CRM Advice Needed (Career Change/First Project)

I'm making a career change from teaching and have been working primarily Salesforce Trailblazer for about a month and a half. In order to get some hands on experience I'm voluneering, and helping a friend of mines cleaning company. It's relatively new and he's using sheets and hand writing a bunch of crap, anyway, it's just not efficient and I'm trying to learn and help him out at the same time.

His company is a cleaning company, he has his workers go and clean up newly built homes, windows, etc. Here are some tasks that he's wanting to accomplish:

– Checking in on employees (checking their work, updates, etc.) Info he's wanting specifically; Address of site, issues, pictures of work

– Employees being able to notify him on issues, updates, and completion/incomplete work

– Scheduling appointments management

I have the most experience with Salesforce and was hoping to create a Playground and make a fake company to show him solutions for his real world problems but I found Trailblazer Playgrounds weren't suited for that kind of thing. I've found that HubSpot (using their free account) is working pretty well thus far.

So on HubSpot:

Scheduling – Connecting Google Calendar seems like the simplest and most efficent option.

Employee check ins – With the Free account only this has a been a bit of a struggle but I believe utilizing their ticket system is a good solution but, again, I'm limited with the Free account. My thought process is, he or an admin can assign tickets to the cleaners, and they can update that ticket throughout the clean process and post pictures there after the work is completed. This in turn, also allows the empoyees to inform him or their superior of any issues, etc.

My question is, am I on the right path here? If there a more user friednly CRM out there or one that's more tailored to this type of industry? Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated.