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Condition based maintenance software turns a sensor threshold breach into a dispatched work order without a human deciding to open a ticket. That’s a narrower job than a full predictive maintenance platform — you don’t need failure-history modeling to run it — but it’s a different job than a plain CMMS, which schedules work on a calendar and has no idea what a bearing’s vibration signature looked like this morning. It’s narrower too than full CAFM software, which spans space planning, assets, and compliance well beyond maintenance triggers. We covered what condition based maintenance actually is and when it beats the alternatives separately; this is the shortlist of platforms that run it in practice for building portfolios, and where each one is the wrong tool for the job. If your buyers sit on the plant floor rather than in a building’s facilities office, our comparison of industrial sensor intelligence platforms covers that ground instead.
We evaluated each on three things that matter for a CBM program specifically: how directly a threshold breach becomes a work order (not just an alert nobody acts on), how much per-asset configuration it takes to set a sane baseline, and whether it was built for condition-based triggering or has it bolted onto a calendar-first CMMS.
1. FrostLogic Explore
Explore reads directly from the BMS and any connected sensors across a portfolio over BACnet, OPC UA, Modbus and oBIX, so condition thresholds run against live building data without a separate sensor deployment for equipment already wired into the BMS. An Edge Agent on the BMS PC pushes the data up, reaching buildings whose BMS has no cloud licence, and it is proven against Schneider, Tridium Niagara and Siemens Desigo. Breaches route straight into a ranked work-order queue, prioritized by cost and risk rather than a flat alert list, which is the part most CBM tools get wrong: they generate alerts faster than a team can triage them.
- **Best for: **portfolios running multiple BMS vendors that want CBM thresholds applied consistently across every building without a separate configuration pass per site.
- **Limitation: **for equipment with no BMS or sensor connection at all, you're instrumenting from scratch, same as any other platform on this list, but worth knowing going in.
- **Pricing model: **scales with connected points across a portfolio rather than a flat per-building fee, ask for a quote against your real point count, not a per-site estimate.
2. Fiix by Rockwell Automation
Fiix layers condition-based triggers on top of its calendar-based PM scheduling. Its integration with FactoryTalk Optix, Rockwell's own IIoT and edge platform, connects PLCs, sensors and SCADA systems directly into Fiix, so a machine signal can open a work order without months of custom integration work (Fiix, FactoryTalk Optix product page, viewed September 2026). That layer is sold and priced separately from the core CMMS: a one-time charge covers the design, build, testing and deployment of the integration. A companion engine, Fiix Foresight AI, analyzes maintenance history to suggest PM intervals from actual failure patterns instead of a fixed schedule, though assets with no condition-monitoring hardware still fall back to time-based scheduling.
Where it beats Explore: a plant standardized on Rockwell or Allen-Bradley equipment gets native PLC-to-work-order wiring a BMS-reading platform was never built to reach. EU data residency for FactoryTalk Optix is not in published materials as of September 2026.
- **Best for: **teams that already run Fiix and are adding condition triggers to a subset of critical assets, especially on Rockwell-connected plant equipment, rather than rebuilding the maintenance program around sensor data.
- **Limitation: **the FactoryTalk Optix integration is a separate paid project, and outside the Rockwell ecosystem the condition-monitoring side stays thinner than a dedicated analytics platform.
- **Pricing model: **per-user CMMS licensing, with the IoT module and the FactoryTalk Optix integration priced as add-ons, the cheapest entry point on this list if you don't need the Rockwell-specific layer.
3. UpKeep
UpKeep runs condition monitoring as a distinct product, UpKeep Edge, sold alongside its core mobile CMMS rather than folded into it. Edge sensors feed UpKeep's AI engine, Nova, which generates work orders from real-time sensor data and surfaces patterns across an asset fleet, catching issues before they become unplanned downtime (UpKeep, CMMS product pages, viewed September 2026). IoT is not bundled into UpKeep's base plans, so Edge is a paid add-on on top of per-technician seat pricing, and multi-site management, IoT-driven condition monitoring and advanced analytics increasingly sit behind Enterprise-tier pricing rather than the plans smaller teams start on.
Where it beats Explore: a single site or small portfolio with no BMS gets a working sensor-to-work-order loop through Edge faster than a platform built to read BMS data that doesn't exist there yet.
- **Best for: **single-site or small-portfolio teams that want a lightweight CBM add-on, through UpKeep Edge, without adopting a full building analytics platform.
- **Limitation: **scaling thresholds across dozens of buildings and multiple BMS types isn't what it's built for, and Edge plus multi-site management push you into Enterprise-tier pricing fast.
- **Pricing model: **per-technician seat, with IoT monitoring as a separate paid tier, competitive for a single site, less so once you're paying per-seat and per-add-on across a large portfolio.
4. Facilio
Facilio's fault detection and diagnostics engine is documented in its own product help center as quantifying the cost and root cause of each fault and ranking which one needs attention first, with configurable actions that can change alarm severity, notify a team, or automatically generate and close a work order (Facilio, Diagnostics documentation, viewed September 2026). Facilio publishes a case study from a deployment at British Land: over 300,000 minutes of air-conditioning runtime optimized per month and a 50 percent year-on-year reduction in heating and cooling costs, without disclosing the portfolio size the figures were measured against.
Where it beats Explore: a portfolio that wants fault detection and condition-based triggering delivered as one bundled analytics deployment, instead of assembled from a BMS-reading layer plus a separate work-order system, gets that from a single Facilio contract.
- **Best for: **large portfolios that want condition-based triggering folded into a broader fault-detection and analytics deployment, not a standalone CBM add-on.
- **Limitation: **implementation overhead is higher than a purpose-built CBM tool for teams that only need the threshold-to-work-order loop, and the published British Land figures come from Facilio, not an independent audit.
- **Pricing model: **enterprise, quote-based pricing tied to portfolio size, budget for a longer procurement cycle than the CMMS-add-on options.
5. Augury
Augury pairs proprietary sensors with an AI diagnostics platform built for rotating equipment. Its published materials describe multi-signal sensing, vibration together with temperature and magnetic flux data, which the company says produces a more confident fault call than vibration alone. Its partnership with Baker Hughes extends that sensing to Ranger Pro wireless hardware for plant-wide machinery coverage under the Bently Nevada System 1 software line (Baker Hughes, Machine Health powered by Augury, viewed September 2026). A Forrester Total Economic Impact study Augury commissioned in 2025 found a composite customer organization typically reaching payback in under six months, with most customers seeing a first machine-health improvement within 30 days. Those are vendor-commissioned figures, and Augury does not publish building-portfolio case studies; its published deployments frame the product around continuous manufacturing, not commercial real estate.
Where it beats Explore: a fleet of pumps, motors or compressors where a wrong diagnosis is expensive gets deeper failure-mode detail from purpose-built vibration hardware than a general BMS analytics layer returns.
- **Best for: **critical rotating equipment where vibration-based diagnosis matters more than portfolio-wide coverage, a central plant's chiller and pump fleet, for example.
- **Limitation: **tied to Augury's own sensor hardware, out of scope for anything that isn't rotating equipment, and its results come from industrial manufacturing customers, not commercial buildings.
- **Pricing model: **bundled hardware-plus-software subscription, priced per monitored asset, reflects the cost of the proprietary sensor hardware, not just the software.
Condition based maintenance software vs. condition based monitoring software
The two phrases get used as if they mean the same purchase, and they don't. Condition based maintenance software, the subject of this comparison, closes the loop: a threshold breach becomes a dispatched work order without a person deciding to open a ticket. Condition based monitoring software is the narrower category underneath it: it watches a signal, such as vibration, temperature or a BMS point, and raises an alert when that signal crosses a threshold, then stops. Whether a work order gets created afterward is left to a separate system or to whoever is watching the dashboard.
Every platform in this comparison sits somewhere on that line. Augury leans hardest toward monitoring: its diagnostics call out a fault, and dispatching the repair still runs through whatever CMMS the plant already uses. Explore and Facilio push further toward maintenance, routing a breach straight into a ranked work-order queue. Fiix and UpKeep sit in between, depending on which module you buy. Confirm which side of that line the product you're evaluating actually sits on before you shortlist it.
How to evaluate condition based maintenance software before you buy
The vendor demo will show a clean dashboard and a threshold that fires on cue. What it won’t show you until you’re live is how much day-to-day tuning the platform actually needs.
- **Ask how thresholds get set. **A platform that ships with generic manufacturer defaults will alert constantly until someone manually tunes every asset — ask whether baselining is guided or entirely manual.
- **Ask what happens after the alert. **If the answer is “it shows up in a dashboard,” that’s condition monitoring, not condition based maintenance — confirm the work-order handoff is automatic, not a step someone has to remember.
- **Ask about multi-vendor BMS support. **If your portfolio runs more than one BMS brand, confirm the platform reads all of them natively — some tools quietly assume a single vendor and charge extra integration fees to bolt on the rest.
- **Price it per asset, not per building. **A flat per-building fee can hide a huge cost swing once you actually count how many pieces of equipment you’re instrumenting — ask for pricing against your real asset count before comparing platforms.
- **Ask for a realistic implementation timeline. **A vendor quoting “live in a week” for a multi-building, multi-BMS rollout is describing the demo environment, not your portfolio — a real rollout across several sites and BMS integrations typically runs weeks to a few months, not days.
The comparison at a glance
| Platform | CBM approach | Best for | Sensor/BMS reach |
|---|---|---|---|
| FrostLogic Explore | Portfolio-wide thresholds on live BMS + sensor data, ranked work-order queue | Multi-BMS portfolios | Any connected BMS or sensor |
| Fiix | CMMS with condition triggers layered on calendar PM | CMMS-first teams adding CBM incrementally | IoT sensor integrations |
| UpKeep | Mobile CMMS with an IoT add-on | Single-site or small portfolios | Limited to connected sensors |
| Facilio | BMS-wide fault detection plus connected work orders | Large portfolios with integration budget | Full BMS integration |
| Augury | Vibration-based diagnostics on proprietary sensors | Critical rotating equipment specifically | Augury hardware only |
Choosing between them
If you’re managing more than a handful of buildings across different BMS vendors, a platform built to read all of them — FrostLogic Explore or Facilio — saves the per-site integration work a CMMS-plus-sensors approach requires at scale. If you’re running a single site or a small portfolio and already have (or want) a CMMS as the system of record, Fiix or UpKeep get you a working CBM loop without replacing what your technicians already use. If the problem is specifically rotating equipment failing without warning, a vibration specialist like Augury will out-diagnose a general platform on that narrow scope. Either way, start with the handful of assets already driving your unplanned downtime, not the whole building — the platform choice matters less than proving the threshold-to-work-order loop closes reliably before you scale it.
For the modeling layer on top of CBM — forecasting a failure window instead of just flagging a threshold breach — see our comparison of the best predictive maintenance software for buildings, and for a portfolio-wide view across every BMS vendor, building management system analytics platforms. For the wider market these tools sit inside, see our full building energy management software comparison.
Do you need a platform at all?
Not always, at least not on day one. A handful of critical assets with a manually-checked threshold and a spreadsheet is a legitimate way to run condition based maintenance while you prove the concept — several of the teams we’ve talked to started exactly there. The point where a spreadsheet stops working is predictable: once you’re tracking more than a dozen or so assets, or the person checking readings goes on vacation and nothing gets reviewed for two weeks, the manual process silently degrades back into run-to-failure. That’s the signal to move to software — not a fixed asset count, but the moment the loop depends on someone remembering to check a spreadsheet.
FAQ
What is condition based maintenance software? Software that monitors equipment condition data — vibration, temperature, current, or BMS points — against configured thresholds, and automatically turns a breach into a work order. It’s narrower than a full predictive maintenance platform, which adds failure-forecasting on top.
Is condition based maintenance software the same as a CMMS? No, though many CMMS platforms now bolt on condition-based triggers. A pure CMMS schedules work on a calendar; condition based maintenance software (standalone or CMMS add-on) schedules work based on live sensor or BMS data instead.
Do I need a dedicated CBM platform, or can my CMMS handle it? If you’re instrumenting a handful of critical assets, a CMMS with an IoT add-on (Fiix, UpKeep) is usually enough. If you’re running condition thresholds across a multi-building, multi-BMS portfolio, a platform built to read every BMS natively saves the per-site integration work.
How much does condition based maintenance software cost? Pricing typically scales with the number of connected assets or sensor points rather than a flat per-building fee. CMMS-plus-IoT add-ons tend to be the lower-cost entry point; portfolio-wide analytics platforms cost more but remove the need to instrument every asset individually where BMS data already exists.
What should I look for when comparing condition based maintenance software? Three things: how directly a threshold breach becomes a dispatched work order (not just an alert), how much per-asset configuration setting a sane baseline requires, and whether the platform reads your existing BMS or requires new sensor hardware on every asset.
Can I run condition based maintenance without buying software? Yes, on a small scale — a handful of assets with manually-checked thresholds and a spreadsheet works while you prove the concept. It stops scaling once you’re past a dozen or so assets, or once the loop depends on someone remembering to check readings rather than an automated alert.
What's the difference between condition based maintenance software and condition based monitoring software? Condition based monitoring software watches a signal, such as vibration or temperature, and raises an alert when it crosses a threshold. Condition based maintenance software closes the loop from there, turning that breach into a dispatched work order without a person deciding to open a ticket.
FrostLogic Explore brings sensor intelligence, scenario simulation, and grounded-inference AI to commercial and industrial buildings. Learn more about Sensor Intelligence or talk it through with us.
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