July 15, 2020

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Telematics Pricing Survey: Why Pay 4.3x More?

Pricing of Telematics Vendors

Prices from Leading Telematics Vendors in the Oil & Gas Industry, including Momentum IoT, Verizon Connect and more.

 

Telematics prices have evolved since business fleets started getting connected more than two decades ago. We did our own industry research, and surveyed thousands of users. The bottom line? Older vendors charge an average of 4.3x more for one year of service with comparable features, and many still require additional up-front payment for hardware.

Across industries, the average cost of connecting a truck for one year is $624, which consists of an average price of $77.29 in hardware cost and an average monthly price of $45.63. Monthly prices vary widely, with the market leader, Verizon Connect, charging $25-$200/month per device, on top of their hardware price of about $100 per device.

 

Up-Front Hardware Costs, Long-Term Contracts

In addition, nearly all vendors require an annual commitment, or an up-front hardware payment, to offset reduced monthly rates. Many vendors are signing customers to 2-year and 3-year contracts, even deployed on networks expected to sunset prior to the 3-year terms of contracts. Customers who purchase devices on older networks are often surprised to learn their hardware becomes useless when a network sunsets. For more on network sunsets, click here.

Among industries, Construction, Oil & Gas, and Municipal fleets pay the highest rates per month, while the Agriculture industry pays the highest average hardware cost. The lowest prices are in the Landscaping industry, where customers pay, on average, $17 per month, and $20 up front for hardware.

Momentum IoT’s $0 up-front, no contract, $12/month pricing is, by far, the most cost-effective solution in the market.

 

How SaaS Pricing is Fundamentally Changing Telematics

Momentum IoT began with a few basic ideas. We started all this when we worked at a large field services fleet, where our CEO, Justin Silva, was the IT manager. He tried several of the traditional vendors, including Verizon Connect. Justin’s well-documented frustrations with vendors in the market helped him form some guiding principles for a new company: 1) Improve the hardware to make it easier to use, and easier to provision and manage over the cloud, 2) Improve security, 3) Improve how data gets used, and offer a great API, 4) keep pricing super-simple, and low enough that any business fleet could start using telematics, 5) no contracts, ever.

 

Why SaaS pricing?

We see how Software-as-a-Service has revolutionized many industries, from Sales and CRM to Cloud Computing. The key to it is easy self-service, where a new customer can get transparent pricing, make a smart decision, buy immediately, and get product shipped in 24 hours. We focused on easy plug-in installation, and modular devices. We also offered guides, video tutorials, and free instant demos to any customer.

 

What Features are Included?

You might think that higher prices reflect more features. The data suggests the opposite. We looked at both baseline and advanced features. All the vendors we looked at offer most basics, including location, geofences, monitors, trips and history. Some offer diagnostics, excessive idling and other reports. The higher priced vendors typically offer less features and often require additional payment for API access and other services.

 

Which Vendors Are Included?

Eagle Eye
GPS Insight
GPS Trackit
Linxup
MiX Telematics
Momentum IoT
NexTraq
Rhino
Trimble
US Fleet Tracking
Verizon Connect

 

Which Industries are Included?

Agriculture
Construction & Heavy Equipment
Field Service Fleets
Landscaping Fleets
Oil & Gas Fleets
Mixed Assets
Municipal Fleets
Plumbing & HVAC
Trailer Tracking

 

READ MORE:

Industry Accolades in Fleet Tracking

Momentum IoT has won several industry awards and analyst accolades:

Additional Press:

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