Can I run Pitlane next to Tekmetric or Shopmonkey?

Yes. Export a CSV from your current system, upload it, and your customers, vehicles, VINs and last-visit dates land in Pitlane. Most shops are imported inside a day. Run both on the trial and move the customer side over one job at a time; nothing forces a cutover.

Does Pitlane have a labor guide or a parts catalog?

No. Parts and labor price off your own numbers: enter a part's supplier cost and Pitlane carries the margin on that line, and labor hours price against the shop rate you set. If catalog ordering inside the repair order is the center of your day, keep your management system for that and let Pitlane run the customer side beside it.

Is a CRM the same thing as a retention tool?

In shops the two words get used for the same product: the texting, reviews, reminders and win-backs. What matters more than the label is whether the record is the vehicle and whether the approval, photos and payment attach to the repair order. A tool that keeps contacts and treats the car as a note is a sales CRM, whatever the box says.

Shop Management System vs CRM: What an Independent Shop Actually Needs

Two logins, two bills, and a customer who got the same review request twice in one afternoon.

That is the stack in a lot of four-bay shops right now. A management system for the back office. A retention tool bolted on for the customer side. And a service writer re-typing the customer's phone number into the second one, because the first one owns the repair order and the second one owns the text thread, and neither will admit the other exists.

What a shop management system is for

Mitchell 1, Tekmetric, Shopware, Shopmonkey. They were built around the catalog. Labor guides, parts lookups and ordering inside the repair order, inventory that decrements when a line closes, accounting exports, multi-location roll-ups. If ordering parts from inside the RO is the motion your whole day turns on, that is what they are for, and they are good at it.

The customer side came later, as modules. Texting was added. Reviews were added. Some of it is fine. None of it was the reason the product exists.

What a CRM is for, in a shop

In a shop, "CRM" means the customer side of the job. The thread with the customer. The approval with a signature. The photos the tech took. The payment. The review ask two hours after pickup. The reminder when the interval comes due. The win-back when they go quiet.

The thing that makes it a shop CRM and not a sales CRM is the vehicle. The record is the car, not the person. The VIN is the key. A tool that keeps "contacts" and treats the Camry as a note field is a sales tool wearing a shop shirt.

Why you end up with both

The management systems grew from the catalog outward and never quite reached the customer's phone. The retention vendors grew from the review request outward and never wrote a repair order. So the RO lives in one system and the customer lives in the other, and the shop is the integration.

That is where the double review request comes from. And the re-typed phone number. And the approval that happened in a text on the writer's personal cell, which the management system has never heard of.

Skip this section if you already run Tekmetric and like it

You don't need to switch. Plenty of shops shouldn't. What you need is a customer side that reads from the same record as the RO, or at least imports from it cleanly, so the thread, the photos and the approval end up on the job instead of next to it.

Ask two questions of any second tool. Does it take my export and match customers to vehicles by VIN? And does its texting come from my shop's own number, with the carrier registration handled? A no to either means you are about to buy a third login.

The price math, since you're still reading

This is the part nobody puts on the homepage. Published prices, as of August 2026, from our own comparison pages:

Shopmonkey: $239, $399 or $499 a month for three to five users, then $20 a seat.
Tekmetric: $199, $349 or $439 a month.
Shopware: $279, $389, $499 or $999 a month.
AutoLeap: $179, $309 or $409 a month on annual billing.

Then the retention tool on top, priced separately, often per seat for the second writer. Remember the two logins from the top? The second one is usually the expensive one, and it is the one the customer actually touches.

What to look for, in order

The customer's approval, photos and payment attach to the repair order. Not to a contact card in another system.
Texting comes from the shop's own number, is included in the price, and the carrier paperwork is done for you.
Card payments cost what the processor charges and nothing on top.
One flat price. Every seat. The second writer does not cost $20 a month.
Your data leaves as a file the day you decide to go.
A person answers the support email. Ask who, before you pay.

When you actually need the full management system

Be honest about this part. If you order parts from the catalog inside the RO all day, keep the management system. If your estimates depend on a labor guide, keep it. If you run three locations and your bookkeeper lives in its exports, keep it. The customer side should sit beside it and read from it, not fight it.

Where Pitlane sits

Pitlane is the customer side and the repair order in one, at $200 a month with every seat included. It prices parts and labor off your own numbers, so there is no labor guide and no catalog; if that is your day, it runs next to Tekmetric or Shopmonkey on the trial, imports your CSV, and you move the customer side over one job at a time. If it isn't, it runs alone.

Count your logins. If it's two, ask which one the customer's phone number lives in. That's the one that should be running the relationship.