The big ERPs cost six figures and a year of your life. The point apps each solve one slice. Spreadsheets almost work — until they don't. Here's the honest layout, sourced and specific.
Most shops run on QuickBooks, a stack of spreadsheets, a whiteboard, and paper travelers. It almost works — which is the trap. Bills of materials are invisible, real job cost is a guess, and the month takes ten days to close.
Then you hit the invisible ceiling around $20M and 50 people, and the duct tape gives out all at once. SteadyFloor is the bridge you put in before that — without the six-figure leap.
Four ways to run a shop. One of them was built for you.
| SteadyFloor | Foreign enterprise ERP SAP · Oracle · Epicor · Infor |
Point apps field-service · inventory tools |
Spreadsheets + QuickBooks | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost to start | No six-figure tax | $40K–$1M implementation | $50–$500/user/mo | Cheap — until the rework |
| Time to live | Days | 6–18 months | Weeks–months | Now (and never finished) |
| One system, whole shop | ✓ Quote→cash→dispatch | Yes, if you survive setup | ✗ One slice each | ✗ Six disconnected tools |
| AI woven into every screen | ✓ Native, local | ✗ Bolt-on, dev-gated | ✗ | ✗ |
| True offline (transact, not just view) | ✓ | ✗ Cloud phone-home | ✗ | Local, but blind |
| A cockpit for every person | ✓ | ✗ Generic seats | ✗ | ✗ |
| Free accredited education built in | ✓ The College | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Workforce / hiring built in | ✓ People First | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Trade standards as code | ✓ SAE/NEC/ASME native | Manual / plugin | ✗ | ✗ |
| Your data, your hardware | ✓ Sovereign | ✗ Cloud + CLOUD-Act | ✗ Cloud-only | Local, fragile |
| Made in the USA | ✓ Milwaukee | Often foreign-owned | Varies | — |
| Pricing as you grow | Not per-seat punishment | $80–$400/seat forever | Per-seat | Hidden cost = your time |
Figures from public pricing pages, G2/Capterra reviews, and 2026 market research. Comparison is categorical and factual.
Domestic, small-shop, sovereign, AI-native, with a mission. No giant is built for it; no point app reaches it. Six moats hold the line.
Your data and your AI run on your hardware. No foreign cloud, no CLOUD-Act exposure, no phone-home.
Training built into the platform compounds engagement and stickiness no SaaS player offers.
Every role gets a tailored, AI-native surface — not a generic ERP seat.
Every opted-in shop strengthens the network — collective intelligence rivals can't replicate.
Open data, on-prem, transparent — built for the post-2025 trust deficit and reshoring wave.
SAE J517, BOM, job costing, crimp specs — native, not a vertical layer bolted onto generic ERP.
See SteadyFloor mapped to your actual shop — the system the big guys have, built for the people who actually do the work.