SafeSWMS Pricing — Simple, Transparent, No Lock-In

The One-Off plan is a single SWMS purchase for $29. It is designed for the contractor who needs one document for one job and is not ready to commit to a subscription. The purchase unlocks the full builder experience — trade-specific hazard libraries, the 5x5 risk matrix with inherent and residual ratings, named responsibility columns, monitoring arrangements, review triggers, worker sign-on via QR code, permanent cloud storage, and quick-amend capability on site. The document remains accessible permanently after purchase and can be amended as site conditions change.

The Solo plan is $19 per month for unlimited SWMS and JSA documents. It is aimed at sole traders and small crews who produce multiple documents across multiple jobs. Everything in the One-Off plan is included, plus inspector mode — a read-only view designed for showing a SafeWork inspector on site without exposing the contractor's other documents or business data. The plan is month-to-month, cancellable at any time, and records remain accessible permanently after cancellation. The monthly price is less than a single One-Off purchase after the second document in any given month.

The Business plan is $59 per month and adds multi-site visibility, bulk sign-on for large crews, and priority support. It is designed for builders, civil contractors, and principal contractors who run several projects with several crews at once. The multi-site dashboard consolidates SWMS across every active project into a single view showing submission status, sign-on counts, amendment history, and review reminders. Bulk sign-on reduces the time to induct a crew of twenty from twenty QR scans to a single session. Priority support provides faster response times for the teams who cannot wait a business day for document queries.

Every plan — without exception — includes unlimited workers per SWMS. There is no per-user fee. A crew of 2 pays the same as a crew of 20. This is a deliberate contrast with some competitors that charge per user, which penalises growing crews and creates a perverse incentive to limit who gets inducted on the SWMS. The Solo and Business plans also include unlimited documents; there is no document cap and no per-document fee after the subscription is active.

The first SWMS is free. No credit card, no trial period with automatic conversion, no email capture required to start. A contractor can open the builder, select a trade, configure the hazards and controls for a specific job, generate the document, and download it without spending anything. This is the only way to evaluate a SWMS platform honestly — by building a real document for a real job and comparing the output to what the contractor currently produces in Microsoft Word.

The free-first-SWMS policy exists because the decision to adopt a tool cannot be made from a feature list alone. A contractor needs to see the actual output — the layout, the pre-loaded hazards, the risk matrix, the sign-on workflow, the inspector mode view — before deciding whether it meets the expectations of their principal contractor, their insurer, and their regulators. A marketing page can describe these features; only a generated document can prove them.

The free document is a full-quality SWMS, not a watermarked preview or a feature-limited demo. It contains the full hazard register, the full risk matrix, the full control measures, and a working QR code for worker sign-on. It is compliant with WHS Regulation 2025 section 299 and suitable for submission to any principal contractor. The only limit is that the builder prompts for a paid plan when the contractor builds a second document, at which point the contractor can choose One-Off, Solo, or Business based on how many documents they expect to build.

This approach avoids the credit-card-required trial pattern that causes so much friction in software purchasing. A contractor who is genuinely in the market for a SWMS platform can evaluate the tool in ten minutes, for free, and make a purchase decision with full information. A contractor who is not in the market costs nothing and walks away without a subscription to cancel.

SWMS documents: the One-Off plan includes a single SWMS document. The Solo and Business plans include unlimited documents. There is no hidden document cap on the subscription plans — a contractor building fifty SWMS a month pays the same as one building five.

JSA documents: the same structure applies. One document on One-Off, unlimited on Solo and Business. A Job Safety Analysis is a different document to a SWMS, but the builder produces both from the same hazard and control libraries, so the marginal cost of supporting both is negligible.

Workers per SWMS: unlimited on every plan. There is no per-worker fee at any tier. A principal contractor with a crew of 50 pays the same per SWMS as a sole trader with two workers. This is deliberate pricing to avoid penalising crew growth.

QR code sign-on: included on every plan. Workers scan the QR code printed on the SWMS cover page using their phone camera — no app installation, no account creation, no friction. The platform records the sign-on with a timestamp, the device, and the specific version of the SWMS acknowledged.

Risk matrix: the full 5x5 matrix with inherent and residual risk ratings is included on every plan. The matrix is applied automatically based on the hazards and controls selected, and the contractor can override the default ratings where site-specific conditions require a different assessment.

Trade-specific hazard libraries: pre-loaded libraries for more than 20 construction trades are included on every plan. Electrical, plumbing and gasfitting, carpentry, bricklaying, concreting, painting, roofing, waterproofing, tiling, plastering, HVAC, sheet metal, welding and hot work, scaffolding, rigging, demolition, excavation, landscaping, glazing, and fire protection systems each have their own hazard register, control library, and training unit references.

Cloud storage: permanent on every plan. Documents are stored on Australian servers, encrypted in transit and at rest, and backed up daily. Records remain accessible to the contractor after cancellation — the platform never deletes historic SWMS.

Quick-amend on site: included on every plan. The contractor opens the SWMS on a phone, adds a hazard or revises a control, saves as a new version, and notifies workers to re-sign. The entire workflow takes under two minutes in the field.

Inspector mode: included on the Solo and Business plans. A read-only view of the SWMS suitable for handing to a SafeWork inspector without exposing other documents or business data.

Multi-site dashboard: included on the Business plan only. Consolidates SWMS across all active projects into a single view with submission status, sign-on counts, amendment history, and review reminders.

Bulk sign-on: included on the Business plan only. Inducts an entire crew in a single session rather than one QR scan at a time.

The Australian SWMS software market contains a small number of established platforms and a larger number of template-focused tools. The Solo plan at $19 per month compares favourably across the main alternatives on both price and feature set. The annual cost of the Solo plan is $228, which is dramatically lower than the per-user pricing used by most enterprise-oriented platforms.

HazardCo operates a project-based pricing model that charges a base subscription plus a per-project fee, which means the total annual cost escalates with the number of active jobs. A contractor running five active projects typically pays between $1,400 and $3,600 per year depending on the tier selected. HazardCo also requires workers to install the HazardCo app on their phones, which creates friction at sign-on and is a common reason supervisors fall back to paper sheets.

BuildPass uses per-user monthly pricing, which creates predictable costs for single-user accounts but escalates rapidly for larger crews. A carpentry crew of six on the Pro tier pays approximately $4,248 per year. A building company with fifteen users pays over $10,000 per year. The per-user model penalises crew growth and creates a perverse incentive to limit who gets access to the SWMS.

SafetyCulture (previously iAuditor) is a broader inspection and audit platform that can produce SWMS through its template system but is not a purpose-built SWMS builder. The per-user pricing starts at around $37 per user per month on the Premium plan, which produces annual costs of $444 to $1,332 depending on the crew size. SafetyCulture is powerful for general inspections but requires the user to build the SWMS template themselves rather than providing a guided builder.

The comparison is not a criticism of those platforms — each has strengths in other workflows. HazardCo has strong Master Builders association partnerships and good phone support. BuildPass has comprehensive project management features beyond SWMS. SafetyCulture is a complete inspection platform. The point is that a contractor who primarily needs a fast, affordable way to build compliant SWMS with auditable sign-on should compare the total annual cost across all the options rather than focusing on the headline monthly price. On that basis, $228 per year for unlimited documents, unlimited workers, and unlimited sites is difficult to beat.

The One-Off plan is for the contractor who has a specific job that requires a SWMS and is not sure whether they will need another one soon. This is common in the trade contractor space — an electrician taking on a one-off commercial fit-out, a plumber performing a single gas installation in a school, a demolition contractor doing a small residential project. For these users, committing to a monthly subscription is unnecessary. The $29 purchase produces a compliant document, stores it permanently, and requires no ongoing payment.

The Solo plan is for the contractor who produces SWMS regularly but runs a small operation — typically sole traders, two-person crews, and small subcontractor businesses producing four or more SWMS per month. At $19 per month, the break-even compared to the One-Off plan is at one SWMS per month, but the real benefit is having the subscription active so that the contractor can amend existing documents, produce new ones without per-document friction, and access inspector mode during site visits.

The Business plan is for the builder, civil contractor, or principal contractor running multiple projects simultaneously. The multi-site dashboard is the primary reason to upgrade: it consolidates SWMS across all active jobs into a single view so the WHS manager is not toggling between projects or maintaining spreadsheets. Bulk sign-on is the second reason: on projects with larger crews, the time saved by inducting twenty workers in a single session rather than twenty individual QR scans is significant. Priority support is the third reason: teams with time pressure on live projects cannot wait for standard response cycles.

The Business plan is also the practical choice for principal contractors who want to recommend a consistent platform to all their subcontractors. Some principal contractors cover the Solo subscriptions for their regular subcontractors as a project overhead, treating it as a cost of operating a compliant site rather than expecting each subcontractor to pay individually. The saving on review time, amendment tracking, and audit preparation across the principal contractor's WHS team dwarfs the aggregate Solo subscription cost.

The Solo and Business plans are month-to-month. Cancellation is immediate from the account settings — there is no retention call, no exit penalty, and no awkward cancellation flow designed to frustrate the user into staying. Subscriptions cancelled mid-month are pro-rated and refunded for the unused portion of the month. The subscription ends at the cancellation date and no further charges are applied.

The critical point about cancellation is that historic records remain accessible permanently. A contractor who cancels their Solo subscription still has access to every SWMS they produced during the subscription, every sign-on record, every amendment log, and every worker acknowledgement. These records can be downloaded, reviewed, or produced for regulatory inspection at any time after cancellation. The platform does not hold the contractor's safety records hostage against a continued subscription.

This retention policy matters because the contractor's regulatory retention obligations continue well after any commercial relationship with the platform has ended. WHS Regulation 2025 requires a SWMS to be retained for at least two years from the date of a notifiable incident, and best practice is seven years. A platform that deletes records at the end of a subscription exposes the contractor to compliance risk for reasons that have nothing to do with the safety of the work.

Upgrades and downgrades between plans are possible at any time. Upgrading from Solo to Business takes effect immediately, with the new feature set available the same day. Downgrading from Business to Solo takes effect at the start of the next billing cycle, so the contractor keeps the Business features until the end of the paid period. There is no re-onboarding required — the account, the documents, and the user data carry across the change.

All prices on this page are exclusive of GST. Australian customers pay GST on top of the subscription price at checkout, and the invoice is GST-compliant for ABN-registered businesses. The GST component is itemised separately on the invoice and can be claimed as an input tax credit by businesses registered for GST. International customers do not pay GST but are subject to any applicable tax in their jurisdiction.

Data residency is Australian. The platform is hosted on Australian servers, the data is stored in Australia, and the backup replication is within Australian jurisdictions. This matters for contractors working on federal government projects, defence projects, and state infrastructure projects that require data to be held in Australia for sovereignty reasons. Offshore-hosted SWMS platforms can create contractual problems on these projects because the data residency clauses in the head contract prohibit offshore storage of project safety data.

Payment is by credit card or direct debit, processed through an Australian payment gateway. Invoice billing is available on the Business plan for companies that prefer net-30 invoicing over card-on-file. Multi-year pre-payment is not offered because the month-to-month cancellation guarantee is a deliberate feature of the pricing model — locking customers into annual contracts defeats the flexibility that contractors need when they move between jobs and projects.

Workers do not pay anything. The sign-on workflow is QR-code-to-browser, so workers never need an account, never install an app, and never see any pricing or payment page. A worker scans the QR code, reads the SWMS in their browser, confirms acknowledgement, and returns to work. This is important because per-worker licensing is a common hidden cost on other platforms — a contractor who is quoted $19 per month can find themselves paying an additional $5 per worker per month once the crew is added. The platform's pricing is entirely contractor-side; workers are always free.

A price comparison between SWMS platforms should include every line item that a contractor will actually pay, not just the headline monthly subscription. Several hidden costs recur across the market and should be checked before making a decision. The first is per-user fees: some platforms charge a base subscription plus a per-user monthly fee, so the advertised price is only the cost for a single user and the actual cost scales with the crew. A $29 per month advertised price can become $250 per month for a crew of ten.

The second is per-project fees: some platforms charge a base subscription plus a per-project fee that applies to each active job. A contractor running five simultaneous projects can pay five times the advertised price. This pricing model punishes contractors with diversified workloads and creates an incentive to consolidate work onto fewer jobs, which is often the opposite of what the business needs.

The third is annual contract lock-in: some platforms advertise a monthly price but require an annual contract at signup. A contractor who cancels in month three is still charged for the full twelve months. The Solo and Business plans are genuinely month-to-month, and cancellation takes effect immediately with pro-rated refunds.

The fourth is trial auto-conversion: some platforms offer a free trial that requires a credit card and automatically converts to a paid subscription at the end of the trial period. The contractor who forgets to cancel is charged for a subscription they did not intend to continue. The first-SWMS-free policy avoids this trap entirely — no credit card is required at any point before the contractor explicitly selects a paid plan.

The fifth is record-retention fees: some platforms delete historic records a specified period after cancellation, or charge an ongoing fee for access to records after the subscription has ended. The retention policy is permanent free access regardless of subscription status, because records access is a safety obligation rather than a commercial upsell.

The sixth is setup and onboarding fees: some platforms charge a one-time setup fee on top of the subscription to cover onboarding and configuration. There are no setup fees on any plan. The contractor signs up, builds their first SWMS free, and only pays when they choose a plan.