Onfleet (which begins at $149 per month for 1,000 tasks) is a very different fleet management software than its competitors.
It's odd to describe a piece of business software as "hip," but it's what kept coming to mind as we tested the product.
It has a dark, modern user interface (UI).
It doesn't provide detailed vehicle tracking, which implies that it's more geared toward gig-economy drivers who use their own vehicles.
When you add a vehicle, it asks if you are entering a car, truck, or bicycle.
Indeed, the ideal Onfleet customer seems more like a trendy urban entrepreneur than a no-nonsense fleet manager out in an industrial area.
While Onfleet may seem cool on the surface, it has some problems that keep it from being one of our Editors' Choice picks for fleet management.
If you need to keep track of detailed vehicle information, something Editors' Choice Fleetio supports, then Onfleet isn't your ideal choice.
If you are concerned about budget, then you might be better off with something such as Avrios, which is much cheaper to start for fleets of all sizes.
Pricing and User Interface
Pricing for Onfleet is a bit different from what we've seen with other fleet management solutions.
Rather than being priced per vehicle per month, Onfleet charges you for tasks.
The Starter edition costs $149 per month for 1,000 tasks (billed annually).
It includes only the most basic tasking features, and doesn't include advanced functionality such as chat, route optimization, analytics data for the previous 30 days, and predictive estimated time of arrival (ETA).
A month-to-month pricing plan costs $50 more.
The Basic plans supports up to 2,500 tasks per month and includes chat and route optimization features, but the price shoots way up to $349 per month when billed annually (or $449 monthly).
That includes analytics data for the previous 90 days.
For $799 per month, billed annually (or $999 month to month), you'll get 5,000 tasks as part of the Premium plan.
You also get features such as barcode scanning, a dedicated phone number for delivery notifications, and analytics data for one year.
The most expensive version of Onfleet would be the Professional plan, which costs a whopping $1,999 per month, billed annually ($2,499 monthly) for 12,500 tasks.
For the extra money, you also get whitelabeled tracking, multibrand support, and first priority when seeking customer support.
It will also store unlimited data for analytics.
The pricing structure is much more complex than Zubie ($179.95 at Zubie) , which offers just one price of $179.95 per diagnostic device per year.
Fleetio also has a more straightforward pricing structure, beginning at just $3 per vehicle per month and only offering one other pricing plan above that.
While Onfleet is more task-oriented than those tools, its pricing is still both very expensive and confusing.
The fact that the Starter edition only has the most basic features is disappointing as well.
The Onfleet UI stands out from other products.
It uses dark colors and modern fonts, giving it the look reminiscent more of an aspiring new social media platform than a business solution.
There are just two tabs, Manage and Analytics, at the top, and all adding of vehicle and driver information is done via the plus and settings icons at the very top of the screen.
It's all straightforward enough, but we wish it were a bit easier on the eyes.
The dark color scheme makes the very small text hard to read versus the bright, modern design of a tool such as Avrios.
Setup
When you first start using Onfleet, you'll be asked to create your team.
This could be your entire company, or you could set up different teams if your company was based in multiple locations.
Here, you can assign drivers and a hub.
From there, you have to go to the Settings menu, which is represented by a gear icon, to add information for drivers, dispatchers, and vehicles.
The Settings menu is also where you'll configure things like your driver communications, your application programming interfaces (APIs), and any software integrations you'd like to add.
Vehicle information is far less detailed than on other solutions.
Vehicles are entered as part of the driver profile, which implies that Onfleet does not figure that vehicles would ever be shared among drivers.
The platform also lacks granular information like vehicle mileage and fuel type you'll find in products like Fleetio and Avrios.
Onfleet boasts of its open API, so perhaps it would assume that customers who care about tracking things like vehicle health would implement this functionality on their own.
Overall, setup is pretty easy.
Drivers will have to accept invitations to sign up via a mobile app, and once they set up their account, you'll be able to see them when they are logged in and on duty.
We were able to set up a fake driver and see him moving around on the live map in just a few minutes.
Real-Time Management
The main focus of the Management module is the live map, where you are able to see the location all of the drivers in your fleet in real time.
Here, you can also see all of the current tasks given to drivers and dispatchers.
This is similar to what we've seen in other fleet management solutions, and it all works in a pretty straightforward way.
Here, you can also communicate with your staff with the in-app messenger.
You can even send announcements to everyone on the team and/or the entire organization.
The Management module is very easy to use, and managers should have little trouble monitoring their drivers.
Other fleet management platforms let you monitor not just your drivers and their assignments, but also the health of the vehicles in your fleet.
For instance, a Zubie subscription comes with a diagnostic device that plugs into a vehicle and can gather granular data like fuel, mileage, engine problems, and even hard braking on the vehicle.
Onfleet does a fine job of demonstrating what your drivers are up to, but competing solutions offer that functionality and more.
It's puzzling and disappointing that such functionality is missing with Onfleet.
Considering how expensive it is, you'd think it would be able to match the feature set of the much cheaper Avrios.
Analytics
The other main module of Onfleet is the Analytics tab.
This is designed to allow both admins and dispatchers to view a history of completed task all sorts of reports regarding driver data.
Here, you can view visualized graphs demonstrating completed tasks, delay time, service time, task type, and feedback.
Most driver analytics are based on two metrics: distance and time.
This data is primarily useful for those trying to do time sheet tracking and figure out appropriate reimbursements.
Data found on the analytics page can be exported to a CSV format, so you'll be able to import it to the spreadsheet software of your choice (Onfleet integrates directly with Google Sheets, which is a nice bonus).
The Analytics page is useful, and being able to pull up visual reports is an appreciated (and surprisingly rare) feature in a fleet management solution.
Graphs are clear and easy to understand.
We could see these sorts of insights really inspiring drastic change in someone's fleet operations.
Navigating the reports and pulling up information is snap, and Onfleet deserves commendation for making it so easy.
Compared with the rest of the competition, Onfleet is an odd beast.
We're still not sure of the logic behind its task-based pricing structure or why it lacks the vehicle monitoring features that other, cheaper tools do.
We would also like to see its UI become a little more readable.
Still, there are probably customers with whom the tool is a great fit.
If you are a fleet manager who thinks about your workload in terms of individual tasks to be performed, then you might find the design of Onfleet to be exactly what you are looking for.
Additionally, you might be fine with the lack of vehicle monitoring features because your drivers own their vehicles.
Onfleet isn't a bad platform by any means, and we can definitely see it being the right choice for a specific kind of customer.
With that in mind, its odd pricing scheme and lack of vehicle monitoring make it a less attractive choice than our Editors' Choice Fleetio or the very affordable Avrios.
The Bottom Line
Onfleet has some decent reporting features.
It also wins points for usability.
Those looking for a more traditional fleet management software will want to look elsewhere, though.
