Switching from ARI
ARI alternatives
ARI costs less than Fixty and does more on four of the sixteen rows this site compares. So this page is mostly about when not to switch, and about the two rows where it is worth it.
What actually moves, and what does not
Be clear about the direction of travel first. ARI publishes a lower month to month rate than Fixty Starter, syncs to QuickBooks Online, counts your stock, handles tires and gives named users their own roles. Fixty does none of those four. Anyone moving for features is moving the wrong way, and this page will not pretend otherwise.
What does move is your customer list, and it moves through a person rather than a screen. Fixty has no upload page. You send the export to support, somebody goes through the columns with you, and it lands in the account without you typing it. No timescale has been published for that, so ask before you cancel, not after.
The part worth planning is your inventory. If you have been counting parts in ARI, there is nowhere in Fixty for those counts to land. Fixty tracks parts on a job: what went on this car, what it cost, what you charged. It does not track what is on the shelf. Decide where that lives before you go, because the answer is either a spreadsheet or a second subscription, and both are worse than what you already have.
Get the QuickBooks side settled first
ARI pushes invoices, customers and inventory into QuickBooks Online. Fixty pushes nothing anywhere. Before you switch, work out what your bookkeeper does instead, because the honest answer today is that they do it by hand.
Ask ARI for the export in writing
Customers, vehicles, job cards and invoices, requested before the billing date rather than after. What a vendor returns on the way out is not published on their site, so get their answer from them rather than from us.
The list is loaded by a person
Send it to Fixty support and work through it with whoever picks it up. Which rows are worth carrying is your call and it decides how long the whole thing takes.
Decide what happens to stock counts
They do not travel, because there is nothing on the other side to hold them. If you buy in bulk and sell from a shelf, this step is the reason not to switch rather than a step to plan.
Overlap on purpose
Run both for a few weeks. New work in the new system, old work looked up in the old one. Cancel when a week goes by without opening ARI.
What you give up by leaving ARI
Four rows where ARI publishes a capability and Fixty publishes none. These are their sentences from their own feature pages, not our summary of them.
Accounting sync
Fixty: No. No QuickBooks or Xero integration today.
ARI
Yes
“Sync ARI invoices to QuickBooks Online! Manage customers and inventory.”
ari.app/integrations/quickbooks, read August 30, 2026
Parts inventory management
Fixty: No. Fixty tracks parts on a job, not stock on a shelf.
ARI
Yes
“With ARI, you can rest assured that you will always have a very clear understanding of what parts you have on stock and what to order next.”
ari.app/features/inventory-management, read August 30, 2026
Tire and wheel shop tools
Fixty: No.
ARI
Yes
“Are you providing tire change services? Do you also happen to have your own tires inventory? Well, now you can easily manage your tire shop inventory with ARI.”
ari.app/features/inventory-management, read August 30, 2026
Multi technician teams
Fixty: No. One mechanic, one workspace. Built solo first on purpose.
ARI
Yes
“This is the part where you assign a technician to work on the tasks included in your work order.”
ari.app/features/job-cards, read August 30, 2026
When ARI is the better choice, in full
- You want to see the whole product before you pay anything. Their free tier has no clock on it: you get a capped number of records and can sit there indefinitely. Fixty gives you fourteen days and takes a card up front, which is a worse deal for a mechanic who wants to try software in the gaps between jobs.
- Your books are in QuickBooks Online. ARI syncs invoices, customers and inventory into it. Fixty has no accounting integration at all today, and that is a real reason to pick them over us.
- You sell or store tires. Their inventory covers tire sizes, brands and a tire shop stock, which is a product line Fixty does not have.
- You carry stock and want to know what is on the van. Their inventory answers what you have and what to order next; Fixty tracks parts on a job and nothing else.
- You are adding people. ARI has named users with roles and per user permissions, and technicians get assigned to tasks inside a work order. Fixty is one mechanic in one workspace on purpose.
- The price matters and you want the diagnostics too. Their entry plan is under Fixty Starter month to month and includes OBD2 scanning through a cheap dongle, which is a tool a mobile mechanic actually carries.
Every ARI claim on this page was read from their own site, is quoted with the page it came from, and was last re-read on August 30, 2026. Where a cell says we could not confirm something, that is what it means: we looked and did not find it, which is not the same as it not existing.
The free tier is a usage cap, and that matters more than it sounds
ARI is often recommended on the strength of a free tier with no expiry, which is a real advantage over a countdown. Read what it actually allows before you plan around it:
Partial
“The free trial is up to 5 Invoices, Estimates, Inspections, Clients, vehicles, and other items.”
ari.app/auto-repair-software-price, read August 30, 2026
Five of each is enough to see the product properly, with no card on file and no clock running, and it is not enough to put a real fortnight of work through. That is a different offer from a fourteen day trial of everything, and which one suits you depends on whether you want depth or time. Fixty gives you the time and takes a card at signup; ARI gives you the depth of the interface and stops you at five records.
The practical consequence is that you cannot answer the only question that matters, which is whether the workflow survives a busy week, without paying one of them.
The two rows Fixty wins are both about the customer, not you
ARI generates a unique link for every estimate and sends it to the client, and that half is not in doubt. What their own sentence describes about the text channel is narrower:
Partial
“You can also generate PDF estimates and send them to the vehicle owners via email or SMS.”
ari.app/features/auto-repair-estimates, read August 30, 2026
A PDF sent by SMS is a document. It is not the thing the customer taps and approves. The approvable link is real and documented on their estimates page; nothing we found says the approvable link itself goes out by text. We record that as unconfirmed rather than reading the silence in either direction, and it is the first thing to ask them.
The second row is what happens when the customer replies. Every SMS sentence on their site is outbound, and inbound messages land in a live chat inside a client portal:
Partial
“This auto repair software allows you to send email or SMS to the client every time you change the status of their vehicle job cards.”
ari.app/features/job-cards, read August 30, 2026
A portal the customer has to open is a portal most customers do not open. If the way your work actually arrives is a text thread, that is the difference, and it is the one thing on this page worth paying more for.
Diagnostics and labor guides: the thing this comparison cannot score
ARI markets diagnostics and labor guides alongside the paperwork, and OBD2 scanning through a cheap dongle is a tool a mobile mechanic actually carries. Fixty has none of that and no plans anybody has published.
This site holds no comparison axis for labor time guides or live parts pricing, for any vendor, so nothing here ranks anybody on them and neither should you on the strength of a marketing phrase. If a labor guide is what decides your purchase, ask ARI which one it is, whether it costs extra, and how current the times are. That question is worth more than every feature grid on this website.
It is worth naming the gap rather than quietly routing around it, because a comparison that only measures what it happens to have data for will always flatter whoever wrote it.
Who should not switch to Fixty
Most people weighing ARI against Fixty should pick ARI. These four especially.
Your books are in QuickBooks Online
ARI syncs invoices, customers and inventory into it. Fixty has no accounting integration of any kind and the handoff is done by hand.
You count parts, or you sell tires
Both are ARI features with their own pages. Fixty has neither and is not building either.
Somebody else logs in
ARI has named users with roles and per user permissions, and technicians get assigned inside a work order. Fixty is one mechanic in one workspace on purpose.
The monthly number decides it
Their entry plan is under Fixty Starter month to month, and includes the diagnostics tooling. Nothing on this page argues against that.
Alternatives to ARI that are not Fixty
ARI is not the only auto native tool under Fixty money, and a page naming one alternative is not answering the question. Here are the others we hold sourced data on.
Trackara Pro
Fits you if: Your day is a driving problem rather than a paperwork problem. Theirs is the only optimizer in our data written for one van: it reorders stops, drops the parts run into the gap and keeps the mileage log for your taxes.
The catch: Their own roadmap still lists card payment inside the invoice as being finished, and their texting goes out through your own phone rather than living in the software.
In their own words
Yes
“Plan the day from your jobs list. Reorder stops to kill dead miles. Drop a parts-pickup at AutoZone or NAPA right where it makes sense. End the day with a mileage summary that flows into your tax log automatically.”
pro.trackara.app/features/route-optimizer, read August 30, 2026
Cheapest published monthly price
$49.99 per month
“Monthly: $49.99 per month, billed monthly”
pro.trackara.app/faq, read August 30, 2026
Orderry
Fits you if: Parts are the hard part and ARI inventory is not deep enough. They reserve a specific part against a specific job, on top of bins, barcodes, serials and purchase orders, and sync both ways to QuickBooks Online and Xero.
The catch: Their entry plan is capped at two employees, one location and a fixed number of work orders every thirty days, and their own pricing page says it cannot be extended.
In their own words
Yes
“Yes. Track stock by van, set min/max levels, and reserve parts per job.”
orderry.com/mobile-mechanic-software-20278, read August 30, 2026
Cheapest published monthly price
$39 per month
“All prices are in USD and exclude special offers and sales tax where applicable. Annual subscriptions are billed yearly.”
orderry.com/pricing, read August 30, 2026
Shopmonkey
Fits you if: You need to take a physical card at the vehicle. They are the only vendor in our data who publishes a card reader of their own alongside a payment link.
The catch: It is a shop system, the dedicated app is scoped to technicians with owners in the web app, and no trial offer was found on any page we opened.
In their own words
Yes
“You can collect payments in person with a Shopmonkey card reader, or remotely by sending your customer a secure payment link via text or email.”
shopmonkey.io/faq, read August 29, 2026
Cheapest published monthly price
$215 per month
“Simple pricing for auto repair and shop management software. Shopmonkey offers plans starting from just $215/month with annual pricing discounts.”
shopmonkey.io/pricing, read August 29, 2026
We sell one of the options on this page, so read the quotes rather than our summary of them. Each price above is the cheapest monthly figure that vendor publishes, which is usually the annually billed rate. Paying month to month generally costs more.
Questions people ask before they switch
Is ARI cheaper than Fixty?
Yes. Their entry plan is published under Fixty Starter and their own sentence says it is billed month to month. They also publish a free tier with no expiry, capped at five each of invoices, estimates, inspections, clients and vehicles.
What does Fixty do that ARI does not?
Two things on the axes this site compares, and both are about the customer. The approvable estimate goes out as a text the customer taps, and the reply comes back into a thread attached to the job rather than into a portal they have to log into. That is the list.
Does Fixty sync with QuickBooks like ARI does?
No. ARI syncs invoices, customers and inventory into QuickBooks Online. Fixty has no QuickBooks or Xero integration and no export. If your books have to stay current on their own, ARI is the better buy and it is also cheaper.
Can I import my ARI data into Fixty?
The customer list, through support rather than an upload screen: you send the export, a person goes through it with you, and it is loaded for you. Job cards, inspection photos and stock counts do not travel. Keep your ARI export somewhere searchable.
If you are switching, start on one job
Do not migrate anything. Take your next job, write the estimate at the curb, text it, let the customer approve the lines they want, and take the card before you pack up. If that one job is better than the way you do it today, enter the next customer too.
Try Fixty free for 14 daysStarter is 14 days free. A card is collected at signup and charged on day 14. Cancel any time and access runs to the end of the cycle you paid for.