Samsara Review and Pricing: The Best Vehicle Tracking System for Managing Vehicles

✔ Pro: Superb vehicle management features

Our readers say vehicle management features are the third most important benefit in a fleet management system. Samsara scores a perfect 5/5 in our vehicle management analysis, taking the top spot alongside Verizon. As one of the best products 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. Its traffic alerts efficiently overlay your maps to know which roads currently have heavy traffic, so you can avoid these roads and save time. For geofence alerts, you can also customise these settings to help you monitor if your driver enters or exits a geofence area.

✔ 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. 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 management 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 & support analysis. You have to install the entire system yourself. It does have a Knowledge Centre you can refer to for videos and articles, but that’s it. In case you need more assistance, it offers 24/7 phone support.

If you absolutely need this, then your best bet is RAM, which scores 4.5/5 in our research. RAM schedules set-ups with their engineers at your most convenient time. 

✗ Con: Not cost-effective

Pricing is also a defining factor for most consumers, and this is where Samsara drops to fourth place, scoring 3.1/5 in our pricing analysis. 

Samsara’s average starting price is £10.83 per vehicle, per month, while its most expensive average price is £23.75 per vehicle, per month. The pricing depends on the contract length, fleet size, and the features you want. 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 and Quartix, which score 4.6/5 for pricing in our research. RAM’s starting price is at  £8.99 per vehicle, per month going up to £14 per vehicle, per month. Quartix, on the other hand, offers £9.90 per vehicle, per month as their entry point, whereas the most expensive price is at £22.90 per vehicle, per month. However, their cheaper price also accounts for the features they are missing out on, such as vehicle diagnostics. 

✗ Con: Strict data limit on hotspots

Samsara’s Data Usage Report feature summarises your monthly fleet Wi-Fi usage. You can use this data to examine Wi-Fi data usage trends and determine whether your fleet requires Wi-Fi driver training or requires different coverage. As helpful as this is for drivers and fleet managers, Samsara has a strict data limit. Once you breach this, you can no longer connect other applications to the Wi-Fi hotspot (other than the Samsara app), which could hinder your data reports and monitoring. 

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 ranks second overall in our market analysis with a score of 4.6/5. Here’s how Samsara matches up with other fleet management systems in the UK:

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. It’s almost at par with its 60-second refresh rate, however, it misses automatic route optimisation, 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. 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. And that’s because it has all the driver management essentials, including history, tracking, Driver ID, idling, crash reporting, and behaviour management. 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 minimise incidents in the future. 

It is worth mentioning, however, that our independent research still identified Teletrac Navman TN360 as the best for managing drivers. This is because TN360 has a cheaper entry point and offers in-cab audio alerts, which Samsara missed on. Additionally, TN360 has built-in driver’s daily vehicle inspection report (DVIR) forms, an important legal requirement that ensures your drivers and vehicles comply with all protocols.

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: