Results / How We Score
How We Score and Price Mobile Mechanic Software
Each product is scored out of 100 on ten things a mobile mechanic pays for, weighted by what each one costs a business on the road when it is missing, and priced only from the vendor's own plan lines. Mobile Service Sync publishes this site and ranks its own product first, so the method is printed here in full for you to check.
The Ten Criteria and What Each Weighs
A repair shop never pays for the drive between jobs or a dead spot in a parking garage, and never has to ask whether an address is inside its area. A mobile mechanic pays for all three every week, and the weights follow the money.
| Criterion | Weight | Why it weighs that much |
|---|---|---|
| Vehicle records with plate or VIN lookup | 15 | The vehicle is the job. Software that files work under a person or a property makes you retype the year, make, model and engine at every visit. |
| Route optimization | 12 | Drive time is the cost a shop with bays never pays. Putting a day's stops in order is the feature that pays for the software. |
| Technician app on iPhone and Android | 10 | The tech is in a driveway, not at a desk. The app has to carry the day: stops, navigation, inspections, payment. |
| Works with no signal | 10 | Parking garages, apartment lots and rural roads drop signal. A job that cannot be closed until the van finds a bar is a job that gets forgotten. |
| Online booking that respects your area and capacity | 10 | A booking from forty minutes outside your area, or at a time no van is free, is worse than no booking. |
| Fleet accounts | 10 | One fleet is forty vehicles, a PO and net terms. It is the steadiest money in mobile service, and it needs its own pricing and billing rules. |
| Two-way texting | 8 | Customers answer texts. On-my-way, running-late and follow-up all live in the thread. |
| Automatic review requests | 5 | Reviews decide who gets the next call. A request that goes out on its own goes out every time. |
| Stock counted per van | 5 | Oil, filters and parts ride in the van. Stock counted at a warehouse does not tell you what the van can do today. |
| Published price, month to month, free trial | 15 | A small business should see the price, try it without a card and leave when it wants. Demos, quotes and annual contracts cost time and lock you in. |
How One Cell Is Marked
Every criterion takes one of six levels. On the plan a one-van mechanic buys, it earns its whole weight; on a higher plan, as an add-on or in part, it earns half; missing or unpublished, it earns nothing.
| Level | Share of the weight | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Included | 100% | On the cheapest plan a one-van mechanic can buy. |
| Higher plan | 50% | Only on a dearer plan. The review names that plan and what it costs. |
| Add-on | 50% | Sold on top of the plan, priced or not. |
| Partial | 50% | There in part: viewing without editing offline, a map that does not order stops, texts through your own gateway. |
| Not offered | 0% | The vendor's own material says it is not offered, or that it needs the opposite, such as a live connection. |
| Not stated | 0% | The vendor's own site says nothing either way, so it earns nothing. Silence is never written up as a no. |
How Prices Are Read
A price on this site is the vendor's list price on monthly billing, from the plan lines printed on its review. Promotions and first-month offers are never used, and annual prices are left out of the totals because they need a year's commitment.
The figures at one, two and five users are worked out in code from those plan lines, and the build refuses to publish a figure that no plan line prints. The method and every table are on Real Cost.
Questions About the Method
- Who publishes this site?
- Mobile Service Sync publishes Best Mobile Mechanic Software. It makes one of the products reviewed here and ranks it first. These criteria describe what a mobile mechanic needs, and Mobile Service Sync was built around them, so weigh the weights with that in mind.
- Where do the facts and prices come from?
- Only from each vendor's own website: its pricing page, feature pages, help center, terms and app store listings. Every cell on a review links to the page that settles it, and every price on Real Cost is computed from the plan lines printed on each review.
- Is Mobile Service Sync scored by the same rules?
- Yes. Its row uses the same levels and weights, and every claim in it is one its own website makes. It scores top marks because every criterion is on its first plan, which is the case these criteria were written to reward.
- What if a vendor thinks a cell or a price is wrong?
- Email hello@mobileservicesync.com with the page that shows it. A cell or a price changes as soon as the vendor's own material says otherwise, and the review's checked date moves with it.