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Our research shows that Samsara is a better fleet management system (FMS) than Motive, as it offers more features, is easier to use, and it has increased support options. Both Samsara and Motive rank among the best fleet management software providers we’ve reviewed, making them strong options depending on your specific needs.
However, Motive (formerly KeepTruckin) does have a higher value-to-cost ratio, due to its minimum 12-month contracts, and it still offers many top features like great driver safety tools, so it remains an attractive pick.
After an in-depth analysis, our research team scored Samsara 4.7/5 overall, compared with Motive’s overall score of 4.2/5, since Samsara has more complex vehicle tracking and route optimization tools.
Read on to figure out which fleet management system is for you, from features and support hours to prices and any potentially hidden fees.
| Price From The typical lowest starting price. The lowest price available for your business will depend on your needs. | Best for Who is this provider most suitable for? | Rating Based on price, tracking features, driver management, vehicle management, product features, and help & support | Pros | Cons | Contract length | Free Trial or Demo | Fuel card integration | Try now: | ||
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| Great for established, large businesses | Best for fast refresh rates | |||||||||
| 4.7 | 4.2 | |||||||||
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| 3-year minimum | 1 year, or monthly | |||||||||
| 30-day free trial; hardware and software | Free trial upon request; software and hardware | |||||||||
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| See Prices | Try Motive |
Just before we dive in, here’s an at-a-glance view of how the prices and features compare for three of our top-rated fleet management systems. To find out more about a provider, simply click through to their website on the buttons.
Samsara vs Motive: Head-to-Head
Both Samsara and Motive (formerly KeepTruckin) offer a large range of the features a fleet needs: routing and dispatch, driver messaging, compliance and safety, fuel tracking, reports, alerts, and 24/7 support.
The systems both include some features that are less common to fleet management systems, including geofencing and Driver IDs that help a manager identify drivers even when they switch vehicles: This makes both systems a good fit for fleets that require careful oversight of their drivers whenever possible.
However, Samsara has features that Motive lacks, including the highly useful custom location tool, which lets a fleet set recurring routes, as well as weather and traffic alerts. While Motive offers a faster refresh time and matches Samsara’s around-the-clock support hours, Samsara’s wealth of features make it a highly functional fleet management system.
- Samsara offers custom locations, which Motive does not support.
- Motive has a fast one to three-second refresh time, while Samsara offers an industry-standard 30 second to one-minute refresh rate.
- Samsara tracks and alerts managers to poor weather and high traffic, while Motive does not.
Pros
- Great for optimizing routes
- Great for vehicle tracking
- Customizable driver management tools
Cons
- 3 year minimum for contracts
- Driver ID token costs extra ($9.99 each)
- Price from: $27/Month
- Compliance: DVIR, IFTA, ELD
- Best for large fleets
- Great Routing & Dispatch Features
- 24/7 Support
- Free 30-Day Trial
Want to learn more? Check out our full Samsara fleet management review and Motive review
Pros
- Open source, open API for lots of customizability
- Fuel tracking functionality is a big money-saver
- Inspection and diagnostics tools for vehicle maintenance
Cons
- Mobile interface has limited functionality
Samsara vs Motive: Pricing and Plans
The fleet management service industry serves a large range of fleet sizes and often offer custom quotes rather than going public with their plans and prices.
We’ve found that a good range to expect from Samsara is $27 to $33 per vehicle per month for their most popular features, with a hardware range between $99 and $148 per vehicle for one-off costs. Motive’s prices are not public, but are estimated to start from $25 per vehicle per month. We can confirm one pricing detail: The platform’s fuel card, Motive Card, comes with a late fee of 5% of the invoice balance or $40, whichever is higher.
Samsara also comes with a minimum contract of three years, compared with Motive’s one-year contracts and its monthly plans. That’s a big commitment for Samsara users, making Motive the flexible option of the two services. It’s a big part of why our researchers gave Motive a higher score for price factors, with 3.9/5 points compared to Samsara’s 2.5/5 points.
The two systems offer similar hardware warranties, as Samsara and Motive both offer five-year warranties for their biggest units – cameras, monitors, and dashcams – while smaller items like cables and card readers are only covered with a one-year warranty.
Both services offer online knowledge bases and 24/7 phone and email support for all customers, but it’s worth noting that only Samsara offers chat bot support as well. Neither Samsara nor Motive charges an installation fee, as both systems are designed for easy self-installation.
Samsara vs Motive: Which has the best free plan?
Compared to Motive, Samsara offers a longer free trial, letting users test its software for 30 days, while Motive has a 14-day free trial.
30 days is typical for the industry, although some top fleet management brands only offer a demo, such as Azuga, or don’t specify a length at all, like Verizon.
Samsara’s Live GPS tracking functionality means it’s easy to track your fleet. Source: Samsara
Best for Optimizing Journeys: Samsara
Our testers found that Samsara has better tracking features than Motive, because it offers real-time traffic and weather alerts as well as custom locations, while Motive does not.
Both services allow a fleet to automatically optimize drive time across a route with multiple destinations, and both offer reporting tools that track data by driver, vehicle or asset. Samsara’s real-time data covers more than Motive, however, from app logins to document submissions. Samsara offers both SMS and email alerts for geofencing or idling events, while Motive just has email alerts.
Motive has one tracking benefit that Samsara lacks: its devices typically collect GPS fleet tracking location and fleet telematics data for each vehicle every one to three seconds, although assets are reported every minute. This is faster than Samsara’s 30 second-to-one-minute refresh time. Motive can also automatically group a vehicle with the assets travelling with it (like trailers), by using telematics data.
Standout Samsara tools:
- Scheduling, dispatch, and route optimization
- Driver record analytics
- Geofencing
- Mileage tracking
- 30 second to one-minute refresh times
- SMS and email alerts
- Weather and traffic notifications
- Smart Map Overlays with custom locations
Standout Motive tools:
- Scheduling, dispatch, and route optimization
- Activity Detail Report
- Geofencing
- Mileage tracking
- One to three-second refresh times
- Email alerts
Samsara’s features make it one of the best route planning software options on the market.
One of Samsara’s more recent updates added AI-powered route-optimization tools. Source: Samsara
Best for Vehicle Management: Samsara
Samsara has every core vehicle management feature that our researchers looked for, beating Motive’s still-great performance. Samsara delivers every core tool our researchers deemed useful for monitoring fleet vehicles specifically, from fuel tracking and diagnostics to maintenance scheduling and DVIR reporting to meet federal regulatory standards.
Motive delivers most of these tools as well, including engine temperature tracking, a feature it lacked just a few years ago. Motive tracks fuel consumption by driver, vehicle, and at a fleet level; Samsara’s fuel tracking tools do this and also estimate cost, runtime, and idle time, with custom reports. The “Motive Card” helps set Motive apart, however, since it functions as a normal fuel card while drawing on telematics data to check financial transactions, flagging potential fraud or misuse — combating the roughly five percent of fuel costs that Motive tells our researchers are typically lost to theft.
Both services also offer auto-alerts for diagnostic needs and allow speed-based alerts to be set, using data delivered by the accelerometers that both services include in their hardware units. Since speeding is behind nearly a third of all traffic collision fatalities, this is a big safety benefit both systems can boast.
Standout Samsara and Motive tools:
- Fuel Management
- Vehicle Diagnostics
- Maintenance Scheduling and Records
- Theft Prevention
- Cargo and Engine Temperature
- DVIR Reporting
Samsara’s toolkit puts it among the best dispatch software providers for trucking, once again beating the still-above-average Motive.
Motive’s Safety hub helps managers view incident reports or quickly flag harsh driving events when they happen. Source: Motive
Best for Driver Management: Tie
Samsara and Motive both aced their driver management assessment, impressing our researchers and testing team. The two systems deliver on the core features that managers need when monitoring fleet drivers. These are: driving histories, two-way messaging, driver performance tracking, idling and crash reporting, and the hours-of-service tracking required for federally mandated ELD compliance.
Samsara and Motive also deliver useful driver-focused tools that not every fleet management has: scores and performance leaderboards for tracking the best or worst performers, safety trend reports, and a Driver ID tool, which allows fleet managers to track drivers even if they switch vehicles. This makes both options a top pick for last-mile delivery fleets, as their drivers may not always use the same delivery truck.
Our research team found Motive also offers a safety function dedicated to coaching: Managers can use it to quickly group poor driving events by driver, allowing them to walk driver through “coachable behaviors” like rolling through stop signs or close following. Plus, managers can see if a driver has or hasn’t taken the time to review their recent safety events.
Samsara can deliver Driver ID with two methods, letting drivers either log into their own portal with their unique credentials or wear a physical Driver ID token on their keychain. While the tokens are a more fool-proof tracking method, they’ll cost an additional $9.99 per token.
Standout Samsara and Motive tools:
- Driving history
- Messaging
- Driver ID
- Driver behavior management
- Driving style data
- Driver performance
- Idling and crash reporting
- ELD compliance
We take our impartial research and analysis seriously, so you can have complete confidence that we're giving you the clearest, most useful recommendations.
After conducting an initial exploration to identify the most relevant, popular, and established tools in the market, we put them through their paces with a research framework designed in-house to see their real strengths and weaknesses. In this case, we analyzed 20 fleet management products across 51 different areas of investigation.
Based on years of market and user needs research, we've established a fleet management testing methodology that scores each product in six core assessment areas and six additional subcategories, covering everything from the driver management features to value for money and customer support, as well as much more.
Our main testing categories for fleet management systems are:
- Price: the cost associated with using the fleet management software, including upfront costs, subscription fees, hardware costs (if applicable), and any additional charges for advanced features or add-ons.
- Tracking: the core functionality of the fleet management software, which involves monitoring and tracking the location and movements of vehicles in real-time, such as GPS tracking, route optimization, and geofencing.
- Driver Management: the features and tools provided by the fleet management software to manage and monitor driver activities. This can include driver behavior monitoring, driver performance reports and driver identification.
- Vehicle Management: the functionalities that allow for the efficient management and maintenance of vehicles, such as vehicle health monitoring and maintenance scheduling.
- Product Features: the additional functionalities and capabilities offered by the fleet management software beyond basic tracking and management, such as real-time alerts and notifications or driver routing and dispatching.
- Support: the resources, assistance, and guidance provided by the fleet management software company to users, including phone support, email or chat support, and online forums.
When it comes to calculating a product's final score, not all testing and research categories are weighted evenly, as we know some aspects matter more to our readers than others, which are merely "nice to have." After hundreds of hours, our process is complete, and the results should ensure you can find the best solution for your needs.
At Tech.co, we have a number of full-time in-house researchers, who re-run testing and research processes regularly, to ensure our results remain reflective of the present day.
Verdict: Samsara Fleet Management Is Better Than Motive
Samsara offers a better fleet management system than Motive. Why? Because Samsara offers a greater range of helpful fleet features than Motive for both vehicle tracking and route optimization, all while matching Motive’s impressive 24/7 support and great driver tools.
Custom location mapping is one of the biggest Samsara features that Motive users will miss.
However, Motive still has nearly all the features most fleets could use, and stands out for its annual or monthly contracts, which beat Samsara’s three-year contract minimum. In the end, either fleet management system could be right for your own fleet needs.
Ultimately, we found that Samsara is among the best fleet management systems on the market today, tying with Verizon for our highest research score ever. Once you’ve narrowed down your fleet management options to the cream of the crop, take the next step: Fill out our expert form to get custom quotes and deals from vetted vendors.
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