Stackroom vs UpKeep

Both have assets. They are organised around different verbs

In a CMMS, the asset exists so that work can be raised against it. The question the system is built to answer is “what needs doing, by whom, and when was it last done”. UpKeep answers that well, on a phone, which is why it has done well with maintenance teams.

In Stackroom the asset exists because someone is holding it. The question is “who has this, since when, where was it last seen, and did it come back in one piece”. Maintenance is present — tickets, schedules, warranty, service history — but it is a supporting workflow rather than the centre.

This is why a feature-by-feature comparison misleads here. Both rows say “preventive maintenance” and both are telling the truth, but UpKeep's is a maintenance management system and ours is a scheduler that keeps equipment serviceable.

A test that decides it quickly

Ask what actually goes wrong with your equipment. If the answer is breakdowns, unplanned downtime, missed servicing and parts not being on the shelf — that is maintenance, and a CMMS is the right category. Stackroom will feel thin.

If the answer is that things disappear, come back damaged with nobody accountable, get double-booked, or cannot be found when needed — that is custody, and a CMMS will feel thin because it has no concept of a person holding something temporarily.

Most organisations have some of both. The one that costs you more this year should decide the purchase.

What a CMMS structurally lacks

No custody chain. A CMMS knows an asset's location, not that Marcus signed for it on Tuesday and still has it. That distinction is the entire point of an accountability system.

No reservations. Work orders are scheduled against technicians, not equipment availability for other people. Two teams wanting the same item next week is outside the model.

No cycle counts. Maintenance reconciles against a work history, not a physical count with a scope and a signature. When finance or an insurer asks for an inventory, a CMMS has nothing shaped like an answer.

Where Stackroom's maintenance genuinely reaches

Being honest about our own boundary: Stackroom does tickets with statuses, costs and a full service history; recurring schedules that raise work ahead of the date; warranty dates with reminders; and an asset held out of the bookable pool while a ticket is open.

What it does not do is parts inventory for repairs, technician workload management, downtime and reliability analytics, or meter-based triggers. If you need those, you need a CMMS, and running both is a reasonable answer — Stackroom's webhooks can raise work in another system when a fault is recorded.