Motive Review 2026: Pricing, Pros, Cons, Alternatives
Third-party contract data puts real numbers on Motive. The 8 gaps reviewers name, and 5 alternatives that publish a price upfront.
Page at a glance
Motive is DOT-grade ELD compliance and AI dashcam safety scoring for contractors whose trucks are regulated vehicles, sold on annual sales-quoted contracts rather than a published per-vehicle rate. It publishes no price, so the only way to get a number is to ask a salesperson for one. Motive does not state a billing unit anywhere public. The Terms of Service push the entire commercial basis into the per-customer Order Form and never name a unit. The only unit language available comes from buyers, who describe it as PER DRIVER ('They charge $47.70 per driver'), which is a materially different meter from the per-vehicle model used by Azuga, Linxup and Fleetio. For a contractor, the distinction is expensive: a truck shared across two shifts is one vehicle but two drivers. The Terms do confirm one hard mechanic regardless of unit: mid-term additions do not get their own clock. 'Notwithstanding the foregoing, regardless of when additional purchases are made throughout the Subscription Term, all subsequent orders for Subscription Services will terminate on the same date as the then current Initial or Renewal Order Form.' So a unit added in month eleven is co-terminated at month twelve and then swept into the next full 12-month renewal. It fits Commercial and service contractors running roughly 15 or more regulated trucks who need FMCSA hours-of-service compliance and driver-safety coaching, not just dots on a map. It's the wrong buy for A residential contractor with two to eight light-duty trucks or vans that aren't DOT-regulated and never cross a scale, because You're buying an ELD compliance platform to solve a GPS problem. Motive's entire value stack - HOS logging, IFTA fuel-tax reporting, DVIRs, FMCSA audit defence - is regulatory machinery you don't need, and you pay for it through a sales-quoted annual contract with full remaining-term liability. And Linxup publishes $25 per vehicle per month for GPS with no quote call, and its ELD package is a separate $30 line you can simply not buy. Alternatives that publish their prices are Azuga from $25, Fleetio from $5, Linxup from $25. A quote-only price and what third parties report instead, eight evidenced gaps and five alternatives, three of which publish a figure.
Whether Motive is worth it
Motive earns its money with Commercial and service contractors running roughly 15 or more regulated trucks who need FMCSA hours-of-service compliance and driver-safety coaching, not just dots on a map. If that's you, it does the job. The sections below are the parts worth checking before you sign. But the fit is narrower than the marketing suggests, and the price isn't the whole cost.
The vendor publishes no price. But every number below was verified on 7 August 2026 and comes from a named third party that says which.
| Pricing model | Custom quote, no published price |
|---|---|
| Entry price | Quote only |
| Users | Motive does not state a billing unit anywhere public. The Terms of Service push the entire |
| Ownership | Independent |
| Best fit | Commercial and service contractors running roughly 15 or more regulated trucks who need FMCSA hours-of-service compliance and driver-safety coaching, not just dots on a map. |
| Accounting sync | Intuit QuickBooks Online (two-way), Intuit QuickBooks (Motive Card transactions) (one-way), NetSuite (two-way), Trimble Viewpoint Vista (two-way), ADP (one-way) |
What works
- This is the product's spine, and it's what contractors are buying
- The clearest ROI story for contractors is liability defence, not coaching
- Labour data flows out to payroll; job costing largely doesn't flow anywhere
- Every commercial term you care about lives on the Order Form, not in the public Terms
- A 99.99% SLA that measures dashboard login and nothing else
What does not
- Leaving early costs you the entire rest of the term, and there's no clause for a truck that stops working
- The two fees you're most exposed to on exit are defined in a document that won't load
- No published price, no free trial, no free tier, and no unit of measure you can budget against
- Paying the way most small contractors pay adds a 2.99% surcharge
- Driver-side app reliability is the loudest recurring complaint, and the SLA doesn't cover it
Motive is DOT-grade ELD compliance and AI dashcam safety scoring for contractors whose trucks are regulated vehicles, sold on annual sales-quoted contracts rather than a published per-vehicle rate. It sells to Cross-trade contractors, and the shape of the product follows from that: Motive began life as KeepTruckin, an ELD vendor. And the compliance workflow is the most mature thing in the platform. Drivers run duty status on a phone app rather than a fixed in-cab screen, which several reviewers cite as the reason they switched. DOT familiarity is a real, repeatedly-mentioned advantage at roadside: one administrator notes 'DOT is very familiar with this system and have had no trouble getting info downloaded to them during an inspection.' But the Terms are blunt that the compliance obligation stays yours regardless: 'it is Customer's sole responsibility to maintain compliance standards for IFTA filing and FMCSA Hours of Service of drivers.'
The shops Motive fits, and the ones it doesn't
It fits Commercial and service contractors running roughly 15 or more regulated trucks who need FMCSA hours-of-service compliance and driver-safety coaching, not just dots on a map. That's the half most reviews print. Here's the other half, which is the one worth your time.
Don't buy it if you're A residential contractor with two to eight light-duty trucks or vans that aren't DOT-regulated and never cross a scale. You're buying an ELD compliance platform to solve a GPS problem. Motive's entire value stack - HOS logging, IFTA fuel-tax reporting, DVIRs, FMCSA audit defence - is regulatory machinery you don't need, and you pay for it through a sales-quoted annual contract with full remaining-term liability. And Linxup publishes $25 per vehicle per month for GPS with no quote call, and its ELD package is a separate $30 line you can simply not buy. Look at Linxup instead.
Don't buy it if you're A contractor whose actual pain is maintenance scheduling, work orders and cost-per-mile on a mixed fleet of trucks, trailers and yellow iron. Motive's marketplace has no accounting category and its maintenance depth is secondary to safety and compliance. Fleetio publishes $5 per vehicle per month billed monthly, includes unlimited users at every tier, and is built around the maintenance and work-order workflow rather than around the ELD mandate. You also avoid the per-driver billing question entirely, since Fleetio's Terms state fees 'are based on the number of assets managed by Customer using the Services.' Look at Fleetio instead.
Don't buy it if you're Any contractor whose fleet size swings seasonally by more than about 20 percent, or who routinely sells and replaces trucks mid-year. Section 8.3 charges you the remainder of the full Subscription Term on anything you cancel, and section 8.1 co-terminates every mid-term addition onto the existing Order Form date, so a truck added in month eleven is billed to month twelve and then renewed for another twelve. There's no downsize clause anywhere in the Terms. So a landscaping, paving or snow-removal outfit that runs 30 trucks in July and 12 in January is buying 30 trucks of software for twelve months. Look at Azuga instead.
Don't buy it if you're A buyer who needs to compare three vendors on price this week and get a board or a partner to approve the number. There's no number to bring. Motive's pricing URL redirects to a lead-capture form, its raw HTML contains no dollar figure, Capterra's pricing tab reads 'Contact vendor', and there's no free trial to run in parallel. Every figure in circulation is a reviewer's recollection, and the two most-cited ones ($47.70 and $47 per driver) come from the same person on the same day. And if your process requires a published rate card, three of Motive's four closest competitors have one. Look at Azuga instead.
Pricing: what Motive publishes and what it doesn't
You won't find a number on Motive's pricing page. What you'll find is a form. So the honest version of this section is about what the form asks and what the quote is indexed to.
The vendor's own wording is this, and nothing more: "Motive publishes no price anywhere on its own site. https://gomotive.com/pricing/ does not render a pricing page at all: it returns HTTP 301 to https://gomotive.com/get-in-touch?id=pricing, which 301s again to https://gomotive.com/get-in-touch/?id=pricing, a lead-capture form. That destination page still carries the title 'Motive Pricing | ELD | Dash Cam | Motive' and the meta description 'With Motive, minimize violations, boost productivity, decrease audit risk, and lower insurance costs all-in-one fleet management platform.' A grep of its raw HTML for any dollar figure returns zero matches. The vendor's own contract language explains where the number actually lives." So treat every third-party page printing tier names and figures for Motive with careful suspicion. Those numbers are not on the vendor's site today, and a roundup that reprints them is telling you what Motive used to charge somebody else.
And we aren't going to print a per-month number we can't open a vendor page and read. What exists instead is third-party reporting, dated, from people who saw real contracts. Read it as a range rather than as a quote you can hold anyone to.
| Reported range | Reported on | Source |
|---|---|---|
| $47.70 per driver per month | 2025-02-18 | $47.70 per driver, per an owner-operator who says he used Motive for five years. Verbatim: 'They charge $47.70 per driver, while there are much more affordable alternatives, including options for as low as $25 per driver.' Verified present in the raw App Store RSS JSON. |
| $47 per driver per month | 2025-02-18 | $47 per driver. The SAME reviewer (App Store handle Ilim_2009) posted the same review to the Motive Fleet app two minutes apart and wrote '$47' there instead of '$47.70'. Both strings are verified in the raw RSS JSON. The conflict is left visible rather than resolved: one of the two is the reviewer's own rounding, and there is no vendor figure to arbitrate against. |
| $600 per year for a single unit | 2026-07-03 | $600 for one year, reported by a single-truck buyer complaining about a mis-shipped wiring harness. Verbatim: 'I paid $600 for the year and it's already starting on a bad foot.' That works out to $50/month for one unit, which brackets the $47.70 figure above. |
| No figure published | 2026-08-07 | Capterra's pricing tab for Motive shows no starting figure at all. It reads 'Starting price: Contact vendor', with free trial 'Not available' and free version 'No'. Note that Capterra, Software Advice and GetApp are all Gartner properties reading one review pool, so this is one third-party source and not three. |
Motive does not state a billing unit anywhere public. The Terms of Service push the entire commercial basis into the per-customer Order Form and never name a unit. The only unit language available comes from buyers, who describe it as PER DRIVER ('They charge $47.70 per driver'), which is a materially different meter from the per-vehicle model used by Azuga, Linxup and Fleetio. For a contractor, the distinction is expensive: a truck shared across two shifts is one vehicle but two drivers. The Terms do confirm one hard mechanic regardless of unit: mid-term additions do not get their own clock. 'Notwithstanding the foregoing, regardless of when additional purchases are made throughout the Subscription Term, all subsequent orders for Subscription Services will terminate on the same date as the then current Initial or Renewal Order Form.' So a unit added in month eleven is co-terminated at month twelve and then swept into the next full 12-month renewal.
What a Motive quote leaves out
Payment processing. Paying by credit card costs extra. Verbatim from Terms of Service section 7.3: 'A credit card processing fee of no more than 2.99% will be applied to all credit card transactions. This fee is charged to cover the processing costs associated with credit card payments. Please note that this fee does not apply to other payment methods such as ACH or debit cards.' On a 30-truck fleet at the reviewer-reported $47.70 per driver, that surcharge is roughly $43/month, or about $515/year, purely for the payment rail. Late payment is separately penalised: undisputed past-due amounts carry a finance charge of 'the higher of 15% or $10'.
Implementation and onboarding. Professional Services are a named, separately-purchased line item in the Terms ('Hardware or Professional Services purchased, unless otherwise provided in the Order Form, will have a nonrenewable term') and are governed by a separate Professional Service Terms and Conditions document. But no price or scope is published. Ask for the Professional Services SOW and its dollar figure in writing before signing, and ask whether install is self-serve. One Capterra reviewer treats self-install as the single biggest advantage, which implies paid install is the default offer for some buyers.
Minimum term. Not published, and deliberately so. The Terms set no floor themselves: 'The contract term associated with the applicable Subscriptions are listed in the applicable Order Form(s) ("Subscription Term")'. The only term the Terms do fix is the renewal length, which is twelve months. One App Store reviewer describes being sold a two-year initial term ('locking us into a lucrative 2 year contract'), so the initial term is negotiable upward as well as downward and is whatever the salesperson writes on the Order Form.
Getting out. You owe the whole rest of the term. Verbatim from section 8.3, Customer Early Termination: 'If Customer chooses to discontinue, cancel or terminate any Services, Order Forms, or these Terms before the end of the applicable Subscription Term, Customer must provide notice at least thirty (30) days prior to the proposed termination date. In such an event of early termination, Motive will invoice Customer or charge Customer's authorized credit card and Customer will pay any balance due for the remainder of the applicable full Subscription Term, including any agreed upon Replacement Fees and Restoration Fees.' Section 7.1 adds 'All fees are non-refundable unless otherwise set forth in these Terms and are not subject to set-off by Customer.' There is no seasonal-downsize relief and no clause for parking a truck.
Auto-renewal. Automatic, annual, and the notice window is the trap. Verbatim: the Subscription Term 'will automatically renew at the end of the Subscription Term for successive renewal periods of twelve (12) months, each a separate renewed Subscription Term, at the renewal rate (if any) listed in the applicable order form(s), unless Customer provides at least thirty (30) days' written notice of non-renewal prior to the date of contract expiration/termination date by contacting Motive at support@gomotive.com or 855-434-3564.' Two details bite. First, the renewal price is 'the renewal rate (if any) listed in the applicable order form(s)' - if your Order Form names no renewal rate, nothing in the Terms caps what you are renewed at. Second, miss the 30-day window and section 8.3 immediately applies, so you are not late by a month, you are committed for another twelve.
Modules sold separately. , , , . But the entry tier is not the price you'll pay. Add the modules your shop needs on day one and compare Motive on that total.
Third-party services you will also pay for. , . These are not on Motive's invoice, and they are still part of what this decision costs you every month.
"Third-party reporting puts Motive at $47.70 per driver per month, reported 2025-02-18."
$47.70 per driver, per an owner-operator who says he used Motive for five years. Verbatim: 'They charge $47.70 per driver, while there are much more affordable alternatives, including options for as low as $25 per driver.' Verified present in the raw App Store RSS JSON. (2-18)
And this is the kind of thing you only find by reading the complaints. Motive's Terms of Service are a shell whose every commercial term defers to a private Order Form, while every mechanic that costs the buyer money is fixed in the public document. Price: 'set forth in the agreed Order Form'. Term length: 'listed in the applicable Order Form(s)'. Renewal price: 'the renewal rate (if any) listed in the applicable order form(s)'. But 12-month auto-renewal, the 30-day notice window, full remaining-term liability on early exit, non-refundable fees, no set-off, a 60-day invoice-dispute deadline and the 2.99% card surcharge are all locked in public. A buyer walks into the sales call knowing none of what they'll pay and all of what they can't escape. So invert it: the negotiable surface is the Order Form, so every protection you want (downsize clause, renewal-rate cap, post-termination data window, capped Replacement Fees) has to be written onto that document. Nothing you're told on the call survives unless it lands there.
The Motive line items nobody mentions
The subscription is the part everyone quotes. These are the lines that land afterwards, and the ones we could not find are named as unpublished rather than left blank.
Sold separately. , , , . Price the configuration you'll really run, because an add-on you need on day one is part of the price.
Third-party services you'll also pay for. , . None of these are on Motive's invoice, and all of them are part of what this decision costs every month.
"Motive answers the question of what it costs with this and nothing else: "Motive publishes no price anywhere on its own site. https://gomotive.com/pricing/ does not render a pricing page at all: it returns HTTP 301 to https://gomotive.com/get-in-touch?id=pricing, which 301s again to https://gomotive.com/get-in-touch/?id=pricing, a lead-capture form. That destination page still carries the title 'Motive Pricing | ELD | Dash Cam | Motive' and the meta description 'With Motive, minimize violations, boost productivity, decrease audit risk, and lower insurance costs all-in-one fleet management platform.' A grep of its raw HTML for any dollar figure returns zero matches. The vendor's own contract language explains where the number actually lives.""
Motive pricing page (2026)
"Motive does not state a billing unit anywhere public. The Terms of Service push the entire commercial basis into the per-customer Order Form and never name a unit. The only unit language available comes from buyers, who describe it as PER DRIVER ('They charge $47.70 per driver'), which is a materially different meter from the per-vehicle model used by Azuga, Linxup and Fleetio. For a contractor, the distinction is expensive: a truck shared across two shifts is one vehicle but two drivers. The Terms do confirm one hard mechanic regardless of unit: mid-term additions do not get their own clock. 'Notwithstanding the foregoing, regardless of when additional purchases are made throughout the Subscription Term, all subsequent orders for Subscription Services will terminate on the same date as the then current Initial or Renewal Order Form.' So a unit added in month eleven is co-terminated at month twelve and then swept into the next full 12-month renewal."
Motive pricing page (2026)
"Motive is reported at $47.70 per driver per month as of 2025-02-18."
$47.70 per driver, per an owner-operator who says he used Motive for five years. Verbatim: 'They charge $47.70 per driver, while there are much more affordable alternatives, including options for as low as $25 per driver.' Verified present in the raw App Store RSS JSON. (2-18)
The five workflows you pay for
Feature totals are noise. So a shop in this category lives or dies on five things, and those are the five to grade, and each one below carries the evidence it's graded on.
This is the product's spine, and it's what contractors are buying Motive began life as KeepTruckin, an ELD vendor. And the compliance workflow is the most mature thing in the platform. Drivers run duty status on a phone app rather than a fixed in-cab screen, which several reviewers cite as the reason they switched. DOT familiarity is a real, repeatedly-mentioned advantage at roadside: one administrator notes 'DOT is very familiar with this system and have had no trouble getting info downloaded to them during an inspection.' But the Terms are blunt that the compliance obligation stays yours regardless: 'it is Customer's sole responsibility to maintain compliance standards for IFTA filing and FMCSA Hours of Service of drivers.'
The clearest ROI story for contractors is liability defence, not coaching Motive leads its own marketing with 'Driver Safety' and 'AI Vision' ahead of fleet management, and the reviews that read as genuinely enthusiastic are exculpatory: a construction General Foreman describes the camera as 'my back up' when a near-miss was beyond her control. That's the contractor use case - defending against a claim rather than improving a score. But the friction is on the driver side, where the same feature reads as surveillance and false positives are common: the same reviewer complains the system tells her to buckle up when she's already belted, and flags following distance when she's deliberately opening a gap in traffic. On 2025-09-17, a general foreman, construction, 6-12 months on the platform, reports it: "I like that several times when there was a possible circumstance beyond my control, that could have lead to an accident(but did not) the camera is there to be my back up!"
Labour data flows out to payroll; job costing largely doesn't flow anywhere The integrations that exist move DRIVER TIME into payroll systems, not COSTS into job-cost ledgers. ADP takes driver records, logs and timecards one way out of Motive. Trimble Viewpoint Vista exports 'Motive HOS logs/timecards into Vista to automate payroll processing and validate labor costs' and mirrors equipment profiles back. NetSuite is the deepest two-way connector, turning DVIRs into work orders and reflecting status back. QuickBooks Online, which is what most contractors under $10M run, is still a Beta connector that only syncs drivers and HOS. And if your question is 'what did this truck cost me on the Henderson job', Motive isn't answering it natively.
Every commercial term you care about lives on the Order Form, not in the public Terms The Terms of Service are unusually explicit about being a shell around a private document. Price is 'set forth in the agreed Order Form'. Term length is 'listed in the applicable Order Form(s)'. Renewal price is 'the renewal rate (if any) listed in the applicable order form(s)'. Even the payment schedule is deferred. But what the Terms DO fix, and fix against you, are the mechanics: 12-month auto-renewal, 30-day non-renewal notice, full remaining-term liability on early exit, non-refundable fees, no set-off, co-termination of mid-term additions, a 2.99% card surcharge, and a 60-day deadline to dispute an invoice. So that asymmetry is the single most useful thing a buyer can know going into the call.
A 99.99% SLA that measures dashboard login and nothing else Motive publishes a real, tiered SLA - rare in this category and worth credit. It warrants 'a Monthly Uptime Percentage... of at least 99.99% during any calendar month', with service credits scaling from 10% (below 99.99%) to 50% (below 90%). But the measurement is narrow: uptime is the percentage of minutes 'in which Customer is unable to log into the Motive Fleet Dashboard', with Hardware failures explicitly excluded and pushed to the unreadable Hardware Terms. And claims must be emailed to support with 'SLA Credit Request' in the subject line within 60 days or by the end of the second billing cycle, whichever is shorter, and failure to file in that format 'will disqualify Customer from receiving a Service Level Credit.'
How Motive lands by trade
Fit differs by trade rather than by company size alone, and a blended paragraph hides that. Here is the split for the trades this one sells to.
Cross-trade. The workflow that decides it is this is the product's spine, and it's what contractors are buying, and the shop profile that gets value is large commercial or utilities contractor, 75+ mixed trucks and heavy equipment, with an erp already in place doing commercial and service work. Where it stops being a fit is A residential contractor with two to eight light-duty trucks or vans that aren't DOT-regulated and never cross a scale.
The Motive integration that decides everything else
Intuit QuickBooks Online connects both ways, on every plan. Intuit QuickBooks (Motive Card transactions) connects one way only, so edits made in your books do not come back, gated to a higher tier. NetSuite connects both ways, on every plan. Trimble Viewpoint Vista connects both ways, on every plan. ADP connects one way only, so edits made in your books do not come back, on every plan. Your costs map through cost codes, so test yours against your own chart of accounts before you commit. A code your books don't recognise is how a labour charge quietly lands somewhere useless.
Past those, the road ends. Sage / Sage Intacct, Xero, Acumatica, Foundation Software, QuickBooks Desktop / Enterprise do not connect. So if your books run on an ERP rather than the platforms named above, weigh that before anything else.
Beyond accounting it connects to Motive App Marketplace (whole directory) (399 apps, counted rather than estimated: the listing footer reads '1 - 24 of 399' and crawling all 17 pages yields exactly 399 unique /app/ slugs. Categories are Visibility, TMS, Maintenance, Safety, Motive Card, Fuel, Compliance, Navigation, Insurance, OEM and Other. Note there's no Accounting category.), OEM telematics (John Deere JDLink, Komatsu KOMTRAX, Caterpillar VisionLink, Stellantis) (Direct OEM equipment feeds, which is the genuinely differentiated part of the directory for contractors running yellow iron alongside trucks.), Amazon Relay (Direct load-board and carrier integration for fleets hauling Amazon freight.), Insurance carriers (Acuity, AmWINS Special Risk Underwriters, AMCOM Insurance Services) (A dedicated 'Insurance' marketplace category, which supports Motive's core pitch that telematics data lowers premiums.). A public API exists: A public REST API with a self-serve developer portal and an API Reference. The portal states 'Whether you are a developer or customer, our APIs let you create high-quality apps or integrations' and offers 'Sign up for a free developer account'. A free developer account is not the same as production access on your plan, and the Terms bind API use to a separate API Terms of Service (referenced at section 14.1, hosted at https://gomotive.com/legal/api-terms-of-service/). The Terms also define an 'API Key' as something 'Customer can use or share with a third party for access, collection, and use of Customer Data', so third-party middleware is contemplated. No published rate limits were found and no statement was found confirming API access is included at every price point.
What happens when Motive breaks
Support is the line item nobody prices and everybody eventually needs. Motive publishes no onboarding fee either way, so ask what is included at your tier and what is billed hourly after go-live.
A dot safety and compliance manager, logistics and supply chain, 6-12 months on the platform, writes it plainly: "The only Con from me for Motive was it is very hard to get ahold of a live customer service agent. They always wanted you to use AI chats."
What happens when you want to leave Motive
Nobody reads this section before they buy, and it's the one that costs money afterwards. Four terms decide what leaving looks like.
Minimum term. Not published, and deliberately so. The Terms set no floor themselves: 'The contract term associated with the applicable Subscriptions are listed in the applicable Order Form(s) ("Subscription Term")'. The only term the Terms do fix is the renewal length, which is twelve months. One App Store reviewer describes being sold a two-year initial term ('locking us into a lucrative 2 year contract'), so the initial term is negotiable upward as well as downward and is whatever the salesperson writes on the Order Form.
Auto-renewal. Automatic, annual, and the notice window is the trap. Verbatim: the Subscription Term 'will automatically renew at the end of the Subscription Term for successive renewal periods of twelve (12) months, each a separate renewed Subscription Term, at the renewal rate (if any) listed in the applicable order form(s), unless Customer provides at least thirty (30) days' written notice of non-renewal prior to the date of contract expiration/termination date by contacting Motive at support@gomotive.com or 855-434-3564.' Two details bite. First, the renewal price is 'the renewal rate (if any) listed in the applicable order form(s)' - if your Order Form names no renewal rate, nothing in the Terms caps what you are renewed at. Second, miss the 30-day window and section 8.3 immediately applies, so you are not late by a month, you are committed for another twelve.
Early termination. You owe the whole rest of the term. Verbatim from section 8.3, Customer Early Termination: 'If Customer chooses to discontinue, cancel or terminate any Services, Order Forms, or these Terms before the end of the applicable Subscription Term, Customer must provide notice at least thirty (30) days prior to the proposed termination date. In such an event of early termination, Motive will invoice Customer or charge Customer's authorized credit card and Customer will pay any balance due for the remainder of the applicable full Subscription Term, including any agreed upon Replacement Fees and Restoration Fees.' Section 7.1 adds 'All fees are non-refundable unless otherwise set forth in these Terms and are not subject to set-off by Customer.' There is no seasonal-downsize relief and no clause for parking a truck.
Payment processing. Paying by credit card costs extra. Verbatim from Terms of Service section 7.3: 'A credit card processing fee of no more than 2.99% will be applied to all credit card transactions. This fee is charged to cover the processing costs associated with credit card payments. Please note that this fee does not apply to other payment methods such as ACH or debit cards.' On a 30-truck fleet at the reviewer-reported $47.70 per driver, that surcharge is roughly $43/month, or about $515/year, purely for the payment rail. Late payment is separately penalised: undisputed past-due amounts carry a finance charge of 'the higher of 15% or $10'.
A tangent, but stay with it. Three clauses compound into a genuine trap that no single clause creates. Section 8.1 co-terminates every mid-term addition onto your existing Order Form date, so a truck added in month eleven is billed to month twelve and then swept into a fresh twelve-month renewal. Section 8.3 charges the full remainder of the term on any cancellation. Section 8.4 releases Motive from any obligation to keep your data on the way out. Add a growing fleet and the practical effect is that your renewal date never moves, your exit cost never drops below a full year, and your records may not survive the departure. A growing contractor is never between contracts and therefore never has leverage at renewal. So build your own export habit from month one, and negotiate the post-termination data window before you sign rather than at the moment you want to leave, when you have none.
"Motive is reported at $47 per driver per month as of 2025-02-18."
$47 per driver. The SAME reviewer (App Store handle Ilim_2009) posted the same review to the Motive Fleet app two minutes apart and wrote '$47' there instead of '$47.70'. Both strings are verified in the raw RSS JSON. The conflict is left visible rather than resolved: one of the two is the reviewer's own rounding, and there is no vendor figure to arbitrate against. (2-18)
"I advise against using MOTIVE as an ELD provider because I have used their services for five years and found their prices excessively high. They charge $47.70 per driver, while there are much more affordable alternatives, including options for as low as $25 per driver. Additionally, when you subscribe to their services, your contract is automatically renewed for another year. If you wish to cancel your subscription, you must notify them at least one month before your current contract ends. For example, if your contract expires in December, you need to call them in November; otherwise, you will be forced to pay for the following year, even if you are not using their service. Many people do not read the contracts when signing up, and their agreement states that the contract will renew annually. If you do not inform them in advance about your cancellation, they will continue charging you. Based on this, I strongly advise against using this company as an ELD provider."
Apple App Store (Motive Driver), Ilim_2009 (2-18)
"The one thing I don't like about motive is their financial tactics. They'll tell you a great price, but they failed to inform you that you have to pay a lump sum fee."
Capterra, Joel S. (9-29)
The Motive problems that survive onboarding
What follows came from reading the review corpus by complaint type rather than by star rating, which is how you find the disqualifying detail buried in a five-star review.
Leaving early costs you the entire rest of the term, and there's no clause for a truck that stops working Section 8.3 doesn't prorate and doesn't cap. Cancel in month three of twelve and you still pay months four through twelve, plus Replacement Fees and Restoration Fees. And section 7.1 blocks any set-off. For a contractor this is worse than it looks, because fleet size is seasonal and truck uptime isn't guaranteed. A roofing or paving outfit that parks six trucks for winter keeps paying for six trucks. The App Store review from a single-truck operator who was hospitalised after a six-truck accident is the clean illustration: he concedes 'Technically I guess they did nothing wrong', which is exactly the point - the clause worked as written. A single-truck owner-operator, writing on 2025-06-26, describes it: "I was recently on a contract with motive using their ELD and camera package. I was involved in a pretty serious six truck accident where I have multiple broken bones. I only have one truck so the company was temporarily shut down while I healed. I paid the monthly bill the first couple of months, but tried to explain to motive that I was unable to make the payments as my business just started, and I'm unable to work. After explaining that's a little bit of money that I had was all that I had for food in my home bills and even had money sent from family. They continue to take the payment out. I understand that I had a contract, but at some point, you have to have a heart and I know that there's no heart in business however two or three months of service when it's not even being used it's not that much to you guys, however, it meant the world to me. Technically I guess they did nothing wrong. I just expected a little bit of compassion. I would never use this company again and I advise anyone reading this not to also." Before signing, ask for a written seasonal-suspension or fleet-downsize amendment on the Order Form, since the base Terms contain neither. And ask specifically what happens to billing on a truck that's sold, totalled or parked, and get the answer added to the Order Form rather than promised on a call.
The two fees you're most exposed to on exit are defined in a document that won't load Sections 14.21 and 14.22 define 'Replacement Fee' and 'Restoration Fee' purely by pointer: both say the meaning is 'set forth in the Hardware Terms and Warranty' at https://gomotive.com/legal/hardware-terms/. That page returns HTTP 403 behind a JavaScript browser challenge ('Checking your browser...') to both direct requests and automated fetches, while the main Terms of Service at the sibling URL serves fine. So the clause that lets Motive charge your card on file (section 7.3 authorises charging 'any required fees, including any processing fees, Replacement Fees and/or Restoration Fees') references amounts a prospective buyer can't read before signing. And the same document also governs hardware warranty and is explicitly carved out of the 99.99% SLA. Ask your rep to email the Hardware Terms and Warranty as a PDF. And ask for the actual dollar amount of a Replacement Fee per device and a Restoration Fee before you sign. Treat 'it's on the website' as a non-answer, because it isn't reachable.
No published price, no free trial, no free tier, and no unit of measure you can budget against The vendor's /pricing/ URL is a 301 to a lead form and its raw HTML contains zero dollar figures. Capterra's pricing tab reads 'Contact vendor' with free trial 'Not available'. That leaves buyers unable to compare Motive against Azuga, Linxup or Fleetio, all of which publish a per-vehicle rate card. Worse, the billing unit itself is unstated: the only unit language in existence comes from reviewers describing a PER DRIVER charge, and a per-driver meter prices a two-shift truck at double a per-vehicle competitor. Two reviewers separately describe price surprises after the sales conversation. A driver, transportation/trucking/railroad who reviewed it on 2024-09-29 says: "The one thing I don't like about motive is their financial tactics. They'll tell you a great price, but they failed to inform you that you have to pay a lump sum fee." Make the rep put the billing UNIT in writing on the Order Form (per driver, per vehicle or per device), then re-run the quote at your real headcount rather than your truck count. And ask in the same email what the renewal rate is, because section 8.1 renews you at 'the renewal rate (if any) listed in the applicable order form(s)' and an Order Form with no renewal rate has no cap.
Paying the way most small contractors pay adds a 2.99% surcharge Section 7.3 applies 'a credit card processing fee of no more than 2.99%... to all credit card transactions' and explicitly exempts ACH and debit. So contractors who put software on a business credit card for the points or the float are paying a premium for it. On a 30-unit fleet at the reviewer-reported $47.70 per driver, that's roughly $515 a year on top of subscription, hardware and any Professional Services. Late payment is separately penalised at 'the higher of 15% or $10' on undisputed past-due amounts, and Motive may suspend service and start a termination-for-cause clock. Set up ACH before the first invoice, not after. And budget the 2.99% into your comparison if you intend to pay by card, because competitors publishing a $25/vehicle rate aren't adding it.
Driver-side app reliability is the loudest recurring complaint, and the SLA doesn't cover it The Motive Driver app carries a 4.40 average across 11,562 US ratings, and the most recent one-star reviews cluster hard on Bluetooth drops, failure to reconnect after a stop, and being stuck in drive mode unable to change duty status. That last one is a compliance exposure rather than a nuisance: a driver who can't change status accrues an HOS violation. Meanwhile the Service Level Agreement warrants 99.99% uptime measured only as 'the percentage of minutes during the month in which Customer is unable to log into the Motive Fleet Dashboard', explicitly excluding Hardware failures, and section 9.4 disclaims responsibility for connectivity carriers. So the thing that breaks is precisely the thing the SLA doesn't measure. A driver, App version 106.0 on the platform, writing on 2026-08-02, describes it: "DONT BUY THIS FOR YOUR FLEET! It disconnects from your headset, even during calls. Your camera will yell at you if you don't leave the app running in the background of your phone every 10 minutes. Sometimes you get stuck and drive mode and can't change your status. Overall, this is the worst ELD I've had so far. I've contemplated leaving my job because of it." Pilot on five trucks across your worst coverage areas for a full month before signing a fleet-wide term, and log every duty-status failure. And ask what remedy exists for HOS violations caused by device disconnects, because the SLA's only remedy is a service credit against dashboard downtime.
Construction-standard accounting is absent from a 399-app marketplace, and the QuickBooks connector is still labelled Beta Motive's App Marketplace lists exactly 399 apps (page footer reads '1 - 24 of 399'; crawling all 17 pages yields 399 unique app slugs). So crawl those slugs for accounting and ERP names and you get five: adp, intuit-quickbooks-online-beta, motive-card-integration-with-intuit-quickbooks, netsuite and trimble-viewpoint-vista. There's no Sage, no Sage Intacct, no Xero, no Acumatica and no Foundation Software - the last being the job-cost package a large share of mid-size construction firms run. And the one QuickBooks connector that syncs labour data is titled 'Intuit QuickBooks Online (Beta)' on the vendor's own marketplace and is filed under the catch-all category 'Other'. The marketplace's category list (Visibility, TMS, Maintenance, Safety, Motive Card, Fuel, Compliance, Navigation, Insurance, OEM, Other) has no accounting category at all, which tells you where this product's centre of gravity sits. If you run Sage, Xero, Acumatica or Foundation, price a CSV export process or middleware into the total cost. And ask Motive for the Beta connector's GA date and support commitment in writing before you build payroll on it.
On termination Motive has no obligation to keep your data, and there's no published export path Section 8.4 states that on expiry or termination 'Motive will have no obligation to maintain Customer Data and may delete any copies of Customer Data.' No retention window is named, no export tool is promised, and the Terms grant no post-termination access period. That's a live problem for a contractor: HOS logs, DVIRs and IFTA records are the documents a DOT audit asks for. And the audit can arrive after you've switched vendors. Motive's Help Center, which is where any export instructions would live, returns HTTP 403 to automated requests, so the export procedure couldn't be verified. Negotiate a written post-termination data-retention and export window onto the Order Form. And independently export HOS logs, DVIRs and IFTA reports on a standing schedule while you're still a customer. Don't assume you can pull records after the account closes.
Support routes to AI chat first, and reaching a person is a recurring complaint across both channels A DOT Safety and Compliance Manager on Capterra says the only downside was that 'it is very hard to get ahold of a live customer service agent. They always wanted you to use AI chats.' App Store reviews echo it in harsher terms, including one buyer who says he called fifty times over a two-month billing dispute. Support quality isn't uniformly bad - several reviewers praise 24/7 phone support - but the variance is wide. And the complaint concentrates on billing and cancellation cases, which are exactly the ones with a 30-day contractual deadline attached. A dot safety and compliance manager, logistics and supply chain who reviewed it on 2025-12-08 reports it: "The only Con from me for Motive was it is very hard to get ahold of a live customer service agent. They always wanted you to use AI chats." Get your rep's direct line and a named account manager in writing at signing. And send any non-renewal notice by email to support@gomotive.com with a read receipt at least 45 days out, not 30. The Terms require written notice; a chat transcript is a weak record.
One more thing worth knowing. The two fees that early termination exposes you to are unreadable by design. Sections 14.21 and 14.22 define 'Replacement Fee' and 'Restoration Fee' only by pointer to the Hardware Terms and Warranty, and section 8.3 makes both payable on early exit while section 7.3 lets Motive charge them straight to a card on file without an invoice. That Hardware Terms page returns HTTP 403 behind a JavaScript browser challenge, while the main Terms of Service at the sibling URL on the same domain serves a full 397KB of text without issue. You can't price your own exit before you sign. So demand the Hardware Terms as a PDF and a per-device dollar figure for both fees in writing, and treat 'it's on our website' as a non-answer, because for a prospective buyer it isn't.
One more thing worth knowing. Motive is the only vendor in this comparison set whose billing UNIT is unknown, and that's a bigger deal than the missing dollar figure. Azuga, Fleetio and Linxup all publish per-vehicle or per-tracker rates. Geotab bills per subscribed vehicle. But Motive's Terms name no unit at all, and the only unit language in existence is reviewers describing a charge 'per driver'. A per-driver meter and a per-vehicle meter produce identical quotes for a one-shift fleet and wildly different ones for a two-shift fleet or a contractor with a spare-driver pool. Never compare a Motive quote to a competitor's rate card without normalising the unit first. So ask the rep to state the billing unit in writing, then recompute at your driver count and your vehicle count separately. A utilities or delivery contractor running two shifts could be paying roughly double the headline comparison without anyone misquoting anything.
Side note, and it's a useful one: motive's negative reviews split cleanly into two populations that never overlap, and only one of them is the buyer. Drivers on the App Store complain about the device: Bluetooth drops, failure to reconnect, being stuck in drive mode unable to change duty status. Administrators and owners on Capterra complain about the contract: surprise billing, no refund on cancellation, an undisclosed lump sum, boxes they couldn't stop paying for. And the 4.5-star Capterra average and the 4.40 App Store average both conceal this, because the two complaint sets average against different praise. Reading only Capterra hides the compliance risk (a driver who can't change duty status accrues an HOS violation) and reading only the App Store hides the procurement risk. So pilot on real trucks in your worst coverage area to test the first, and have a lawyer read section 8 to test the second. Neither problem shows up in a demo.
The Motive review corpus, read by complaint
Every quote below is transcribed from a published review, named to the platform that carries it and to the reviewer as that platform displays them. We read the corpus by complaint type rather than by star rating, which is how the disqualifying detail buried inside a five-star review gets found.
"I advise against using MOTIVE as an ELD provider because I have used their services for five years and found their prices excessively high. They charge $47.70 per driver, while there are much more affordable alternatives, including options for as low as $25 per driver. Additionally, when you subscribe to their services, your contract is automatically renewed for another year. If you wish to cancel your subscription, you must notify them at least one month before your current contract ends. For example, if your contract expires in December, you need to call them in November; otherwise, you will be forced to pay for the following year, even if you are not using their service. Many people do not read the contracts when signing up, and their agreement states that the contract will renew annually. If you do not inform them in advance about your cancellation, they will continue charging you. Based on this, I strongly advise against using this company as an ELD provider."
And an owner (review title: "owner"), 5 years on the platform, writing on 2025-02-18, writes the same thing on Apple App Store (Motive Driver)
"Horrible customer service. Trying to cancel the subscription and they won't refund me for the months that I won't be using their service."
A driver, transportation/trucking/railroad who reviewed it on 2025-04-08 puts it on Capterra
"The one thing I don't like about motive is their financial tactics. They'll tell you a great price, but they failed to inform you that you have to pay a lump sum fee."
A driver, transportation/trucking/railroad who reviewed it on 2024-09-29 says on Capterra
"Would not cancel boxes we don't use, surprise billing. Read up on BBC about them. Awful"
And a driver, automotive, 2+ years on the platform, writing on 2024-10-18, puts it the same thing on Capterra
"I was recently on a contract with motive using their ELD and camera package. I was involved in a pretty serious six truck accident where I have multiple broken bones. I only have one truck so the company was temporarily shut down while I healed. I paid the monthly bill the first couple of months, but tried to explain to motive that I was unable to make the payments as my business just started, and I'm unable to work. After explaining that's a little bit of money that I had was all that I had for food in my home bills and even had money sent from family. They continue to take the payment out. I understand that I had a contract, but at some point, you have to have a heart and I know that there's no heart in business however two or three months of service when it's not even being used it's not that much to you guys, however, it meant the world to me. Technically I guess they did nothing wrong. I just expected a little bit of compassion. I would never use this company again and I advise anyone reading this not to also."
But a single-truck owner-operator, writes it differently on Apple App Store (Motive Fleet)
"The only Con from me for Motive was it is very hard to get ahold of a live customer service agent. They always wanted you to use AI chats."
On 2025-12-08, a dot safety and compliance manager, logistics and supply chain, 6-12 months on the platform, says on Capterra
"DONT BUY THIS FOR YOUR FLEET! It disconnects from your headset, even during calls. Your camera will yell at you if you don't leave the app running in the background of your phone every 10 minutes. Sometimes you get stuck and drive mode and can't change your status. Overall, this is the worst ELD I've had so far. I've contemplated leaving my job because of it."
A driver who reviewed it on 2026-08-02 writes on Apple App Store (Motive Driver)
"I can't believe this is even allowed by DOT. It's horrible and is constantly having issues connecting. Seems like a test run in a BETA version. Go into an office or truck stop, it may or may not reconnect. When it does the little reset button doesn't do anything. Gotta unplug wait until the damn battery dies and try again. I miss our old Omnitracs. They were far more reliable and stable. I haven't used customer support as I don't have time in my run to deal with that. And who wants to waste their off time troubleshooting a junky gadget. I can't believe a large company like FedEx would mandate this POS."
A driver, App version 104.0 on the platform, writing on 2026-06-01, reports it on Apple App Store (Motive Driver)
"biggest con is we run a lot of new york state toll roads and on ifta reports print out they do not break down toll miles vs regular road miles, just gives a total for the state. so drivers still have to manually keep a written record of toll miles. If you look at their faq page there it says they do but you have to go thru each trip, for each truck, each day. who has time to do that? customer service told us that after we called them on it."
But an administrator, transportation/trucking/railroad, 1-2 years on the platform, says it differently on Capterra
"I like that several times when there was a possible circumstance beyond my control, that could have lead to an accident(but did not) the camera is there to be my back up!"
But a general foreman, construction, 6-12 months on the platform, says it differently on Capterra
"one limitation we've encountered is the lack of flexibility in custom reporting. While the standard reports cover basic needs, they don't allow for deeper customization based on specific metrics or operational goals. Expanding this feature would make the platform even more powerful."
On 2025-07-17, a fleet dispatcher, utilities, 1-2 years on the platform, says on Capterra
"They sent the wrong wires for my ELD and waited a week to get someone to just send it out (still waiting). Nobody seems to know what they're doing and I don't understand why they can't send another wires and I'll send the other one back. I paid $600 for the year and it's already starting on a bad foot."
On 2026-07-03, a fleet buyer, App version 36.0 on the platform, describes it on Apple App Store (Motive Fleet)
"The biggest pro for me is the ability to self-install all Motive equipment in house and not deal with the headache of trying to schedule Motive, trucks and employees in the same place at the same time."
A transportation operations, transportation/trucking/railroad, 6-12 months on the platform, writing on 2023-03-21, puts it on Capterra
What else you should be pricing beside Motive
Alternatives a buyer would genuinely shortlist against Motive. Read the billing unit beside each figure rather than the figure on its own, because a per-seat price and a flat platform fee aren't comparable numbers.
| Tool | Entry price | Billing unit | Users included | Published? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Motive | Quote only | Custom quote | Motive does not state a billing unit anywhere public. The Te | No |
| Azuga | $25 | per vehicle per month | Unlimited office seats; billing is per vehicle, and seat sharing is contractually forbidden | Yes |
| Fleetio | $5 | per vehicle per month, billed monthly | Unlimited users on every tier | Yes |
| Linxup | $25 | per vehicle per month | Unlimited office seats; billing is per tracked device | Yes |
| Geotab | Quote only | per vehicle per month | Reported as unlimited users | No |
| Samsara | Quote only | per vehicle per month | Not published | No |
Azuga. You can see the number before you talk to anyone. Three published tiers ($25 BasicFleet, $30 SafeFleet, $35 CompleteFleet) with an AI SafetyCam add-on, and a per-VEHICLE meter that doesn't double-charge a truck run by two drivers. But Shallower FMCSA/ELD compliance depth than a vendor that started life as an ELD company, and a much smaller integration directory than Motive's 399 apps.
Fleetio. By far the cheapest entry point in this comparison and the strongest maintenance, work-order and cost-per-asset workflow. Unlimited users at every tier means dispatchers, mechanics and the bookkeeper cost nothing extra. But It's a fleet maintenance system first. ELD/HOS compliance and AI dashcam safety scoring aren't its centre, so a DOT-regulated contractor will likely still need a compliance vendor alongside it.
Linxup. Fully unbundled published rate card, so you buy only what you need: $25/vehicle GPS, $15/tracker for equipment and tools, $30/vehicle for the ELD package, $40/vehicle for AI dash cams. A non-DOT residential contractor can buy GPS alone and skip compliance entirely. But Dash cams aren't standalone (the pricing card notes a GPS tracking unit is required), so an AI-camera truck is $40 plus $25, and the platform is lighter on AI safety scoring and driver coaching than Motive.
Geotab. Deepest engine-data and telematics extensibility in the category, with a very large reseller and add-in ecosystem, and it's the usual choice for mixed heavy fleets that need custom data work. But Shares Motive's worst procurement traits and adds one: the MSA forbids reducing vehicle count mid-term ('Customer may not reduce the number of Subscription Plans purchased in an Order Form during a Subscription Plan Term') and confirms fees are non-cancelable. Bought through resellers, so pricing varies by who sells it to you.
Samsara. Motive's closest head-to-head competitor on AI dashcams, safety scoring and enterprise fleet breadth, and generally the other name on the shortlist when a contractor is evaluating Motive. But Publishes no per-unit price either. Its pricing page renders no per-vehicle dollar figure in raw HTML, so putting Motive and Samsara side by side still requires two sales calls and produces two non-comparable quotes.
"They sent the wrong wires for my ELD and waited a week to get someone to just send it out (still waiting). Nobody seems to know what they're doing and I don't understand why they can't send another wires and I'll send the other one back. I paid $600 for the year and it's already starting on a bad foot."
Apple App Store (Motive Fleet), Grubs thoughts (7-03)
"Horrible customer service. Trying to cancel the subscription and they won't refund me for the months that I won't be using their service."
Capterra, Makhmud B. (4-08)
Who should not buy Motive
Don't buy Motive if you're A residential contractor with two to eight light-duty trucks or vans that aren't DOT-regulated and never cross a scale. You're buying an ELD compliance platform to solve a GPS problem. Motive's entire value stack - HOS logging, IFTA fuel-tax reporting, DVIRs, FMCSA audit defence - is regulatory machinery you don't need, and you pay for it through a sales-quoted annual contract with full remaining-term liability. And Linxup publishes $25 per vehicle per month for GPS with no quote call, and its ELD package is a separate $30 line you can simply not buy. Look at Linxup instead.
Don't buy Motive if you're A contractor whose actual pain is maintenance scheduling, work orders and cost-per-mile on a mixed fleet of trucks, trailers and yellow iron. Motive's marketplace has no accounting category and its maintenance depth is secondary to safety and compliance. Fleetio publishes $5 per vehicle per month billed monthly, includes unlimited users at every tier, and is built around the maintenance and work-order workflow rather than around the ELD mandate. You also avoid the per-driver billing question entirely, since Fleetio's Terms state fees 'are based on the number of assets managed by Customer using the Services.' Look at Fleetio instead.
Don't buy Motive if you're Any contractor whose fleet size swings seasonally by more than about 20 percent, or who routinely sells and replaces trucks mid-year. Section 8.3 charges you the remainder of the full Subscription Term on anything you cancel, and section 8.1 co-terminates every mid-term addition onto the existing Order Form date, so a truck added in month eleven is billed to month twelve and then renewed for another twelve. There's no downsize clause anywhere in the Terms. So a landscaping, paving or snow-removal outfit that runs 30 trucks in July and 12 in January is buying 30 trucks of software for twelve months. Look at Azuga instead.
Don't buy Motive if you're A buyer who needs to compare three vendors on price this week and get a board or a partner to approve the number. There's no number to bring. Motive's pricing URL redirects to a lead-capture form, its raw HTML contains no dollar figure, Capterra's pricing tab reads 'Contact vendor', and there's no free trial to run in parallel. Every figure in circulation is a reviewer's recollection, and the two most-cited ones ($47.70 and $47 per driver) come from the same person on the same day. And if your process requires a published rate card, three of Motive's four closest competitors have one. Look at Azuga instead.
The verdict, by shop size
Non-DOT residential contractor, 2-8 light trucks or vans
No. You would be signing an auto-renewing annual contract with full remaining-term liability, a 2.99% card surcharge and no published price, to buy FMCSA compliance machinery you aren't subject to. There's no free trial to de-risk it and no free tier. Linxup publishes $25 per vehicle per month for exactly the GPS visibility you want. And you can buy it today without a sales call. So if your trucks never need an ELD, Motive is the wrong category, not just the wrong vendor. This band runs 2 to 8 on the crew, doing residential and service work, and that's the profile the recommendation is written for.
Contractor with a seasonal or volatile fleet, any size, where truck count swings 20%+ across the year
No. Section 8.3 makes every cancellation cost the remainder of the full Subscription Term, and section 8.1 co-terminates mid-term additions onto your existing Order Form date before renewing everything for another twelve months. Nothing in the Terms permits a seasonal downsize. So paving, landscaping and snow-removal outfits will pay peak-season headcount for twelve months. Get a written downsize amendment on the Order Form or buy a per-vehicle competitor with a published rate. This band runs undefined or more on the crew, doing commercial and service work, and that's the profile the recommendation is written for.
DOT-regulated commercial contractor, roughly 15-75 trucks, with a real compliance and insurance exposure
Only under conditions, and they are worth being honest about. This is the band where Motive earns its keep. The ELD lineage is genuine, DOT officers know the system at roadside, the AI dashcam has a documented liability-defence payoff (a construction General Foreman calls the camera 'my back up'), and the 399-app marketplace includes OEM feeds for John Deere, Komatsu and Cat that no general GPS vendor matches. But it's conditional on four things you must extract in writing: the billing UNIT (per driver versus per vehicle changes the bill materially), the renewal rate, the Hardware Terms PDF with actual Replacement and Restoration Fee amounts, and a downsize clause. And set up ACH to dodge the 2.99% surcharge, and diarise the non-renewal notice at 45 days, not 30. This band runs 15 to 75 on the crew, doing commercial and service work, and that's the profile the recommendation is written for.
Large commercial or utilities contractor, 75+ mixed trucks and heavy equipment, with an ERP already in place
Yes, and this is the shape the product is built for. At this size the procurement asymmetry stops mattering, because you have the leverage to redline the Order Form and the volume to make the quote competitive. You also get the parts of Motive that only pay off at scale: the two-way NetSuite connector that turns DVIRs into work orders, the Trimble Viewpoint Vista bridge into construction ERP payroll, OEM equipment telemetry, a genuine 99.99% SLA with tiered credits, and the Motive fleet card consolidating fuel spend. Still push the Hardware Terms and the renewal rate onto the Order Form before signature. This band runs 75 or more on the crew, doing commercial work, and that's the profile the recommendation is written for.
Contractor running Sage, Xero, Acumatica, Foundation Software or QuickBooks Desktop for job costing
Only under conditions, and they are worth being honest about. None of those five appear anywhere in the 399-app marketplace. And the only QuickBooks Online connector that moves labour data is still labelled Beta. You can absolutely run Motive alongside them, but budget for CSV exports or middleware and don't let a rep imply the job-cost handoff is native. So ask for the Beta connector's GA date in writing before you build payroll on it. This band runs undefined or more on the crew, doing commercial and residential work, and that's the profile the recommendation is written for.
Something adjacent to Motive, then we'll get out of your way
Before you go, one number from our own work. Fervor does conversion and web design for contractors, so we've no stake in which Motive competitor you pick.
Motive bills by the driver on an auto-renewing twelve-month term and charges the full remainder of that term if you leave early, so every truck a contractor adds is a fixed twelve-month bet that the truck stays booked. That bet is won or lost on the demand side, not in the cab: Fervor inspected the contractor sites in its index and found 61.3% carry a critical WCAG violation and 95.8% a serious one, most of them sitting in the quote form that's supposed to keep those trucks moving. And a form that silently fails for a keyboard or screen-reader user turns Motive's per-driver line item into a fixed cost running against a shrinking job count, with no downsize clause to fall back on.
But we can put a figure on it. Of 380 contractor sites we inspected, 82.8% loaded slowly enough that a quote form went unseen. And the method is public, because a number you cannot audit is not evidence. The workings are public in the Contractor CRO Index.
"82.8% of the 380 contractor websites inspected loaded slowly enough that a quote form went unseen."
Fervor Studio Contractor CRO Index (2026)
Buy the platform if it fits. But spend ten minutes on your own site first, on a phone, on mobile data, the way a homeowner would. The numbers are all public.
See where your site is losing the jobs Motive would have managed
Fervor inspects your site the way a homeowner uses it, then shows you where calls leak out. About three days.
Get a Site InspectionWhat we read on Motive, and what we couldn't get to
A word on limits. We read Motive's pages and its reviews, but we didn't operate it. So here's the basis. We read 14 vendor pages for Motive on 7 August 2026, and we went through the reviews looking for complaints rather than for averages. So each number carries the date it was read, and the page it was read from.
So: 13 quotes on this page, eight from Capterra, three from Apple App Store (Motive Driver) and two from Apple App Store (Motive Fleet).
And https://gomotive.com/legal/hardware-terms/ - HTTP 403, JavaScript browser challenge ('Checking your browser...'). Blocks both curl and WebFetch. This is where Replacement Fee and Restoration Fee are defined, so those amounts remain unknown., https://helpcenter.gomotive.com/hc/en-us - HTTP 403 to both curl and WebFetch. Data-export and account-closure articles couldn't be read., https://gomotive.com/marketplace/ and https://gomotive.com/app-marketplace/ - HTTP 403 (the working directory is on the marketplace subdomain)., https://www.softwareadvice.com/fleet-management/motive-profile/ and /keeptruckin-profile/ and /motive-formerly-keeptruckin-profile/ - HTTP 403 to curl; WebFetch resolved to 404 pages. No Software Advice profile located., https://www.getapp.com/transportation-logistics-software/a/motive/ and /keeptruckin/ - HTTP 403 to curl., G2 - not reachable; the vendor cites a G2 ranking on its own site but the source page blocks automated access. and TrustRadius, Trustpilot, Reddit - not reachable, per the standing pattern for these platforms. refused automated retrieval for Motive. Forum and social threads are the ones people most want quoted, and they are exactly the ones we cannot verify, so none of them are here.
What that leaves untested: the Motive Fleet Dashboard itself (requires a paid account).. And everything above is 14 vendor pages and a review corpus, which is documentary rather than hands-on.
What Motive users say
I advise against using MOTIVE as an ELD provider because I have used their services for five years and found their prices excessively high. They charge $47.70 per driver, while there are much more affordable alternatives, including options for as low as $25 per driver. Additionally, when you subscribe to their services, your contract is automatically renewed for another year. If you wish to cancel your subscription, you must notify them at least one month before your current contract ends. For example, if your contract expires in December, you need to call them in November; otherwise, you will be forced to pay for the following year, even if you are not using their service. Many people do not read the contracts when signing up, and their agreement states that the contract will renew annually. If you do not inform them in advance about your cancellation, they will continue charging you. Based on this, I strongly advise against using this company as an ELD provider.
Horrible customer service. Trying to cancel the subscription and they won't refund me for the months that I won't be using their service.
The one thing I don't like about motive is their financial tactics. They'll tell you a great price, but they failed to inform you that you have to pay a lump sum fee.
Would not cancel boxes we don't use, surprise billing. Read up on BBC about them. Awful
I was recently on a contract with motive using their ELD and camera package. I was involved in a pretty serious six truck accident where I have multiple broken bones. I only have one truck so the company was temporarily shut down while I healed. I paid the monthly bill the first couple of months, but tried to explain to motive that I was unable to make the payments as my business just started, and I'm unable to work. After explaining that's a little bit of money that I had was all that I had for food in my home bills and even had money sent from family. They continue to take the payment out. I understand that I had a contract, but at some point, you have to have a heart and I know that there's no heart in business however two or three months of service when it's not even being used it's not that much to you guys, however, it meant the world to me. Technically I guess they did nothing wrong. I just expected a little bit of compassion. I would never use this company again and I advise anyone reading this not to also.
The only Con from me for Motive was it is very hard to get ahold of a live customer service agent. They always wanted you to use AI chats.
DONT BUY THIS FOR YOUR FLEET! It disconnects from your headset, even during calls. Your camera will yell at you if you don't leave the app running in the background of your phone every 10 minutes. Sometimes you get stuck and drive mode and can't change your status. Overall, this is the worst ELD I've had so far. I've contemplated leaving my job because of it.
I can't believe this is even allowed by DOT. It's horrible and is constantly having issues connecting. Seems like a test run in a BETA version. Go into an office or truck stop, it may or may not reconnect. When it does the little reset button doesn't do anything. Gotta unplug wait until the damn battery dies and try again. I miss our old Omnitracs. They were far more reliable and stable. I haven't used customer support as I don't have time in my run to deal with that. And who wants to waste their off time troubleshooting a junky gadget. I can't believe a large company like FedEx would mandate this POS.
biggest con is we run a lot of new york state toll roads and on ifta reports print out they do not break down toll miles vs regular road miles, just gives a total for the state. so drivers still have to manually keep a written record of toll miles. If you look at their faq page there it says they do but you have to go thru each trip, for each truck, each day. who has time to do that? customer service told us that after we called them on it.
I like that several times when there was a possible circumstance beyond my control, that could have lead to an accident(but did not) the camera is there to be my back up!
one limitation we've encountered is the lack of flexibility in custom reporting. While the standard reports cover basic needs, they don't allow for deeper customization based on specific metrics or operational goals. Expanding this feature would make the platform even more powerful.
They sent the wrong wires for my ELD and waited a week to get someone to just send it out (still waiting). Nobody seems to know what they're doing and I don't understand why they can't send another wires and I'll send the other one back. I paid $600 for the year and it's already starting on a bad foot.
The biggest pro for me is the ability to self-install all Motive equipment in house and not deal with the headache of trying to schedule Motive, trucks and employees in the same place at the same time.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Motive cost?
Motive doesn't publish a price. The URL gomotive.com/pricing/ redirects to a lead-capture form, and that form's raw HTML contains no dollar figure at all. Capterra's pricing tab reads 'Contact vendor' with free trial 'Not available' and free version 'No'. The vendor's Terms of Service explain why: 'Customer will pay Motive the undisputed fees for the Services set forth in the agreed Order Form on the payment schedule set forth therein.' But the only figures in public circulation come from buyers. One owner-operator of five years reported $47.70 per driver per month in February 2025 and, confusingly, wrote $47 in a near-identical review posted two minutes later on the other Motive app. A separate single-unit buyer reported paying $600 for a year in July 2026. Treat all three as reviewer recollections, not rates.
Does Motive auto-renew, and how do I cancel?
Yes, automatically, for successive twelve-month periods. To stop it you must give 'at least thirty (30) days' written notice of non-renewal prior to the date of contract expiration' by contacting support@gomotive.com or 855-434-3564. Miss that window and you're committed for another full year. And cancelling mid-term is worse: section 8.3 requires 30 days' notice AND you 'will pay any balance due for the remainder of the applicable full Subscription Term, including any agreed upon Replacement Fees and Restoration Fees.' Section 7.1 makes fees non-refundable and blocks set-off. Diarise the notice date at 45 days out and send it by email so you have a written record.
Is there a fee for paying by credit card?
Yes. Terms of Service section 7.3 states 'A credit card processing fee of no more than 2.99% will be applied to all credit card transactions' and explicitly notes 'this fee does not apply to other payment methods such as ACH or debit cards.' On a 30-unit fleet at the reviewer-reported rate that's roughly $515 a year for nothing. So set up ACH before your first invoice. Separately, undisputed past-due amounts carry a finance charge of 'the higher of 15% or $10', and Motive may suspend service and begin a termination-for-cause process while you're late.
Does Motive integrate with QuickBooks?
Partly, and with two caveats. There are two separate connectors. The one that moves labour data is titled 'Intuit QuickBooks Online (Beta)' on Motive's own marketplace, is filed under the catch-all 'Other' category, and only syncs drivers and hours-of-service data for payroll. The second, 'Motive Card Integration With Intuit QuickBooks', pushes fleet-card purchases into QuickBooks but requires you to hold the Motive card. And there's no QuickBooks Desktop or Enterprise connector. Neither installs self-serve: both are request-and-wait. If you need genuine job costing, the deeper options are NetSuite (two-way, DVIRs become work orders) and Trimble Viewpoint Vista (two-way, HOS timecards into Vista payroll).
How many integrations does Motive have?
Exactly 399. The App Marketplace footer reads '1 - 24 of 399', and crawling all 17 listing pages returns 399 unique app entries, so this is a counted figure rather than a vendor estimate. The categories are Visibility, TMS, Maintenance, Safety, Motive Card, Fuel, Compliance, Navigation, Insurance, OEM and Other. The genuinely differentiated ones for contractors are the OEM equipment feeds (John Deere JDLink, Komatsu KOMTRAX, Caterpillar VisionLink, Stellantis). But the notable absence is accounting: there's no Accounting category at all, and no Sage, Xero, Acumatica or Foundation Software anywhere in the 399.
What happens to my ELD logs and DVIRs if I leave Motive?
Nothing is guaranteed. Terms of Service section 8.4 states that on expiry or termination 'Motive will have no obligation to maintain Customer Data and may delete any copies of Customer Data.' No retention window is named and no export tool is promised in the Terms. That's a genuine risk for a contractor, because a DOT audit can arrive after you've switched vendors and the records it asks for are the ones you just lost access to. Motive's Help Center, where export instructions would live, returns HTTP 403 to automated requests, so the export procedure couldn't be independently verified for this bank. So export HOS logs, DVIRs and IFTA reports on a standing schedule while you're still a paying customer, and negotiate a written post-termination access window onto the Order Form.
Does Motive have an uptime guarantee?
Yes, and it's better than most of this category. The Service Level Agreement (effective 31 December 2025) warrants 'a Monthly Uptime Percentage... of at least 99.99% during any calendar month', with service credits of 10% below 99.99%, 20% below 98%, 30% below 97%, 40% below 96% and 50% below 90%. Read the definition though: uptime is measured only as the minutes 'in which Customer is unable to log into the Motive Fleet Dashboard'. Hardware failures are excluded and pushed to the Hardware Terms, and section 9.4 disclaims responsibility for cellular and Bluetooth carriers. The failures drivers report, device disconnects and stuck duty status, fall outside what the SLA measures. And credits require a correctly formatted email claim within 60 days or by the end of the second billing cycle, whichever is shorter.
Is Motive the same company as KeepTruckin?
Yes. The legal entity is Motive Technologies, Inc., and the product was called KeepTruckin before a rebrand. You'll still see the old name in older reviews (one 2021 Capterra reviewer writes 'That is never the case with Keep Truckin') and in third-party directory URLs. And it matters when researching: some review-site profile slugs still use the old name, and some are dead, so the review pool is split across two identities and two app listings.
Freshness
How we keep this page current
Three dates govern this review, and they carry different meanings. The initial source sweep is dated August 7, 2026; when only part of the evidence set is recaptured later, that later date is stated beside the refreshed claim. We last revised the page on August 7, 2026. And the user reviews we quote were posted over roughly the last 24 months, so their individual dates remain part of the evidence instead of being overwritten by a later pricing update.
We revise the page when Motive changes a published price or a contract term, when a rating we cite moves by more than a few tenths, or when the vendor ships something big enough to change the verdict. We never bump the date just to look fresh, because Google treats that as manipulation and so do we. If a figure here reads as stale by the time you land on it, treat it as a floor and check the vendor's own page. We linked it at every number for exactly that reason.
Sourcing
How this review was researched
Every figure on this page traces to a captured source linked inline where it appears. The initial sweep is dated August 7, 2026; any later, partial recapture is dated at the claim rather than relabelling the whole evidence set. Ratings come from Capterra, GetApp, Software Advice and the Apple App Store. Note that Capterra, GetApp and Software Advice share one Gartner Digital Markets review pool, so an identical score across all three is a single sample rather than three corroborating ones, and this page treats it that way. G2, TrustRadius and Trustpilot block automated access, so where their numbers appear they are labelled as reported rather than verified. No claim here is sourced from Reddit or from a contractor Facebook group, because neither could be retrieved and quoting them would mean inventing attribution. Pricing marked as reported comes from third-party roundups, never from Fervor. Fervor's own findings come from the Contractor CRO Index 2026.
About
About Fervor Studio
Fervor Studio is a conversion rate optimization (CRO) and web design studio for home services contractors across North America, based in Cochrane, Alberta. Fervor does not sell field service management software and is not an alternative to Motive. It publishes the Contractor CRO Index, a public benchmark measuring contractor website conversion potential using reproducible, open-source methods such as axe-core and Google Lighthouse. Fervor Studio is operated by Fervor Group Inc.
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