Can I define my own statuses?
If the workflow comes locked, you’ll spend years translating your operation into it. Our answer: you define the statuses, with their own behaviors.
Fracttal alternative
Looking for a Fracttal alternative? Check whether GMAO CLOUD fits your operation
Switching CMMS is a big decision and feature tables don’t help: they all come out tied. Here are the five questions that do tell options apart, what we answer, and how to check it with your own case in front of you.
Why it’s so hard to decide
Because the catalogs look alike. Every CMMS manages assets, work orders, preventive maintenance and spare parts, and every one has an app, reports and integrations. If you compare by feature list, they’ll all look similar and you’ll end up deciding on price or on who you clicked with best in the demo. What actually separates one from another are five things that almost never show up in the table: whether the product adapts to your process or the other way around, what its app does without coverage, how it’s billed, what it takes to get started, and who owns your data if you leave.
The questions that actually tell them apart
Ask everyone these five, us included, and compare the answers.
What does the app do without coverage?
Ask what’s stored on the device and what happens if something fails to sync. Ours stores orders, assets and documents, and the queue flags what fails instead of losing it.
Is it billed per user?
Work out the cost with your whole team included, clients and subcontractors too. Us: unlimited licenses on every plan, no per-user cost.
What does it take to get started?
How the inventory gets imported, how much detail it needs, and whether you can start with just one part. It’s the real bottleneck in most rollouts.
Who owns my data if I leave?
What you take with you, in what format and with how much effort. Worth resolving before you sign. In our case, every installation has its own environment and its own data.
What we won’t do on this page
We’re not going to tell you what another vendor does or doesn’t do. We have no way to verify it with the depth that would take, it changes with every release, and publishing it would be just as unreliable as those comparisons you find written by the very company that comes out on top. What we can do is answer with facts about our own product, tell you what we don’t do too, and encourage you to ask whoever else you’re evaluating the same questions. If another product fits your operation better, the sensible thing is to go with it: a forced sale turns into a cancellation the following year.
And a few things we will say about ourselves
We’re a CMMS, not a CAFM: we don’t manage space or occupancy. Our reports are a broad catalog with filters and export, not a business-intelligence tool. The projects module distributes daily work-order sheets between two dates; it’s not a construction-management program with cost breakdowns and certifications. We’re not ISO 27001 certified yet, but we’re working on it: we’ve started the conversations and committed to obtaining the certification before 31 December 2027. And the client app doesn’t work offline; the technician app does. We say this here because it’s exactly the kind of information you’d want to have before signing, and almost no one puts it in writing.
Shall we look at it with your way of working?
Leave your details and we will get in touch to see whether we fit. No commitment, no lock-in period.
The criteria that actually set one option apart from another
Maintenance software comparisons usually end up as a feature table where every product has nearly every box checked, and that table doesn’t help you decide anything. What actually separates the options are four things that rarely show up. The user pricing model, because if you pay per person, cost grows exactly when the system starts working, and you end up leaving out people who should be in it. Real adaptability to your own process, which is different from having lots of configuration options. What happens with integrations to the ERP you already have, which is where the first year’s budget goes. And how close the support is, which sounds like a soft argument until the day you need to fix something and the difference between a ticket and a phone call is weeks.
Switching systems without repeating the mistake
If you already have a tool and are looking at alternatives, it’s worth starting with an uncomfortable question: what exactly failed. Because in quite a few cases, it wasn’t the product. The reasons that repeat are three: it was configured with a scope impossible to maintain, technicians were asked to enter data without getting anything back for it, or it was left with no one to keep it running once whoever set it up moved on. None of those three gets fixed by switching vendors, and if they’re not identified, the new system ends up in the same place two years later, with the cost of migration on top. When the reason really is the product —because the pricing model doesn’t fit, because it doesn’t adapt to your operation, or because support doesn’t respond— then switching makes sense, and you go into it knowing what to demand from the next one.
Frequently asked questions
What happens to the data in my current system?
It’s the first question worth asking, and worth asking your current vendor before the new one. What’s almost always worth bringing over is the asset inventory and documents still in force; the work-order history is worth evaluating separately, because migrating it takes a considerable cleanup effort, and often it’s enough to leave the old system available to consult for a while.
What should I look at when comparing CMMS options?
Five things that don’t show up in the tables: whether you can define your own statuses, what the app does without coverage, whether it’s billed per user, what it takes to get started, and who owns your data if you leave.
Why don’t you compare directly against other products?
Because we can’t verify what another one does with the depth that would take, and publishing a comparison made by an interested party isn’t reliable. We’d rather give you the questions and answer them ourselves.
What doesn’t GMAO CLOUD do?
It doesn’t manage space or occupancy, it’s not a business-intelligence tool, the projects module doesn’t handle cost breakdowns or certifications, we’re not ISO 27001 certified yet (we’re working on it, committed to obtaining it before 31 December 2027), and the client app doesn’t work offline.
How do I really compare?
By asking two or three vendors for the same demo on your real operation, with your assets and your workflow. Half an hour like that says more than any table.
Compare us against your own case
Ask two or three vendors for the same demo with your real operation. It’s the only comparison that says anything.