What is auto repair software?

Auto repair software is the suite of tools necessary to run a car shop. This includes generating quotes and estimates for customers, tracking vehicle histories, handling inventory management to ensure you’re never short on parts, and more. One key feature we noticed that every auto repair software should have, but doesn’t always: VIN lookup. With the right auto repair software handy, you can handle an entire customer action from the front desk.

Who is auto repair software for?

• Large, auto repair businesses. These shops especially need auto repair software because they have a lot of inventory to manage, a lot of customers to track, and not a lot of time to spend in office management.
• Small auto repair shops. Even if you have fewer employees and fewer garages, a small auto repair shop can use an affordable way to create professional invoices and never lose track of customer data.
• Multi-faceted shops. Some auto repair shops don’t only offer auto repair but are part of larger companies like automotive dealerships.

What does auto repair software do?

• Inventory management, billing & invoicing, and quickly generating quotes for customers will be key features here. With a higher volume of customers to deal with, the speed and convenience of the software become paramount.
• Features like inventory management are still important, but small auto repair shops have fewer resources. That means budget and customer support will be bigger concerns for small auto repair shops.
• Multi-faceted shops and dealerships may have the same needs as large auto repair shops, but with an increased emphasis on the versatility of the software and its ability to place nice with other types of software.

Benefits of using auto repair software

One of the key benefits of using auto repair software is you can trace everything to one source. Do you need to order a part? The right software can handle it. Need to look up a VIN? Ditto there. Auto repair software should create a streamlined approach to your business that makes customers trust that you’re not only professional, but you know what you’re doing.

How much does auto repair software cost?

Generally speaking, we found the auto repair software in our list of finalists ran from about $99 per month to about $199 per month—though there will always be exceptions. Most vendors will charge you by the month rather than big, upfront purchases. You may also notice that the pricing tiers can be affected by how many features you need.

Who should use auto repair software, and what are the different types?

Anyone running a professional auto repair shop needs auto repair software of some type. Many of the vendors we found on our list are capable of handling multiple categories—from large to small—but we find that these are some of the key offerings available:

• Basic auto repair software — these are the vendors and pricing tiers that can get your shop up and running, but may not necessarily be robust enough to handle multiple locations or larger businesses.
• High-volume auto repair software — If you’re a dealership or a company with multiple locations, you might want to opt for the software with features like employee management and communication. That’s your indicator that you’re dealing with software that’s thinking about big teams.
• Auto repair shop marketing software — Auto repair shops of all sizes want to attract and retain customers. A company like Mechanic Advisor is a great option for auto repair shops that currently use shop management software but want to crank up marketing with text, email, and direct mail campaigns.

Auto repair software FAQs

What is the best automotive software?

We’ve got a few suggestions on our list. We noticed great reputations for Shopmonkey, Shop-Ware, TekMetrik, Autoleap, and Alldata. But a good reputation alone doesn’t make for great software. We also had to take into account the features, the customer support, and the pricing of each offering to come up with a list of which service is best suited to which kind of auto repair shop. You can find our results above.

Is there an app for auto mechanics?

There is! You’ll notice that many of our top picks offer mobile apps which make it easier for mechanics to work and communicate while on the go. This is particularly useful for anyone who works in an auto repair shop with a lot of employees—which means a lot of communication. But you’ll typically find that apps for auto mechanics are easy to find these days, with many of the offerings on our list offering mobile and tablet versions of their software.

What are the best software features for auto mechanics?

Anything that helps you get your day done more quickly and efficiently is going to be an ideal feature. We particularly looked for the following five features when weighing our options: billing and invoicing, inventory management, quotes and estimates, VIN lookup, and work order management. Of course, this is just a selection of the features offered by some of the top solutions in auto repair software. But we wanted to establish a baseline of service—these are the features that help auto repair owners run their shop like a true business.

What can auto repair software do?

Ideally, it should do everything except the repairing itself. If you need to order new inventory or track new parts, you should do that through your software. If you need to generate an on-the-fly estimate for a customer, your software should be able to print that out right away. Everything you can think of that will give your customers a smoother experience generally falls under the umbrella of effective auto repair software.

How we chose the best auto repair software

Think of it as a big funnel. We started with a massive list of 84 software vendors, poured everything in a big bowl, and we saw what came out the other end.

Okay, fine. It’s a little bit more involved and sophisticated than that. Of the initial 84 software vendors, we were able to suss out 15 that seemed to perform a bit above the rest. We then zoomed in on those, asking questions like:

• What kinds of features does the software offer? It was highly polarized. We found many that fit our five basic needs—as mentioned in the FAQs—but some that barely had any.
• What kind of customer support do they offer? We used multiple factors in customer support to come up with an ultimate “out-of-five” customer support score for each offering.
• What kind of reputation does the software have? For this, we leaned a little on the online reputation of each software offering. Do they have a lot of online reviews? If not, the limited sample size was a bit of a knock against them. Meanwhile, a high score with a large sample size earned a great reputation score.

These questions helped us whittle things down. But there’s also a “feel” to auto repair software that’s difficult to put into quantifiable terms.

But we did! We gave each one a score. We were able to use a combination of reputation scores, lists of features, pricing, and customer support features to get a more comprehensive picture of each vendor. And scoring things this way made it easier to find our recommendations at a glance.

From there, we whittled our list down to the several you see here. Pick one of the vendors on this list, and you’ll be able to take on any challenge that rolls into the shop.

We collect information about vendors and verify it through:

• Interviews
• Video and live demos
• Vendor and parent company websites

The B2B Reviews editorial team consists of researchers, writers and editors who cover all aspects of business-to-business software and services across a wide variety of industries. Our research takes hours, days and weeks to compile and analyze the data that backs our recommendations. Our goal is to make this painstaking process our job so you can get back to doing yours.