Construction equipment management software › Small fleet maintenance software
Small fleet maintenance software: the free tiers, side by side
Of the tools compared here, three have a free tier that does real work: Simply Fleet for vehicles (up to 5 vehicles and 3 users), GearJoT for equipment (every feature, up to 10 pieces of gear) and Dozer for machines only (hours, service due and fault codes for 10 on one site). MaintainX's free plan is per user. Fleetio has a 14-day trial.
The free tiers
| Tool | Free limit | What free includes | The catch | After free |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simply Fleet | 5 vehicles, 3 users | Preventive maintenance reminders, inspections, issues, work orders, fuel and trips | Only 6 months of history kept; 3 parts in inventory; no telematics, inspection photos or driver signatures | $3 a vehicle a month (Essential) or $5 (Advanced), 5 minimum |
| GearJoT | 10 pieces of gear | Every feature: inspections, tasks and work orders, maintenance tracking, telematics, maps | Paying starts at the 11th piece | $7.50 a piece for 11-25, less in each higher band |
| Dozer | 10 machines, 1 site, 1 camera | Hours, next service, status, repair tickets, fault code lookup, rentals with off-rent dates, crew free | Machines only, no truck maintenance; no work orders with parts, no inspection forms, no GPS; web app only | $99 a site a month, every machine |
| MaintainX | Per user, Basic plan | Unlimited work orders, 2 repeating ones | Scheduled service beyond 2 repeating work orders needs a paid plan | $20 a user a month billed yearly, $25 monthly |
| Fleetio | None | A 14-day trial of everything, no card | Then you pay | $4 a vehicle a month billed yearly, $5 month to month |
What the 11th machine costs
Free tiers are easy to start and easy to outgrow. Here is the monthly bill as the fleet grows past the free limit, from list prices. Fleetio's figure uses its published Essential rate, which assumes a 5-asset band.
| Machines | GearJoT | Dozer | Simply Fleet Essential | Simply Fleet Advanced | Fleetio Essential |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | $0 | $0 | $0 (Free plan) | $25 | $20 |
| 10 | $0 | $0 | $30 | $50 | $40 |
| 11 | $7.50 | $99 | $33 | $55 | $44 |
| 15 | $37.50 | $99 | $45 | $75 | $60 |
| 25 | $112.50 | $99 | $75 | $125 | $100 |
Read the jump at 11 (MaintainX is left out because it charges per user, not per machine): Dozer goes from $0 to $99 in one step, while GearJoT and the per-vehicle tools climb slowly. Dozer's flat site price only comes out ahead of GearJoT once a single site holds about 24 machines or more (24 machines on GearJoT is $105). Below that, GearJoT is cheaper and does more of the shop's work.
An example: eight machines and four trucks
Take an earthwork contractor with eight machines and four pickups and dump trucks, all out of one yard. GearJoT counts 12 pieces of gear: $15 a month (2 paid at $7.50), with inspections and work orders for everything. Simply Fleet counts 12 vehicles: $36 on Essential, $60 on Advanced with work orders. Fleetio Essential is $48 billed yearly. Dozer is free if only the eight machines go in, and $99 with all twelve; it doesn't do truck maintenance anyway, so most fleets like this would track the trucks elsewhere. The cheapest tool depends less on the rate than on which assets you actually put in it.
When a spreadsheet is still enough
With five machines, one person keeping the records and a yard you walk every day, a spreadsheet works: one row per service with the date, hour reading, work done, parts and cost. It stops working when hours have to come in from people in the field, when two people edit it, or when nobody notices a machine creeping past its 500-hour service. The maintenance log guide has the columns and a filled-in sample.
Which free tier to start on
- You want a real maintenance system, free: GearJoT. Inspections, issues, work orders and maintenance tracking are all in the free 10.
- It's mostly pickups and trucks: Simply Fleet. Free for 5, then $3 a vehicle; know that free history stops at 6 months. Of the tools here it's the one built around trucks.
- You want hours and service due without anyone learning a maintenance system: Dozer. A foreman photographs the hour meter, Dozer reads the hours and suggests the next service, and fault codes come back in plain words. Dozer Machines
- You'll outgrow free within a year and want one system for good: try Fleetio for 14 days and price the plan you'd end up on.
Also read
- What equipment management software costs, including the quoted tools.
- All ten tools compared.
About this page
Published by Winding AI, Inc., the company that makes Dozer, one of the tools named here. Winding AI earns money when customers pay for Dozer, and nothing from links to other tools; links to Dozer carry a tag so Dozer can count visits from this page. Something wrong? Write to support@winding.ai.