Test & Tag Software Comparison: Free vs Paid

When buying a portable appliance tester in today’s market, never has there ever been so many different features to compare and models to look at. Because there’s such a huge range to evaluate, a lot of decision making needs to go into this before you make your PAT tester choice.

So here in this blog we specifically take a closer look at one of those critical features which is PAT software - one of the essential tools in the kit for test and taggers. In the test and tag world you have two choices: you can either use paid software, or if you prefer take advantage of free versions which are available to use. Lets breakdown everything you need to know about test and tag software.

Feature Comparison

Some portable appliance tester manufacturers offer their own software, while others are third-party. The cost and functionality of these various options can range from ‘free and basic’ through to ‘expensive and feature rich’.

As you would expect, the free software doesn’t have a lot of frills or features, but generally provides a basic single report that is often adequate for most people’s needs. But if you want to store data as a record of your testings, then you need something more. The ease of use and the degree of customisation of these free offerings varies across all manufacturers so it is worth finding out what the software can and can’t do before purchasing the portable appliance tester.

Paid software such as PATGuard Elite used for Seaward testers or PATlink or aPAT for Metrel, will generally have more features and would offer a good range of different reporting formats and customisation. For example, with the PATGuard 3 Elite you’ll be able to send customers reminders via email when re-testing is due, which is typically something you won’t be able to do with free versions. There will also be more options around how your testing data is managed, stored, and retrieved. But again, it’s advised to see what it can and can’t do before committing to a particular make or model of the tester. Most paid software options will have a trial version available, so we certainly recommended taking advantage of this to see exactly what it has to offer.

Device and Software Compatibility

Currently manufacturers are supplying PAT software that is predominately PC based. Unfortunately, this is not the case for Mac users, which is a common pain point for our customers who are more accustomed to Macs. Some third-party options are browser based but do require manual input of information.

This is also the case with mobile device applications which are currently only available on Android due to Apple’s security restrictions. Most mobile applications have a DEMO mode that is free, and the user can basically choose to purchase a one-time licence to remove the DEMO MODE message.

aPAT Software on an Android Device

The Bottom Line

There’s almost as many options of PAT software as there are of actual PAT tester. And more often than not, you will surely get what you pay for – either ‘cheap and basic’ or ‘expensive and feature-rich’. Other than pure dollars, effectively your choice also depends on your work requirements.

Our recommendation is if you’re somebody who is just starting out in the test and tag industry, an appliance tester with free software would most likely do the job for you. But if you’re a test and tagger who is testing a lot of items, potentially as a service provider, then you might want to consider the paid versions.