Oxmaint's free tier covers the core maintenance execution stack — work orders, asset register, PM scheduling, and mobile field access — with no time limit and no credit card required. The ceiling is 50 assets and 3 users. For a satellite facility or single production line, that ceiling is never reached. For an integrated kiln plant, it is hit within 90 days. This guide defines exactly where the free tier ends, what it costs operationally to stay on it past that point, and which specific paid-tier capabilities drive the measurable ROI that justifies the upgrade.
$0
No cost to start. No credit card. No time limit.
90 days
Typical time before an integrated plant hits the free-tier ceiling
4.2x
Average ROI on upgrade investment within 12 months
68%
Of teams that start free upgrade within 18 months
Free Tier Feature Coverage
The table below maps each capability against free and paid tier availability, with a one-line operational note on what the limit means in a cement plant context.
| Feature | Free Tier | Paid Tier | Operational Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Work Order Management | ✓ Full | Full | No restriction. Corrective, planned, and breakdown work orders fully supported. |
| Asset Register | 50 assets | Unlimited | Integrated kiln plants typically carry 200–400 maintainable assets. Satellite facilities stay within limit. |
| PM Scheduling | ✓ Calendar | + Run-hour & condition triggers | Calendar PMs free. Condition-based and run-hour-triggered scheduling requires paid tier. |
| Mobile Field Access | ✓ Full | Full | Unrestricted. No mobile user cap on free tier. |
| User Accounts | 3 users | Unlimited | Most common first constraint. Shift teams sharing accounts fragment work order attribution and maintenance history. |
| Spare Parts Inventory | Manual tracking | + Reorder automation | Manual stock tracking free. Minimum-stock alerts and work order parts reservation require paid tier. |
| KPI Dashboards | Basic reports | MTBF, MTTR, OEE, PM% | Live MTBF, MTTR and OEE dashboards are paid tier. Free tier produces work order count reports only. |
| Condition Data Integration | ✗ Not included | OPC-UA, API, manual entry | Sensor-to-work-order automation is paid tier. Free tier requires manual work order creation after condition review. |
| Multi-Site Management | ✗ Not included | Unlimited sites | Portfolio-level visibility across plant sites is paid tier only. |
| FMEA & Failure Mode Analytics | ✗ Not included | Full FMEA templates | RCM analysis tools, FMEA templates and failure mode tracking are paid tier. |
| ERP & DCS Integration | ✗ Not included | Full REST API | SAP, Oracle, historian and DCS integrations require paid-tier API access. |
| Compliance Documentation | CSV export | Regulatory-format reports | OSHA, PUWER and BetrSichV formatted audit documentation requires paid tier. |
Free vs Paid: What Changes Operationally
The distinction between free and paid tier is not about feature volume — it is about the operational cost of the gaps. The comparison below identifies where those gaps generate measurable maintenance cost in cement plant operations.
| Area | Free Tier Constraint | Paid Tier Capability |
|---|---|---|
| PM Scheduling | Calendar-based only. No run-hour or condition triggers. | Auto-generated from run hours, calendar, and condition thresholds. |
| KPI Reporting | Manual spreadsheet export. 6–10 hrs/month. Always retrospective. | Live MTBF, MTTR, OEE, and PM compliance dashboards. On demand. |
| Spare Parts | Manual stock checks. Shortages found at repair time. | Work orders linked to inventory. Automated reorder alerts. |
| Condition Monitoring | Manual anomaly-to-work-order process. 3–6 week delay typical. | Threshold breach triggers work order automatically. Under 1 hour. |
| Team Scale | 3-user cap. Account sharing breaks attribution and shift visibility. | Unlimited accounts. Full attribution and shift handover visibility. |
| Shutdown Planning | Individual work orders only. No project scope or critical path. | Full project management — dependencies, critical path, contractor assignment. |
Start Free — Upgrade When Your Plant Is Ready
Oxmaint's free tier is a permanent plan — not a trial. Work orders, PM scheduling, asset tracking, and mobile field access included at no cost. Paid tier unlocks condition monitoring integration, unlimited users, FMEA tools, and live KPI dashboards.
5 Signals Your Plant Has Outgrown the Free Tier
The free tier stops being cost-effective when the workarounds it requires cost more than the upgrade. These are the five operational signals — each with a direct cost implication.
01
Shift teams are sharing user accounts
Once accounts are shared, work order attribution is lost. You cannot determine who completed a task, what they found, or what was deferred. The maintenance history that underpins MTBF analysis and shutdown scope accuracy becomes an incomplete record. Every day the 3-user cap is worked around rather than resolved, the diagnostic value of the CMMS degrades. For any plant running rotating shifts, this is the primary upgrade trigger — not a future consideration.
02
KPI reports are built manually each month
6 to 10 hours per month of planner or engineer time consumed building MTBF, MTTR, and PM compliance reports from spreadsheet exports is a direct, recoverable cost. At a loaded rate of $80/hour that is $6,000 to $10,000 per year in avoidable labour. More significantly, those reports describe the previous month — which means corrective action is always one reporting cycle behind the event that warranted it. A live dashboard eliminates both the labour cost and the decision lag.
03
Condition monitoring data sits outside the CMMS
A vibration alert that requires an analyst report, an email, and a manual work order creation introduces 3 to 6 weeks between anomaly detection and intervention. On an asset with an 8-week P-F interval, that administrative delay consumes 40 to 75 percent of available response time before the work order is even raised. The integration gap is not a convenience issue — it is a systematic compression of the margin between detection and failure that condition monitoring was deployed to create in the first place.
04
Asset count exceeds 50
Once the register limit is reached, maintenance teams leave assets unregistered, create parallel tracking outside the CMMS, or open duplicate accounts. Each workaround fragments asset history across systems — exactly the consolidation problem the CMMS was deployed to solve. Unregistered assets have no work order history, no PM schedule, and no condition trending, which means failures on those assets are invisible until they become unplanned stops.
05
A regulatory audit required manual record reconstruction
When OSHA, PUWER, or BetrSichV inspection evidence requires formatted maintenance records that the free tier cannot generate directly, the preparation work falls to the maintenance team — typically 15 to 20 hours of manual compilation per audit. Plants that have experienced this once upgrade before the next cycle. The compliance documentation module in paid tier generates audit-ready records on demand from live work order data with no manual intervention.
Cost of Staying Free vs Value of Upgrading
Each free-tier constraint generates a quantifiable annual cost. The calculation below uses conservative estimates applicable to a mid-size integrated cement plant. Plants with active condition monitoring programmes or multi-site operations should apply higher figures to the integration and coordination lines.
Hidden Cost of Staying on Free Tier
Manual KPI reporting — 8 hrs/month at $80/hr
~$7,700/yr
Condition-to-WO delay — 1 avoidable intervention/yr
~$40,000/yr
Account-sharing coordination loss
~$8,000/yr
Untracked assets — degraded PM coverage
~$22,000/yr
Audit preparation — 2 audits × 18 hrs at $80/hr
~$2,900/yr
Conservative annual cost of staying free
~$80,600/yr
Value Recovered After Upgrading
Live KPI dashboards — zero report compilation
+$7,700/yr
Automated condition work orders — intervention restored
+$40,000/yr
Named accounts — full attribution and shift visibility
+$8,000/yr
Unlimited asset register — full PM coverage
+$22,000/yr
On-demand compliance export — zero audit prep labour
+$2,900/yr
Conservative annual value recovered
~$80,600/yr
Frequently Asked Questions
QIs the free tier a time-limited trial or a permanent plan?
Permanent plan. No trial expiry, no credit card required, no billing obligation. The free tier remains available indefinitely. Paid features unlock on upgrade but the free tier is not degraded or removed if you choose not to upgrade. Create your account here.
QIs the data created on the free tier preserved on upgrade?
Yes — fully. The upgrade unlocks features on the same account and dataset. No migration, no rebuild. Work order history, asset records, and PM schedules created on the free tier carry forward as the historical foundation for MTBF trending and FMEA analysis post-upgrade. Book a demo to see the upgrade path in detail.
QAt what point does the upgrade ROI become clear-cut?
When any two of the five signals above are present simultaneously, the upgrade ROI calculation becomes straightforward. A plant managing condition monitoring data outside the CMMS and manually building monthly KPI reports is already absorbing $47,000 to $50,000 per year in avoidable cost from those two constraints alone — typically multiples of the annual paid-tier licence cost.
QHow does Oxmaint's free tier compare to competitors?
The primary differentiator is unrestricted mobile access on the free tier and a clearly defined upgrade path that retains all free-tier data and unlocks condition monitoring integration and FMEA tools in one step. Most competitors gate mobile access or impose work order volume limits at the free tier. The full platform comparison covering the top 5 CMMS options for cement plants is linked below.
Continue Reading
The articles below provide the technical and strategic context that determines which paid-tier features your plant actually needs — and at what scale the upgrade investment is justified.
Top 5 CMMS for the Cement Industry: Feature Matrix
Full feature comparison across the leading CMMS platforms — free tier limits, integration depth, and RCM capability.
Read the Comparison →
Cement Plant RCM: Reliability Centered Maintenance Guide
The maintenance strategy framework that determines whether FMEA tools and condition monitoring integration belong in your upgrade decision.
Read the Guide →
Cement Plant TPM Implementation with CMMS
Which TPM pillars require paid-tier CMMS capability and how Oxmaint maps to a full TPM deployment.
Read the Article →
Cement Industry Maintenance Benchmark Report 2026
Performance gap between plants on basic CMMS tools versus full analytics and integration capability — by asset class and plant type.
Read the Report →
Start Free. Upgrade When the Numbers Say So.
Oxmaint's free tier is a permanent starting point — not a restricted preview. When any two of the five signals above are present, the upgrade ROI calculation resolves quickly.
