Samsara Review and Pricing: Best for Managing Vehicles

✔ Pro: Superb vehicle management features

Our readers say vehicle management features are the third most important benefit in a fleet tracking system. Samsara scores a perfect 5/5 in our vehicle management analysis, taking the top spot alongside Verizon. As one of the best systems for managing vehicles, Samsara gives you the complete fleet management experience. You can:

• Track the fuel usage of every vehicle. You can sort by vehicle name, driver, the amount of fuel used, estimated fuel costs, runtime, and idle time. 
• Review vehicle diagnostics by producing automatic reports. You are also alerted whenever a faulty system is detected, which Samsara will automatically sync with your data. 
• Schedule regular maintenance checks and review maintenance records.
• Track how fast your driver is going. For easier interpretation, you can review this data using convenient graphs to see the speed your drivers are currently going.
• Review your total distance travelled 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. 
• Summarise your equipment by sorting them based on specific tags, like active engine hours. You can also generate high-level reports about this. 
• Prevent theft attempts by sending alerts if the vehicle is unplugged from its gateway. 
• Monitor engine and cargo temperature to prevent damage and loss of product.

✔ Pro: Top-tier vehicle tracking

Samsara scores 4.9/5 in our vehicle tracking analysis, second to Verizon, which ranks first with a perfect score. 

Samsara helps you track your drivers and vehicles better by showing all information about live/active locations. Moreover, it has Live Location Sharing which delivers best-in-class customer service with live location links to equip your customers with accurate ETAs.

✔ Pro: Efficient driver management system

Samsara scores a perfect 5/5 for driver management analysis. Its driver portal gives you an overview of your drivers’ active driving times, start and end locations, distance, and driver information. It also 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. This is a crucial feature since texting while driving is a major cause of road crashes in Canada. If your driver attempts to access the messages while driving, Samsara will send a warning message. 

✗ Con: No installation support

Samsara is a powerhouse in fleet tracking systems, but one of its drawbacks is that it does not have installation support, ending up with a score of 4/5 in our help and support analysis. You have to install the entire system yourself. If this is something you absolutely need, then your best bet is RAM, which scores 4.4/5 in our help and support research category. RAM schedules set-ups with their engineers at your most convenient time. 

However, RAM offers limited phone support. Meanwhile, if you have questions regarding installation or your fleet tracking software, you can call up a Samsara representative anytime.

✗ Con: Not cost-effective

Pricing is also a defining factor for most consumers, and this is where Samsara drops in ranking, scoring 2.5/5 in our pricing analysis. 

Samsara doesn’t publish its pricing in Canada, but as a guide, Samsara’s average starting price in the UK is £10.83 per vehicle, per month, while its most expensive average price is £23.75 per vehicle, per month. Another reason why we scored it down is that you have to pay extra for some of its features, such as the Driver ID token.

Though it keeps up with the industry norm of setting bespoke price plans, it is not as cost-effective as RAM, which scores 3.7/5 for pricing in our research. RAM is pretty hush-hush when it comes to pricing, but to give you an idea of how affordable it is, RAM’s UK pricing starts at  £8.99 per vehicle, per month going up to £14 per vehicle, per month. However, its cheaper price also accounts for the features it’s missing out on, such as vehicle management features, which Samsara offers.

What kind of business is Samsara best for?

Our in-depth research into Samsara singles it out as the best for managing vehicles. Vehicle management features help you track your drivers and vehicles, manage fuel and labour costs, and plan the most efficient routes for your drivers and customers, to make your operation run smoothly.

As such, we recommend Samsara for fleets with a lot of vehicles to manage and those who rely highly on deliveries. Its vehicle management features will help you run your business smoothly and efficiently.

Want to know if Samsara is suited for your business’ needs? Try our free quote comparison tool. We will match you up with top vehicle tracking providers so you can find the perfect one for your business.

Samsara scores 4.5/5 overall in our market analysis. Here’s how Samsara matches up with other fleet management systems in Canada:

Samsara’s vehicle tracking features

Samsara, with a score of 4.9/5, is the second-best overall in our tracking analysis, Samsara has everything you need to track your drivers and vehicles efficiently. It has one of the fastest refresh times, refreshing data every 30 to 60 seconds. However, if you want fast refresh rates at a lower cost, then go for RAM (which scores 4.6/5 in our tracking analysis). It’s almost at par with its 60-second refresh rate, however, it misses automatic route optimization, theft prevention, and fuel efficiency, among others.

In terms of alerts and notifications, what sets Samsara apart is that you can create webhooks in your account, which is useful for integrating alerts into different vehicles. Its live/active tracking features are also more detailed compared to Verizon (which scores 5/5 for tracking features). Verizon allows you to track all vehicles on the map by colour: 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. 

Samsara’s ability to improve driver safety and behaviour

Samsara scores a perfect 5/5 in our driver management analysis, tied with Verizon. Samsara has all the driver management essentials you need, including history, tracking, and risky driving alerts. Although, it is worth mentioning that Verizon Connect Canada has a special driver management software where you can access reports and historical data to quickly and easily see who was driving a fleet vehicle if you happen to receive customer complaints.

However, we want to highlight how Samsara puts its drivers’ safety first. If you upgrade to Samsara dash cams, it sends driver-side alerts through the dash cam whenever it detects harsh driving conditions, incidents, crashes, and more. Additionally, it produces a safety trend report, a helpful tool that can help you minimize incidents in the future. 

Samsara’s vehicle management features

Our in-depth research into fleet management systems shows that Samsara is the best for managing vehicles. With a perfect 5/5 score in our vehicle management analysis, it checks all the boxes to help you manage your fleet smoothly, from fuel monitoring, automatic data integration, maintenance scheduling, and theft prevention.

Its competition, Verizon (also scoring 5/5 for vehicle management), offers these too, but you have to upgrade your subscription. Certain Verizon subscriptions (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’s journey optimization features

During our research, we found out that Verizon and Azuga both offer automatic route optimization. Samsara offers a more thorough and accurate calculation on start and stop points. It automatically optimizes a route with a maximum of 20 stops to reduce driving time. Then, it analyses which order of stops yields the shortest distance travelled while keeping the Start Location and Last Stop constant. On the other hand, Azuga is our top contender for efficient vehicle routine as it allows you to edit even the Start Location and Last Stop Location. This gives you more control over all your stops. 

Meanwhile, Samsara automatically computes the Time on Site report for you so you can determine the average stop duration based on your driver’s recent driving history. Samsara uses either this average duration or a default of 30 minutes if no recent data is available to determine the planned departure time for each job. The travel time between jobs is calculated using the predicted traffic conditions for the time of day. These calculations yield a complete, automated itinerary.

Does Samsara have good customer reviews?

To back up our claims, we checked Samsara’s customer reviews on Capterra, Trustpilot, and G2, where we got an average customer score of 3.8/5. While most of its users applaud its stellar tracking features, this also proves to be a point of improvement for Samsara. Some users report having difficulty driving in traffic as it can be too sensitive. Here’s what they have to say: