Weighing up leaving TechMan?

Most owners who leave TechMan are not short of features. They want a system the team runs without them standing over it, the numbers coming to them at home, and a contract they can walk away from.

This page says where GarageRevs is the better system for an independent run as a business, where TechMan holds its own, what paying more gets you, and how the move happens when you have years of history in the old system. Every claim on it can be checked on a demo of both.

Who this page is for

The owner running an independent garage as a business on TechMan. Off the tools, or heading there. Several people on the desk, techs who may or may not be on tablets, and either a Partner contract with months left on it or a Flexi plan you could leave next month. If that is you, read on. If it is not, the right-hand list says so.

Why owners leave TechMan

TechMan is well known in the trade and plenty of garages run on it. The owners who leave tend to say the same three things, in the trade groups and on the phone to us, and none of them is about features.

• 1 The contract is what keeps them, not the software. A minimum term, a bill to get out early, and a clock that owners say restarts when they add a module. Garages stay on a system they stopped trusting because leaving costs more than putting up with it. That is leverage, not loyalty.
• 2 The team has stopped using it properly. The desk works around it, the techs find reasons not to pick up the tablet, and the owner ends up back in the building checking on everyone. A system the team will not run is one the owner cannot step back from.
• 3 The garage has outgrown the plan it signed. Another person on the desk, the techs on tablets, health checks with photos going out to customers: on TechMan each of those sits on a higher tier than the one most garages signed, and moving up mid-term is reported to restart the term. The garage grows; the contract grows with it.

In owners’ own words

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

Four owners, one pattern: a long term, a bill to leave, and a doubt about whether the history really comes with you. The rest of this page is about what a system does instead.

Partner, Flexi, and the clock that restarts

TechMan has recently started selling every plan two ways. The Partner plan is a minimum-term agreement: no upfront fee, and a monthly price about 20% lower. The Flexi plan is 30-day rolling, at the higher monthly price plus an upfront fee of £199 to £1,300 for onboarding, set-up and moving your data across. How long the Partner term runs is not on their pricing page. Owners in the trade groups talk about three years.

The trap is in the Partner plan. Owners on it have reported that adding a module or moving up a tier restarts the term: two years into a three-year agreement, one extra module, and the contract runs another three years from that date. So before you add anything mid-term, read the renewal clause and ask in writing whether the term resets. If the answer is not clear, treat the upgrade as a new contract in disguise.

If you are mid-term and thinking of moving, stop adding to TechMan now. There is less to unwind later and a smaller bill at the end. What to do about the Direct Debit, your data and the notice period is in our practical guide for garages leaving TechMan.

TechMan or GarageRevs: what you get, and what it costs

Not a feature-by-feature teardown. Features change. These are the things that decide whether a system runs the garage for you, checked against TechMan’s own pricing page on 10 September 2026.

If the team will not run it, you cannot step back from it

Most comparison pages are written for the owner and talk about the owner. But the people who live in the system are the desk and the techs, and an owner who is off the tools finds out how they get on with it second-hand: the tablet nobody picks up, the job card done on paper and typed in later, the question that lands on his phone because the desk could not find the answer. A system the team works around is one that needs you in the building.

So the test when you compare systems is not the features. It is whether the desk can run a day on it without ringing you, and whether the techs will pick the tablet up. Ask to see both on a demo, on a garage like yours. What a day on the desk looks like on GarageRevs, from the phone call to the invoice, is on its own page.

How the move happens

The fear owners voice most is not the data. It is the changeover: a team used to the old system, a desk running slow for a fortnight, and staff who liked things how they were. Then the data, and the doubt about whether it all comes across.

So the move is planned before you commit. On the demo call we look at what you have in TechMan, tell you what comes across and what it will not export, and agree the day you go live. Your customers, cars and history come across in one piece, the front desk and techs are trained in person on their own customers and cars before that day, and the workshop keeps invoicing throughout. Even the messiest moves from an older system are done 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.

Before you sign with anyone, hold them to the standard you wish you had held TechMan to. 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. Ask them of us too.

Many owners weighing up TechMan are also looking at Garage Hive. Our Garage Hive comparison says where each system wins. And if you want the numbers behind the whole market, our guide to what UK garage software costs covers what the “from” prices leave out.

See both, then decide.

Book a demo and bring your TechMan questions. We will show you a day on the desk, what you would see from home, and what the move from TechMan looks like on a garage like yours. If TechMan is the better system for how you run the place, we will say so.