP import | Upload an existing PCPP and reuse the structure. | |||
| Document checking | ||||
| Data export | PDF/DOC download | |||
| AI chat | ||||
| Site inspections | — | — | Pro/Enterprise add-on module. | — |
Most alternatives pages target users upgrading from a cheap tool to something more serious. This one targets the opposite move - builders who are on HandsHQ and have realised it's too much tool for a sub-ten-person firm. HandsHQ is built for mid-to-large contractors with dedicated H and S staff and the pricing reflects that. For a small builder, the right call is downsizing to a tool architected for your scale. That's what this page ranks.
At-a-glance fit per product - pulled from the same data that drives the snapshot table.
Pick the option that matches how your team actually works.
If you're under five people and downsizing from HandsHQ because the annual contract and the demo-led onboarding don't fit your scale, The Site Book is the cleanest move. Thirty pounds a month flat covers the full CDM suite, self-serve signup replaces the HandsHQ sales gate, and monthly billing kills the enterprise contract. You're swapping a great enterprise tool for a right-sized small-builder tool - not a downgrade, a better fit.
Recommended for: Under 5 people - sole trader or micro-team downsizing from HandsHQ
If you're a five-to-ten person firm downsizing from HandsHQ because the per-seat enterprise pricing stings every time you add casual labour, The Site Book or Haspod both make sense. The Site Book wins on monthly flat rate and AI document generation; Haspod wins if you want a hand-editable template library. Either is a rational downsize - HandsHQ's sweet spot starts above this tier, not inside it.
Recommended for: 5 to 10 people - outgrowing entry tools but nowhere near enterprise
Strengths, weaknesses, fit, and the sources every claim came from.
The Site Book Ltd
from £30/mo
Haspod Ltd
£799/yr (annual upfront)
RAMS Pro
Free; GBP15-45/mo
CDM Wizard
Free
Pricing
See TheSiteBook pricing
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Related comparisons
The Site Book vs HandsHQ: Small Builder Comparison 2026
The Site Book wins for sole traders and 1–10 person builders on flat-rate pricing; HandsHQ remains the right call for 10+ person firms with a dedicated health and safety manager.
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Best RAMS Software UK (2026)
The Site Book is best overall for 1–50 person UK builders needing full CDM coverage at a flat rate; HandsHQ remains the enterprise pick, and RapidRAMS suits pay-per-document occasional use.
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Best Alternatives to RAMS App for UK Builders (2026)
The top credible alternatives to RAMs App for builders who have outgrown template-only tooling - The Site Book for full CDM coverage at flat-rate pricing, HandsHQ for enterprise, RapidRAMS for pay-per-document, Evalu-8 for broader EHS, CDM Wizard as a free learning starting point, and Word/Excel for DIY paperwork.
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Short, straight answers - the same questions real builders ask.
HandsHQ is an excellent tool - it's just architected for mid-to-large contractors with dedicated health and safety teams. If you're a small builder, you're paying enterprise prices for features you don't use, onboarding overhead you can't justify, and per-seat costs that spike every time you add casual labour. Downsizing to a tool built for your scale saves money and removes the sales-demo bottleneck before you can even start work.
HandsHQ doesn't publish prices. You have to book a demo and receive a quote, which for a five-person firm typically lands in the thousands of pounds a year on an annual contract. The opposite approach - The Site Book at thirty pounds a month flat, self-serve signup, no demo, no annual commitment - is the main reason small builders downsize rather than stay on the enterprise track.
The Site Book is the closest like-for-like scope match - full CDM suite in one subscription - but priced and built for a team of one. HandsHQ's feature depth is aimed at collaborative H and S teams, so a sole trader buying HandsHQ pays for collaboration they can't use. Downsizing to The Site Book keeps the scope and loses the per-seat scaling and the demo gate entirely.
You can export your RAMS and method statements from HandsHQ as PDFs and re-import the source content into another tool. The Site Book accepts PCPP uploads and reuses the structure, so existing HandsHQ output gives you a head start. Most teams run both platforms in parallel for a few weeks during the downsize - draft new jobs in the new tool, close out old jobs in HandsHQ, then cancel the HandsHQ contract.
CDM Wizard is the free fallback — it ships a basic CDM 2015 questionnaire and PDF output for nothing, which suits builders who need one document for one job and cannot justify monthly spend. The Site Book's own free tier lets you create a real project and generate a real RAMS at no cost with no credit card, which is usually a better starting point for anyone planning more than one job per year.
Based on publicly available vendor pricing and documentation reviewed 2026-04-15.
Every pricing, feature, and fit claim in this comparison is pulled from public vendor documentation and cross-checked against independent sources. The “source basis” footer on each product card lists the exact URLs and the date we fetched them. We revisit this page at least every 90 days - last reviewed on .