Why we built PanelGear

Without naming names, most software for panel and paint shops share a few frustrating traits. Dense, inconsistent menus. It fights you when more than one person needs the same job open. And to even see it, you often have to sit through a scheduled demo where someone works hard to sell you.

We thought shop owners deserved better than that. So we built PanelGear.

The problems we kept hearing

Talking to shops, the same themes came up again and again:

• Current options on the market are dated. many are 15+ years old and look their age.
• Quoting is slow. Photos pile up; write-ups happen late at night or between jobs.
• Collaboration is painful. Records lock. Changes get lost. "Who has this open?" is a daily question.

The principles we built on

PanelGear is shaped by a few deliberate choices.

Start from a draft, not a blank page

AI drafts quotes from photos so the tedious first pass is done for you. You review and price; the software handles the busywork.

No save buttons

Every change is saved the moment you make it. It sounds small; on a busy floor it's the difference between trusting the tool and fighting it.

Honest, self-serve, no hard sell

Built to fit, not to replace

We're not here to tear out the software your team already relies on. PanelGear is designed to slot alongside your existing estimating and management tools and make the quoting and customer side faster. If you love your current suite, keep it — and add PanelGear where it genuinely saves you time. (We wrote more about that in our honest comparison.)

What's next

We're building in the open with the shops that use us. More features are on the way, and the fastest way to shape them is to tell us what your shop actually needs.

Ready to see it? Explore the product or start a free trial.