Garage Hive or GarageRevs?

Garage Hive and GarageRevs are built for the same owner: the one who runs the garage as a business, is off the tools or heading there, and wants to know how the place is doing without standing in it. They get him there differently. Garage Hive gives you a long list of reports and all the data behind them, and a system the team gets used to over a few months. GarageRevs gives you the answers, presented properly, and a system the team runs from the first week.

This page says where Garage Hive wins, where GarageRevs does, what you get for the money with each, and how the move happens if you make it. Every Garage Hive price and term on it is checked against their own pages, and every claim can be tested on a demo of both.

Who this page is for

You run an independent garage as a business. You are off the tools, or heading there. You have several people on the desk, techs on tablets or about to be, and more staff coming as the garage grows. And you are either choosing between Garage Hive and GarageRevs, or already on Garage Hive and asking whether it is worth the money. If that is you, read on. If it is not, the right-hand list says so.

If you are in the second list, stay where you are. Garage Hive is the right system for that owner, and the rest of this page will not change that.

Where Garage Hive wins

Garage Hive is the most established system in the trade for the owner who runs the garage as a business, and plenty of owners on it would not move for anything. Where it is the better system, this page says so.

• More reports than most. Garage Hive runs on Microsoft Business Central, Microsoft’s general business software, with Power BI for the reports. There are a lot of them. If a long list of reports is what you want, and you have someone to work through them, they have it.
• The community. An owners’ group and an annual conference. If being part of that is part of why you are buying, Garage Hive is where it is.
• Parts suppliers. Garage Hive orders from more suppliers out of the job sheet than we do today. GarageRevs orders from GSF and NAPA, with more suppliers on the way, and puts any other supplier’s invoice onto the job photographed or from the PDF they emailed you.

Why owners on Garage Hive look elsewhere

Garage Hive owners are loyal, and the ones who leave are quiet about it. But in the trade groups the same three things come up, from owners who like the system as much as from owners who do not, and none of them is about features.

• 1 The team takes months to get used to it, and some never do. Owners on it call it a steep learning curve, say there is a lot of pain before any pleasure, and say the desk’s admin goes up, not down. For an owner trying to step back, a system the team is fighting three months in is three months he cannot leave the building.
• 2 The numbers are in there. Reading them is the work. Garage Hive has a report for most things, and most of them are a page of figures to read rather than an answer you get. The owners who love it say so themselves: it paid off once they understood the data. An owner who wants to know what each job made and whether the labour rate is right should not need a course to find out.
• 3 Every login is a Microsoft account, and every account is on the bill. Take on a tech, or a second person on the desk, and the number goes up. Owners report over £350 a month for one on the desk and three techs, and over £1,000 a month for bigger garages. As the garage grows, the software bill grows with it.

In owners’ own words

Posted in public UK trade groups by garage owners, most of them on Garage Hive at the time. Not testimonials, not staged. Names withheld out of respect for the people who posted; the sources are on file.

Four owners, one pattern: a system the team has to grow into, and a bill that grows with the team. The rest of this page is about the other way to do it.

“From £145 a month” is the first login, not the garage

Garage Hive’s pricing page says from £145 a month on a one-month rolling contract. The “from” is doing the work. The price is per user, through Microsoft accounts, so what your garage pays depends on how many people need their own login. Technical data is separate on both: on Garage Hive, Autodata is your own subscription with its own tiers, and HaynesPro is charged as you use it; on GarageRevs, HaynesPro is paid for by the lookup, in tokens, with the first 100 in the plan. Set-up and in-person training are charged on top too; owners put the training at a couple of grand. Before you sign, ask another garage your size what they actually pay a month, and what they paid to go live. Owners in the trade groups put it at over £350 for one on the desk and three techs, and over £1,000 for bigger garages.

The one-month rolling part is true of the base subscription. Two things from their terms are worth knowing before you sign. There is no refund if you cancel part way through: you pay to the end of the month or, on some services, the quarter. And leaving takes a signed cancellation form, not a button.

The same terms let Garage Hive end your account without giving a reason on six months’ notice. That is the kind of clause you find in big-company software, and it is fair to say nobody in the trade groups reports it being used. It is there, though, and you should know it is before you sign.

Garage Hive or GarageRevs, side by side

Not a feature-by-feature teardown. Features change, and Garage Hive has more of them. These are the things that decide whether a system runs the garage for you, checked against Garage Hive’s own pricing page on 10 September 2026 and their terms of service as published.

The team decides whether you can step back

Garage Hive’s own customers say the honest thing: the system pays off once the team has got used to it, and that takes a few months. For an owner who is already off the tools, those months are spent back in the building. The desk running slow, the techs finding reasons not to pick the tablet up, the question that lands on his phone because nobody could find the answer. A system the team works around is one you cannot step back from, however good the reports are.

So when you compare the two, put both in front of the desk and the techs, not just yourself. Ask each vendor to show a day on the desk, from the phone ringing to the invoice, on a garage like yours, and watch the people who will live in it. What a day on the desk looks like on GarageRevs is on its own page.

Live inside 14 days, not three months

Whichever system you pick, the changeover is where it goes right or wrong: the desk on new screens with the phones ringing, the techs on new tablets, and years of history from the old system coming across in one piece. Garage Hive’s own customers put the settling-in at about three months, with the on-site training charged on top.

On GarageRevs the move is planned before you commit. On the demo call we look at what you have now, say what comes across and what will not, and agree the day you go live. Your front desk and techs are trained in person at your own counter, on your own customers and cars, before that day, in the price. The history comes across in one piece and the workshop keeps invoicing throughout. Start to finish, inside 14 days.

Then you have 90 days to run it properly, month-end and all. If it is not right for your garage, every penny back and we help you export your data. Month to month from there, and no exit fee when you leave.

Whichever way you go, put the same questions to both of us. Our five questions to ask before you sign up to any garage management system cover the whole-garage price, how long you are tied in, taking your data with you, who trains the team, and seeing the Xero link work live.

If you are also looking at TechMan, our TechMan comparison covers a different kind of decision: a minimum term, a bill to get out early, and a clock that restarts. And our guide to what UK garage software costs covers what the “from” prices leave out, across the whole market.

Put both in front of your desk.

Book a demo and bring the one Garage Hive feature you could not run without. We will show you it working on a job sheet, or say straight out that we do not have it. Either way you will see a day on the desk, what you would see from home, and what the move looks like on a garage like yours. If Garage Hive is the better system for how you run the place, we will say so.