Best Free Fleet Management Software

Fleet management software can revolutionize the way your organization does business, but not everyone has the budget to pay for it. Others may simply want to explore cost-saving alternatives to paid options. The best free fleet management software balances limitations and features in a way that is well-suited to your use case. Here are the best free fleet management tools, where they shine, and who they are right for.

What is Fleet Management Software?

Business software can often be named in vague or confusing terms; this is not the case for fleet management software. 

Broadly speaking, this type of tool is designed to help you manage your entire collection of vehicles, drivers, and any incidents that may occur on the road. More basic options are simple logistical tools to help you stay organized. Advanced systems can track real-time location, fuel usage, efficiency, and much more. 

If you are looking for a quick recap of how these tools work, check out the video below.

How do you choose the right Fleet Management Software?

With the host of options available, it’s possible to feel drowned in choices and to not know what you should be looking for. If you are unsure what to look for, we recommend checking out our piece below on how to choose the right fleet management software.

Best Free Fleet Management

Once you know what you are looking for and have decided to explore no-cost options, you’re ready to see what is on offer.

If you have read TrustRadius articles on free software before, you know we tend to pick 5 or more of the best free options. This allows us to give a variety of options for various use cases. In the case of fleet management, we will select fewer. This is because, quite simply, there are not many strong options available. The tools listed below are going to be the best for the vast majority of free use cases, and to erroneously include others would be unhelpful. With that said, below you will find the best free fleet management software for your use case. 

Everlance – Reliable Free Fleet Management

Everlance is a free version of paid software, and if you can work within the limitations, will be a fantastic choice. The tool offers all the polish of a software-as-a-service (SaaS) tool as a result of its paid tier and substantial investment.

Everlance offers unlimited users up to 30 automatic tips per month per user. For many small-to-mid-sized businesses, this will be enough. With the tool, users can also manage expense tracking with receipt uploads. Reimbursement reports can be generated from there. For a free tool, Everlance offers a strong level of customization. Users can personalize their report approval flows. 

Data exporting is standard and can be done with Excel and CSV file types. Once again, for many users, this will be enough. The team reporting and analytics functions are basic, but go beyond what many offer in a free tool. The centralized administrator dashboard is user-friendly and easy to use. 

Customer support is offered only via email for the free tier, and you will be prioritized behind paying users. 

Everlance is best for those whose fleet drivers tend to make longer trips. Because of the limit of 30 per month per user, this will broadly translate to one per day. Those who make many short trips during their workday will run into their cap with weeks left to go in the month. Longer, one-per-day trips are perfect for this tool. You can get away with two, depending on your work schedule, but you probably won’t want to be right on the edge of your limit every month. 

Odoo Fleet Management – Fantastic organizational tools

Odoo is a vendor that offers a truly ridiculous variety of apps and services, and its fleet management tool is great for those looking for organizational and data management tools. Where Everlance is simple, relatively basic, and streamlined, Odoo offers more comprehensive logging capabilities you could ever need.

Odoo allows its users to create a whole fleet of vehicles, contractors, and records. Vehicles are recorded by make, model, year, chassis designation, and just about everything else you can think of. From here, managers can track any and all costs associated with the vehicle. Drivers can be assigned to a vehicle and have their own individual statistics managed. 

Costs can be viewed piecemeal or as a whole. Visualization features allow managers to quickly see where money is being spent. Fuel management and vehicle inspections can be more easily coordinated. Fuel consumption is recorded, with users better able to understand the fuel costs to idling breakdown. 

Odoo offers a strong mobile app, with its “smart app” suitable for nearly all functions the tool provides. Users can directly track everything from fuel logs to vehicle maintenance and overall fleet maintenance requests.

The wealth of organizational features make this a fantastic option for those with contracted drivers. Odoo serves as an information hub for teams of many sizes. It is, at its core, an asset management and business operations tool. Odoo’s biggest strengths are in its lack of limitations on driver numbers and fleet data management. Preventative maintenance, warranty information, and other vehicle management are made far more organized. While not overly complex, it is less user-friendly than Everlance. Smaller teams may find the latter better suited to them. 

Odoo offers integrations with an array of its other apps. The ability to seamlessly integrate with expense tracking, employee directories, project management, and much more is a massive plus for this tool. Those who are using Odoo apps may find this to be the obvious candidate. To get the most out of Odoo, it is best to use several of their apps together. 

Traccar – Open-source GPS tracking

As far as free software goes for fleet management, GPS tracking is exceedingly rare. Traccar is an open-source alternative to SaaS offerings. There is one massive caveat to this tool: Traccar requires server hosting to function. The software itself is entirely free. Traccar does offer hosting services, but this would make the offering no longer free.

Very simply, this software allows you to have access to real-time tracking information on your fleet. The tool works with the vast majority of GPS systems. The interface is strong for an open-source tool, and support for mobile devices with an android and iOS app. The reporting system is solid, if nothing compared to what a tool like Odoo offers.

In summary, if live tracking is what you are looking for, and you have the skill and hardware to make this tool work, you can get a premium feature at no cost. This is worthy of its inclusion alone. There may be some operational costs to server management that can be prohibitive to small businesses. For others, GPS fleet tracking is an essential part of what they are looking for in a fleet management system. 

More Fleet Management solutions

If you are still unsure, you can check out all fleet management software and read real reviews by clicking the button below. Overall, these are the best options for most people for free fleet management. If you find yourself unable to work with these limitations or want more premium features, it may be time to consider paid options. 

The cheapest, like Fleetio, can cost as little as 5/vehicle/month and can greatly streamline your fleet operations. Pricing models vary greatly, and various software solutions can be suitable for different fleet needs.