Per user versus flat pricing, with the full transcript
If you are shopping for maintenance software, understand one thing before you compare anything else. Most of this market is priced per user. The number on the pricing page is not the number you will pay. Your price is that number, times the size of your team, forever. This video is made by Torgix, which prices by fleet size instead, so we have a position here. But the math is just math, and we will also tell you when per user pricing is genuinely fine.
Here is how the market prices as of August 2026, and check every figure on the vendor's site, because these change. MaintainX starts around twenty dollars per user per month on annual billing, sixty five on its premium tier, and it has a genuinely free basic tier. UpKeep starts around twenty four dollars per user per month, fifty five on premium. Limble does not publish prices. Fleetio prices per vehicle rather than per user, roughly four to ten dollars per vehicle per month. Samsara and Tenna do not publish pricing, and both involve hardware.
Now the math. Take an equipment operation with twenty people who should be in the system. Mechanics, operators, foremen, dispatch, the office. At twenty four dollars per user, twenty people is four hundred eighty dollars a month. On a premium tier around sixty dollars, the same twenty people cost about twelve hundred a month. Grow to thirty people and you are near eighteen hundred. The software did not change. Your bill did.
The bigger cost is not the invoice. It is what per user pricing makes you do. When every login costs money, you start deciding who deserves one. The operator who noticed the hydraulic leak does not have a seat, so the leak gets reported at coffee, or not at all. To be fair, some vendors offer free requester accounts, and that helps. But reporting is not the same as participating. Closing a work order, checking a machine's history, looking up a part still costs a seat. Every person you leave out is a machine whose problems you find out about later.
The honest part. Per user pricing is fine if your maintenance team is three people and will stay three people. MaintainX's free tier is a real place for a very small shop to start. Per user pricing hurts when the number of people who should be in the system is large and growing. Which describes most equipment intensive operations.
The alternative is pricing by fleet, not by people. Torgix publishes seven tiers sized by fleet, starting at ninety nine dollars a month for up to ten units, with unlimited named users at every tier. No per seat pricing, ever. The whole crew gets a login, including the operator who noticed the leak, and the AI is included with no add on fee. Whatever you choose, run this exercise. Count every person who should be able to report an issue, close a work order, or look up a machine. Multiply by the real per user price. Compare that to a fleet sized flat option, in year three, at your real headcount. The pricing model you pick decides who is in the system. And who is in the system decides what the software is worth. Torgix.