Decide whether you need a CMMS or an EAM first
A CMMS handles work orders, PM schedules and spare parts for one or a few plants. An EAM (IBM Maximo, Hexagon HxGN EAM, SAP EAM) manages asset lifecycles across a portfolio of sites, often with financial and capital-planning modules attached. If you're maintaining production lines at one facility, the enterprise tier here (Maximo, Hexagon, SAP, Prometheus Group) brings implementation weight you probably don't need. If you're a multi-site enterprise standardizing maintenance practice across a dozen plants, the smaller cloud tools may not scale their reporting and role hierarchies far enough.
Rule out what you can't administer day to day
A CMMS is only as good as the person who keeps the PM schedules current and closes work orders. Ask who that will be before you shortlist. Tools with a free tier (MaintainX, Fiix) let a single technician start logging work orders without a purchase order, which matters if your maintenance lead has authority but no budget yet. Quote-only enterprise systems (Maximo, SAP EAM, Hexagon) typically assume a dedicated administrator, sometimes an outside integrator, for setup and ongoing config.
Match deployment to your IT posture
Of the fifteen vendors here, several list hybrid deployment (Maximo, Hexagon, SAP EAM, Maintenance Connection, Prometheus Group, MPulse, MicroMain) alongside a cloud-only set (Limble, MaintainX, UpKeep, Fiix, eMaint, Brightly, Tractian, L2L). Hybrid options matter if plant-floor connectivity is unreliable or if IT policy keeps asset data on-prem. Pure cloud tools remove that infrastructure question but assume steady network access on the floor, including for the mobile app your technicians will actually use.
TODO(editor): verify which of the hybrid-listed vendors still ship a genuine on-prem build versus a hosted instance with offline caching, before making that distinction firm on the page.
Check what it has to talk to
A CMMS that can't exchange data with your ERP, your label printer or your CMM becomes a second system of record nobody trusts. Fiix is backed by Rockwell Automation and eMaint by Fluke Reliability, which may matter if you already run those companies' hardware or condition-monitoring tools, but the listings here don't specify which ERPs or historian systems each integrates with natively.
TODO(editor): confirm and list actual ERP/integration partners per vendor (SAP EAM's tie to SAP ERP is stated; the rest are not) before claiming integration depth anywhere on this page.
Price the rollout, not just the license
Only three vendors publish a seat price. The other twelve, including established names like Maintenance Connection and MPulse, require a sales call to get a number. A quote-only price is not automatically higher, but it does mean you can't compare total cost until you've had that call, and vendors sizing a quote to an enterprise account may not offer the smaller-plant pricing a 20-person shop needs.
TODO(editor): check whether any of the quote-only vendors (eMaint, Brightly, Maintenance Connection, MPulse, MicroMain) have published starter pricing elsewhere that should be reflected in the price field.
Decide if you need predictive maintenance or just PM scheduling
Tractian pairs vibration sensors with work-order software for predictive maintenance; most of the rest here are schedule-and-log PM tools. If your failure modes are wear-driven and detectable early (bearings, motors), sensor-based monitoring changes what "preventive" means on your floor. If your maintenance problem is mostly missed PM tasks and paper work orders, that sensor layer is cost you don't need yet.
