Samsara Reviews

Pros

1. Simplified and robust documentation on each and every feature.
2. Also, the compliance and rules they follow and explain is also very helpful for small companies where safety manager is not available.
3. Customizable Alerts, Document Management Tools, Customizable Mobile app
4. Developer Friendly with webhook support.

Cons

I have not some to any such shortcomings so far. But sometimes, notification emails or alerts are not triggered on time.

Alternatives Considered

Motive

Reasons for Switching to Samsara

Ease of use, popularity, good support, cloud app and customizable mobile app.

Pros

We love how accurate and real time the information is provide to operations.

Cons

Pricing has been a great challenge to keep up with the service provider.

Alternatives Considered

Verizon Connect and Geotab

Reasons for Choosing Samsara

I changed jobs and once I start the new position we implement Samsara back in 2015.

Switched From

Geotab

Reasons for Switching to Samsara

Better cost benefits. But considering changing in the future if we can’t keep up with the 36 months commitment.

Pros

The equipment works and we were able to track the vehicles. The ai feature works great.

Cons

The customer service. [sensitive content hidden] will not answer your messages or phone calls. We were suppose to do a renewal and he is absent. There is a bottleneck for the renewal where you can only deal with him. His management team doesn't intervene. You are left at his disposal. 3 weeks in the process of renewal with 7 systems failing. You can't buy replacements because you have to be in contract.

Alternatives Considered

Verizon Connect

Reasons for Choosing Samsara

Could not get the renewal done for another 3 years despite everything being completed on my end. Verizon had the contract done in 30 minutes and they dont increase their rates ever. They also do month to month payments.

Switched From

Verizon Connect

Reasons for Switching to Samsara

The AI technology was more advanced 3 years ago. They were a great startup company but have not maintained that energy.

Pros

Easy and reliable, also easy to understand to the drivers

Cons

Customer support, If you need help you will die trying to get someone from support to help you
instead os help they overrun you with emails from 6 or 7 representative asking same thing at same time and make you loose track of the conversation, also, after 30 min or 1 hour they rush to hang up on you to keep going, poor knowledge from the team explaining you contracts breakdowns

Alternatives Considered

Motive

Reasons for Choosing Samsara

Lack of customer support, inconsistencies on services and they just didn't care

Reasons for Switching to Samsara

At that time was good and afordable, good platform

Pros

I like the evolving technology in Samsara and the ability to run the operation on single platform.

Cons

Not being able to manage equipment or vehicles (like rentals) without a VG.

Pros

The ease of use. How it can be used to get out of sticky situations when incidents occur. Has also helped with lowering idle times.

Cons

Having to pay extra for things that should be included in your monthly payment.

Alternatives Considered

Verizon Connect and DriveCam

Reasons for Switching to Samsara

Had more to offer in the beginning. After Samsara did an internal audit an took most of our programs off, don't know if it would still be better cost than another company.

Pros

Instant video of accidents and issues. We are able to get quick footage in the event of a major accident.

Cons

My only issue is not being able to assign drivers to there vehicle. We typically make many changes in that area as a school district.

Pros

It never had any issues with the location and you were able to switch it to personal convenience while in motion.

Cons

I never had any issues with it. I was driving under someone else's company so it worked perfectly for me.

Pros

easy to use app features are east to understand and easy to read

Cons

logging out after completing post-trip doesn't always fully log out and when there is yard movement the driver is thrown back into driving.

Pros

Very accurate and instant information, picture does not lie.

Cons

Reports could be improved but always getting better

Alternatives Considered

Titan GPS

Reasons for Switching to Samsara

Best value and most options and solutions available.

Pros

I have no Pros after there was continuous issues throughout the time I was locked into my contract.

Cons

Read my overall experience worst experience ever!!!

Pros

Everything you need is included, and in one place. Fleet tracking, cameras, HOS, safety, performance, and dispatch tools all live in one place. Additionally, the team is very responsive in creating one-off or custom integrations should you need them.

Cons

The cameras, the logic by which they record, and the dashboard for viewing them could use some work. You're unable to retrieve segments more than 60 seconds in length at any one period of time. They offer a "hyperlapse" mode, but I find this to be a useless gimmick as the compression effectively omits frames making it difficult to identify incident times.

Pros

The ease of use for both the driver and for the operations team is what stands out the most. Our drivers were able to pickup and use the Samsara ELD with little to no training as it is very intuitive.

Cons

I would like some more integration options with 3rd party vendors that integrate directly into the driver app and not require another app to operate (Navigation, scale/toll bypass).

Alternatives Considered

Motive

Reasons for Choosing Samsara

At the time we decided to make the switch, Zonar was not yet approved for ELD by the Canadian Government and the ELD deadline was approaching and we wanted to have an approved product in place with enough time to work out any bugs/issues prior to the Canadian ELD deadline.

Reasons for Switching to Samsara

We had already had experience with the dashcams and I had some good reviews from some other companies that had been happy with Samsara.

Pros

They have some benefits, but I refuse to do business with companies like this. See review below

Cons

Company has poor customer service. We had 6 dashcams with them for 3 years and I wanted to cancel at the end of the contract. They have fine print in their contract that it will automatically renew at end of three years and you have to let them know 30 days in advance to cancel the renewal. I left them know at end and they refuse to refund me the entire next year charge. I would easily agree to pay them for one month extension, but no they want the entire $1600 for a whole year.. These are marks of a slimey/scammy company.
Please stay away from this company. I have other products with this company on another contract and was planning to keep it long term, but not now. Good luck to this company to try to grow with this kind of policies and tactics. Check out Motive for their dashcams. They have just file lawsuit against Samsora.

Pros

The use of Samsara has become our best friend when it comes to locating assets and drivers in real time day to day operations. Dash cams help you improve on the driver's behavior along with implementing the score cards for your fleet. Samsara has helped us improve with our fleet when it comes to monitoring speed and Driver behavior events. Reports help you vitalize the use of assets, drivers, Mills with geofences. Overall, Samsara is the #1 leading operation system for us.

Cons

I don't think there is anything that I least like

Alternatives Considered

Motive

Reasons for Choosing Samsara

Ease of use with Samsara, Cost and how compact Samsara's hardware is

Switched From

Trimble Estimation Desktop

Reasons for Switching to Samsara

Ease of use with Samsara, Cost and how compact Samsara's hardware is I see a future with AI and the Samsara will continue to grow and bring new features to the table

Pros

This is great for in the minute tracking. Anything else is a pain in the fanny.

Cons

I find it very frustrating when I have to correct someone's log because once they logged off someone else jumped in their truck and it logged the original person back on. It counts as driving time and will not allow you to make changes so it saves a violation. The reports are impossible to obtain at one time. Noting is really user friendly. You have to have the manual with you when ever you need to do any thing or your lost.

Alternatives Considered

Verizon Connect

Reasons for Switching to Samsara

Because they promised the world! It was a lie!

Pros

There customer service is terrible. No one has the ability to help. Growth turned this once great company to trash.

Cons

There customer service is terrible. No one has the ability to help. Woke management will not help.

Pros

The setup and configuration options are very user friendly. The ability to share live links is very helpful. The Time on Site report is a great tool to share with shippers and consignees.

Cons

There were a few features that were missing in the beginning but have since been added so nothing comes to mind.

Alternatives Considered

Verizon Connect, Motive and Geotab

Reasons for Choosing Samsara

Omnitracs unwillingness to allow for integration and their very poor customer service.

Switched From

Omnitracs

Reasons for Switching to Samsara

It was clear early on that the Samsara team was more responsive to questions and willing to discuss flexibility of their system.

Pros

I find the ease of use good for monthly audits. I do not own the Samsara product I use. I have full login credentials as a contract safety rep. I only do monthly and spot audits but find the accuracy and ease good. Once I learned the system, audits can be done relatively quick and systematically. Other programs seem to require redundant actions to do the same thin.

Cons

I do not see the driver's end of it, but it seems there be some features that would make it mandatory to fill some fields or alerts that the driver did not add a shipping doc or trailer #. Or most common issues.

Alternatives Considered

EROAD

Reasons for Choosing Samsara

The company made the switch, not me. They had Big Road AOBRDs and then ELDs and the product allowed the driver to manipulate the data and the data was not accurate to what the truck was doing

Reasons for Switching to Samsara

I did not make the choice, but I believe an affordable cost was a big factor

Pros

Samsara is very user friendly, it seems to have endless features you can use. We like the cameras they offer and have them on all of our route service based vehicles to be able to confirm missed trash collections or confirm issues with why carts may have not been collected.

Cons

Pulling the camera footage can occasionally be difficult just because the points on the map do not always align perfectly with the footage. This is a simple problem to fix, I just expand the amount of footage I pull.

Alternatives Considered

Verizon Connect

Reasons for Choosing Samsara

We had Verizon Networkfleet which was still running on 3G so we had to either upgrade or find a new provider.

Switched From

Verizon Connect

Reasons for Switching to Samsara

Samsara had real time tracking and no bread crumb trails. The past service we used had bread crumb trails which could be difficult to decipher. Samsara also has much better customer service.

Pros

Ease of use, good quality of cameras, customer service is on point.

Cons

Everything needs to be able to export in Excel, not just CSV

Alternatives Considered

Verizon Connect and OneStep-JV

Reasons for Choosing Samsara

Needed a system that could grow with our company

Reasons for Switching to Samsara

Better price, better quality, easier install and size was not too big

Pros

Intuitive navigation for the dashboard user as well as for the driver.

Cons

The dashboard is just a little boring with the lack of color. Maybe needs just a little splash of color for visible interest.

Alternatives Considered

Omnitracs

Reasons for Choosing Samsara

We didn't want to upgrade our Omnitracs with an inflated price after having been a customer for so long. Our IT director is highly respected in his field. His recommendation, after looking at just a few alternatives, was to choose Samsara based on the quality of the software.

Switched From

Omnitracs

Reasons for Switching to Samsara

Better price and better technology.

Pros

The cameras, vehicle monitoring and GPS are very good. Managers using the web app like the ability to check-in on the cams as the drivers are on their delivery routes. Detailed vehicle information provided to our Fleet Operations is extremely useful in managing vehicle maintenance.

Cons

Using the API to download routes and create Proof of Delivery documents has proven to be unreliable and Samsara Tech support is nowhere to be found. Very helpful with simple things but anything with the API is beyond them. After spending over $20,000 building the connection and screens to support Proof of Delivery, we found it simply would not work reliably with about 20% of the document signatures not being captured by Samsara. Also could not post a route larger than 20 stops, that is the limit built into Samsara, we can have routes with up to 30 stops in a day.
Samsara never tried to work directly with my team, instead we had to upload screenshots, code snippets and detailed explanations which they would take 3 to 5 days to respond to, never providing any fix or communicating with us directly.
This went on for over 8 MONTHS and finally we had to pull the plug on the project and just use the driver / vehicle monitoring functions. Huge waste of time and resources.

Alternatives Considered

WorkWave Service

Reasons for Choosing Samsara

Thought we would be able to integrate with Samsara API for Proof of Delivery documents.

Pros

The control and data entry portion of the daily log is good and easy enough to understand.

Cons

This list will be lengthy....

1. Random duty status changes for no apparent reason and into statuses that shouldn't be possible. For example while driving it puts you into ON DUTY NOT DRIVING or just the opposite.

2. While driving it will switch to you co-driver and start logging on their log.

3. Won't track and will enter wrong locations in completely other states.

4. Will lock you out and not allow entries... their answer... uninstall and reinstall. Like I have tome for this especially in low data signal areas.

5. Day / Night mode is at set times which don't cha need bases on time of year so you have this huge bright white screen staring at you while driving at night in rain and snow. Not a problem if you aren't close on time monitoring it.

6. Message system is pure crap... no DELETE an no MARK AS READ options.

7. Often will not detect driving or motion of the vehicle and must be entered manually which means I have to pull over and stop on busy highways to do this... that's safety.

Pros

It is cloud based, has real time location of truck with map and has a driver app.

Cons

Software is faulty. Most recent issue gateway is supposed to automatically record driving time but, it's recording driving AFTER driver is going off duty and truck is parked.. causing HOS violations on log.. tried editing but, because the edit is from DRIVING (incorrectly recorded) to OFF DUTY it indicates there is still an ELD violation. Reached out to Samsara they said it will be about 2 months before this can be fixed. I've decided not to renew my contract.