7 Top-Rated Free Preventive Maintenance Software
Imagine the gut-wrenching feeling of a critical equipment breakdown, leading to a halt in business operations. Wasted time, frustrated employees, and dropping profits are just a few issues that small-and-midsize-businesses witness due to unplanned asset maintenance. Enter preventive maintenance software, helping you focus on regular maintenance tasks to prevent equipment failures and extend asset life.
Worry not if you are a small business and skeptical about spending a hefty amount to try software. This article highlights seven top-rated free preventive maintenance software tools alphabetically, based on verified software reviews.
The tools featured in this article fall under the asset management or centralized maintenance management systems (CMMS) category and offer preventive maintenance features, including asset tracking, standard performance analytics, and work order management.
We selected products for this article based on their average ratings between January 2022 - January 2024, which may differ from their current overall average ratings.
1. AssetTiger
Cloud-based asset management software AssetTiger offers preventive maintenance features that can assist you in tracking the performance of your business’s equipment and resources, identifying downtime, and scheduling maintenance. The tool provides four depreciation tracking methods—straight line, double declining balance, 150% declining balance, and the sum of the years’ digits, to help generate monthly or yearly depreciation and calculate the overall spending.
The free version of AssetTiger offers unlimited user access to track up to 250 assets and get tags for individual performance tracking. Upgrading to a paid plan increases the trackable asset count up to 500,000.
Free features:*
Mobile barcode scanning: Use a smartphone or tablet to scan asset barcodes, take pictures, and tag assets for real-time performance updates. The feature allows you to add and edit any asset required in the office or warehouse.
Asset tags: Add durable labels (typically containing a barcode or alphanumeric identifier) directly to your assets. The tool also offers virtual tags, such as QR codes and serial numbers associated with assets within the system.
Pre-configured reports: Select templates from a library of preset reports covering key areas, such as maintenance history, inventory levels, downtime statistics, and cost analysis. The feature allows you to customize reports for specific metrics and utilize visualization elements to highlight crucial metrics and track trends.
Cost to upgrade: $120 per year
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: FAQs, phone calls, emails, and an online ticketing system
Who should consider AssetTiger?
Asset managers, operational managers, and teams working with equipment that have short life spans, including computers, mobile devices, and software licenses can benefit from AssetTiger’s depreciation tracking feature. Users can prioritize the maintenance of assets nearing the end of their useful life, presenting costly breakdowns and ensuring optimal performance. Understanding the remaining value of an asset helps determine if repayment and maintenance costs outweigh its value for the business. This helps users decide about continuing maintenance or selling the asset before it becomes obsolete.
2. Coast
Coast CMMS offers a team workspace to create and manage new and recurring work orders (cards) for asset maintenance, repairs, and inspections, including asset information, task descriptions, assigned technicians, due dates, and other performance-related information. The workspaces let you chat (1:1 or in groups), discuss tasks, share cards, or ask questions, all in one place. The tool helps you track the progress status of scheduled maintenance tasks, work orders, and attached photos and notes. Within team workspaces, you can create conversations with multiple or individual team members to discuss work orders, share cards, or ask questions.
Coast’s free plan comes with unlimited cards, workspaces, and messages. You get up to 3MB of file uploads and image attachments and can store up to seven days of card and message history. Once you exceed this limit, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan for unlimited file uploads and image attachments, time and cost tracking, reporting dashboard, and scheduling.
Free features:*
Shareable cards: Create and customize a form with work order details and share it with the team using dedicated workspaces. The feature allows you to print forms directly from the system.
File uploads: Attach notes, images, videos, and documents to work orders. The supported file and document formats include PNG, JPEG, GIF, PDF, Word, and Excel.
Card history: Search, access, share, and download any past maintenance work orders stored in the system.
Cost to upgrade: $20 per user per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: FAQs, blogs, help center, and emails
Who should consider Coast?
Asset maintenance managers focusing on multiple work orders within large projects can benefit from Coast’s preventive maintenance features. It offers dedicated workspaces for each project, assigned teams, cards, and related files. Users can share cards and documents with other team members for feedback and approval. The tool enables access to all past cards, saving time from manually searching previous work orders for non-performing assets and identifying the applicable reason.
Pro tip
Prioritize automated work order generation, performance reporting, and data analysis to save time and resources that can be utilized for more strategic planning and productive maintenance.
3. Fiix
Fiix is a CMMS software that lets you build a custom asset performance dashboard with metrics specific to your business goals. The dashboard compares the selected metrics for different projects, assets, time, and users. You can choose from pre-built report templates or build custom reports to assess the asset maintenance tasks. The tool’s mobile application lets you take work requests, submit query requests, log work hours, record spare part usage, and attach photos. Your team receives automatic in-app notifications when new work is assigned, or requests are raised.
Fiix’s free plan allows tracking unlimited assets, parts usage, and inventory supplies. You can schedule up to 25 preventive maintenance requests and create unlimited work orders and service requests. Upgrade to a paid plan for unlimited schedules, AI work orders, and multi-site asset management.
Free features:*
Downtime tracking: Track and measure equipment uptime and downtime to assess key performance indicators (KPIs), such as mean time to repair (MTTR) [1] and mean time between failures (MTBF) [2]. The feature lets you customize and assign reason codes for downtime to track the equipment history.
Speech-to-text notes: Dictate notes directly into the mobile device while performing preventive maintenance tasks. The notes are saved as audio files within relevant work orders or maintenance records. The feature allows you to transcribe the audio files as text notes.
Task lists: Create a list of tasks associated with scheduled maintenance, checklists, and standard operating procedures related to asset maintenance. The list can include individual tasks with specific instructions, assigned technicians, and due dates. The feature allows customizing the list for different work order types or specific assets.
Cost to upgrade: $45 per user per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: Video tutorials, webinars, learning center, help center, user community, chat, FAQs, and blogs
Who should consider Fiix?
Fiix’s customizable dashboard benefits asset and maintenance managers looking to sort through all the asset data, giving quick access to work orders, performance reports, field technicians, and other relevant details. The tool’s mobile application simplifies the process, allowing technicians to access work orders and submit job-related queries to the support team. This collaboration saves time and effort for remote teams and field technicians to efficiently connect in real time.
4. Fracttal
Fracttal maintenance management system tracks your assets and equipment using QR codes and Near Field Communication (NFC) chips [3]. The tool’s desktop and mobile application can access all the asset details. It creates work orders for different asset types owned by your business, including asset information, required maintenance tasks, assigned technicians, and other details related to the asset performance. You can set up automated email reminders for upcoming work orders or changes in the existing ones. The location and equipment catalog in Fracttal lets you create and manage a list of assets and their work location for inventory management.
The free software plan of Fracttal includes up to two users, 100 work orders, and 50 assets in the catalog. Upgrading to a paid software plan provides unlimited access to all preventive maintenance activities along with an interactive reporting dashboard.
Free features:*
Location and equipment catalogs: Create a searchable library of assets with essential information, including asset names, work descriptions, tags, codes, and other identifiers. The feature lets you manually add or edit the catalog information.
QR and NFC tracking: Attach QR code stickers or NFC chips to your field assets. The codes can be scanned on mobile devices to access asset data, and the NFC chip details are available on the mobile devices associated with the assets via the mobile application.
Asset health status: Track the asset health using the QR and NFC sensor readings. The feature offers a dashboard to visualize the highlighted health metrics, such as speed and temperature.
Cost to upgrade: $229 per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: Blogs, chat, help center, and FAQs
Who should consider Fracttal?
Asset managers working with field assets can track the assets’ real-time health and performance status using Fracttal’s desktop and mobile app. This includes location, speed, maintenance history, downtime, and usage data. The real-time tracking feature will help users eliminate errors associated with manual data entry and identify potential issues to prevent task failures. Additionally, having a mobile application provides on-the-go access to assets, speeding up decisions in an emergency.
Pro tip
Assess the tool’s remote asset management capabilities using tags and codes to monitor its health, performance, and location. Businesses can utilize remote management to ensure timely scheduled maintenance and troubleshoot issues in an emergency.
5. Limble CMMS
Limble CMMS lets you set preventive maintenance schedules using pre-built templates and attach standard operating procedures (SOPs), checklists, photos, and other relevant documents. The tool automates preventive maintenance scheduling and assigning tasks to the right technicians based on their skills and previous maintenance tasks. The tool's dashboard lets you track the real-time completion rate of the generated schedules and work orders. The equipment logs in Limble CMMS can be tailored for different asset hierarchies based on their assigned work and performance.
Free Limble CMMS software plan lets you create unlimited work orders with attached pictures. You can have up to four active maintenance schedules. Upgrading to a paid plan gives you access to unlimited recurring schedules, automated work orders, and custom escalation notifications.
Free features:*
Photo capture and markup: Capture and attach photos to work orders and asset lists. The feature allows you to add basic annotations, such as text boxes and arrows, to highlight specific areas in the photo.
Work request portal: Allow field technicians to raise new work requests using the tool’s portal. The request is raised as tickets with details, including the asset name, maintenance requirements, and location.
Procedure templates: Use pre-built templates for common maintenance requests with details, including steps, material, cost, safety checklist, and tools. The feature allows attaching photos, videos, and documents for additional instructions.
Cost to upgrade: $28 per user per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: FAQs, blogs, chat, help center, and phone calls
Who should consider Limble CMMS?
Automatic generation of work orders in Limble CMMS eliminates the need for asset and maintenance managers to manually enter the asset data and create schedules. Users can save time and reduce administrative tasks to focus on factoring asset usage, calendar availability, and technician skills that maximize efficiency and increase resource utilization. As the tool allows field technicians to add new tasks using procedure templates, they can ensure timely execution of tasks and prevent missed maintenance or sudden equipment failures.
6. MaintainX
Preventive maintenance in MaintainX CMMS leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to generate procedures by analyzing the provided asset information and extracting key elements, such as tasks, steps, materials, safety protocols, and the required tools. The tool organizes information into structured, easy-to-follow guides about aligning technicians, scheduling maintenance, and utilizing tools and resources. You can edit the generated guides for your maintenance team’s requirements and the changing asset inventory.
The free plan of MaintainX software allows two users to access unlimited work orders, two active recurring work orders with attached procedures per month, and a month’s asset management dashboard. Upgrade to a paid one for unlimited users and access to all the above features, inventory management, and resource planning.
Free features:*
Custom asset and location fields: Define new fields for assets and their locations, selecting from text, numbers, dates, drop-down lists, and checkboxes. The feature allows mapping these fields to different asset types or locations.
Procedure score: Track work order performance against the scheduled maintenance procedures. The process allows monitoring the maintenance progress and identifying recurring issues for downtime.
Signature capture: Approve work orders and procedures by e-signing them directly from the system. The feature can be used on desktop and mobile applications to sign documents using a finger touch or a stylus or to upload images.
Cost to upgrade: $16 per user per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: FAQs, live webinars, live chat, blogs, case studies, training, and support center
Who should consider MaintainX?
Asset and operations managers struggling with inconsistencies in standard asset operating procedures can utilize MaintainX’s automated procedures to maintain assets better. They can eliminate errors due to individual interpretations and varying experiences of different team members. The tool’s centralized approach speeds up procedure generation over manual effort while ensuring clarity, completeness, and adherence to best practices. Users can also leverage AI to analyze the existing maintenance data and suggest improvements to optimize procedures for specific assets or job requirements.
Pro tip
Check if you can attach documents and images to work orders for technicians to detect and eliminate issues correctly. The software should support multiple formats, such as PDF, DOC, XML, CSV, and JPEG.
7. Odoo
Odoo manufacturing resource planning (MRP) system optimizes preventive maintenance operations by automatically calculating key asset metrics, such as MTBF, MTTR, and predicting the next failure dates. The analyzed metrics aid in effective maintenance planning and scheduling work orders. Kanban boards in Odoo let you visualize workflow stages and track the progress of maintenance requests. Each stage is represented by a column on the board using labels such as ‘Planned,’ ‘Scheduled,’ ‘In progress,’ ‘Completed,’ and ‘Overdue.’ You can drag-and-drop tasks across the board to reflect their progress and highlight priorities through color-coding.
Odoo’s free plan offers access to all preventive maintenance features for unlimited users. Upgrading to a paid plan lets you add more Odoo software tools to your tech stack, such as finance, sales, marketing, and productivity.
Free features:*
Calendar view: View scheduled preventive maintenance tasks in a calendar with deadlines and descriptions. The calendar can be filtered for weekly or monthly tasks, asset types, and technician assignments.
Work center: Create virtual workspaces to manage production and assembly activities related to specific assets and equipment. The feature automatically calculates and tracks key metrics for these work centers, including cost per hour, capacity, and work efficiency.
Reporting dashboard: Get a centralized view of all business assets, performance, availability, and productivity time. The dashboard lets you compare assets for their duration of work to understand usability, lifespan, and maintenance costs.
Cost to upgrade: $25 per user per month
Billing cycle: Annual
Customer support options: FAQs, tutorials, product demos, chat, phone calls, emails, and support tickets
Who should consider Odoo?
Asset and maintenance managers in manufacturing businesses looking to enhance transparency in communication with remote team members and field technicians can benefit from Odoo’s work centers, calendars, and reporting dashboards. They can visualize workflows and prioritize maintenance tasks via the tool’s drag-and-drop cards and color codings. The tool’s calendar interface provides a clear overview of planned tasks to prevent scheduling conflicts. Any conflicts or inconsistencies can be adjusted in real time to optimize resource utilization.
What is the cost to upgrade from free preventive maintenance software to a paid one?
Upgrading to a paid preventive maintenance tool can cost as low as $16 or increase to $400+ per user per month, depending on various factors, including the number of users, work orders, maintenance schedules, asset tracking, and AI-enabled features. Most preventive maintenance software typically includes subscription plans:
Free trial: No-cost trial plans ranging from 14 to 30 days, giving users access to all or limited preventive maintenance features.
Free version: Free software plans offer standard features, including work orders, recurring schedules, asset tracking, and AI-enabled features in some cases, along with limited premium feature access. These are ideal for small businesses or individuals with a limited budget.
Entry-level: Ranges from $16 to $59 per user per month and offers features such as asset performance dashboard, custom reports, and procedure templates. These are a good option for small businesses or teams with basic preventive maintenance.
Mid-tier: Mid-range pricing ranges from $37.4 to $539 per user per month and offers features such as advanced analytics, automated scheduling, and procedures, in addition to the standard features.
High-end: Advanced plan pricing is available upon request from the vendor. The plans offer unlimited access to entry and mid-level features; ideal for large enterprises requiring priority support and employee training.
Hidden costs associated with preventive maintenance software
Besides the software license, there may be additional costs, including:
Device limits: Some free or lower-tier plans might limit the number of devices you can use the software. Additional devices could incur extra costs.
Data migration: Transitioning from one preventive maintenance software to another might require help from the software support team for an extra cost.
Cloud storage: Storing a large amount of asset documents might lead to storage costs if your software limits storage capacity.
Frequently asked questions when selecting preventive maintenance software
Here are some common questions you can ask software vendors when evaluating the best preventive maintenance software for your business needs.
What core preventive maintenance features are available for free?
As free preventive maintenance software plans offer limited features, checking if they provide all the essential features required for your business’s asset maintenance processes is necessary. These may include tracking assets, creating work orders, assigning technicians, monitoring work order progress, and generating asset performance reports.
Does the software allow integration with other business tools?
Check if you can integrate the selected preventive maintenance software with asset management, inventory management, customer relationship management, accounting, and facility management. The integration allows smooth data exchange between relevant team members, vendors, and clients. When selecting the software, you can look for APIs or pre-built connectors for system integration.
Does the software allow remote tracking for field assets?
If your assets are often employed in the field, look for the features that allow you to remotely view the assigned work orders, submit service requests, scan asset barcodes, and track the asset location. You can also consider automated reminders to alert in-office teams on urgent tasks, overdue maintenance, or equipment failures. Remote tracking allows you to sync the tool’s mobile and desktop applications for real-time data sync.
Methodology
We selected three products with the highest ratings to feature in this article. To be considered for this list, products must:
Have at least 20 unique product reviews published on Software Advice within the past two years, with an average rating of 3.0 or higher (as of Jan. 19, 2024).
Offer a free, stand-alone version of the software (not a trial version of the software where you must purchase the product after a limited amount of time).
Meet our preventive maintenance software market definition: “Preventive maintenance software streamlines scheduling of regular maintenance and organizes tasks that need to be performed to ensure proper operation of facilities and/or equipment.”
Product research for this article was contributed by Rakshat Chhokar.
*Our research team identified these features from vendor websites (as of Jan. 19, 2024) based on their analysis of what users find valuable in or expect from preventive maintenance software. This list is not exhaustive. For additional features, refer to the vendor's website.
**We selected products for this article based on their average ratings as of January 2024; however, the article displays each product’s current average rating, which may differ if more reviews have been left since our analysis.
Editorial independence: We select and rank products based on an objective methodology developed by our research team. While some vendors may pay us when they receive web traffic or leads, this has no influence on our methodology.
Note: Products evaluated for the pricing calculation were taken from Software Advice’s preventive maintenance software directory. The pricing ranges exclude freemium versions of the products. The features highlighted were identified based on their relevance and the percentage of products in the Software Advice directory that offer them.
Definitions:
[1] Mean time to repair (MTTR) is the average duration required to restore the full functionality of a malfunctioning system, including both the repair and testing. MTTR measures the efficiency of problem resolution, from the moment of failure to the flawless operation of the system.
[2] Mean time between failures (MTBF) evaluates equipment performance, safety, and design. MTBF value represents the average period between system breakdowns, offering insights for maintenance scheduling and ensuring optimal operation.
[3] Near Field Communication (NFC) chips are tiny sticker-sized chips (tags) embedded into assets to enable wireless communication with the devices tracking asset performance.