Most maintenance teams are not choosing between two pieces of software. They are choosing between the spreadsheet they already have and the idea of software. That is the real competitor, and it should not be underestimated.
What a spreadsheet does very well
It is already there. It is already paid for. Everyone can use it. You can add a column on a Tuesday afternoon without asking anyone's permission, and it never breaks because of an update.
For a single site, a handful of machines and one technician who knows all of it by heart, a well-kept file is an honest answer. Migrating at that stage costs more than it returns.
What it structurally cannot do
Four limits eventually get paid for, and none of them is a question of features.
It has one author at a time. Two people editing the same file produce two truths. The version that wins is the one saved last, not the one that is right.
It does not record who decided what. A changed cell does not say who changed it or when. When an auditor asks for a machine's history, it gets reconstructed from memory — and memory is generous.
It does not go to the machine. Nobody fills in a spreadsheet standing in front of a broken compressor. So entry is deferred, batched and approximate — when it happens at all.
It connects nothing. A part consumed on one tab does not reduce stock on another. The two drift, quietly, until the number on screen has no relationship to what is on the shelf.
The real trigger
It is almost never the number of machines. It is the number of people who need the same information.
While one person keeps the file and answers the questions, the system works. The day that person goes on leave — and the history goes with them — the cost becomes visible all at once.
Migrating without losing everything
The classic mistake is trying to bring across every record since 2019. Don't.
Bring the equipment, not the history. The machine list with model, serial number, location and criticality is the only thing you genuinely need on day one. Past history can stay in the spreadsheet, archived and readable if anyone asks. It is no longer what you make decisions from.
Start clean on jobs. The history that matters is the one you are about to build properly, from now on. Three months of trustworthy data beats five years of copied data.
Do not start with preventive plans. Your current plans reflect habit, not measurement. Run reactive work for a few months, then write plans from what the history actually shows.
Put the codes on the machines immediately. That is the physical part, the one that takes real time on the floor, and it is what makes reporting possible with no account and no training.
What actually changes day to day
The visible change is not in the reports. It is that an operator who spots a leak reports it there and then, from their phone, instead of mentioning it to somebody who will forget.
Everything else — the history, the metrics, the audit trail — follows from that. It is why setting up MainteNeat starts with taking your existing files and loading the equipment: a one-off fee, quoted per site, rather than a six-month project.