Part Owner Manuals Software Vendors Build a company

Software, by what it is for

191 software markets and 1420 named products, screened by Research Upon and read here from the buyer's side: who the default is, who the alternatives are, what the lock-in costs you and where the vendor is.

Snapshot 2026-10-15

How to read a market

Start with the default choice — in most trades one product is what everyone already runs, and there is usually a reason. Then read getting out before you read the price: the cost of a bad choice is the migration, not the subscription.

Where the names link

A vendor name is a link wherever Research Upon has researched that company — 2,743 of them do. It opens the research page, not the company's own site, in a new tab.

What the letters mean

A a regulator, a filing or the maker's own document. B trade press or a funding record. C the vendor's own claim, or a single unverified source. A C-tier user count is marketing; treat it that way.

Not a recommendation, and one disclosure

Being listed means the research named the vendor, nothing more. Part Owner takes no fee from any product on this page, and the screen was written to answer a different question — whether the market was worth entering — which is exactly why it is honest about the incumbents. The exception is marked everywhere it appears: Part Owner is a Semple Ventures company and so are these — they are our own software, marked sponsored wherever they appear. Funding terms are private and undisclosed, so no amount, stage or valuation is stated anywhere. Nothing here is a Research Upon finding: the screens on this page were written to judge whether a market was worth entering, and our own products were never part of that judgement.

1

Where the vendors are

Counted from the vendor notes in the research: how many of the named products have a stated home in each country. Useful when procurement, data residency or a support timezone makes the vendor's location the deciding factor — and a reminder that most categories are sold from two countries.

United States89Canada82Australia13United Kingdom13Germany12Spain6France5Norway4India4Switzerland3Sweden3Denmark3New Zealand3Ireland2Brazil2Netherlands1

A blank is not an absence — it means the research did not state a home for that vendor. For buying one in your own country, the method is on vendors in your country.

2

Our sites — try our software for your business

Sponsored, and ours. Everything else on this page is screened research; these five are products Semple Ventures backs alongside Part Owner, built for the same businesses the manuals are written for. They are marked this way everywhere they appear, and funding terms are private so no amount, stage or valuation is stated.

Part Owner is a Semple Ventures company and so are these — they are our own software, marked sponsored wherever they appear. Funding terms are private and undisclosed, so no amount, stage or valuation is stated anywhere. Nothing here is a Research Upon finding: the screens on this page were written to judge whether a market was worth entering, and our own products were never part of that judgement. Semple Ventures

3

Vertical — software for one trade

Written for a single industry. Usually the system the business is actually run on: the schedule, the job, the invoice, the compliance record.

Livestock & Herd Management Software

NAICS 112· 3 named

Default choice Merck Animal Health (Allflex / SenseHub) and Datamars

Alternatives Herdwatch (Ireland), CattleMax, AgriWebb (Australia), Performance Beef (Zoetis), Cattlytics (Canadian)

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Forestry & Timber Harvest Management Software

NAICS 113· 3 named

Default choice Trimble Forestry (Connected Forest, LIM) and Remsoft (Canadian — Fredericton NB)

Alternatives Cengea (Trimble), Silvacom (Canadian — Edmonton), FORSite, Woodtracker, TimberOps

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Commercial Fishing & Aquaculture Operations Software

NAICS 114· 3 named

Default choice AKVA group (Fishtalk) and Innovasea (Canadian — Halifax)

Alternatives Manolin, Deckhand (electronic monitoring), Mercatus, Aquabyte, Tidal

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Farm Management & Precision Agriculture

NAICS 1151· 4 named

Default choice Bayer Climate FieldView, Corteva Granular, John Deere Operations Center

Alternatives Trimble Ag, AGI SureTrack, DroneDeploy, Farmbrite, Semios (Canadian), Croptracker (Canadian)

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Oil & Gas Operations Software

NAICS 2111· 4 named

Default choice Enverus

Alternatives Quorum Software, P2 Energy Solutions, Aucerna, Petrolink, TIBCO/Spotfire in reservoir workflows

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Mining Operations & Geology Software

NAICS 2122· 5 named

Default choice Hexagon Mining

Alternatives Deswik (Sandvik), Micromine, Datamine, MineRP, Seequent (Bentley), RPMGlobal

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Price 5% organic growth in Q1 2025 — and a structural change ahead: the division is being separated from the parent

Oilfield Services & Well Data Management

NAICS 213· 4 named

Default choice Peloton (WellView, Canadian — Calgary) and Enverus (OpenInvoice, OpenTicket)

Alternatives Quorum Software, Cortex (Canadian), WellEz, Greasebook, OpsCompass

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Utility Metering, Billing & Customer Systems

NAICS 2211· 4 named

Default choice Oracle Utilities and SAP, with Itron (NASDAQ: ITRI) on the metering side

Alternatives Hansen Technologies (ASX: HSN), Minsait, Kraken Technologies (Octopus Energy), Harris Computer Systems (Constellation), Gentrack

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Renewable Energy & Solar Project Software

NAICS 221119· 13 named

Default choice Aurora Solar (installer design and proposals, incl. HelioScope); Power Factors (Vista) owns utility-scale asset management

Alternatives Installer tier: OpenSolar (free), Solargraf (Enphase), Enerflo. Utility-scale design and build: PVcase, RatedPower (Enverus), Terabase. Development and finance workflow: Euclid, Odyssey Energy Solutions, Paces, Frigg. Operations: Raptor Maps, Zeitview, SenseHawk

Getting out Low to moderate in the installer tier — proposals and designs are per-job and installers trial tools freely, which is why a free product (OpenSolar) can compete. High in operations: SCADA and data integrations, years of performance history and lender/investor reporting sit in the asset-management platform across whole portfolios

Construction Management Software

NAICS 2362· 6 named

Default choice Procore

Alternatives Autodesk Construction Cloud, Buildertrend, Fieldwire, Bluebeam

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Heavy Civil Construction Estimating & Operations

NAICS 237· 4 named

Default choice HCSS (Thoma Bravo) and Trimble B2W

Alternatives InEight (Kiewit), Command Alkon (materials and batching), Kojo, Bid2Win, Agtek

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Roofing Contractor Software

NAICS 238160· 3 named

Default choice JobNimbus and AccuLynx

Alternatives Roofr (Canadian), Roofsnap, EagleView for measurement

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Electrical Contractor Software

NAICS 238210· 2 named

Default choice ServiceTitan

Alternatives Procore, Jobber, FieldEdge, Housecall Pro

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Price 24% growth at nearly $1B of revenue

Mechanical Trades Contractor Software

NAICS 238220· 2 named

Default choice ServiceTitan (NASDAQ: TTAN)

Alternatives UpKeep (29.25% of installs), Housecall Pro, Jobber (Edmonton), FieldPulse, BuildOps, Intuit FSM ES

Getting out 12-month minimum contracts, multi-year for larger firms, early-cancellation penalties, and $5,000–$50,000 implementation sunk cost

Price Growing 24% a year at nearly $1B of revenue — the incumbent is compounding, not stalling

Digital Shelf & Product Content Software

NAICS 311· 4 named

Default choice Salsify and Syndigo

Alternatives Akeneo, inriver, Pimberly, PIMworks, Productsup, plus retail-execution tools Repsly and Vividly

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Food Safety & Traceability Software

NAICS 311· 4 named

Default choice Trustwell (FoodLogiQ + Genesis) and TraceGains

Alternatives Safefood 360 (LGC), SafetyChain, iFoodDS, Wherefour, ParityFactory

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Cannabis Seed-to-Sale Compliance Software

NAICS 3123· 2 named

Default choice Metrc

Alternatives BioTrackTHC, Dutchie, Flourish Software, Trellis, Canix

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Apparel PLM & Production Management

NAICS 315· 8 named

Default choice Centric Software (Dassault Systèmes)

Alternatives Bamboo Rose, PTC FlexPLM, Aptean Apparel ERP, Backbone PLM, Zedonk

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Process Manufacturing & Refining Software

NAICS 3241· 6 named

Default choice AspenTech

Alternatives AVEVA (Schneider), Honeywell UOP and Forge, Yokogawa, Siemens Process, KBC (Yokogawa)

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Life Sciences Commercial Software

NAICS 3254· 5 named

Default choice Veeva Systems

Alternatives IQVIA, Salesforce Life Sciences Cloud, Certara, Medidata

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Job Shop & Metal Fabrication ERP

NAICS 332· 4 named

Default choice ECI Software Solutions (JobBOSS²) and Epicor

Alternatives Paperless Parts (quoting), Fulcrum, ProShop ERP, Global Shop Solutions, E2 / Shoptech

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Manufacturing Execution & Plant Automation

NAICS 333· 3 named

Default choice Siemens Opcenter, Rockwell (Plex), SAP Digital Manufacturing

Alternatives AVEVA, Honeywell, Tulip, Katana, MachineMetrics, 42Q

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Price Segment operating margin expanded from 24.2% to 29.7% in a single year — this incumbent is getting more profitable, not less

EDA, CAD & Product Lifecycle Management

NAICS 334410· 4 named

Default choice Cadence Design Systems, Synopsys, Siemens EDA

Alternatives Dassault Systèmes, PTC, Autodesk, Ansys, Altium

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Cannabis Dispensary POS & Inventory Software

NAICS 4134· 4 named

Default choice Dutchie

Alternatives Flowhub, Treez, Blaze, Meadow, Cova (Canadian — Calgary)

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Wholesale Distribution ERP & Route Accounting

NAICS 418· 3 named

Default choice Epicor (Prophet 21, Eclipse) and Infor Distribution

Alternatives Aptean, DDI System, Acumatica Distribution, NetSuite, Kerridge Commercial Systems

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

EDI & Trading Partner Integration

NAICS 419· 2 named

Default choice SPS Commerce (NASDAQ: SPSC)

Alternatives TrueCommerce, Cleo, Orderful, DiCentral (TrueCommerce), EDI departments inside NetSuite and Dynamics partners

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

SPS CommerceATrueCommerce / Cleo / OrderfulC

Dealership Management Systems

NAICS 441110· 4 named

Default choice CDK Global

Alternatives Tekion (cloud-native, ex-Tesla CIO), Reynolds & Reynolds, Pinewood.AI (US launch Feb 2026)

Getting out OEM certification requirements plus contested control of dealer data on exit

Price Not the primary grievance here — continuity and data portability are

Marine Dealer Management Software

NAICS 441220· 6 named

Default choice Lightspeed DMS

Alternatives Dockmaster (marina, boatyard and dealer), DealerRock, Winboats (marine-only), BiT DMS, Ideal Computer Systems, Commander, Total Control

Getting out Manufacturer price files and multi-store parts and service workflows. Lightspeed advertises close to 300 manufacturer price files and 500+ integration partners [C, vendor]

Price Not disclosed by the incumbent. BiT publishes contract-free pricing from $238/month, which is the only public price point found [C, vendor]

Powersports Dealer Management Software

NAICS 441220· 5 named

Default choice Lightspeed DMS, with TALON held inside Harley-Davidson Dealer Systems

Alternatives DX1 (DMS, website and marketing in one login), Blackpurl (cloud, integrates QuickBooks, Xero, Shopify), BiT DMS, DealerClick

Getting out OEM ownership of the system itself (TALON inside Harley-Davidson), plus manufacturer price files and warranty-claim workflows

Price Not disclosed. BiT publishes pricing from $238/month; no other vendor in this set publishes a price [C, vendor]

Building Materials Dealer ERP

NAICS 444· 3 named

Default choice Epicor BisTrack and ECI Spruce

Alternatives DMSi Agility, Kerridge K8, ADS Solutions, Ponderosa (Epicor)

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Grocery & Convenience Retail Technology

NAICS 4451· 3 named

Default choice Instacart (Carrot) and Toshiba Global Commerce

Alternatives NCR Voyix, Swiftly, Flashfood (Canadian), Relex, Symphony RetailAI, Blue Yonder

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Price Divergent: Instacart +11% while NCR Voyix Retail −6%. Grocer technology spend is moving toward the demand layer and away from the till

Retail Merchandise Planning & Allocation

NAICS 455· 6 named

Default choice Oracle Retail and Blue Yonder (Panasonic)

Alternatives RELEX Solutions, o9 Solutions, Aptos, ToolsGroup, Increff, Impact Analytics

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Independent Pharmacy Management

NAICS 456110· 3 named

Default choice PioneerRx

Alternatives Liberty Software, QS/1, BestRx, Micro Merchant

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Fuel Retail & Forecourt Systems

NAICS 4571· 4 named

Default choice PDI Technologies

Alternatives Gilbarco Veeder-Root (Vontier), Invenco/Verifone, Bulloch Technologies (Canadian — Ontario), Petrosoft, KSS (Kalibrate)

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Specialty Retail POS & Inventory Software

NAICS 4591· 2 named

Default choice Lightspeed Commerce (TSX/NYSE: LSPD, Canadian — Montréal)

Alternatives Shopify POS (Canadian — Ottawa), Square, Heartland Retail, Rain, Ascend (bike retail)

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Price Subscription grew 8% while total revenue grew 14% — the transaction line is outgrowing the licence, which is the whole point

Airline Operations & MRO Software

NAICS 4811· 3 named

Default choice Sabre and Amadeus

Alternatives Ramco Aviation, Trax, IFS, AMOS (Swiss-AS), Lufthansa Systems, Hexaware for MRO

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Price Amadeus growing 8.5% at constant currency; Sabre's EBITDA up 12% on roughly flat revenue — one is compounding, the other is repairing margin

Business Aviation Flight Operations Software

NAICS 481214· 6 named

Default choice CAMP Systems International (Hearst)

Alternatives Veryon, Traxxall, FL3XX (Part 135, Part 91, medevac and cargo), Leon Software (European EASA operators), Portside (holding the rights to Avianis), ForeFlight

Getting out Maintenance and airworthiness records continuity. An aircraft's logbook and AD-compliance history is the asset that carries its resale value, and moving it is a certification-adjacent exercise rather than a data export [C]

Price Not disclosed. No vendor in this set publishes a price

Rail Operations & Yard Management Software

NAICS 482· 2 named

Default choice Wabtec (NYSE: WAB, formerly GE Transportation digital)

Alternatives Trimble Rail, Hitachi Rail (Bombardier Transportation), RailComm, Optym, Bourque Data Systems

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Price Segment revenue up 74.4%, almost entirely bought rather than built

Maritime & Port Operations Software

NAICS 483· 7 named

Default choice Kaleris (Navis) and Veson Nautical

Alternatives Octopi (Navis SMB), Portchain, Voyager Portal, Awake.AI, Tideworks, CyberLogitec

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Fleet & Freight Operations Software

NAICS 4841· 5 named

Default choice Motive and Samsara

Alternatives McLeod, Trimble, Omnitracs, KeepTruckin legacy fleets

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Moving Company Software

NAICS 484210· 11 named

Default choice No single owner. SmartMoving leads the residential and local mover segment; MoveHQ (Updater since 2017) is the incumbent at the van-line agent end

Alternatives Supermove ($18M Series A, a16z, January 2022 [B]); MoveitPro (1,500+ movers claimed [C]); Elromco MoveBoard (600+ claimed, $289–$399/month [C]); Chariot (hundreds claimed, from $254/month [C]); Granot, MoverBase, Movegistics (bootstrapped, [C]). Surveys: Yembo (Atlas Van Lines exclusive, 2024 [B]), Voxme (Toronto, 10,200 users claimed [C]). Cross-trade: Vonigo

Getting out Low at the small end. Elromco is month to month, and Chariot and Elromco both migrate data for free [C]. SmartMoving sells 12- to 36-month terms, and downgrades only take effect at renewal [C]. That contract is the main lock-in. Higher at the van-line agent end, where the survey, inventory, bill of lading and storage records feed the van line's systems and a van line can name…

Transit & Paratransit Scheduling Software

NAICS 485· 3 named

Default choice Trapeze Group (Modaxo / Constellation Software, Canadian — Toronto)

Alternatives Optibus, Via and Remix, Ecolane, Swiftly, Clever Devices, GIRO (Canadian — Montréal)

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Pipeline Measurement & Hydrocarbon Accounting

NAICS 486· 3 named

Default choice Quorum Software (Thoma Bravo; Calgary and Houston)

Alternatives Enverus, Energy Solutions (PipelineManager), Emerson, Schneider Electric, P2 legacy installs

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Quorum SoftwareCEnergy SolutionsCEmerson / Schneider measurement linesC

Tour & Activity Booking Platforms

NAICS 487· 6 named

Default choice FareHarbor (Booking Holdings) and Peek Pro

Alternatives Rezdy, Checkfront (Canadian — Victoria BC), Bokun (Tripadvisor), Xola, TrekkSoft

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Price Toward zero for the software. FareHarbor charges operators no monthly fee and takes a booking commission instead, so the reservation system is funded by demand rather than sold as a licence — the same structure that makes expense software free at 541514.

Airport Operations & Ground Handling Systems

NAICS 4881· 7 named

Default choice SITA and Amadeus Airport IT

Alternatives Veovo, INFORM, ADB Safegate, Damarel, TAV Technologies, Rockwell Collins ARINC (Collins Aerospace)

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Towing & Roadside Dispatch Software

NAICS 488410· 6 named

Default choice Towbook (independent operator dispatch, impound and motor-club invoicing) and Autura (Autura + Traxero roll-up: TOPS, Omadi, Dispatch Anywhere, Beacon, TowLien; government and police towing). On the demand side, Agero (with Swoop and, since 2026, Urgently) controls motor-club job intake

Alternatives HONK (Santa Monica; consumer and insurer roadside network; $31.8M raised, Series A and B led by Altpoint Ventures [B]), Tow4Tech (Florida; commercial-fleet tow dispatch; $3.3M raised, $1.5M round led by BrightCap Ventures, Apr 2025 [B]), Urgently (now Agero; formerly the public challenger to the motor clubs [A])

Getting out High and two-sided. Motor-club job intake runs through integrations (Agero's RoadsideConnect and dispatch-partner integrations; Towbook invoices motor clubs directly), so the job feed decides which dispatch tool an operator can use. Police rotation and impound work bring municipal contracts, lien notices and auction workflows (Autura's government base).

Freight Visibility & Transportation Management

NAICS 4885· 6 named

Default choice project44 and FourKites

Alternatives Descartes Systems (Canadian, public), Trimble Transportation, McLeod, E2open, Flexport, Blue Yonder TMS

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Last-Mile Delivery & Courier Management

NAICS 492· 2 named

Default choice Descartes Systems Group (TSX/NASDAQ: DSGX, Canadian — Waterloo)

Alternatives Bringg, Onfleet, FarEye, Wise Systems, Route4Me, Shipday, Trimble Transportation

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Warehouse Management Systems

NAICS 4931· 5 named

Default choice Manhattan Associates (NASDAQ: MANH)

Alternatives Blue Yonder, Körber, Oracle, SAP EWM, Descartes (Canadian), Softeon, Deposco

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Film & TV Production Payroll & Spend Software

NAICS 512110· 4 named

Default choice Entertainment Partners and Cast & Crew (the duopoly employer-of-record payroll houses)

Alternatives Wrapbook (digital EOR payroll; about $151M raised [B]), GreenSlate (third full-service house; bought Circus in 2025), and point tools beside payroll: RollCredits (spend cards), LÜK Network (1099 freelancer pay)

Getting out Employer-of-record status. The payroll house is the guild/union signatory employer, holds the workers' comp policy and the contribution history, and keeps paying residuals on a title for years after wrap. Studios also sign multi-show master agreements, and crew already hold accounts in MyEP and MyCast&Crew

Price Not disclosed. Neither incumbent publishes a price list; fees are quoted per production

Video Production Pipeline Software

NAICS 512110· 3 named

Default choice Autodesk Flow Production Tracking (formerly ShotGrid)

Alternatives ftrack (Backlight), Frame.io (Adobe), Kitsu (open source), AYON / OpenPype

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Podcast Hosting & Monetisation Platforms

NAICS 5122· 3 named

Default choice Spotify (Megaphone, Spotify for Creators)

Alternatives Acast, Libsyn, Buzzsprout, Captivate, Transistor, Castos

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Price Falling. Podcast ad sales at the platform that sets the category's price declined €116M in 2025 on lower CPMs

Publishing Editorial & Rights Management

NAICS 513· 4 named

Default choice Klopotek and Firebrand Technologies

Alternatives Aries Editorial Manager (Elsevier), ScholarOne (Clarivate), Bookwire, Virtusales, Ingram CoreSource

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Live Streaming & Broadcast Production Software

NAICS 5161· 17 named

Default choice OBS Studio (free, open source) as the default; Streamlabs (Logitech) and StreamYard (Bending Spoons) as the paid layers

Alternatives Browser/cloud: Restream ($50M Series A), Riverside ($47M, recording-first). Desktop: vMix (StudioCoast), Wirecast (Telestream), Ecamm Live (Mac), XSplit, PRISM Live Studio (free). Internet radio: AzuraCast (open source), RadioKing (NRJ/towerCast), Live365 (SoundStack), Radio.co, Centova Cast, SAM Broadcaster (Spacial), mAirList

Getting out Low for video: scenes and overlays are rebuilt in an afternoon, and Streamlabs built an importer for Twitch Studio users when Twitch shut it down [C]; destinations are standard RTMP. Higher for internet radio, where the vendor holds the music library, schedule and — at Live365 — the US royalty licensing [C]

Price StreamYard's current list prices are $44.99 (Core) and $88.99 (Advanced) a month [C]; reports that Bending Spoons raised them sharply after the 2024 purchase come from competitors and are UNVERIFIED. The free floor (OBS, PRISM, AzuraCast) has not moved

Creator Economy & Streaming Analytics Software

NAICS 5162· 3 named

Default choice CreatorIQ (brand side) and Streamlabs / Logitech (creator side)

Alternatives Aspire, GRIN, Later, StreamElements, Beacons, Passionfroot

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

DRM — Digital Rights Management & Content Protection

NAICS 5162· 14 named

Default choice Google Widevine, Apple FairPlay and Microsoft PlayReady (the three CDM owners who set the rules); in the multi-DRM service layer, NAGRA (Kudelski), Irdeto and Verimatrix

Alternatives castLabs, Axinom, EZDRM, BuyDRM, DoveRunner (ex-PallyCon; $8.2M raised Jan 2025 [B]) in cloud multi-DRM; Friend MTS (NorthEdge-backed) in anti-piracy services; Readium LCP (open) against Adobe ADEPT in e-books

Getting out Weak at the licence-server layer. Keys and FairPlay credentials belong to the streamer (Apple refuses third-party credential accounts), and every vendor issues the same three licence formats via the CPIX key-exchange standard. Stronger at the watermarking and anti-piracy layer, where the vendor's embedder sits in the player or headend and the takedown relationships are…

Price Not disclosed by the incumbents. Cloud vendors quote per-licence or per-subscriber prices, and Widevine is described by Google as free-to-use; no price series sourced

Telecom BSS/OSS & Revenue Management

NAICS 517· 5 named

Default choice Amdocs (NASDAQ: DOX)

Alternatives Netcracker (NEC), Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei, CSG Systems, Salesforce, Oracle

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Library & Archive Management Systems

NAICS 519· 4 named

Default choice Clarivate (Ex Libris, ProQuest, Innovative)

Alternatives SirsiDynix, OCLC (member co-operative), Koha and FOLIO (open source), Biblionix, Auto-Graphics

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Core Banking Systems

NAICS 5221· 4 named

Default choice FIS, Fiserv, Jack Henry

Alternatives Temenos, Mambu, Thought Machine, 10x Banking, nCino (origination rather than core), Finastra

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Mortgage Origination & Servicing Systems

NAICS 5222· 4 named

Default choice ICE Mortgage Technology (Encompass)

Alternatives Blend (share contracted from 23% in 2022 to ~17% in 2025E; strong in depository banks), nCino (strong among independent mortgage banks), Dark Matter, MeridianLink

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

RegTech & Financial Crime Compliance

NAICS 5223· 7 named

Default choice NICE Actimize and Nasdaq Verafin

Alternatives ComplyAdvantage, Chainalysis, Fenergo, Quantexa, Unit21, Hummingbird, Feedzai

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Price NiCE group cloud revenue +13% — the compliance estate is being re-platformed to cloud, which is where an entrant would have to compete

Capital Markets & Post-Trade Systems

NAICS 5231· 4 named

Default choice SS&C Technologies (NASDAQ: SSNC) and FIS (NYSE: FIS)

Alternatives Broadridge (NYSE: BR), Bloomberg, LSEG, Nasdaq, Murex, Calypso (Adenza/Nasdaq), Clearwater Analytics

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Financial Data & Credit Analytics

NAICS 5239· 3 named

Default choice S&P Global and Moody's

Alternatives MSCI, Bloomberg, LSEG (Refinitiv), FactSet, Morningstar, Fitch

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Price Moody's Analytics recurring revenue reached 97% of segment sales — this is a subscription business with almost no transactional exposure left

Insurance Carrier Core Systems

NAICS 5241· 5 named

Default choice Guidewire (NYSE: GWRE)

Alternatives Duck Creek (taken private by Vista Equity at $2.6B), Sapiens (Europe/APAC, life + P&C), Majesco (greenfield and insurtech), Socotra, EIS

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Insurance Agency Management Systems

NAICS 524210· 5 named

Default choice Applied Systems (Epic) and Vertafore (AMS360)

Alternatives HawkSoft, EZLynx, Better Agency

Getting out Multi-year contracts plus migration cost — conversion difficulty IS the retention strategy

Price Pricing is unpublished; agencies report negotiations favouring the vendor, particularly for smaller firms

Fund Administration & Private Capital Software

NAICS 526· 3 named

Default choice SS&C Technologies and Allvue Systems (Vista)

Alternatives Juniper Square, Carta, eFront (BlackRock), FIS Investran, Dynamo Software, Anduin

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Price SS&C grew 6.6% on a $6B base — scale without acceleration; the same rate as 2024 on 2023 (6.9%)

Self-Storage Management Software

NAICS 531130· 7 named

Default choice Storable (EQT majority; Cove Hill Partners minority)

Alternatives Cubby (AI-native PMS; $63M Series A, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, January 2026), Tenant Inc. (Hummingbird PMS; about $37M from 100+ operator-investors), Yardi (Breeze Self Storage and Self Storage Suite), OpenTech Alliance (access control, kiosks, StorageTreasures auctions), and point tools that plug into every PMS: Swivl (conversational AI/CRM) and SafeLease (tenant protection)

Getting out The tenant ledger and its integrations. The PMS holds every tenant's balance, autopay card, lien status and gate code, and it drives the gate-access system, kiosks, website rentals, tenant insurance enrolment and payments. Switching is a 'conversion' project: one large Sitelink customer (National Storage) took two months to convert 58 centres [C, vendor case study], and…

Real Estate Transaction Management Software

NAICS 5312· 4 named

Default choice Lone Wolf Technologies (Stone Point Capital; Canadian roots — Cambridge, Ontario)

Alternatives dotloop (Zillow), SkySlope (Fidelity National Financial), MoxiWorks, Brokermint (Inside Real Estate)

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Appraisal & Property Inspection Software

NAICS 5313· 4 named

Default choice ACI (First American) and Bradford Technologies

Alternatives SFREP, Anow (Canadian — Calgary), HouseCanary, Clear Capital, Reggora, spectora on the inspection side

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Property Management Software

NAICS 531310· 6 named

Default choice AppFolio and Yardi

Alternatives Yardi, MRI Software, RealPage, Entrata, Buildium, Rent Manager, ResMan, DoorLoop

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Commercial Real Estate Data & Analytics

NAICS 531390· 9 named

Default choice CoStar Group (NASDAQ: CSGP) — CoStar, LoopNet, Ten-X

Alternatives MSCI Real Capital Analytics (transaction data inside MSCI's Real Assets segment), Altus Group (ARGUS valuation software; owns Reonomy), CompStak (crowd-sourced lease and sale comps), Crexi (listings marketplace and auctions), Cherre (data integration for owners and lenders), Yardi Matrix (multifamily and commercial research inside Yardi), Placer.ai (foot-traffic analytics)

Getting out The research database and the workflows built on it. Brokers' comps, pitch books and lender underwriting are built on CoStar records, and valuation models on ARGUS files that lenders and appraisers exchange as a de facto format. CoStar reports about 89% company-wide subscription renewal for contracts of a year or more in 2025 and 2024 [A].

Price CoStar's 10-K attributes its 9% growth in CoStar revenue in 2025 to 'an increase in subscribers and inflation-based price increases' [A] — the incumbent prices up annually. No list prices are published by any vendor

Vehicle Rental & Car-Share Operations Software

NAICS 5321· 3 named

Default choice TSD Mobility Solutions and Bluebird Auto Rental Systems

Alternatives Thermeon, HQ Rental Software, RENTALL, Fleetwire, Rentall/Barsnet

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Equipment Rental Management Software

NAICS 5324· 4 named

Default choice Point of Rental and Texada (Canadian)

Alternatives Wynne Systems (Clearlake), Alert EMS, MCS Rental, Record360 for inspection

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

IP & Patent Portfolio Management

NAICS 533· 3 named

Default choice Anaqua and Clarivate (CPA Global)

Alternatives Questel, Dennemeyer, PatSnap, IPfolio (Clarivate), Alt Legal, Patsnap

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Immigration Case Management Software

NAICS 541110· 11 named

Default choice Split by buyer: 8am DocketWise (AffiniPay, now 8am) and INSZoom (Mitratech) for law firms and consultants; Envoy Global for corporate immigration programs

Alternatives Law-firm tools: LollyLaw (Paradigm), LawLogix Edge (Equifax), eimmigration (Cerenade), CampLegal; Clio is used by immigration firms as general practice management but is not an immigration forms engine. Canadian RCIC tools: Officio (Uniques Software) and INSZoom's Canadian module. Tech-enabled immigration law firms competing for the corporate buyer: Boundless, Alma

Getting out High for a case-management system of record: cases run for years (a family petition to green card to naturalisation), and the platform holds questionnaire answers, filed form versions, USCIS receipt numbers, priority dates and expiry alerts. INSZoom says set-up takes 2–5 business days with extra time for data migration [C, vendor].

Accounting Practice Management

NAICS 541212· 4 named

Default choice Karbon, Canopy, Ignition

Alternatives Intuit Practice Management, Thomson Reuters, Jetpack Workflow, Financial Cents

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Price CCH Axcess growing 19% organically inside a division already leading group growth — the incumbent suite is accelerating, not stalling

AEC Design & Engineering Software

NAICS 5413· 4 named

Default choice Autodesk (NASDAQ: ADSK)

Alternatives Bentley Systems (NASDAQ: BSY), Trimble (NASDAQ: TRMB), Nemetschek (Allplan, Vectorworks, Graphisoft), Procore in adjacent construction management

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Geospatial & GIS Platforms

NAICS 541370· 6 named

Default choice Esri (private, Redlands CA — ArcGIS)

Alternatives Hexagon (Safety, Infrastructure & Geospatial — now inside the Octave spin-off), Trimble, Autodesk, Bentley Systems, Tyler Technologies (Cityworks), Google (Earth/Maps platform), Safe Software (FME, Canadian — Surrey BC), CARTO, TomTom, SuperMap

Getting out Not assessed - screened before diligence. The observable mechanism is the Enterprise Agreement plus the proprietary geodatabase format, mirroring the RVT/DGN lock recorded at 5413

Creative Proofing & Digital Asset Management

NAICS 5414· 3 named

Default choice Adobe (Workfront, Frame.io, Experience Manager Assets)

Alternatives Ziflow, Filestage, Bynder, Brandfolder (Smartsheet), Canto, Air

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

MSP Remote Monitoring & Service Automation

NAICS 5415· 5 named

Default choice Kaseya and ConnectWise

Alternatives NinjaOne (>$500M ARR, ~70% growth, 35,000 customers), N-able (NYSE: NABL), HaloPSA, Atera, Syncro

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Clinical Trial & R&D Data Management Software

NAICS 5417· 4 named

Default choice Veeva Systems (NYSE: VEEV) and Medidata (Dassault Systèmes)

Alternatives IQVIA (Technology & Analytics Solutions, ~$6.63B in 2025), Oracle Health Sciences, Medable, Castor, Florence

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Agency Operations & Ad-Ops Software

NAICS 5418· 3 named

Default choice Deltek (WorkBook, Vantagepoint) and Adobe Workfront

Alternatives Scoro, Productive, Teamwork, Operative and Boostr (publisher ad-ops), Placements.io

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Programmatic DOOH & Digital Signage Software

NAICS 541850· 4 named

Default choice Broadsign (Canadian — Montréal)

Alternatives Vistar Media (acquired by T-Mobile in 2025), Hivestack (Canadian, acquired by Perion for ~US$100M), Place Exchange (now Broadsign), plus signage CMS vendors Scala, BrightSign, Yodeck and ScreenCloud

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Price Consolidating rather than pricing: three of the four independent platforms were acquired between 2023 and 2025

Veterinary Practice Management Software

NAICS 541940· 4 named

Default choice IDEXX (ezyVet, Neo) and Covetrus (Pulse)

Alternatives DaySmart Vet 11%, Hippo 5%, Practice Vantage 5%

Getting out Diagnostic analyser integration. The software is the channel for consumables revenue, not the product

Price 13% growth, led by cloud-native installed base expansion

Board & Entity Governance Software

NAICS 551· 4 named

Default choice Diligent

Alternatives Nasdaq Boardvantage, CSC Entity Management, Computershare GEMS, Athennian (Canadian — Calgary), Boardable

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Recruitment Agency Software (ATS, CRM & Back Office)

NAICS 561310· 15 named

Default choice Bullhorn (Stone Point Capital lead investor; Insight Partners and Genstar)

Alternatives Vincere (The Access Group), JobAdder (SEEK), Loxo (Tritium Partners, $115M transaction 2025), Avionté (Serent Capital) and TempWorks in the US temp back office, Recruit CRM, Crelate, Manatal, Zoho Recruit, Recruiterflow, Firefish, PCRecruiter, Mercury xRM; AI sourcing from SeekOut, Gem and Juicebox; LinkedIn Recruiter as the sourcing layer every agency rents

Getting out Strong for temp and contract desks, weak for perm-only desks. Where the system runs timesheets, payroll and client invoicing, switching means moving pay-and-bill and every open assignment mid-cycle — the reason Bullhorn, Avionté and TempWorks sell back office. A perm agency's candidate and client database exports, so recruiter CRMs compete on price and features

Contact Centre & Customer Experience Platforms

NAICS 5614· 4 named

Default choice NiCE (NASDAQ: NICE)

Alternatives Five9 (NASDAQ: FIVN, $1.1491B in 2025, +10%), Genesys, Talkdesk, Amazon Connect, Zoom Contact Center

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Corporate Travel Management Software

NAICS 5615· 3 named

Default choice Navan and Amex GBT

Alternatives TravelPerk, SAP Concur, Sabre, Amadeus Cytric, Coupa Travel, TripActions legacy accounts

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Price Navan grew 31% to $702.3M and still lost $398.0M, against Amex GBT's $111M of net income — the challenger is buying share at a loss while the incumbent turns a profit. Navan's revenue is commission-linked: gross booking volume rose 38% to $9.1B while revenue rose 31%, so the take rate is drifting down as volume grows

Travel Booking & Itinerary Management Software

NAICS 561510· 5 named

Default choice Amadeus (BME: AMS), with Sabre (NASDAQ: SABR) and Travelport

Alternatives Agency and tour tooling: Travefy, TravelJoy, Tourwriter, TripCreator, Wetu, Ezus, WeTravel, Lemax, Dolphin, Travel Booster, TravelWorks (mid-office), PHPTRAVELS; activity side: Bókun, Rezdy, FareHarbor, Peek Pro, TrekkSoft

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Price Published SMB list prices sit in a narrow $19–$111/month band across ten vendors, which is the signature of a commoditised tier rather than a priced one

AmadeusSpainASabreATravelportBTravefy / TravelJoy / Tourwriter / Wetu / EzusCBókun (Tripadvisor) / Rezdy / FareHarbor (Booking Holdings)C

Security Guard & Patrol Workforce Software

NAICS 561612· 9 named

Default choice Split by layer: TEAM Software / WinTeam (WorkWave, an IFS company) for back-office ERP at the large guard firms; Trackforce (TrackTik, GuardTek, Silvertrac; K1 Investment Management) for field operations, guard tour and incident reporting

Alternatives Belfry (New York; $20M total, $12M Series A January 2025 led by Base10 Partners [B]); Guardhouse (Sydney; A$850K seed 2020, Sundance Growth investment March 2026, acquired Mobohubb August 2026 [B/C]); Guard Owl ($3M seed February 2026 led by Tower Research Capital, as reported [C]); QR-Patrol (Terracom, Greece); OfficerReports (Baton Rouge); Guardix; Celayix (shift scheduling across several industries)

Getting out High at the top: WinTeam carries payroll, billing, job costing and contract history, so moving it is an ERP migration. Medium in the field layer: guard-tour checkpoints (NFC/QR tags) are physically installed at client sites, post orders and incident histories live in the platform, and clients log into its portal for reports, so a switch is visible to the guard firm's own…

Pest Control Business Software

NAICS 561710· 10 named

Default choice Split by segment: PestPac (WorkWave, an IFS company) at the enterprise and multi-branch end, now Rentokil Terminix's North American standard; FieldRoutes (ServiceTitan; formerly PestRoutes) at the high-growth residential and door-to-door-sales end

Alternatives Inside parents: ServSuite (ServicePro, ServiceTitan since February 2021 [B]); Briostack (EverCommerce since January 2021; 3,700+ pest and lawn companies claimed [C]). Independent: GorillaDesk ($49–$149/month [C]); Pocomos (300+ businesses claimed [C]). Horizontal: Jobber ($176M raised [B]; chemical tracking on its pest page [C]). Around the system of record: Pest Share ($28M Series A, Integrity Growth Partners, September 2025 [B]);

Getting out High at the enterprise end: years of service history, chemical-use records that the regulator can audit (3-year retention in BC [A]), recurring service agreements, stored cards and termite warranties sit in the system of record. Route density and the payment take rate tie FieldRoutes customers in.

Cleaning Business Software

NAICS 561722· 9 named

Default choice Split by segment: Jobber (horizontal home-service software, Edmonton) at the residential and small-crew end; TEAM Software / WinTeam (WorkWave, an IFS company) at the commercial-contractor end

Alternatives Horizontal: Housecall Pro (Denver; $125M June 2022 from Permira Growth Opportunities and Vista Credit Partners [B]), ServiceM8. Residential cleaning-specific: ZenMaid (3,000+ maid-service owners claimed [C]), Launch27, BookingKoala (20,000+ users across industries claimed [C]). Commercial cleaning-specific: Swept (Halifax; US$2M seed 2017 led by iNovia and Afore [B]), Otuvy (formerly CleanTelligent;

Getting out Low at the residential end: recurring schedules, client list and stored cards move with a CSV, and ZenMaid advertises free data migration and month-to-month plans [C]. The real lock-in is the payments attach on Jobber and Housecall Pro. High at the commercial top: WinTeam is an ERP carrying payroll, job costing and contract history

Landscaping & Green Industry Software

NAICS 561730· 4 named

Default choice Aspire (ServiceTitan)

Alternatives LMN (Canadian), SingleOps, Jobber, Real Green

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Pool & Spa Service Business Software

NAICS 561799· 13 named

Default choice Skimmer (owner-operators and small crews); at the multi-branch top, ServiceTitan and Pool Brain are winning the private-equity roll-ups

Alternatives Enterprise and roll-ups: ServiceTitan (Nasdaq: TTAN; SPS PoolCare March 2026, Azureon December 2025 [B]), Pool Brain (Phoenix; National Pool Partners 2023 [B], America's Swimming Pool Company 2024 [C]; no funding disclosed). Owned by equipment makers: Pooltrackr (Fluidra, 100% acquired 2025 [B]; ANZ leader). Small-route tier: Pool Office Manager, PoolTrac, PoolCarePRO, Paythepoolman, PoolDial, ProValet; Jobber as the horizontal option.

Getting out Moderate at the small end: the per-pool chemistry and service history, equipment records, gate codes and photos, stored cards and autopay, and the customer portal all live in the route software, and re-enrolling autopay customers is the real switching cost. Skimmer also ties in supplier and test-kit integrations (Heritage, LaMotte) [C, pricing page].

Waste Hauler Route Management

NAICS 562110· 4 named

Default choice AMCS, Soft-Pak, Trash Flow

Alternatives Routeware, Rubicon, Encycle

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

K-12 Student Information Systems

NAICS 611110· 4 named

Default choice PowerSchool

Alternatives Infinite Campus, Skyward, Clever, Blackbaud K-12

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Alumni Relations & Advancement Software

NAICS 611310· 11 named

Default choice Blackbaud (Raiser's Edge NXT, Blackbaud CRM) and Ellucian (CRM Advance, Banner/Colleague Advancement) for the advancement CRM

Alternatives Gravyty (Graduway; K1), EverTrue (ThankView, DonorSearch; Rubicon), Encoura (ex-Anthology Encompass/Advance/Raise), Hivebrite (Quadrille, Insight), Almabase (bootstrapped), PeopleGrove (Reach Capital), Salesforce Education Cloud, 360Alumni

Getting out Gift, pledge and endowment history plus decades of constituent records in the advancement CRM, fed by the SIS; gift-officer workflows and campaign reporting built on it. The engagement layer is shallower (directories and community content) but integrates with the CRM, so vendors sell as add-ons rather than replacements

Price Not published by the main vendors. No price history found

Higher-Ed Student Information & Learning Management

NAICS 611310· 4 named

Default choice Ellucian, Anthology, Instructure (Canvas)

Alternatives Workday Student, Blackboard, D2L Brightspace (Canadian), Moodle-based hosting providers

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Free floor Moodle, Open edX, Canvas LMS (open-source core) — Moodle in particular is a genuine substitute with large institutional deployments

Course Creation & Certification Platforms

NAICS 6115· 4 named

Default choice Kajabi and Thinkific (Canadian — Vancouver)

Alternatives Teachable (Hotmart), Podia, LearnWorlds, Circle, Skool; Moodle and Open edX free at the institutional end

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Price ARR grew 5% against revenue growth of 9% — the recurring base is growing more slowly than the top line, which is the churn problem showing through

Thinkific Labs (Canadian — Vancouver)CanadaAKajabiCTeachable (Hotmart) / Podia / LearnWorlds / CircleCMoodle / Open edXB

Tutoring & Coaching Business Software

NAICS 6117· 2 named

Default choice TutorCruncher and Teachworks

Alternatives Oases, Pike13, Jackrabbit Class, Sawyer, MyMusicStaff

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Healthcare Revenue Cycle & Admin Software

NAICS 621· 15 named

Default choice Optum (Change Healthcare)

Alternatives Waystar (Nasdaq: WAY), Availity, Experian Health, Zelis (payer payments), R1 RCM and Ensemble (outsourced), athenahealth (bundled); AI-native: AKASA, Adonis, Candid Health, Infinitus; credentialing: Medallion, CertifyOS; Canada: TELUS Health, Dr.Bill

Getting out High at the rails. A clearinghouse is wired to thousands of payer connections, to the record and to the practice-management system. Enrolment for electronic remittance and payment is redone payer by payer when a provider switches. Outsourced revenue cycle is a multi-year contract that often transfers staff. Point AI tools are easier to swap (analyst judgment)

EHR+ — Patient Engagement & Portal Platforms

NAICS 6211· 14 named

Default choice Epic Systems (MyChart)

Alternatives Phreesia (NYSE: PHR; $480.6M fiscal 2026 revenue), Weave (NYSE: WEAV; $239.0M 2025), Luma Health ($160M raised), Artera, Relatient (Brighton Park), Kyruus Health, Solutionreach; Canada: Ocean (WELL Health), Medeo (Loblaw/QHR), PocketHealth (imaging PHR)

Getting out Patient-side lock-in is real. Patients have created accounts, installed the app and set up proxy access, and messaging histories live in the portal. Moving them means re-enrolling every patient. A portal bundled with the record leaves only with the record.

Electronic Health Records & Practice Management

NAICS 6211· 5 named

Default choice Epic Systems

Alternatives Oracle Health (Cerner), athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, NextGen, Veradigm, Elation, Tebra, Canada Health Infoway-aligned regional systems

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Free floor OpenEMR, OpenMRS, Bahmni — genuinely used, mostly in low-resource and global-health deployments rather than as competitive substitutes in North America

Patient Booking & Doctor Marketplaces

NAICS 6211· 10 named

Default choice Docplanner (Doctoralia, ZnanyLekarz, MioDottore, jameda)

Alternatives Doctolib (Paris; about $815M raised; €5.8B in 2022), Zocdoc (New York; about $378M raised; profitable per 2021 release), Practo (Bengaluru; Ray clinic software), Healthgrades (RVO Health), Solv (US urgent care; over $80M raised), plus scheduling vendors with no marketplace: Jane App, Cliniko, Tebra, NexHealth

Getting out Two kinds. The profile and its accumulated patient reviews cannot be moved to a rival marketplace, so leaving one means starting your online reputation from zero. Where the practice also runs its calendar and reminders on the vendor's software (Docplanner's SaaS, Doctolib's agenda, Practo Ray), switching also moves the appointment book.

Dental Practice Management Software

NAICS 621210· 3 named

Default choice Henry Schein One (Dentrix) and Patterson (Eaglesoft)

Alternatives Curve Dental, Open Dental, Adit, Tab32

Getting out Data gravity and per-practice licensing; migration cost rises with every acquired practice

Price 7.1% growth in the technology segment — steady, and slower than the practice-consolidation happening beneath it

Free floor Open Dental — open-architecture, widely integrated

Chiropractic Practice Software

NAICS 621310· 8 named

Default choice ChiroTouch (PracticeTek)

Alternatives ChiroHD ($26M growth round led by Mainsail Partners, April 2025), Jane (North Vancouver; multi-discipline; under $10M primary raised, about $1.8B valuation in a TCV-led 2025 secondary), Practice Better (Toronto; US$27M led by Five Elms, 2023, plus US$13M CIBC debt, 2024), ClinicMind (absorbed Genesis), ChiroSpring (a PracticeTek company), ChiroFusion

Getting out The clinical record and the stored payment relationships. Years of SOAP notes, x-ray and exam findings, and personal-injury case files are records the practice must keep and that do not migrate cleanly. Care plans and memberships are prepaid balances or recurring charges on stored cards (ChiroTouch's CT Pay, ChiroSpring Memberships, ClinicMindPay), so switching means moving…

Optometry Practice Management & EHR Software

NAICS 621320· 10 named

Default choice Eyefinity (VSP Vision) — Encompass, the successor to OfficeMate/ExamWRITER

Alternatives RevolutionEHR (13,000+ eye care professionals claimed; RevOptix majority since 2014), Crystal PM (8,000+ independent providers claimed), Compulink (since 1985; multi-specialty), Sightview (My Vision Express; new owners July 2024), Ocuco (Acuitas; €60M from Accel-KKR, 2023), Barti ($12M Series A, Five Elms Capital, 2025), LiquidEHR, NextGen Healthcare (enterprise EHR with an Eyefinity tie-up)

Getting out Three layers. (1) The clinical record: exam history, refractions and imaging tied to devices. Compulink advertises interfaces to 400+ eye care devices [C], and every one of them is a re-integration project when a practice switches. (2) The optical store: frame and contact-lens inventory, open lab orders and point-of-sale history live in the same system.

Behavioural Health Practice Software

NAICS 621330· 4 named

Default choice SimplePractice (EQT)

Alternatives TherapyNotes, Jane App (Canadian — Victoria BC), Valant, Alleva, and the network models Headway and Alma

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Rehab Therapy Practice Software

NAICS 621340· 3 named

Default choice WebPT

Alternatives Prompt, Jane (Canadian), Raintree, SimplePractice

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Addiction Treatment Programme Management

NAICS 621420· 3 named

Default choice Netsmart and Qualifacts (CareLogic / Credible)

Alternatives Kipu Health, Alleva, Sunwave, BestNotes, Ritten

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Medical Imaging & PACS

NAICS 621510· 4 named

Default choice Sectra, Fujifilm, GE HealthCare, Philips

Alternatives Merative (Merge), Agfa HealthCare, Intelerad (Canadian), plus AI-first entrants Aidoc and Viz.ai

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Price Sectra's cloud recurring revenue grew 49% — the transition to cloud PACS is the live movement; Philips Diagnosis & Treatment comparable sales were flat

Home Care Agency Software

NAICS 621610· 4 named

Default choice WellSky and AlayaCare

Alternatives Axxess, HHAeXchange (now with Sandata), Alora, CareVoyant; the state EVV aggregators are no longer a separate group — HHAeXchange is one

Getting out Moderate at the application layer, high at the EVV layer. State-aggregator integrations and payer billing configuration are the switching cost, and after the Sandata deal one vendor holds a large share of those contracts

Price Not the primary grievance — caregiver supply is

Telehealth & Remote Patient Monitoring

NAICS 6219· 3 named

Default choice Teladoc Health

Alternatives Amwell, Included Health, Doximity, Maple (Canadian), Dialogue (Canadian), plus RPM specialists Cadence, Optimize Health and Withings Health

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Price BetterHelp's 9% decline against Integrated Care's 3% growth — the consumer half is contracting while the employer/payer half grows slowly

Hospital Operations & Capacity Software

NAICS 6221· 4 named

Default choice Epic Systems

Alternatives Oracle Health, Infor Healthcare, LeanTaaS, Qventus, Hospital IQ, Canadian regional health authority in-house systems

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Long-Term Care & Senior Living Software

NAICS 623· 4 named

Default choice PointClickCare

Alternatives MatrixCare (ResMed), WellSky, McKesson, Allscripts/Veradigm, eClinicalWorks, Yardi Senior Living

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Childcare Centre Management

NAICS 624410· 3 named

Default choice Brightwheel

Alternatives Procare, Lillio (formerly HiMama, Canadian), Kangarootime, Playground

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Event Ticketing & Venue Operations Software

NAICS 7113· 3 named

Default choice Live Nation / Ticketmaster (NYSE: LYV)

Alternatives Eventbrite (NYSE: EB), SeatGeek, Vivid Seats, AXS (AEG), Tixr, AudienceView, Humanitix

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Talent & Booking Agency Software

NAICS 711411· 3 named

Default choice Master Tour (Eventric, Live Nation) and Prism.fm (Vivid Seats)

Alternatives Muzeek, Gigwell, Tagmin, Casting Networks, Salesforce builds at the large agencies

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Museum Collections & Heritage Management

NAICS 712· 4 named

Default choice Gallery Systems (TMS) and Axiell

Alternatives PastPerfect, Lucidea, eHive, CollectionSpace (open source), Adlib (Axiell)

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Attractions & Family Entertainment Centre Software

NAICS 713110· 10 named

Default choice accesso (AIM: ACSO) for large theme and water parks; ROLLER for FECs and active-play venues

Alternatives ROLLER (US$50m, Insight Partners, 2023), Convious ($20M Series A, Begin Capital / Wille Finance), CenterEdge, Semnox, Gateway Ticketing, Clorian, Ventrata; cashless-card specialists Embed and Intercard

Getting out High and partly physical: arcade card readers and kiosks on every game, outstanding card balances, season-pass and membership databases, waiver records, turnstile/access-control integration, on-premise installs (accesso Horizon, Gateway Galaxy) and multi-year enterprise contracts. Payments are now being bundled in (accessoPay/Adyen 2026;

Price accesso is paid per ticket or as a percentage of venue revenue, not per seat [A]. Other vendors publish no prices. The direction is toward payments monetisation: accesso says accessoPay will 'grow payments monetisation over the medium to long term' [A]

Casino & Gaming Management Systems

NAICS 7132· 4 named

Default choice Light & Wonder (NASDAQ: LNW) and IGT (Apollo, private since July 2025)

Alternatives Agilysys (NASDAQ: AGYS) on the hospitality side — FY2026 revenue $319.3M, +15.9%, company-wide and not gaming-specific; Konami Gaming, Aristocrat, Oracle Gaming (OPERA)

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Golf & Country Club Management Software

NAICS 713910· 12 named

Default choice Jonas Club Software (Constellation) and Clubessential (now Xplor) in private clubs; GolfNow (Versant) in public golf

Alternatives Northstar (1,500+ clubs claimed), foreUP (Xplor), Lightspeed Golf (Chronogolf), Club Caddie (Jonas), Teesnap (TELEO Capital / Allegiant), Club Prophet, TenFore Golf ($7M Series A, Blueprint Equity, 2026), Whoosh ($6M, Craft Ventures, 2022). ClubReady is Clubessential's fitness product and is excluded

Getting out Member billing — the ledger, statement history, F&B minimums and dues — plus the tee sheet that members and staff live in. On public courses, GolfNow's barter ties the software to the marketplace: the course pays in tee times and gets golfer demand, so leaving the software means leaving the channel

Price Not published by the main vendors. Barter is the de-facto price on GolfNow-run courses; cash-priced rivals (Club Caddie, TenFore, foreUP) sell explicitly against it. No price history found

Marina Management Software

NAICS 713930· 8 named

Default choice Dockwa (booking marketplace and marina OS), with DockMaster holding the full-service back office

Alternatives Storable Marine (Molo, inside EQT-controlled Storable), Scribble Software (MARINAGO, Snag-A-Slip integration), Marinalife / Snag-A-Slip (Baltimore; $5M Series A led by Claritas Capital, 2023 [B]), Pacsoft (Jonas Software), Harba (Denmark), Havenstar, Harbour Assist, Marina Master (IRM), Pick a Pier (Israel, European berth booking)

Getting out Seasonal slip contracts, the boater payment-on-file and the marina map. The booking side adds a network effect: boaters book where the app is, so a marina that leaves Dockwa leaves its transient demand channel too

Price Dockwa publishes modular prices from $169/month (transient) to $249/month (POS), annual billing in USD, plus a free leads tier [C, vendor]. No price history found; no other vendor publishes a list price

Fitness Studio Management

NAICS 713940· 6 named

Default choice Mindbody

Alternatives Xplor, Wodify, Glofox, Zen Planner, Push Press

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Kids & Youth Activity Software — Sports, Classes, Camps & Play

NAICS 71399· 16 named

Default choice Sports: PlayMetrics (Stack Sports, SportsEngine; Genstar Capital). Classes: Jackrabbit Technologies and iClassPro (founder-owned). Camps: CampMinder, ACTIVE Network. Indoor play: ROLLER (see 713110)

Alternatives Sports: TeamSnap (Waud Capital), LeagueApps (Accel-KKR, Arctos; $35M VC before), GameChanger (DICK'S). Camps: CampMinder, UltraCamp, CampBrain, ACTIVE Network (Global Payments), CourseStorm. Classes and recreation: DaySmart (Sawyer for Business, Dash; LLR/Parthenon), Pike13 (Jonas Software), Amilia ($35M Vertu Capital 2025), Upper Hand (Lometa, Park Ten), Omnify, Akada (joining Studio Pro). Free/cheap end: TeamLinkt, Jersey Watch, Thapos, GameSheet

Getting out Medium-high and seasonal. Governing-body contracts (Little League, AYSO and state associations steering member clubs to one registration system), embedded payments and payouts, player and family histories, background-check and safeguarding records, and multi-season schedules.

Price Mostly paid by families through per-registration and payment-processing fees rather than by the club; free-to-start tiers (TeamLinkt) sell against platform fees. No list-price history found. Class software is a monthly subscription to the provider, often tiered by active students, plus payment processing;

Restaurant Operations Software

NAICS 722511· 4 named

Default choice Toast (NYSE: TOST)

Alternatives SpotOn, TouchBistro, Square, Olo, regional acquirers bundling POS

Getting out Proprietary hardware at $5,000–$15,000 per location that works with no other processor, plus bundled payment processing

Price ARR +26% and 30,000 net locations added in one year — the incumbent is still taking the market, not defending it

ToastAPAR TechnologyAOloASquare (Block) / Lightspeed Restaurant / SpotOnC

Independent Auto Repair Shop Software

NAICS 8111· 4 named

Default choice Tekmetric and Shop-Ware, against Mitchell 1 inside Snap-on

Alternatives Mitchell 1, Shopmonkey, AutoLeap, Identifix

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Collision Repair & Auto Body Estimating Software

NAICS 811121· 9 named

Default choice CCC Intelligent Solutions (NYSE: CCCS) — CCC ONE estimating, repair management and parts

Alternatives Mitchell (Enlyte; Mitchell Cloud Estimating, RepairCenter, Cloud Repair; buying PartsTrader), Solera/Audatex (Qapter; Vista Equity Partners), and AI tools that plug into the estimate rather than replace it: Tractable (photo estimating for insurers), Partly (parts identification), Revv (ADAS calibration documentation)

Getting out Insurer connectivity. The estimate must be written in a system the paying insurer accepts, and DRPs route the work: 51.2% of Audatex users and 35% of Mitchell users named an insurer mandate as their main reason for the system, and 30.3% of shops pay for more than one estimating system to cover their insurers (2019 survey) [B].

Car Wash Management & Membership Software

NAICS 811192· 10 named

Default choice DRB Systems (Vontier, NYSE: VNT) — SiteWatch / Patheon / Washify POS, TunnelWatch controller, pay stations

Alternatives Equipment-tied: Sonny's (Quivio; Genstar Capital), ICS (Dover OPW), Hamilton Manufacturing, Micrologic (WashCentral). Software-first: Rinsed (membership CRM on top of the POS; $35M raised), EverWash (membership network; $11M disclosed incl. debt), FlexWash (cloud POS + CRM + LPR)

Getting out The tunnel controller and its wiring, gates, pay stations and LPR/RFID readers, all usually bought with the tunnel; plus the membership base itself (recurring card-on-file billing, plate and RFID records), which is 76% of wash sales at the largest chain [A].

Salon & Spa Management

NAICS 812115· 5 named

Default choice Boulevard and Zenoti

Alternatives Fresha, Vagaro, Mangomint, Square Appointments

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Medical Spa & Aesthetics Practice Software

NAICS 812190· 10 named

Default choice Fragmented. Clinical side: PatientNow (PSG), Aesthetic Record, AestheticsPro. Booking/payments side: Boulevard and Zenoti

Alternatives Moxie (medspa operating platform on revenue share; $51M raised, Viewpoint Ventures led the March 2026 Series C), RepeatMD (memberships, rewards, e-commerce; $50M Series A incl. $10M debt, Centana and Full In, 2023), Boulevard ($80M Series D, JMI Equity, 2025), Mangomint ($35M Series B, Altos Ventures, 2024), Pabau (UK all-in-one clinic software; 4,000+ practices claimed), Nextech (TPG; plastic surgery, dermatology and medspa EHR)

Getting out The clinical record and the stored payment relationships. The EMR holds every patient's injection maps, lot numbers, consents and before-and-after photos, which are medical records the practice must keep and which do not move cleanly between systems.

Funeral Home Management

NAICS 812210· 2 named

Default choice Passare, Gather, FrontRunner

Alternatives SRS Computing, Halcyon, Osiris

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Passare / Gather / FrontRunnerCBatesville (Hillenbrand) tech linesC

Pet Grooming & Boarding Management Software

NAICS 81291· 3 named

Default choice Gingr (Togetherwork)

Alternatives MoeGo, Time To Pet, PetExec, Kennel Connection, DaySmart Pet, Pawfinity

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Parking Operations & Payments Software

NAICS 812930· 8 named

Default choice Metropolis (operator-owned computer-vision checkout, after SP+) on the off-street side; Arrive (EasyPark, ParkMobile, Flowbird, RingGo, Parkopedia) on the municipal and on-street side

Alternatives Flash (cloud PARCS; $250M+ round led by Vista, 2022, $1B+ valuation [B]), Passport (municipal mobile pay, permits, enforcement; $125M raised by Dec 2019, Series D led by Rho Capital [B]), JustPark, formerly ParkHub (event and operator payments; FTV Capital-led growth round 2024 [B]), HONK (Toronto; operator mobile pay; $3M seed led by Impression Ventures, 2015 [B]), SpotHero (consumer reservations marketplace;

Getting out High and physical. PARCS gates, pay stations and LPR cameras are installed hardware with multi-year service contracts. Municipal mobile-pay and enforcement contracts are awarded by RFP for multi-year terms. And in Metropolis's model, the operator and the software are the same company, so there is nothing to sell into

Price Mobile pay charges drivers a convenience fee; ParkMobile's was 35 cents in 2021, which sources called standard [B]. Licence pricing is not published

Church & Congregation Management Software

NAICS 8131· 3 named

Default choice Ministry Brands (Insight Partners) and Pushpay

Alternatives Planning Center, Tithe.ly, Breeze ChMS, Subsplash, Church Community Builder (Pushpay)

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Nonprofit & Fundraising Software

NAICS 8132· 4 named

Default choice Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB)

Alternatives Salesforce (Agentforce Nonprofit, ~55,000 nonprofits via Power of Us), Bloomerang (acquired Qgiv, Jan 2024), Neon One, Virtuous, Keela (Canadian)

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

HOA, Condo & Strata Management Software

NAICS 813990· 11 named

Default choice CINC Systems and Vantaca (management-company tier); AppFolio and Buildium where general property managers also run associations

Alternatives FrontSteps (CIP Capital), Enumerate (formerly TOPS; Great Hill Partners), BuildingLink (Bregal Sagemount), PayHOA ($27.5M Series A, Elephant, 2024 — self-managed boards), Condo Control (Klass Capital; Canada), StrataPress and StrataStation (BC strata)

Getting out The association's general ledger, owner ledgers and assessment history, tied to the bank: operating and reserve accounts sit at partner banks wired into the software (CINC lists 38 direct bank integrations), so switching software often means moving the association's deposits too.

Price Not published by the management-company vendors (demo-gated). The banks behind the integrations are a second revenue stream, so the licence price is not the whole price. Self-managed tools publish per-unit pricing;

GovCon Compliance & Clearance Management Software

NAICS 9111· 4 named

Default choice Deltek Costpoint and Unanet

Alternatives PROCAS, JAMIS, Exostar (identity and CMMC supply chain), Summit 7 and other GCC High integrators

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Court & Justice Case Management

NAICS 912110· 4 named

Default choice Tyler Technologies

Alternatives Journal Technologies, Equivant, Thomson Reuters C-Track, provincial in-house systems in Canada

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Local Government Software

NAICS 913910· 5 named

Default choice Tyler Technologies

Alternatives OpenGov, Accela, Granicus, CivicPlus

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

4

Horizontal — software every company buys

The categories that have nothing to do with your trade and everything to do with being a company: CRM, ERP, HR, payroll, contracts, documents, security.

ATS — Applicant Tracking Systems

NAICS 541514· 14 named

Default choice iCIMS, Greenhouse, Workday Recruiting

Alternatives SmartRecruiters, Ashby, Teamtailor, Workable, Recruitee, JazzHR, Breezy, Jobvite

Getting out Weak. Candidate data exports, and job-board integrations are commodity

Free floor OpenCATS, Odoo Recruitment, Frappe HR recruitment

CLM — Contract Lifecycle Management

NAICS 541514· 14 named

Default choice Icertis, with DocuSign CLM and the suite modules

Alternatives Enterprise: Ironclad, Sirion, Agiloft, Conga, Malbek, and the AI-native drafting tools. SMB proposal/quote/contract tier: PandaDoc (private; $1B valuation at its September 2021 Series C [B]), Proposify (Halifax; over 10,000 paying customers claimed in 2021 [C, vendor]), Qwilr (Sydney; $7.25M Series A, May 2020 [B]), Juro (London; $23M Series B, January 2022 [B]), and DocuSign CLM Essentials (launched April 2022 for small and midsize businesses [C, vendor])

Getting out The executed-contract repository and its clause library. Moving it is a migration of the legal record itself

Price Not disclosed. Increasingly bundled into procurement and e-signature renewals

Free floor No open-source CLM of consequence exists, and the reason is liability rather than capability. The artefact is an executed legal record with retention, audit and privilege duties attached, so self-hosting it transfers risk to the buyer instead of saving them a licence fee — the inverse of the…

CMS — Content Management Systems

NAICS 541514· 16 named

Default choice WordPress (open source; commercial arm Automattic, enterprise tier WordPress VIP)

Alternatives Enterprise DXP: Adobe Experience Manager, Sitecore, Optimizely, Acquia (Drupal). Headless: Contentful, Contentstack, Storyblok, Sanity, Hygraph. Hosted builders: Wix, Squarespace, Webflow. Open source: Drupal, Strapi, Payload, Directus, Ghost

Getting out The content model and its URLs, plus every template, plugin, integration and agency skill built on the platform. Leaving means rebuilding the website, usually as a redesign project

Price Not disclosed. The price floor is zero (WordPress, Drupal and the open-source headless tools); enterprise DXP is quoted inside marketing-suite agreements

Free floor WordPress — The web's default CMS; Automattic and many other hosts sell it as a service; Drupal — Government, university and enterprise sites; Acquia is the main commercial steward; Strapi — Open-source TypeScript headless CMS; $45M raised, CRV-led Series B;

CNAPP & Cloud Security Posture Management

NAICS 541514· 9 named

Default choice Wiz, now inside Google

Alternatives Palo Alto Prisma Cloud, CrowdStrike, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Orca Security, Sysdig, Aqua

Getting out Agentless scanning needs cloud-account trust relationships, and those are granted once and rarely re-granted

Price Compressed from both sides — hyperscaler bundling above, open-source scanners below

Free floor Prowler — The most widely used open-source cloud security scanner; hundreds of checks across AWS, Azure and GCP; Cloud Custodian — CNCF project. Policy-as-code remediation, not just detection; ScoutSuite — Multi-cloud auditing from NCC Group; Steampipe — Queries cloud configuration as SQL;

Corporate LMS & Training Management

NAICS 541514· 6 named

Default choice SAP SuccessFactors Learning and Workday Learning

Alternatives Docebo, Cornerstone OnDemand, Absorb, TalentLMS, 360Learning, LearnUpon

Getting out Completion records. Regulated training history has retention duties, so the system holding it is rarely replaced

Price Downward. A free institutional tier below and suite bundling above leave little room for per-seat pricing

Free floor Moodle — The most deployed LMS in the world; runs national education systems as well as corporate training; Open edX — The platform behind edX; built for scale rather than for departments; Canvas LMS — Instructure's core is open source; widely used in higher education; Chamilo — Lightweight;

CPQ — Configure, Price, Quote

NAICS 541514· 8 named

Default choice Salesforce Revenue Cloud, with Oracle and SAP CPQ

Alternatives PROS, Conga, Vendavo, Tacton, Epicor CPQ

Getting out The product configuration model and pricing rules, which encode years of commercial policy and are painful to re-author

Price Not disclosed; typically negotiated into suite renewals

Free floor No open-source CPQ of consequence. A configuration and pricing engine is close to worthless without the product catalogue and commercial policy behind it, and those are the customer's own confidential data rather than anything a community can ship.

CRM — Customer Relationship Management

NAICS 541514· 14 named

Default choice Salesforce (NYSE: CRM)

Alternatives HubSpot ($3.13B FY2025 revenue, 288,706 paying customers), Microsoft Dynamics 365 (~5.2% share), Zoho, Pipedrive, Freshworks

Getting out Data gravity, admin ecosystem, and a certified consultant labour market that exists to keep customers on the platform

Price 10% growth on a $41.5B base — mature, and still the reference price for the category

Free floor Twenty (45k+ GitHub stars), SuiteCRM, EspoCRM, Odoo CRM, Dolibarr, YetiForce, Krayin, Mautic

DAM — Digital Asset Management

NAICS 541514· 7 named

Default choice Adobe Experience Manager Assets

Alternatives Bynder, Canto, Acquia DAM (Widen), Brandfolder (Smartsheet), Cloudinary

Getting out The asset library and its metadata schema, plus every embed and integration pointing at those URLs

Price Not disclosed. Suite bundling and an open-source tier both press downward

Free floor ResourceSpace — Long-established open-source DAM used by museums, universities and NGOs; Pimcore — PIM and DAM in one; the strongest open-source answer for product-led asset libraries; Nextcloud — Not a DAM, but the substitute many mid-market teams actually deploy

DMS — Document Management Systems

NAICS 541514· 13 named

Default choice Microsoft SharePoint (bundled in Microsoft 365), with OpenText and Hyland in enterprise ECM

Alternatives Box (NYSE: BOX), M-Files, Laserfiche, DocuWare (Ricoh), Egnyte. In legal: iManage and NetDocuments. In open source: Alfresco and Nuxeo (both Hyland), Mayan EDMS, Paperless-ngx

Getting out The repository itself: years of documents with their version history, permissions, metadata, retention schedules and legal holds. A migration has to carry the audit trail as well as the files, and in legal it also has to carry matter-centric security and email filing

Price Not disclosed. SharePoint's inclusion in Microsoft 365 sets an effective price of zero for basic storage and versioning, so independents sell compliance, workflow and vertical features on top

Free floor Alfresco Community Edition — Hyland-owned since 2020. The community repository is still committed to on GitHub; Nuxeo Platform — Hyland-owned since 2021. Cloud-native content and DAM platform; Mayan EDMS — Self-hosted EDMS with more than 14 years of releases. Mayan EDMS LLC sells support.

EAM — Enterprise Asset Management

NAICS 541514· 19 named

Default choice IBM Maximo, with SAP Asset Management inside the SAP estate

Alternatives IFS (IFS Cloud EAM for enterprise, IFS Ultimo for mid-market, IFS Copperleaf for capital planning), Octave Attune EAM (formerly Infor EAM / HxGN EAM; spun out of Hexagon in 2026), Oracle (E-Business Suite eAM and Fusion Cloud Maintenance), AVEVA (APM; owned by Schneider Electric), GE Vernova APM (Meridium, SmartSignal), Bentley AssetWise ALIM, Trimble Unity Maintain (Cityworks and AgileAssets), Siemens asset management (formerly Brightly)

Getting out The asset hierarchy and decades of work-order, inspection and failure history. It is the regulator-facing record of asset condition, and it is wired into ERP finance, GIS and SCADA/historian data. Replacing it is a multi-year programme, so most buyers upgrade in place (Maximo 7.6 to Maximo Application Suite) rather than switch

Price Not disclosed at category level. The shift is from perpetual licence plus maintenance to subscription: IFS reports FY2025 ARR +23% and cloud revenue +30%, with 83% of revenue recurring [B, company release]; Infor EAM was already over 70% recurring at the 2021 sale [B]

Free floor No open-source EAM of consequence exists. ERP suites such as Odoo and ERPNext include a basic maintenance module, but nothing open-source carries the regulated asset register, risk-based inspection or reliability analytics that a utility or refinery buys EAM for.

EOR & AOR — International Hiring Platforms

NAICS 541514· 12 named

Default choice Deel, with G-P (Globalization Partners) as the enterprise incumbent

Alternatives Remote, Rippling (EOR bundled into its HR suite), Oyster, Papaya Global, Pebl (formerly Velocity Global), Multiplier, Atlas HXM, Safeguard Global; Omnipresent was acquired by Deel in October 2025; Canadian entrant Borderless AI (Toronto)

Getting out Moderate and per worker. Each employee's contract, benefits enrolment and payroll history sit with the EOR's local entity, so moving means re-papering every worker, usually at a renewal or a statutory notice point. Contractors under AOR can be moved far more easily

Price Not sourced. List prices are per worker per month; heavy venture funding, free-month promotions on Deel's and Oyster's own home pages (checked 2026-10-10) and the bundling of EOR into Rippling's suite all point downward

Free floor There is no open-source tier, for structural reasons. Being the employer of record means owning a registered entity, a payroll tax account and benefit contracts in each country, and those cannot be forked.

ERP — Enterprise Resource Planning

NAICS 541514· 16 named

Default choice SAP

Alternatives NetSuite (Oracle), Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Sage, Infor, Epicor, Acumatica

Getting out Implementation sunk cost. An ERP migration is a multi-year, multi-million-dollar programme — the deepest switching cost in business software

Price 26% constant-currency cloud growth with a €77B contracted backlog behind it

Free floor Odoo, ERPNext (Frappe Technologies), Dolibarr, Tryton, iDempiere

Expense & Corporate Spend Management

NAICS 541514· 7 named

Default choice SAP Concur

Alternatives Ramp, Brex, Navan, Expensify, BILL, Airwallex, Rho, Mercury

Getting out The corporate card itself. Switching software means re-issuing cards and moving the credit relationship

Price Downward to zero. Interchange-funded challengers give the software away

Free floor No open-source tier, and interchange is the reason. The economics of this category depend on issuing a card and earning on the spend; a community project cannot issue one. That is also why the commercial price is falling toward zero without any free tier existing — the floor is being set by…

GRC & Compliance Automation

NAICS 541514· 7 named

Default choice OneTrust, with Vanta and Drata owning the automation tier

Alternatives Vanta, Drata, Secureframe, Sprinto, ServiceNow GRC, Archer, LogicGate

Getting out The evidence history. An auditor wants continuity year over year, and that record lives in the tool

Price Compressing in the mid-market as three funded vendors compete for the same SOC 2 buyer

Free floor Eramba — The best-known open-source GRC platform; risk register, controls and audit workflow; OpenSCAP — Automated configuration compliance against public benchmarks; Comply — SOC 2 policy templates and evidence scaffolding

HCM — Human Capital Management suites

NAICS 541514· 24 named

Default choice Workday, ADP, Oracle (Fusion Cloud HCM / PeopleSoft) and SAP SuccessFactors, with UKG and Dayforce as the PE-owned suites

Alternatives HiBob (US$166M Sept 2026, ~$3.2B reported [B]), Personio ($8.5B valuation 2022 [B]), Employment Hero with Humi in Canada (A$2B 2023 [B]), Factorial ($1B 2022 [B]), and Rippling from the HRM tier

Getting out Payroll: ADP estimates Employer Services clients stay about 13 years; revenue retention is 91–92% at ADP, Paycom and Paylocity [A]. Tax-year cutovers, pay history and benefit carrier feeds make a switch a once-a-decade project

Price Enterprise suites price on quote per employee per month and publish nothing. Employment Hero Canada lists payroll at $7 per employee/month ($70 minimum) [C]. ADP cites 'an increase in pricing' among FY2026 revenue drivers [A]

Free floor Frappe HR — HR and payroll on the Frappe/ERPNext stack; licence as checked in the WFM record; OrangeHRM — HR admin; covered in the HRM record

HRM — Human Resource Management & Payroll

NAICS 541514· 14 named

Default choice Rippling, Workday, ADP

Alternatives BambooHR ($10.01B valuation), Gusto ($500M trailing revenue, cash-flow positive), HiBob, Deel, Paylocity, Paycom

Getting out Payroll. Once you run payroll for a company, switching means risking employees not being paid — the strongest switching cost in horizontal software

Price Rippling passed $1B of ARR from $570M a year earlier — roughly 78% growth against Workday's 13%

Free floor OrangeHRM, Odoo HR, Frappe HR

ADPAWorkdayARipplingBOrangeHRM / Odoo HRBBambooHRBADP / PaychexCWorkday HCMADP Workforce Now / RUNPaychex FlexGustoHiBobDeelPaylocity, PaycomUKG, Dayforce (Ceridian), TriNet, Namely

LXP — Learning Experience & Skills Platforms

NAICS 541514· 15 named

Default choice Workday and Cornerstone OnDemand (each now owning an acquired LXP: Sana and EdCast), with Degreed the reference independent

Alternatives Skills intelligence and mobility: Eightfold AI ($220M Series E, 2021), Gloat ($90M Series D, 2022), Fuel50 ($15.5M Series B, 2021), Workera ($23.5M Series B, 2023). Learning layer: 360Learning, Skillsoft (Percipio). Content: Go1 (aggregator), Coursera with Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, Pluralsight. Free floor for course delivery only: Open edX

Getting out Weak at the LXP layer: a recommendation layer over someone else's LMS and content is easy to switch off. The real lock-in is the HR suite's employee record and its skills taxonomy, which is why the suites buy the LXPs

Price Not disclosed. Increasingly bundled into HCM renewals; content libraries consolidating (Coursera–Udemy)

Free floor Open edX — Course platform stewarded by Axim Collaborative (founded by Harvard and MIT); claims 140M+ learners. It delivers courses; it has no skills graph or talent marketplace

Procurement & Spend Management

NAICS 541514· 8 named

Default choice SAP Ariba and Coupa

Alternatives Jaggaer, Zycus, Ivalua, GEP, Basware, and the ERP vendors' own modules

Getting out The supplier network. Migrating means re-onboarding every vendor's catalogue, tax and payment detail

Price Not disclosed. Enterprise seats are negotiated inside suite renewals

Free floor This category has no open-source tier, and the absence is structural rather than an omission. The thing being bought is a live supplier network carrying catalogue, tax and payment detail for thousands of counterparties. A community can host software;

Project Management Software

NAICS 541514· 14 named

Default choice Microsoft, Atlassian, Asana, Monday.com

Alternatives ClickUp, Smartsheet, Wrike, Zoho, Notion, Linear, plus Oracle and SAP at the enterprise end

Getting out The weakest in this research. Projects and tasks export cleanly; teams switch tools on a whim

Price monday.com grew 27% and Atlassian 20% — the category is still expanding, and Asana at $790.8M shows the gap between the tiers

Free floor OpenProject, Taiga, Redmine, Leantime, Focalboard, Vikunja, GitLab

Revenue Intelligence & RevOps

NAICS 541514· 11 named

Default choice Gong, and the merged Clari + Salesloft. Two different claims on the same budget: Gong came up through conversation intelligence and now reports the larger revenue base; Clari came up through forecasting and bought its way into engagement.

Alternatives People.ai, BoostUp, Aviso, Revenue Grid, Scratchpad and Weflow at the independent end. The more serious challenge is native: Salesforce and HubSpot both ship forecasting and activity capture in the tier most buyers already pay for, which caps what a standalone layer can charge.

Getting out High, and it is the corpus rather than the contract. The product's value is years of recorded calls, emails and closed-won outcomes joined to CRM history — switching vendor means starting that history again, and the forecast accuracy a buyer is paying for degrades until it rebuilds.

Price Upward through bundling rather than through list price. Post-merger reviews report the full Clari + Salesloft stack at roughly US$200–310 per user per month, with the bundled experience priced above the parts [C, vendor-adjacent review sites].

Free floor This category has no open-source tier at all — and that absence is the finding rather than an omission. CRM, ERP, project management, HRM and ATS each have a credible free substitute that sets a price floor;

Sales Engagement & Enablement

NAICS 541514· 11 named

Default choice Seismic and Highspot (merger announced February 2026)

Alternatives Salesloft + Clari, Outreach, Showpad, Mindtickle, Apollo.io, and the native sequencing built into Salesforce and HubSpot

Getting out Not assessed — screened before diligence

Price Consolidating: the two largest transactions in the category's history both landed within fifteen months

Free floor This category has no open-source tier at all — and that absence is the finding rather than an omission. CRM, ERP, project management, HRM and ATS each have a credible free substitute that sets a price floor;

Sales Intelligence & B2B Contact Data

NAICS 541514· 9 named

Default choice ZoomInfo Technologies (NASDAQ: GTM, formerly ZI)

Alternatives Clay (orchestration, ~$100M ARR, reported $7.1B valuation), Apollo.io (~$150M ARR), Cognism ($83M ARR), Lusha ($64.4M ARR), People Data Labs and the enrichment-waterfall layer (FullEnrich, BetterContact, LeadMagic, Prospeo), plus HubSpot's absorbed Clearbit

Getting out Weak and weakening. Waterfall enrichment made any single provider substitutable by design — the buyer's own tooling now treats vendors as interchangeable suppliers behind one interface, which is the opposite of lock-in.

Price Downward and restructuring. ZoomInfo is moving off per-seat pricing toward platform fees plus pre-purchased data credits, which is what a vendor does when seats stop expanding. Downmarket ACV fell 12% year over year in Q2 2026.

Free floor No open-source tier exists, and it cannot. The product is not software, it is a continuously re-verified corpus of people and companies. Code can be given away; the cost here is acquisition, verification and decay — contact data rots at roughly a third a year — so there is no…

Team Chat & Instant Messaging (incl. web chat)

NAICS 541514· 21 named

Default choice Microsoft Teams and Slack (Salesforce); Intercom and Zendesk in customer web chat

Alternatives Suites: Google Chat (Workspace), Zoom Team Chat (Zoom FY2026 revenue $4.87B [A]). Communities: Discord (200M+ monthly users; confidential IPO filing reported January 2026 [B]). Regulated: Symphony (finance; $460M+ raised [B]), Mattermost, Element, Wire, Rocket.Chat. Web chat and AI agents: Intercom (Fin, $0.99 per resolution), Zendesk, LiveChat (Text S.A., ARR $89.5M [A]), Tidio, Crisp, tawk.to, Drift (Salesloft), LivePerson (SoundHound AI)

Getting out Years of searchable message history plus hundreds of installed integrations, bots and workflows, and for Teams the Microsoft 365 identity, meetings and file storage it rides on. In web chat, lock-in is lighter: a script tag on the site and a knowledge base the AI agent is trained on, which is why prices there are falling

Price Team chat: Slack lists Pro at $7.25 and Business+ at $15 per user a month (annual, checked 2026-10-10), with AI now packaged into tiers [C, vendor]. Earlier list prices were not verified, so the size of any rise is not stated.

Free floor Mattermost — About 39,300 GitHub stars; open-core, sold for sovereign and air-gapped deployments; Rocket.Chat — About 46,200 GitHub stars; team chat plus an omnichannel customer-chat module; Element / Synapse (Matrix) — Federated, end-to-end encrypted; Element web about 13,600 stars;

WFM — Workforce Management (Scheduling, Time & Attendance)

NAICS 541514· 19 named

Default choice UKG (Kronos), with time modules inside the payroll suites (ADP, Paychex–Paycor, Workday, Dayforce)

Alternatives Enterprise: Legion (Redwood City; $50M Series C, Stripes, 2021 [B]), Quinyx (Stockholm; $50M, Battery Ventures, 2021 [B]), TCP Software (Humanity). SMB: Connecteam ($120M Series C at about $800M, Stripes and Insight, 2022 [B]), When I Work ($200M, Bain Capital Tech Opportunities, 2021 [B]), Deputy (Sydney; $81M Series B, IVP, 2018 [B]; reported US$1B+ valuation in 2024 [C]), 7shifts (Saskatoon;

Getting out The pay-rule configuration (overtime, premiums, union agreements, fair-workweek and predictive-scheduling rules), installed timeclock hardware, the payroll integration and years of punch records that wage-and-hour audits rely on

Price Not disclosed at the enterprise end. At the SMB end, free plans (Homebase, Sling, 7shifts) and per-user prices of a few dollars a month set the floor

Free floor Frappe HR — Open-source HRMS with shift types, shift assignment and attendance; github.com/frappe/hrms had about 8,900 stars and was pushed 2026-10-09 [A, GitHub API]; Kimai — Time tracking and timesheets, not shift scheduling;

Workflow Automation — BPA, iPaaS & RPA

NAICS 541514· 14 named

Default choice Microsoft Power Automate across the board; by segment, UiPath (RPA), ServiceNow (enterprise workflow), Workato / Boomi / MuleSoft (iPaaS) and Zapier (no-code SMB)

Alternatives n8n (Berlin; $180M Series C at $2.5B, October 2025, led by Accel [B]), Make (Celonis), Activepieces, Pipefy, Kissflow, Tray.ai, Nintex, Automation Anywhere

Getting out Hundreds of live automations wired into production systems, each with its own credentials, connectors and edge-case logic. Nobody rewrites them to save a licence fee. The weakest lock-in is at the SMB end, where a Zap or scenario is short and portable

Price Not disclosed. Pricing is moving from per-user to per-task, per-bot and per-agent-run. Power Automate lists $15 per user a month and $150 per unattended bot a month [C, vendor]

Free floor n8n — Source-available rather than OSI open source: internal business and personal use are free, reselling it as a service is not. The fastest-growing builder in the category; Node-RED — Flow-based, event-driven low-code tool, an OpenJS Foundation project;

5

Cross-industry — one problem, many trades

A single function sold across verticals: payments, product data, ESG reporting, franchise control.

FSM — Field Service Management

NAICS 238· 20 named

Default choice ServiceTitan (Nasdaq: TTAN) for SMB and mid-market trades; Salesforce Field Service, ServiceNow FSM, IFS and PTC ServiceMax at the enterprise end

Alternatives Jobber (Canadian — Edmonton), Housecall Pro, ServiceTrade, BuildOps, simPRO, Workiz; the roll-up brands FieldEdge (Xplor), Service Fusion and Kickserv (EverCommerce); Fieldwire (Hilti) on the construction jobsite side

Getting out Moderate to strong. The customer list, service-agreement schedule, equipment history and price book live in the FSM system, and once card payments and consumer financing run through it the switching cost includes re-papering the merchant account. Owner-operators on the cheapest tiers still churn between Jobber, Housecall Pro and Workiz

Price Upward at the top, held down at the bottom. The leaders monetise through payments and add-on modules (ServiceTitan's GTV of $82.1B against $961M revenue shows how much of the take rides the transaction) [A]; the entry tiers compete on monthly price and free trials [C, vendor]

Free floor OCA field-service (Odoo Community Association) — Community FSM modules for Odoo — orders, workers, routes, scheduling. Small and implementer-led; GitHub API checked 2026-10-10; ERPNext — Full open-source ERP with maintenance visits and service-level tracking;

PLM — Product Lifecycle Management for Discrete Manufacturers

NAICS 336· 21 named

Default choice Siemens (Teamcenter), Dassault Systèmes (ENOVIA / 3DEXPERIENCE) and PTC (Windchill) — an oligopoly of three, with Autodesk, Aras, Oracle and SAP behind

Alternatives Aras (Innovator, low-code PLM, private-equity backed); Autodesk Fusion Manage with Upchain; Propel (built on Salesforce); OpenBOM; Bild; Duro (now Altium); and adjacent tools such as CoLab design review, which plug into PLM instead of replacing it

Getting out Very strong. PLM is the system of record for part numbers, BOM structures, released revisions and the history of every engineering change, often 20 to 30 years of it. It is also wired into CAD, ERP and MES. A migration means remapping data models and revalidating released configurations, and in aerospace and medical devices it means re-proving traceability to regulators.

Price Moving to subscription and SaaS with no visible discounting. Dassault's subscription revenue grew 11% in FY2025 [A]; Siemens sells Teamcenter X as SaaS; PTC's ARR grew 10% to $2,478.5M [A]. Published entry prices: Onshape (CAD + PDM) $1,500 and $2,500 per user per year [A, vendor page];

Free floor DocDokuPLM — The one open-source PLM of note, with a small following on GitHub. It does not constrain incumbent pricing; FreeCAD — Open-source parametric CAD, not PLM. It is listed because it is the free end of the CAD seat that PDM sits behind

PIM — Product Information Management

NAICS 417· 16 named

Default choice No single leader. Enterprise tier: Stibo Systems (STEP), Salsify, Akeneo, inriver, Syndigo (now with 1WorldSync) and Informatica Product 360 (inside Salesforce since November 2025)

Alternatives Plytix and Sales Layer at the SMB and B2B mid-market; Bluestone PIM (headless/MACH); Pimcore (open core); Contentserv (now inside Centric Software / Dassault Systèmes); open source — Akeneo Community Edition and AtroPIM

Getting out High. The PIM holds the customer's attribute model, category taxonomy, classification mappings (GS1, ETIM, retailer schemas) and every enrichment workflow; the ERP, e-commerce site, DAM and syndication feeds are all wired to it. Replacing it is a re-modelling and re-integration project, not an export

Price Upward at the enterprise end as suites absorb the category (Salesforce, Dassault, Syndigo's roll-up) [analyst judgment]; capped at the small end by free Akeneo CE and AtroPIM, and partly uncapped for firms over €5M turnover by Pimcore's 2025 licence change [A for the licence, judgment for the effect]

Free floor Akeneo Community Edition — The reference free PIM; same data model as Akeneo's paid editions, so it is also the paid product's on-ramp; AtroPIM — Maintained by AtroCore; still full copyleft; Pimcore Community Edition — GPLv3 up to 2024.4;

Marketplace Management — One Catalogue Across Amazon, Walmart and the Brand's Own Store

NAICS 459· 20 named

Default choice Rithum (CommerceHub + ChannelAdvisor, merged), with Feedonomics inside Commerce.com

Alternatives Sellercloud, Linnworks, Channable, Zentail, Extensiv (formerly Skubana); the retail-media layer — Pacvue, Perpetua, Teikametrics; the seller-research tools — Jungle Scout, Helium 10; and SoStocked on the inventory side

Getting out Weaker than it looks. The listings, repricing rules and order history are the switching cost, but the catalogue exports and the integrations belong to the platform rather than the vendor — changing tools is a re-mapping job, not a migration of the system of record

Price Downward wherever the platform ships the feature. Shopify Marketplace Connect and Amazon Seller Central carry no incremental licence, so the independents price against free at the small end and must justify a premium above it [C, vendor]

Free floor WooCommerce — A storefront, not a marketplace manager — but its free community channel and feed plugins cover the Google, eBay and Amazon feed cases for a small seller, which is exactly where the independents' cheapest tier competes;

Supply Chain & Inventory Optimisation — Forecasting, Positioning and Replenishment

NAICS 493· 20 named

Default choice Blue Yonder and SAP IBP at the top of the enterprise, with Manhattan Associates (NASDAQ: MANH) the strongest anchor that actually files

Alternatives o9 Solutions, Kinaxis (TSX: KXS), RELEX Solutions, ToolsGroup, Netstock, Inventory Planner at the small end — and, from above, the ERP planning modules that ship by default

Getting out High, and it is the forecast history rather than the software. A demand model tuned on several years of the buyer's own data, with the safety-stock and service-level policies built around it, is the asset; re-training that from scratch is what makes switching expensive and is also what makes the first sale slow

Price Not disclosed by anyone. The structural pressure is downward at the mid-market, where the ERP and WMS vendors include planning in a renewal the buyer is signing anyway, and where Netstock-tier tools price per warehouse rather than per enterprise

Free floor Nixtla StatsForecast / MLForecast — Production-grade statistical and ML forecasting at scale. The demand-forecasting mathematics that vendors charge for is genuinely free and genuinely good — what is not free is the data plumbing, the exception workflow and somebody accountable for the number;

Embedded Payments & Fintech for Vertical Software — renting the rail

NAICS 522390· 22 named

Default choice Stripe (Connect) and Adyen (Adyen for Platforms) at the infrastructure layer; the merchant-acquirer giants (Global Payments, which now owns Worldpay and Payrix) behind them

Alternatives Finix, Rainforest, Tilled, Infinicept, Moov, Worldpay for Platforms (Payrix); BaaS: Unit, Treasury Prime; embedded lending: Parafin; embedded payroll: Check

Getting out Medium-high for the merchant, low-to-medium for the platform. Each merchant's stored cards, payouts, chargeback history and underwriting sit with the processor, so moving a portfolio means re-onboarding every merchant (KYC/KYB) and migrating card tokens. But a platform at scale can and does renegotiate or move to a PayFac model, which is the challengers' entire pitch

Price Downward at the rail. Challengers sell on price and economics share: Rainforest takes a small per-transaction cut with no platform or merchant fees (Crunchbase News, 2025-09-08) [B]. Toast's fintech line runs at roughly 23% gross margin against 72% on subscriptions (FY2025 10-K, computed) [A] — the rail is the…

Free floor No open-source substitute exists at the money-moving layer: acceptance requires a sponsor bank, card-network registration and PCI compliance, none of which code can supply. Open-source payment orchestration layers route between processors but still need one — none was checked for this record.

Franchise compliance SaaS — the franchisor's inspection regime, billed to the franchisee

NAICS 5331· 11 named

Default choice FranConnect on the franchisor side; Crunchtime (with Zenput) and Jolt on the unit-execution side

Alternatives Jolt, Opterus, Tango, FranchiseSoft, ClientTether, Zebra's Workcloud line (ex-Reflexis), and in-house builds on Zoho Creator or similar low-code

Getting out The multi-year audit history and the operations manual it enforces, plus the fact that the system is named in the franchise agreement and its cost disclosed in the FDD — changing vendor means re-issuing a disclosure document, not just a migration

Price Not disclosed by any vendor in this set. The structural point is that a required-technology fee is capped by what a franchisor is willing to print in FDD Item 6 and defend to a franchisee association, not by the buyer's budget

Free floor Odoo Community — Quality, maintenance and checklist modules that a franchisor's IT contractor can bend into an audit tool; ERPNext — Same story from the ERP side — forms, workflows and approvals at no licence cost; Formio — Form and workflow builder;

Franchise Management Software — the Franchisor's Platform from Lead to Royalty

NAICS 5331· 11 named

Default choice FranConnect (Serent Capital-backed; absorbed FranchiseBlast, World Manager and RizePoint)

Alternatives FranchiseSoft and ClientTether in franchise development and CRM; Better and ServiceMinder in franchisor-plus-franchisee operations for service brands; Delightree and Operandio working up from the unit operations layer; Zoho as the horizontal platform large franchisors configure instead; Naranga's former installed base

Getting out High, and contractual. The royalty ledger, the development pipeline, years of audit history and the franchisee portal all live in one system, and that system is named in the franchise agreement and disclosed in FDD Item 11 with its cost and upgrade terms [A, 16 CFR 436.5]. A switch is a disclosure change and a system-wide re-training, not a data migration

Price Undisclosed by the incumbent; none of FranConnect, FranchiseSoft, ClientTether or Better publishes list prices. The cost is commonly passed through to franchisees as a technology fee disclosed in the FDD [C, FranConnect guidance], so price is capped by what a franchisor will print in Item 6 and defend to its…

Free floor SuiteCRM — General CRM a franchisor could configure for a development pipeline; carries no royalty, FDD-receipt or field-audit model; Odoo Community — ERP/CRM suite with portal and accounting; franchise royalty logic would be custom-built

Franchise onboarding SaaS — lead to signature to open, as a product

NAICS 5331· 9 named

Default choice FranConnect, with ClientTether on the franchise-sales end and the HR/POS suites on the employee end

Alternatives ClientTether, FranchiseSoft, Naranga (defunct), Wisetail, Seismic (which absorbed Lessonly), Tango on the site and build-out side, and the onboarding tabs of Homebase, Toast and every payroll vendor

Getting out Almost none on the franchisee-onboarding reading — the opening is a project that ends. What holds the account is the rest of the suite: the royalty ledger, the audit history and the development pipeline, none of which the onboarding step owns

Price Not disclosed for the franchisor suites. On the employee reading the direction is unambiguous: onboarding is bundled into plans priced per location in the tens of dollars a month, or given away with payroll

Free floor Moodle — The training half of onboarding, free and two decades mature; hosted Moodle partners undercut every paid LMS; Open edX — Course delivery at scale for nothing, with a real commercial hosting ecosystem;

Franchise workforce management SaaS — scheduling and labour control across a franchised estate

NAICS 5331· 13 named

Default choice Fourth (with HotSchedules) and Crunchtime at the enterprise end; Toast, Homebase, Deputy, When I Work and 7shifts at the unit

Alternatives Workforce.com, Deputy, When I Work, Homebase, Restaurant365's labour module, Zebra's Workcloud line, and the scheduling tabs inside every payroll platform

Getting out Time and attendance feeds payroll, and payroll is the thing nobody changes mid-year. Whoever holds the clock holds the account — which is exactly why the POS and payroll vendors give scheduling away to get it

Price Downward and visible, because these vendors publish list prices: $2.50 to $9.00 per user per month across the independents, free at one location on Homebase and on 7shifts' free plan [B, vendor price pages]

Free floor Odoo Community — Employees, attendance, timesheets and shift planning in a free ERP — the self-host route for a multi-unit operator with IT; ERPNext — HR, shift types, attendance and leave, free, with a commercial hosting option

Multi-location reporting SaaS — one dashboard across every unit in the system

NAICS 5331· 9 named

Default choice The buyer's existing BI stack — Power BI, Tableau, and the reporting modules already inside the operations suite

Alternatives Domo (pending sale to Progress Software), Sisense, the reporting tabs of FranConnect, Crunchtime and Restaurant365, and the open-source stack — Metabase, Superset, Grafana

Getting out Weak. The artefact is a saved query over POS and back-office data the franchisor already extracts under the franchise agreement; the dashboard is the thinnest layer in the stack and the one most easily rebuilt

Price Downward pressure is visible in the one place it can be read: a per-seat BI licence at $14 a month and a capable free tier sit under anything a franchise-specific reporting vendor can charge

Free floor Metabase — The default free answer for a multi-site operator who wants dashboards over a Postgres warehouse; Apache Superset — Foundation-governed, enterprise-capable, and genuinely free — no vendor to be squeezed by; Grafana — Operational dashboards with alerting;

Carbon Accounting — selling the emissions ledger

NAICS 541620· 12 named

Default choice No independent leader. The ledger is a module of Workiva, Microsoft, IBM, SAP, Salesforce, Sphera and Cority platforms

Alternatives Watershed, Persefoni, Sweep, Greenly, Normative, Plan A, Sphera, Cority, Benchmark Gensuite, IBM Envizi, Salesforce Net Zero Cloud, SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, Schneider Electric Resource Advisor

Getting out Weak. The artefact is activity data multiplied by published factors, re-baselined most years anyway; the factor libraries are licensed, not owned, and export is a spreadsheet

Price Downward at the data layer. Climatiq lists a free non-commercial tier and EUR 3,000/year for single-user emission-factor access (vendor price list, fetched 2026-09-20) [B]. No vendor discloses seat or platform pricing

Free floor openLCA (olca-modules) — Life-cycle assessment engine; last push 2026-09-15, actively maintained [A, GitHub API]; Cloud Carbon Footprint — Cloud-emissions estimation, 1,050 stars, last push 2026-04-23 [A, GitHub API];

EHS Software — Incidents, Inspections, Permits and the OSHA Log Across Every Industrial Site

NAICS 541620· 21 named

Default choice No single leader. A ring of PE- and strategic-owned suites — Cority (Thoma Bravo), Intelex (Fortive), Sphera (Blackstone), VelocityEHS (CVC), Enablon (Wolters Kluwer) — at the top, and SafetyCulture (Mitti) at the bottom

Alternatives Benchmark Gensuite, Ideagen (with ProcessMAP), EcoOnline (with Alcumus's software), Quentic (AMCS), HSI Donesafe; and above the system of record, the computer-vision safety layer — Intenseye, Voxel, Protex AI

Getting out High at enterprise. Years of incident history, OSHA 300 logs, permits, audit findings and training records sit in one system, wired to HR, contractor and maintenance data; re-implementing across dozens of sites is a multi-month project the EHS director has to justify. Low at the bottom: a checklist app's templates are rebuilt in an afternoon

Price Two-tier. The bottom is pinned at a published $24/seat/month (annual) with a free tier for up to 10 users [C, Mitti pricing page]. Enterprise suites quote privately; no published enterprise price was found

Free floor No maintained open-source EHS suite was found in this screen, and none is asserted. The free alternative that actually caps pricing is SafetyCulture's proprietary free tier, plus the spreadsheets and paper OSHA forms most small employers still use.

Energy Efficiency Auditing — the building audit as software

NAICS 541620· 12 named

Default choice The services firms, not a software vendor: Willdan, Ameresco, Legence and the utility programme implementers, with EPA's free Portfolio Manager as the de facto standard tool

Alternatives EnergyCAP, Verdigris, Schneider Electric Resource Advisor, IBM Envizi's building layer, plus the retrofit-analytics and fault-detection vendors reaching the same buyer

Getting out Weak in software, strong in relationships. What is sticky is the multi-year utility programme implementation contract — Willdan describes utility contracts of up to five years and individual programme contracts above $250M — not the tool used to produce the audit

Price Effectively capped at free for the benchmarking layer by ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager. No vendor in this category discloses pricing or revenue

Free floor EnergyPlus — The whole-building simulation engine, 1,570 stars, last push 2026-09-18 [A, GitHub API]; OpenStudio — Modelling SDK over EnergyPlus, 646 stars, last push 2026-09-18 [A, GitHub API];

ESG Compliance Reporting — the mandated disclosure, assembled and assured

NAICS 541620· 13 named

Default choice Workiva, with the EHS platforms (Sphera, Cority, Benchmark Gensuite, Enablon) and the governance suites (Diligent, Nasdaq) pressing from either side

Alternatives Donnelley Financial Solutions, Sphera, Cority, Benchmark Gensuite, Enablon (Wolters Kluwer), IBM Envizi, Position Green, Novata, Diligent ESG, Nasdaq Metrio, and the carbon-first vendors moving up into reporting

Getting out Moderate to strong, and the strongest of the four sustainability categories. The artefact is an assured, audit-trailed report tied to the statutory filing; the auditor's reliance on the control environment is what makes a switch expensive

Price Not disclosed by anyone. The pressure is on volume rather than price — fewer in-scope companies, not cheaper seats

Free floor No open-source ESG reporting platform of consequence exists, and the reason is assurance rather than capability. The standards themselves are free — ESRS, ISSB, GRI and SASB are published documents, and the XBRL taxonomies are public — so the barrier was never the content.

Sustainability Procurement Tracking — supplier ESG data as a network

NAICS 541620· 12 named

Default choice EcoVadis, as a rating network rather than a software product

Alternatives Sphera (with SupplyShift), IntegrityNext, Assent, Sedex, Position Green, Novata, IBM, SAP Ariba, Coupa and Ivalua's own supplier-sustainability modules, plus CDP's supply chain programme

Getting out Strong, and two-sided. A supplier that has completed an assessment will not repeat it elsewhere without being made to; a buyer whose category managers have years of comparable scores will not restart the series

Price Not disclosed. Suppliers pay to be assessed and buyers pay for access, so the entrant faces two price points and a chicken-and-egg on both

Free floor openLCA — Life-cycle assessment engine behind product-level footprints; actively maintained, last push 2026-09-15 [A, GitHub API]; Climatiq Starter tier — Free factor search and five basic product footprints — enough to prove a concept without paying anyone [B, vendor price list]

WHMIS and SDS Management — the safety data sheet binder, sold as software

NAICS 541620· 18 named

Default choice VelocityEHS (formerly MSDSonline) for SMB and mid-market North America; 3E (New Mountain Capital, ex-Verisk) for the enterprise SDS catalogue

Alternatives Chemscape (Canadian-owned), SDS Manager (free tier, AI authoring), KHA Online-SDS, Chemical Safety Software, Chemwatch, RMT ChemAlert, EcoOnline; Sphera (with SiteHawk) and UL Solutions WERCS on the enterprise and supplier side; CCOHS CHEMINFO as the public floor

Getting out Low to moderate. The customer's own SDS collection, inventory by location and label templates are the switching cost, but the documents are the manufacturers' and are re-downloadable from any of several free or cheap libraries — moving is a re-indexing job, not a migration

Price Downward at the small end: a free 200-SDS plan and free 17M-SDS search (SDS Manager), US$699/yr for 1,000 SDSs (Chemical Safety Software), C$300 CHEMINFO. Enterprise pricing is unpublished across VelocityEHS, 3E and Sphera [C]

Free floor No open-source SDS library of consequence was found, and it does not matter. The free floor here is public and freemium rather than open source: Health Canada and CCOHS publish the WHMIS guidance free at WHMIS.org, manufacturers must supply the SDS with the product, and SDS Manager gives away…

HIPAA Compliance SaaS — selling the Security Rule

NAICS 6211· 16 named

Default choice Nobody owns it as a category. The nearest thing to an incumbent is the multi-framework compliance platform — Vanta, Drata, Secureframe — for which HIPAA is one framework among many, with HealthStream holding the hospital training and documentation half

Alternatives Compliancy Group, Accountable HQ, MedTrainer, Clearwater, Censinet, Symplr and Intraprise Health on the healthcare-native side; Sprinto, Scytale, Thoropass and the SOC 2 platforms from above; Paubox and Virtru on the encrypted-communications edge; HHS's own free SRA Tool from below

Getting out Weak, and weaker than the compliance framing suggests. The retention duty — six years from creation or last effect, 45 CFR 164.316(b)(2)(i) — falls on the covered entity, not on the vendor, so the policies, training records and BAA register are the buyer's documents and they export. What a switch costs is a year of habit and a re-upload, not a migration of a system of record

Price Down, and increasingly invisible. Accountable HQ publishes list prices of $199, $299 and $799 a month, or $169, $254 and $679 billed annually ($2,028 / $3,048 / $8,148 a year) for 15–20 employees with extra seats at $9–$19 a month.

Free floor HHS ONC / OCR Security Risk Assessment (SRA) Tool — v3.7: Windows desktop application (72.5MB MSI) plus an Excel workbook edition. Walks a provider through the risk analysis the Security Rule requires; stated target audience is medium and small providers. Nothing entered leaves the user's machine;

CMMS — Computerized Maintenance Management Software

NAICS 8113· 10 named

Default choice No single incumbent. The category is now owned by industrials: MaintainX (Autodesk, closed 2026-08-03), Brightly (Siemens), Fiix (Rockwell Automation) and eMaint (Fluke / Fortive)

Alternatives Limble, UpKeep, Fracttal, Facilio, MPulse, Hippo CMMS (now Eptura Asset); open source — openMAINT, Atlas CMMS

Getting out Moderate, and it rises with use. An asset register, PM schedules and years of work-order history are what the team relies on, and they export as CSV. The real switching cost is re-training technicians on the phone app and re-wiring sensor and ERP integrations, which the industrial owners are deliberately deepening

Price Pressed down at the bottom and up at the top. MaintainX gives a Basic plan at $0 per user per month and sells paid tiers at $20 and $65 [C, vendor page]; UpKeep starts at $24 [C]; open-source options are free. Upward pressure comes from AI and sensor add-ons sold per credit or per asset

Donor Management & Online Fundraising — the Giving Layer Every Cause Buys

NAICS 813· 25 named

Default choice Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB) — Raiser's Edge NXT, Blackbaud Integrated Payments, JustGiving

Alternatives Bonterra (Apax: EveryAction, Network for Good, Social Solutions, OneCause, DonorDrive), Bloomerang (JMI Equity, Warburg Pincus: Kindful, Qgiv), Salesforce non-profit (Nonprofit Cloud / Agentforce Nonprofit), Neon One (FTV Capital), Virtuous, DonorPerfect (SofterWare), GoFundMe Pro (ex-Classy); free-model challengers Givebutter, Zeffy, Donorbox; Canadian players Keela (Aplos) and iWave/Kindsight (Charlottetown)

Getting out High at the CRM, low at the form. Decades of gift history, pledges, soft credits and receipt numbering sit in the donor CRM, and a hospital foundation or university cannot re-issue years of tax receipts from a new system — so the CRM is migrated once a decade.

Price Downward at the small end, upward through payments at the top. Zeffy (free; optional donor contribution), Givebutter (0% platform fee with tips, 3% without) and Donorbox (free plan, 2.95–3.95% fees) price the form layer at or near zero to the charity [C, vendor];

Free floor CiviCRM — Self-hosted constituent CRM with contributions, memberships and events, running inside WordPress, Drupal or Joomla. The free floor for technically staffed nonprofits