ServiceTitan scrapped its Podium partnership. Each company frames it differently.

ServiceTitan last week pulled the plug on its longstanding partnership with software company Podium. The companies are framing the split differently. 

Why it matters: The move affects nearly 1,000 contractors using the companies’ integration, according to Podium CEO Eric Rea. They have roughly a month to make a change. 

Catch up quick: Podium, founded in 2014 as a reputation management tool for local businesses, first struck an integration partnership with ServiceTitan nearly a decade ago. (That arrangement did not include a referral fee or revenue sharing, a Podium spokesperson told Homepros.)

• Last fall, ServiceTitan introduced a certification program for its App Marketplace — the company’s hub for third-party software integrations — requiring partners to meet additional technical standards and either pay connection-based fees or share revenue, among other requirements. 
• “As our ecosystem expands, our responsibility grows in tandem,” the company wrote at the time. “Ensuring quality and reducing risk becomes increasingly critical as we scale.”

What’s happening: ServiceTitan co-founders Ara Mahdessian and Vahe Kuzoyan on Wednesday, August 12, told customers in an email that the company will end its Podium integration on September 15, offering discounts to switch to certified partners or suggesting they contact Podium to continue using it without an integration. 

• “Podium was under a legacy partnership that had run its course,” Mahdessian wrote in a subsequent LinkedIn post. “Podium had a path to continue partnership through this certification program, and we offered them certification on the same standards as others.” 
• “Podium opted not to certify. I won’t speculate as to why. But with the legacy partnership ending and no certified partnership going forward, we cannot continue the integration,” he added.

Of note: When it introduced certification, ServiceTitan wrote: “Partners who decline to participate or can’t meet certification standards will be removed from the Marketplace and considered custom integrations.”

The other side: “Over the last two years, ServiceTitan started changing the terms of our partnership,” Rea wrote in an email to customers on Thursday, August 13. “They wanted a substantial cut of revenue that ultimately comes out of your pocket, and they wanted us to agree to stop building anything that competed with them.”

• “We have been trying to work through this with ServiceTitan for months,” he continued. “About three months ago they became completely non-responsive, despite repeated attempts from our side. After months of silence, their response was a termination notice with 30 days to figure it out.” 

“We found out officially [at] the exact same time, the exact same day, as customers did,” Rea told Homepros.

The tension points: The timeline — and competition.

• “ServiceTitan can do whatever they want — they’re a business, we’re a business,” Rea said. “The thing that I don’t love is [that] 30 days is pretty unprecedented… To me, they want to hurt us, and they’re totally willing to hurt 1,000 of their own customers in the process, which I think is totally wrong.”
• Meanwhile, revenue sharing “wasn’t the hill we were going to die on,” he added. “The hill we were going to die on is, ‘You can’t innovate.’ It was basically like, ‘We can go copy anything that our partners do, but anything that our partners build that’s remotely close to what we already have, you can’t do.’ It doesn’t make any sense.”  

Between the lines: In a June update, ServiceTitan wrote that it welcomes Marketplace partners that compete with parts of its platform, “as long as they’re not leveraging the partnership and our support to gradually displace additional parts of ServiceTitan.”

• While Podium began as a reputation management tool, it has since expanded into a broader platform spanning call handling, dispatching, and payment processing, among other features, with the company billing itself as an “AI Operating System for home services.”
• According to people familiar with the matter, Podium’s sales team has been pitching contractors using its ServiceTitan integration on adopting its full platform. 

What they’re saying: “We recently made the decision to sunset our integration with Podium after Podium’s legacy agreement expired and they opted not to move forward with their own certification,” ServiceTitan told Homepros in a statement. 

• “While many of our partners have become certified, Podium’s legacy integration is not in compliance with our Marketplace standards. We’re supporting every affected customer directly to minimize the impact on their business,” it added. 

The company declined to comment beyond its statement. 

What we’re watching: While September 15 marks the end of the integration, “I’m still hopeful we can agree on a much more reasonable transition period,” Rea wrote in a Facebook post.