Hoist vs Workshop Software

Hoist is $140/month NZD + GST, with 3 users included and $10/month per extra user. Workshop Software publishes three monthly tiers at $119, $149 and $249 + GST in Australian dollars, with up to 20% off on annual billing, which takes Silver to about A$99. Their headline can land near ours, so the difference is in the meters. Extra users are $20/month there against $10 here, exactly double, and that gap widens with every person you put on. Vehicle lookups are 59c each on prepaid credits against 5c cached or 24c live here, which is the one that adds up in a shop doing WoFs all day. And their list price is in Australian dollars with no NZD price list published, so what you actually pay moves with the exchange rate.

Yes, and properly. They publish a New Zealand phone number, and their New Zealand registration lookup fills in the vehicle details at 59c a lookup on prepaid credits per their knowledge base. The one thing worth checking for a NZ shop is currency: they publish in Australian dollars with no NZD price list, so what you pay moves with the exchange rate. Ask them to quote you in NZD before you sign.

It’s the larger and longer-established product. It has multi-branch support and a deep set of parts-supplier integrations, Repco, Burson, Capricorn, NAPA ProLink, PartsTech and TireConnect among them, none of which Hoist has today, and its native mobile app is out now while ours releases in September 2026. It also discounts by up to 20% on annual billing, which we do not. If you run several branches or want supplier ordering inside the system, those are genuine points in its favour.

Two-way customer texting is the clearest one, and it is not close. There it is a paid add-on at $299 + GST a month on top of your plan, with a $1,250 set-up fee to switch it on and the messages charged on top of that. With us it is in the $140, and replies land in a thread against the customer instead of on someone’s personal phone. Data import is the second, and their own pricing page is specific about it: import assistance is an additional fee on Silver and Gold, and only comes included on Platinum at $249. We do the migration for you at no charge on the one plan we sell. Then a connected mailbox so the email about a job sits beside the job, and deferred work tracking so work declined in March is waiting on the vehicle in September, neither of which they advertise. Support is the fourth. They do publish a New Zealand phone number, so we are not going to pretend they are unreachable - but priority support is a Platinum line item on their pricing page, where here every channel is open to every customer on the one plan: live chat, phone and email, from our own team in Upper Hutt, working your hours.

Yes, and the migration is free. We move your customer records, vehicle history and job templates across for you, and help you get set up. Get in touch before you cancel anything so there is time to take a clean export.