Motive Fleet Management Review & Pricing 2023

Motive is a great fleet management service for many reasons: It offers easy dash camera integrations, great driver safety tools, and at just one-to-three seconds, it delivers blazing fast refresh rates that beat top competitors like Samsara and Verizon, earning Motive a 4.2/5 overall score.

Motive lacks a few features that fleets may consider important, however: It doesn't offer custom locations or weather and traffic alerts, for instance. But if great safety tracking and coaching tools are your priority, Motive will deliver up-to-the-second functionality.

Our full review below covers all Motive's core features, support tools, and price details, although you can also cut to the chase and request a custom Motive quote.

In this guide:

• Motive Driver and Vehicle Management
• Motive Vehicle Tracking
• Motive Pricing and Value
• Motive Help and Support
• Motive Installation and Other Features
• Methodology: How We Rated Motive
• Verdict
• FAQs

Motive Driver and Vehicle Management

Motive, formerly called KeepTruckin, offers all the top tools you'll need to manage drivers' locations, actions, and safety, as well as most of the tools you'll need for vehicle needs like maintenance and security.

It's only missing one vehicle tracking feature that might be important for your fleet, a dedicated panic button. However, it has automated alerts that can warn managers of incidents within seconds, as well as driver messaging to aid communication. Motive's noteworthy vehicle and driver features include detailed fuel tracking as well as a few benefits that many fleet systems don't offer: Cargo temperature tracking, and a personalized coaching system for helping drivers improve their safety.

The Fleetview section of the Motive software shows managers all the vehicles on a live map. Image source: Motive

Vehicle Maintenance and Security

Motive earned a good 4.5/5 vehicle management score for its roster of features including vehicle diagnostics. Motive's Vehicle Gateway hardware will run automatic diagnostics and maintenance checks on your vehicles.

Like other top providers, Verizon and Samsara, Motive's reports cover distance summaries, and the software lets managers set custom maintenance reminders based on time, distance, or hours used. Managers can create reports to log upcoming, overdue, and completed service. Drivers can cover their DVIR reporting needs through the mobile app.

Theft prevention measures from Motive include real-time alerts when assets are unexpectedly moved, powered by the battery-powered Asset Gateway hardware. Motive even includes cargo temperature and humidity tracking functionality, a perk that many fleet systems including Azuga and Omnitracs do not offer.

The Motive Fuel hub holds all fuel-related features and data. Image source: Motive

Fuel Management

Motive has a stellar 5/5 driver management score, due in part to its fuel tracking tools. The platform can log fuel consumption by driver, vehicle, or fleet, helping managers spot ways to reduce high fuel use. Managers can also view a driver or vehicle's idle time within their dashboard, while idling alerts can be set to warn them in real time. IFTA taxes are tracked through the dashboard as well.

Motive Card, the system's fuel card, offers discounts at participating stations and can be used wherever Mastercard is accepted, not just at fuel stations. The Motive Card integrates with telematics data for additional fintech anti-fraud features: It “can tell you if anyone bought fuel further than fifteen feet away from the pump,” Motive says to Tech.co. Plus, a dozen other fuel integrations are available from the platform's app store.

Azuga remains the best fleet system for fuel tracking tools, as it offers even more granular functions, such as automatically checking if idling happens at specific locations, but fuel tracking is one area where Motive excells.

The Motive Safety hub holds all the features managers or drivers can use to access fleet safety and view incident reports. Image source: Motive

Safety Features

Motive's system relies on plenty of data tracking tools — vehicle speedometer, GPS-based speed, accelerometer, and gyroscope — to automatically identify risky driving events and flag them for managers with alerts. Motive's software will even automatically rank events by severity for easy processing. Crash reporting tools can be used to create incident reports featuring vehicle telematics data like speed and braking behavior, along with location, driver details, video screenshots, and vehicle information.

Motive tracks driver history and supports driver IDs for easier identification. The dashboard has a DRIVE risk score that helps managers understand each driver's safety based on the past two weeks. Managers can coach the bottom-performing drivers using DRIVE, to help them improve. Drivers will get ELD compliance tools. They'll also get two-way messaging, a perk that a few fleet systems (like Linxup) do not offer.

Like other top systems Samsara and Teletrac, Motive does not include a dedicated panic button, which could potentially speed up a response. Panic button aside, Motive's safety tools are comprehensive, with its simple-to-use safety coaching system a particular standout.

Motive Vehicle Tracking

Motive has a solid 4/5 score for tracking tools: It offers many of the most important tools and stands out for its unbeatable refresh rates, which can be as fast as one second. The only features missing from the platform are custom locations and traffic and weather alerts: These tools can further streamline routing and dispatch, potentially lending an edge to competitors that offer them, including Verizon and Samsara.

Motive offers “activity detail” reports, which cover individual vehicles or assets. Users can also benefit from core tools including email alerts, dispatch, geofencing, and automatic route optimization, thanks to a “Fleet View” section of the software that displays each vehicle's real-time locations, mileage, and other telematics information. And when we say real-time, we mean it: Motive's lightning fast 1-3 second refresh rates easily beat industry leaders Verizon and Samsara, which both offer rates between 30 and 60 seconds. Motive's asset tracking refresh rates are one minute.

Motive lacks custom locations, a functionality many fleet systems use to reference frequently visited areas when creating routes. It also does not offer weather and traffic alerts, which some fleet systems offer to help flag unexpected delays that might require a reroute. Finally, Motive won't have third-party GPS integrations, although these are rare for fleet systems like Motive, which provides its own GPS tracking.

Read more about the Best Route Planning Software available today

Motive's dash cams sync up with its software to track driver telematics. Image source: Motive

Motive Pricing and Value

Motive does not make its pricing public, although it does use a one-plan-fits-all approach. It gives all fleet system features to all users, from its fuel card to its safety tools.

Motive offers its own hardware for a separate licensing charge in addition to its software costs, although fleets can often use their existing third-party hardware as well. Many of their core hardware devices come with a five-year warranty, including the Vehicle Gateway, Asset Gateway, and road-facing and dual-facing smart dash cams. Software contracts can be renewed annually or monthly with a 30-day cancellation period, making them less restrictive than those from Verizon and Samsara, which have 3-year minimums.

The Motive Card comes with a late fee: 5% of the invoice balance or $40, whichever is more.

Motive offers demos and a 14-day free trial, which is a little shorter than the industry standard 30-day trial period, but should be enough to give you a feel for the features. Motive has a great value: Its warranties and contracts helped push it to a 3.9/5 price score from our researchers, beating our top overall picks, Verizon and Samsara, which both have 2.5/5 scores.

Motive Help and Support

Motive offers 24/7 phone and email support to its users, along with an online knowledge center that users can consult first in order to identify the most common concerns or issues.

Not on offer? Motive lacks a live chat support option, and does not provide any in-person installation or setup help. Our research team gave it a 3.5/5 support score, tying it with our top overall pick, Verizon, and putting it a little below Samsara's 4/5 score in this category. If you need the best customer service support, however, we recommend Omnitracs, which earned a 5/5 score for offering everything Motive has, plus live chat and installation aid.

Motive Installation and Other Features

Motive's ruggedized hardware comes with a five-year warranty, with options for plugging into a vehicle's OBD-II port for easy installs or directly hardwiring a device to the engine for greater data tracking. The software is designed for use in remote locations as well, with an option to record data locally when there's no connectivity, as well as cloud recording. Role-based access helps keep data secure on a need-to-know basis. Motive is best for US-based fleets, as some features (including core dispatch tools) aren't available in Canada.

Motive integrates with its own dash cams and others. Its dash cams include integrated batteries, so they won't lose power in a collision, and they integrate with Motive's Safety hub so that all safety incidents come with video footage that drivers can review themselves.

The service has integrations including Motive Card for fuel tracking along with a fuel hub that tracks IFTA reports and fuel purchases from the Motive Driver App, for easier review from managers. Motive also has an option for asset tracking, delivering location and telematics data once a minute with the right hardware. It has no GPS integrations, but this is common for fleet systems, which track location themselves. It also lacks a panic button and weather alerts.

Our researchers scored Motive 3.8/5 for product features, which isn't bad, although users might be tempted by our higher scores for Verizon, Omnitracs, and Geotab, all ranked at or above a 4.8/5 score.

Methodology: How We Reviewed Motive

Tech.co's team of expert researchers combed through 20 different fleet systems available in the US and Canada, tracking all their features and functions to access what each is best at. To accurate compare them, our testers created six categories to judge each fleet system:

• Price: This covers plans, contracts, warranties, and free trials or demos.
• Tracking: Features like dispatch tools, geofencing, custom locations, and alerts.
• Driver Management: Messaging, crash reporting, and driver safety tools.
• Vehicle Management: Theft prevention, maintenance scheduling, fuel cards, and diagnostics.
• Product Features: Software abilities such as integrations, mobile apps, and types of hardware.
• Help & Support: Installation aid, support hours, and support type (phone, email, or chat).

Our experts gave each provider a 5-point score for each category, before compiling them all into a single 5-point overall score. Our impartial reviews are based on this research, which is frequently updated to reflect the most recent feature and pricing updates.

Motive FAQs