If you are looking at Fleetio, you probably have machines that need tracking and Fleetio kept coming up. It is a strong product. But read what it is built around — fuel, inspections, telematics, integrations for road fleets — and then look at your yard. If what you own is skid steers, mini-excavators, mowers, and a couple of UTVs, Fleetio is solving a different problem than the one you have.
This is the honest comparison. Fleetio is excellent for the fleets it is built for. EquipHours is built for off-road equipment that wears by engine hours, billed flat instead of per vehicle.
What Fleetio is built around
Fleetio is fleet management for vehicle fleets. Pricing changes, so check their site for current numbers, but the model is per-vehicle/per-asset, and the strengths are fuel tracking, inspections, integrations, and the kind of reporting a fleet manager running trucks down the road needs. Fuel cards, mileage, DVIRs, telematics feeds — that is the heart of it.
For a delivery operation or a service company with twenty vans on the highway, that is exactly right. Miles drive their maintenance, fuel is a major cost line, and telematics pays for itself.
Why off-road equipment is a different animal
Your machines do not wear by miles. A skid steer sitting in one spot running a mulcher all day puts on zero miles and a full day of engine hours. The oil change is due on hours. The hydraulic service is due on hours. The whole maintenance calendar runs on the hour meter, not the odometer.
Fuel-card integration does not help you — you fill jerry cans at the gas station. Telematics and GPS are not your problem; the machine is on a trailer or sitting on the job. Mileage-based service reminders are the wrong unit entirely. You are paying for a road-fleet feature set and using almost none of it.
EquipHours logs engine hours (or miles if a machine uses them) and runs service intervals on those hours, with green/yellow/red status and an email alert when an interval goes newly overdue.
The pricing model difference
Per-vehicle pricing is fine when each vehicle is a revenue-earning truck. It gets expensive when half your "assets" are a walk-behind, a plate compactor, and a generator that runs forty hours a year. You still pay per asset to keep them in the system, and the temptation is to leave the small stuff out — which is exactly the stuff that gets forgotten and seizes up.
EquipHours prices by machine tier, not per vehicle and not per user:
- Free — $0, 2 machines
- Crew — $14.99/mo, 15 machines
- Fleet — $39.99/mo, unlimited machines
Annual options exist. Put every machine in, down to the generator, because adding the small stuff does not change your bill until you cross a tier. And there is no per-user fee, so the whole crew logs under their own names.
Side by side
| EquipHours | Fleetio | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Off-road equipment crews (2–15 machines) | Road vehicle fleets |
| Wears by | Engine hours (or miles) | Miles, with fuel and telematics |
| Pricing model | Flat machine tiers | Per-vehicle/per-asset (check their site) |
| Offline logging | Yes, offline-first, syncs later | Built around connected fleet ops |
| Fuel / telematics / GPS | No — not a fleet platform | Yes, core strengths |
| Integrations | No | Yes, many |
| Best fit | Hour-based equipment maintenance | Mileage-based road fleets |
What EquipHours does not do
Say it plainly so there are no surprises:
- No fuel tracking and no fuel-card integration. If fuel is a cost line you manage, EquipHours will not help.
- No telematics or GPS. It does not pull data off the machine or tell you where it is.
- No integrations. It does not connect to accounting, fuel providers, or telematics feeds.
- No DVIR/road-compliance workflows. It is a maintenance log, not a fleet-compliance system.
If you need any of that, Fleetio is the better tool and it is not close.
What you get instead
- Hour-based intervals that match how equipment actually wears, with status colors and overdue alerts.
- Quick Log built for the field — tap the machine, enter the meter on a big numpad, pick the service, save, under thirty seconds.
- Real offline operation. Job sites do not have signal; log anyway and sync later with duplicate protection.
- Receipt photos on every service, so the maintenance history follows the machine to resale.
- Whole-crew logging under individual names, owner/crew roles, invites by email or QR.
You also get per-machine maintenance schedules for popular machines, including mini-excavators, tractors, and UTVs, and a Fleet CSV export on the Fleet tier when you want the whole history out.
Hours versus miles, with a real example
Take two pieces in the same yard. A pickup that hauls the trailer racks up 18,000 miles a year and sits at low engine hours relative to that mileage — its service really does track miles, and Fleetio would handle it well. A track loader next to it runs 900 engine hours a year and travels almost no distance. Its oil, hydraulic, and filter services are all due on hours, and miles are meaningless.
A mileage-based system either ignores the loader's real wear or makes you fake it. EquipHours logs the loader on hours, where the wear actually is, and you can log the truck on miles if you prefer. The point is that off-road equipment lives on the hour meter, and the tool should treat that as the default, not the exception.
The forgotten-machine problem
Per-asset pricing creates a quiet incentive that costs real money. When every asset adds to the bill, the small, cheap, low-use machines — the plate compactor, the trash pump, the standby generator — get left out of the system to save a few dollars. Those are exactly the machines that get neglected, because they are out of sight, and then the generator will not start the one weekend you need it.
Flat machine tiers remove that incentive. Adding the generator does not change your bill until you cross a tier, so you put everything in, set an hour interval, and let the generators schedule remind you before it matters. The cheap stuff is usually what bites you, and it should be in the log.
When Fleetio fits better
Choose Fleetio over EquipHours when:
- You run real road vehicles where miles and fuel drive maintenance.
- You use fuel cards and want fuel spend tracked automatically.
- You rely on telematics or GPS and want that data in your maintenance system.
- You need integrations with accounting, fuel providers, or compliance systems.
A road fleet should use a road-fleet tool. EquipHours is for the crew whose machines live on trailers and job sites and wear by the hour. If your real objection is per-seat pricing on a CMMS rather than per-vehicle pricing, the MaintainX alternative page covers that angle.
Try it on your own machines
Start free with 2 machines, no credit card. Add your two busiest pieces, log a few hours, and see whether hour-based tracking is what you actually needed. See pricing, the features list, and the free equipment maintenance log template, then sign up at /app/register.