The Top Fleet Management Companies: Features and Costs Compared

Deciding which of the best fleet management companies is right for your business can be a daunting task. Although many companies now offer comprehensive and cost-effective GPS fleet tracking solutions, it’s sometimes difficult to ensure you’re not paying over the odds for features you don’t need, or missing out on genuinely useful ones.

According to our research, Verizon Connect will be the best fit for most businesses. It thoroughly impressed us with its superb driver monitoring and safety tools, while the customizable notifications system allowed vital information to be shared quickly and easily. It’s features like this that will actually help you cut business costs in the long run, even if the initial monthly price tag is a little high. If you are on a tight budget, RAM is a significantly cheaper option with a lot of the same central functionalities as Verizon.

We’ve picked apart Verizon, RAM and three other top providers so you can find the best fleet management company for your business – no matter your budget. Jump to our buying guide for expert advice on the top things to consider when purchasing fleet management software, or dive straight into our comparisons of each provider by scrolling down.

If price is your top priority when selecting a fleet management system, check out the best deals below:

The Top Fleet Management Companies 2024

According to our extensive research, the top fleet management companies are:

1. Verizon Connect – Best Overall Fleet Management System

Verizon Review

Verizon is our top recommendation for a complete fleet management product. Its higher price bracket and large data handling capacity make it most suitable for medium to large fleets with complex management needs or those who’ve outgrown their current provider.

Simply put, if you’re seeking an advanced, multi-faceted fleet management system, Verizon is your best bet.

What Does Verizon Do Well?

Verizon is rightfully crowned number one for its extensive range of features that betters all of the top fleet management companies we’ve tested.

It offers sophisticated color-coded live tracking and route information and crucial map information such as road closures, to expertly monitor your fleet.

The system grants fleet managers a high level of visibility over driver behavior. Drivers are measured on a number of KPIs and given an overall safety score and speed score which will incentivize safer driving.

Verizon’s real-time map creates a live overview of all your drivers, updating every 30 seconds. We liked how the color-coded icons above each vehicle indicate the current status of each driver, whether they are active, idling, or stopped. You can find it under the ‘Live Map’ tab of the Verizon Connect Reveal interface, as shown in our screenshot below.

And with the help of Google Street View, you can gain immediate visibility of your driver’s location while remaining inside the software. All you need to do is click on a particular vehicle, via the map or the left-hand pane, and then click on the Street View button attached to each driver’s on-map vehicle status.

Plus, we loved that you set customizable real-time alerts for almost anything, including driver actions and diagnostics, and receive notifications via the desktop or mobile app, email, and SMS. For instance, the below screenshot shows us setting custom notifications for when any of our fleet vehicles are traveling 10mph over the speed limit.

If you want to take your fleet management to the next level, the Reports feature provides detailed information about your fleet, including speed and completed jobs. This information can help you make informed decisions about scheduling, route planning, and fuel usage.

To make the whole process as simple as possible, Verizon’s Scheduler is incredibly user-friendly. On the left-hand sidebar of the scheduler tab – as shown in the screenshot below – you’ll find a complete list of all your technicians, while the full screen displays a timetable of jobs. Verizon uses color-coding to indicate job status, making it easy to identify which jobs are complete, in progress, or just starting. Additionally, the pending tab collects all appointment requests in one place, ensuring that no jobs are missed.

This breadth of tools makes Verizon Connect a comprehensive option for almost any fleet business, especially larger ones. In particular, however, its driver and vehicle safety, monitoring, and alert features set it up nicely for use in the construction industry.

What Could Verizon Do Better?

Verizon is the most expensive option on this page, perhaps unsurprisingly given the extent of its features, with prices starting from around $30 to $40 per month. You’ll also need to be ready for a lengthy initial three-year contract, although it does become a yearly cycle after that.

Outside of pricing, the only other conceivable shortcoming is their customer support. This is due to the lack of help on how to install a car tracker and a chatbot on their sites. If you’re looking for better pricing, RAM is cheaper than Verizon Connect, and Teletrac Navman is substantially better at customer service.

2. Samsara – Best for Managing Vehicles

Samsara Review

Whether your transportation fleet carries goods or people, your routes must be optimized to get those jobs done in the shortest time – saving you money and fuel. Samsara offers the most advanced route optimization feature we tested, incorporating more calculating factors than any other provider to find your drivers the quickest routes possible.

After you’ve entered a series of upcoming jobs, Samsara can use existing data, such as the average time your drivers spend at each site, to automatically plan your fleet’s schedule, order respective jobs, and pencil in departure times to plot out the most efficient day for your drivers.

While Verizon’s route optimization feature also fine-tunes routes based on previous journeys and existing driver data, Samsara betters it with more advanced route analysis such as the incorporation of expected traffic conditions for particular streets at particular times of day. Routes are then adapted depending on whether they are better or worse than planned in terms of time and distance taken.

What Does Samsara Do Well?

Samsara also stands out for its driver messaging tools, which help you to quickly and safely communicate any changes directly to your drivers, and its comprehensive fuel usage reporting, which we believe to be the best on the market.

Plus, it provides insightful fleet maintenance reports that give a quick view of your fleet’s overall health – keeping you informed of everything from the services and inspections your vehicles are due to the insurance that needs to be renewed.

Add in some of the speediest refresh rates around (30 to 60 seconds) meaning you are always on top of where your drivers are and how their vehicles are doing.

As a result, Samsara performed exceptionally well in the categories of both driver and vehicle management, and provides an excellent suite for professionals in the transportation industry overall.

What Could Samsara Do Better?

An annoyance we had was that you need to configure alerts yourself via self-coding which is a bit of a hassle. Samsara does provide the code snippets, but manual configuration is required.

The only major bugbear we had with Samsara was around pricing, which scored the same low score as Verizon for a comparatively expensive and long-term commitment. It only offers contracts of three to five years and also promotes self-installation over providing the service itself.

If you’re looking for a more affordable option, RAM is our pick.

3. Teletrac Navman “TN360” – Best for Managing Drivers

Teletrac Navman Review

Teletrac Navman’s TN360 provides a complete solution to managing driver behavior and encouraging safer driving practices.

We found it an expert choice for a solid balance between total cost and features and offered improved customer support compared to Verizon and Samsara. Those two providers do bring a greater variety and extent of features to play with, but what Teletrac Navman does, it does very well.

What Does Teletrac Navman Do Well?

Fleet managers can set up alerts for instances of dangerous driving, while drivers can anticipate potential threats with real-time alerts in the cab. A  leaderboard system incentivizes drivers to stick to speed limits and abide by safe driving rules, too. And these features earned Teletrac Navman a perfect score for driver management; the same as Verizon and Samsara, though at a more attractive price point.

Elsewhere, in the unfortunate case of a collision, fleet managers can investigate details surrounding the incident. This includes details such as which driver/s were involved, the location, and the speed of the vehicle before the collision.

Perhaps Teletrac Navman’s TN360’s key USP is its user-friendly reporting feature. Curious about your fuel consumption over the last 7 days? Simply type questions in conversational English into the system and it’ll automatically generate a report and chart. This means there is less of a learning curve in getting to grips with the analytics features and you can use the system to its full potential.

What Could Teletrac Navman Do Better?

For vehicle management, we found that Teletrac Navman was without cargo and engine temperature checkers. We also discovered it lacked satnav integration, a panic button, and weather updates. If you need these features, Verizon Connect offers everything that the TN360 doesn’t.

In a similar vein, we found Teletrac Navman is one of the most limiting providers for those looking to start on the lowest pricing tier a provider offers. Its cheapest plan doesn’t include customizable alerts for driver behavior or safety analytics, and you’ll be stuck on a slower data refresh rate of five minutes.

4. Azuga – Best for Efficient Routes

Azuga Review

Azuga’s fleet management system provides an excellent solution for route optimization. It works automatically, so once stops are plugged into the GPS, they’ll be placed into the order that saves you the most time.

What Does Azuga Do Well?

Azuga also gives maximum visibility over fuel usage via reports on consumption, as well as real-time low-fuel alerts, which handily suggest the nearest and cheapest gas stations. It’s the only provider we’ve tested that enables you to customize your data refresh time, between 30 seconds and 59 minutes, so you can create a bespoke solution befitting your needs.

This system also provides insight into vehicle diagnostics and for an extra cost, can also schedule vehicle maintenance, for which you can receive alerts. 

What Could Azuga Do Better?

We didn’t find Azuga to be a great option in terms of flexibility since it has long contract lengths of 36 months. You only get to try out its service on a free trial if your business has over 30 vehicles, too.

Starting at around $25 per month, Azuga’s cheapest subscriptions are also fairly expensive. While Azuga doesn’t limit the reports (such as driver safety, operating costs, diagnostics, etc.) we don’t think you get as much value out of Azuga as you do with the similarly priced and more feature-rich Verizon Connect, Samsara, and Teletrac Navman.

If you’re looking for a lower-cost product, RAM is more than half the price of Azuga.

5. RAM – Best for Affordability

RAM Review

RAM performed well across most of our testing areas but where it stood out compared to the competition was in its value for money. Like most fleet management systems, RAM is tight-lipped about its exact pricing, but from our hands-on testing, it has shown to be the most affordable platform we’ve looked at during our research.

What Does RAM do Well?

Of the providers on this page, RAM is the only one to offer a specific cost-savings report for your business which should help your fleet cost-cutting go even further.

But it also performed well in other areas of our testing procedure, including near-perfect marks for tracking features. While streamlined compared to Verizon, it still offers real-time GPS tracking, geofencing capabilities, route history, vehicle status updates, and speed monitoring capabilities. It’s also the only product to provide direct crash report data on this page.

Its excellent customer support options and reputation, plus ease of use, only add to its appeal as a simple-to-use, low-priced product

Overall, RAM’s low cost, less extensive features, and the requirement to self-own your hardware leaves RAM as a great option for small fleets such as those in the maintenance or repair industries.

What Could RAM Do Better?

RAM is missing a few features that some businesses may define as crucial to their fleet management. They include automatic route optimization, a panic button, or a driver chat line. If those, amongst others, were in place, RAM would be contending with the other fleet management companies on this page, even without its affordable price point.

We scored RAM pretty poorly for vehicle management tools since it offered less extensive features than the other providers on this page. For instance, it doesn’t include fuel management, vehicle diagnostics, cargo or engine temperature, or fleet maintenance records, which can make the analytics less granular and broader, especially when you’re dealing with sensitive cargo.

If you need every one of these features, Verizon has all of them covered.

Buying Guide: How to Choose the Right Fleet Management Company

With so many options, it can be overwhelming to know where to start. Our step-by-step guide is here to clarify what you should consider when searching for a fleet management provider:

1. Your specific pain points: What are you looking to track with your fleet management product, driver behavior, gas consumption, or route efficiency? Perhaps all of the above, in which case, Verizon is our top recommendation for an all-round fleet management solution.
2. The size of your fleet: Fleet sizes within the industry can vary greatly from a sole proprietor to a multi-vehicle trucking fleet. It’s crucial to ensure that you’re not overspending on a system that is too complex for your needs, while also avoiding settling for a system that cuts corners and doesn’t cater to advanced operations.
3. Upfront hardware cost: While subscriptions to fleet management systems can vary based on your fleet size, the hardware cost is usually fixed. That’s why it’s important to check how much it costs before you commit to a provider.
4. Ongoing subscription costs: Likewise, check the range of subscription models and ensure that your chosen provider offers one that offers all the necessary features for your fleet and that the pricing plan suits your budget. If you expect your fleet to expand, ensure that there is the option to upgrade to a plan that accommodates growth.
5. Usability: Examine your chosen provider’s ease of use rating. This is especially important for larger fleets that need to onboard multiple drivers to the system. Some providers, such as Samsara, offer tailored onboarding support which is extremely valuable to ensure that you and your drivers get the maximum benefit from your system. You can cross-check other users’ experiences with the system by reading customer reviews.
6. Try before you buy! Many systems offer a trial version so that you can be sure your chosen provider suits you before taking the plunge.

How Did We Test the Top Fleet Management Companies?

Our team of independent researchers analyzed 20 of the best and most popular fleet management systems, including companies such as Linxup and GPS Trackit.

After finding all the information we needed, the researchers then compared each platform against its competitors, allowing us to find the cream of the crop. The criteria we look at include:

• Price: Simple enough – the platform with the lowest price tag scores the best
• Tracking: How robust and effective are the platform’s tracking features? For example, how quickly does the tracking map refresh, does the map factor in traffic, etc.
• Driver Management: Tracking and logging the behavior of each of your drivers. Does Driver #3 idle his vehicle for too long? Does Driver #4 tend to speed?
• Vehicle Management: Checking up on the health of your vehicles. Are they in need of maintenance? Are they well protected against theft?
• Product Features: What else can the product do? Can it sync up with third-party satnavs? Is there a phone app?
• Customer Support: Again, easy enough – look at the options available and see what each platform offers its customers when it comes to their support resources

Weighting

We also surveyed Expert Market’s American-based readership and discovered that tracking is the most important benefit of fleet management software for users.

As a result, this is a primary consideration of our scoring criteria. Here we noted the extent of alerts and notification options, live/active tracking features, geofencing tools, and the refresh rate of each provider.

Reducing costs was the next most important consideration for our readers, and we looked into the extent of software features for cost-saving tools like auto-route optimization, traffic alerts, and mileage tracking.

The third largest weighting is applied to tools for monitoring vehicles, such as vehicle diagnostics, maintenance scheduling, maintenance records, and theft prevention, and is followed by the remaining criteria.

After factoring in all this information, alongside the scores they received, we calculated a final overall score for each fleet management system. This resulted in the top five picks listed on this page.

Jump To: Top Five Fleet Management Companies Compared

If you’d like more help finding the right fleet management option for you, why not compare vehicle tracking and fleet management quotes using our quick, free, and easy service? Simply tell us about your fleet and what you’re looking for in a provider, and we’ll match you up with the right companies for you. You’ll then receive tailored quotes from them, just for you, so you can compare and pick the right option.