Samsara Review: Vehicle Management Mastery

Samsara is amongst the best GPS fleet management systems around, with a wide range of features for locating vehicles, reducing fleet costs, and general asset monitoring.

These qualities have earned it the title of the best system for managing vehicles from all the fleet management platforms we’ve investigated. In the below Samsara review, we look at what it can offer you in more detail, including considerations of price, standout features, and comparisons to other solutions on the market.

Samsara Review: Pros, Cons and Overview

Samsara performs exceptionally well in several key areas, including vehicle management, tracking, and driver management. However, it also has some notable drawbacks, particularly in terms of pricing and customer support.

Here’s a summary of what it can offer you fleet business before we jump into the full Samsara review.

Samsara Review: Design and Layout

Samsara’s design is user-friendly, with a clean and intuitive interface that makes it easy for fleet managers to access the information they need. The system’s dashboard is highly customizable, allowing users to prioritize the data most relevant to their operations. This design flexibility is particularly beneficial for managing large fleets, as it enables efficient monitoring of multiple vehicles and drivers simultaneously.

The layout of the system supports quick navigation, with all essential tools accessible from the main dashboard. Features such as real-time tracking, fuel monitoring, and driver management are integrated seamlessly, reducing the learning curve for new users.

Samsara Review: Key Features

Samsara gives you complete control over your fleet through various intelligent tracking devices, safety cameras, and industry-leading reporting features. Let’s go through its highlights, one by one.

Extensive vehicle tracking tools

When it comes to tracking, you want to get as close to real-time updates as possible. Good news: Samsara has one of the fastest data refresh rates in the industry. It refreshes data every 30 to 60 seconds, the same as Verizon Connect, giving you near-live information about your vehicles and their locations, driver behavior, and distance. But there’s more to why Samsara is one of the best telematics companies we researched.

It shows you all the information about live/active locations. Its traffic alerts efficiently overlay your maps to know which roads currently have heavy traffic, so you can avoid these roads and save time. For geofence alerts, you can customize these settings to help you monitor if your driver enters or exits a geofence area.

In terms of alerts and notifications, you can create webhooks in your account, which helps integrate alerts into different vehicles so that when certain actions happen, you get notified right away.

Excellent route optimization

Optimizing the routes taken by vehicles in your fleet will mean less driving time, which eventually means lower fuel costs – a great perk, especially in this economy. Our research into Samsara shows that route optimization is somewhere Samsara stands above most other software options.

Among all the providers we’ve reviewed, only Verizon and Samsara offer automatic route optimization. However, Samsara provides a more thorough and accurate calculation of start and stop points. It optimizes a route with a maximum of 20 stops to reduce driving time. Then, it analyzes which order of stops yields the shortest distance traveled while keeping the Start Location and Last Stop constant.

You can look back on routes that have already happened, helping you figure out where your drivers have been, if they skipped any stops and if any other problems have arisen so you can make changes to future routes accordingly.

After determining the optimal order, it computes the ‘Time on Site’ report to determine the average stop duration based on the recent driving history.

Smart driver management

Samsara’s driver portal gives you an overview of your drivers’ active driving times, start and end locations, distance, and driver information. It has Kiosk Mode, where drivers can edit their on and off-duty statuses for accurate logs. 

If you need to send an urgent instruction to your driver, you can easily send them a direct message on the dashboard. Samsara will notify your driver, but they cannot open messages while in Driving Mode. If your driver attempts to access the messages while driving, Samsara will send a warning message.

If you have a dashcam, you can also replay and review ‘harsh driving events’ to see exactly what went wrong. This can help identify what topics drivers could use more training or guidance on going forward.

Best-in-class vehicle maintenance and management

In short, Samsara is the best choice for managing vehicles. It checks all the boxes to help you manage your fleet smoothly, from fuel monitoring to maintenance scheduling, and theft prevention.

Samsara’s fuel monitoring feature is convenient and comprehensive, and it’s what every fleet manager needs to stay on top of fuel usage and cut down costs. Unlike software such as Teletrac, it provides a detailed breakdown of the fuel usage of all the vehicles in your fleet.

The details include the vehicle name, current driver, current fuel level, amount of fuel used, estimated fuel costs, idle time, and runtime, as you can see in the image below. 

You can also run reports automatically on your most convenient setting, be it per day, week, or month. This allows you to review vehicle diagnostics and get alerted whenever a faulty system is detected, which Samsara will automatically sync with your data.

You can even review your total distance traveled and evaluate the average usage of all your vehicles. This feature is handy for fleet managers as they can easily track return on investments and know which equipment is worth investing in in the future. 

Thereafter, you can schedule regular maintenance checks and review maintenance records as and when you need to. To make the process even easier, you can use mileage data to automatically determine when it’s time for you to get your fleet vehicles checked. The system also monitors other metrics, such as engine and cargo temperature, to prevent damage and loss of product.

And to help prevent theft attempts, Samsara also sends alerts if the vehicle leaves any specified geofenced areas that you want to keep your vehicles inside of.

Samsara Review: Pricing and Costs

While Samsara does offer bespoke pricing depending on your contract length, fleet size, and chosen features, there are certainly more affordable options according to our price estimates. Here’s what our research says it costs:

• Software: Between $27 and $33 per vehicle, per month
• Hardware: Between $99 and $148 per vehicle for hardware (lower prices for longer contracts)

Our data-collection has shown that the likes of RAM, Quartix, GPS Trackit, Teletrac Navman and Linxup all offer low-priced alternatives if monthly cost is a determining factor for your business.

RAM, which tops our pricing analysis, has much more affordable bespoke price plans, whereas Quartix offers a starting price of $14.90. 

Those Samsara prices are without any add-ons, too. For instance, Driver ID, a wearable key fob that allows you to track driver vehicle usage without signing into the Samsara Driver App, costs an additional $9.99. 

Samsara Review: Mobile App For Drivers and Managers

Samsara streamlines fleet management with one unified mobile app, called Samsara Fleet, that serves both managers and drivers — eliminating the need for multiple apps (unlike Verizon, which has more than ten different applications) and keeping everyone in sync, no matter where they are. Here’s what it offers:

• Real-time tracking: With the Samsara Fleet app, managers can view live vehicle locations, monitor diagnostic data, and review sensor information at a glance. Drivers benefit too — the app automatically logs trip data, including route progress and key performance metrics, helping create a comprehensive history of each journey.
• Safety incident review: The app lets you instantly access safety events with HD dash cam footage available right on your mobile device. Managers can quickly identify risky behaviors and provide timely coaching, while drivers receive real-time alerts to help maintain safe driving practices.

• Custom notifications: Set up tailored alerts for events like speeding, harsh braking, or vehicle diagnostic issues. These notifications keep you informed of any safety or maintenance concerns as they occur, so no detail is ever missed.
• Instant communication: Built-in calling and messaging features allow fleet managers to connect with drivers in a single tap. Whether it’s a quick check-in or a detailed discussion about a safety event, the app ensures that communication is both efficient and effortless.
• Additional utilities: Beyond tracking and alerts, the Samsara Fleet app includes tools for Hours of Service (HOS) monitoring, navigation aids, and vehicle health tracking. Integration with third-party apps further extends its capabilities.

How Does Samsara Compare with Other Fleet Management Systems?

Samsara ranks second overall in our market analysis with a score of 4.6/5. Here’s how Samsara matches up with other fleet management systems in the US:

Samsara vs Verizon Connect Reveal

Samsara’s closest competitor is Verizon Connect’s Reveal software.

Samsara’s live/active tracking features are slightly more detailed compared to Verizon. Verizon allows you to track all vehicles on the map by color: green is for driving; red is for stopped; blue is for no GPS; and orange is for idle. Samsara, on the other hand, lets you filter by driver, vehicle, or gateway, and it will produce all the information from the current location to the driver’s name. 

Traffic alerts are a feature common to both Verizon and Samsara, however we reckon Verizon has the edge. Aside from overlapping your maps, as occurs on Samsara’s live map, you can also check if there are road closures along the way.

Verizon offers very similar vehicle management and maintenance features, but you may have to upgrade your subscription. Only certain Verizon packages (depending on your tailored quote and business needs) can schedule automatic maintenance and maintain these records. As for theft prevention, Verizon only sets time limits to detect theft attempts. 

Samsara vs RAM

For a cheaper alternative, RAM is almost at par in terms of data speeds with its 60-second refresh rate. However, it lacks automatic route optimization and fuel efficiency, amongst other tracking features.

Samsara’s maintenance tools are more intuitive than RAM too. The latter provides maintenance scheduling based on your total mileage but does not have automatic options. Instead, it only allows you to set self-reminders for your maintenance.

Still, RAM is far better in terms of help and support, too. It allows you to schedule set-ups with its engineers at your most convenient time, whereas Samsara requires you to learn how to install a vehicle tracker yourself. It does have a Knowledge Centre you can refer to for videos and articles, but that’s it.

The greater support options, less advanced features, and lower cost position RAM as a better alternative for fleet businesses new to vehicle tracking, whereas Samsara is better suited to larger operations demanding the best capabilities around.

How We Reviewed Samsara