Maintenance Connection and Asset Essentials alternatives: how to compare CMMS options
Updated · Reviewed by Israel Margulies, founder and CEO of High Point GPS
If you are looking at alternatives to Maintenance Connection or Asset Essentials, compare every option against your own written requirements and test each one with your own equipment list before you sign. This guide gives you the requirements that matter most for equipment fleets, the questions to put to every vendor, and a two-week trial plan. It describes FleetZap only and makes no claims about any other product.
Start with why you are looking
People search for “maintenance connect”, “accruent maintenance connection”, “asset essentials app” or “accruent cmms” for many reasons: a renewal coming up, a new site, a merger that left two systems in place, or a team that never took to the current tool. Write your reason down in one sentence and test that first.
A common case on this search is a company whose maintenance system grew up around buildings and plant equipment, and which now runs trucks, loaders and trailers as well. If that is you, the hard part of switching is moving records that were set up for things that never move into a structure that handles machines that do. The rest of this guide covers that move.
Requirements that matter for equipment fleets
Facility maintenance and fleet maintenance overlap, but equipment that moves adds needs a building never has. Ask to see each of these working in a live demo, on a machine like yours.
- Preventive schedules by engine hours and miles as well as by calendar, on the same machine if needed
- Meter readings from technicians, operators and connected telematics, with PM due dates that update from them
- Locations that include yards, shops and job sites, with every list filterable by location
- Operators and drivers able to report a problem or run a pre-use check without a full user account
- Parts issued to a work order deducted from stock and costed to the machine
- Outside repair shops recorded on the job with their charge
- Downtime recorded with reasons, so availability and downtime cost come from real events
- Reports you can read without building them: MTBF, PM compliance, backlog, cost per machine
- For DOT-regulated trucks, a record of each inspection, repair and maintenance job with its date and nature, which 49 CFR 396.3 requires motor carriers to keep
How facility records map to fleet records
Facility systems are usually organized as a location tree: site, building, floor, room, then the equipment in it. A fleet record has to work the other way round. The machine is the anchor, and its location is a field that changes every time it goes to a job site or the shop. Before you export anything, decide how each kind of old record will land in the new system.
Go through your current asset list and sort it into three groups: fixed plant (compressors, wash bays, shop hoists), mobile equipment, and the places themselves. Fixed plant can keep a permanent location. Mobile units get a home yard plus a current location. The places become locations you can nest, such as yard, shop and bay, so a job site can be added and closed without touching the asset list.
- Asset IDs: keep the tag numbers your people already paint on the machines, even if the old system used its own internal codes
- Location paths: flatten deep room-level trees for anything mobile; keep them only for fixed plant
- PM triggers: list every calendar PM on a mobile unit and decide which should run on engine hours or miles instead
- Meter history: export the last readings with their dates, since a meter-based schedule needs a starting point
- Requesters: facility systems often route requests from building occupants; on a fleet, the people reporting problems are operators and drivers at the machine
Converting calendar PMs to meter-based schedules
Plant equipment runs on a calendar because it runs every day. A loader that sits for three weeks in winter and then works double shifts in spring doesn't. Take each mobile unit's manufacturer service chart and rebuild its PM around the meter the manual uses, usually engine hours for off-road machines and miles for road vehicles, with a calendar backstop for fluids and inspections that age even when the machine is parked.
Hypothetical example: a facility system holds a quarterly service on a wheel loader. The operator’s manual for that model lists services at 250, 500 and 1,000 hours. In the new system you would set three hour-based schedules, enter today’s hour meter as the starting reading, and keep an annual calendar task for the items the manual lists by time. Follow your manufacturer’s manual for the real intervals.
Do this before go-live. If you import quarterly schedules as they are, the new system will repeat the old system’s problem, with PMs coming due on machines that barely ran and coming due late on the ones that ran all month.
Plan the move before you choose
Before you sign, export what you have: the asset list with tags, serials and meters, PM schedules with intervals, open work orders, parts with stock levels, and as much repair history as the current system will give you. Open the export early. Free-text fields, merged sites and retired assets that were never closed out usually need cleanup.
Decide how much history to bring. Many teams import the asset register, schedules and parts, close out open work in the old system, and keep the old history as an archive file. That keeps the cutover short. For DOT-regulated trucks, keep that archive where you can produce it: 49 CFR 396.3 requires the inspection, repair and maintenance records for each vehicle, kept for 1 year and for 6 months after the vehicle leaves your control.
The FEMP guide names inadequate training and a lack of commitment to implementation among the common CMMS pitfalls. Name one owner for the switch and give them the hours to do it. Run the trial on 20 to 30 of your own machines, mobile units included; the FleetZap guide on how to choose CMMS software has a vendor question list and a trial plan.
Where FleetZap fits
FleetZap is a cloud CMMS built for equipment fleets: trucks, trailers and off-road machines, along with the shops and plants that maintain them. Preventive maintenance follows engine hours, miles or dates, and meter readings arrive from technicians, from rental returns or from a connected telematics account (Geotab, Samsara, Motive, Azuga, Verizon Connect, Webfleet, GPS Insight, Teletrac Navman, Zonar or Linxup). Locations nest from a yard or plant down to a single bay, and every asset has a home yard. Operators report problems and run checklists by scanning a QR label, with no account, and any failed item becomes a repair work order.
Technicians use the field app in their phone’s browser with nothing to install, and step answers, comments, photos and status changes made without a signal sync when the phone reconnects. Parts, purchase orders and outside vendors cost to each machine, and Reports calculate failure analysis, MTBF, PM compliance and backlog, plus the split between planned and reactive jobs. QuickBooks Online, CSV exports and a REST API are included. You can import your equipment from a spreadsheet with a preview of problem rows, or send us the file and we load it. Pricing is quoted per company, and you can try the live demo or start a free trial. Read more about how FleetZap works as a CMMS.
Maintenance Connection, Asset Essentials and Accruent are trademarks of their respective owners; this page describes FleetZap only and makes no claims about their products or pricing.
Key takeaways
- Sort the old asset list into fixed plant, mobile units and places before you export; each group imports differently.
- Any calendar PM on a machine whose usage swings by season is a candidate for an hour or mile trigger.
- Record a dated meter reading for every mobile unit on cutover day, or the first meter-based PMs have nothing to count from.
- Keep the old system's DOT truck records as a retrievable archive for at least the 396.3 retention period, even if you never import them.
Sources
Frequently asked questions
What should I look for in a Maintenance Connection alternative?
Look for the requirements your own team has: preventive maintenance by meter and calendar, a phone app technicians will use, parts and labor costed to each asset, downtime with reasons, and reports you can read without building them. Then confirm data import, full export, integrations with your accounting system and how support works. Test all of it with your own data.
How do I compare Asset Essentials app alternatives on mobile?
Put each option on a technician’s own phone during the trial. Time how long it takes to find a machine by scanning or typing its tag, close a job with a photo and a meter reading, and report a new problem. Try it in the yard with gloves on and poor signal. Write the times down and compare them across every option.
How long does it take to switch CMMS software?
It depends mostly on your data. A fleet with a clean asset list and simple PM schedules can import and start closing work orders within days. Messy spreadsheets, long repair histories and several sites take longer. Plan the cutover around one owner, a full export from the old system and a short period running both before you switch off the old one.
Can I move my maintenance history to a new CMMS?
Usually you can bring the asset register, PM schedules, parts and meter history, and many systems import them from a spreadsheet. Older repair history depends on what your current system exports. Some teams import only recent history and keep the rest as an archive file, which keeps the move short and the new system clean.
What questions should I ask a CMMS vendor when moving from a facility system?
Ask how the system handles machines that change location, whether PM can run on engine hours, miles and dates on the same unit, how meter readings arrive, and whether operators can report problems without an account. Then ask who loads your data, whether you can export everything later, and what integrates with your accounting and telematics.