Coast

Why a Messaging-First CMMS Works

Most CMMS tools get installed and then sit unused. The technician opens the app once during training, forgets the password, and goes back to texting the supervisor. Coast was founded in 2019 in San Francisco with $35M in funding and a different bet: what if maintenance workflows lived inside something that feels like WhatsApp?

That bet has paid off. Coast's interface looks like a group chat, not enterprise software. Work orders show up as messages. Checklists arrive as interactive tasks. Shift schedules appear in the same feed. The adoption problem that kills most CMMS rollouts basically disappears because the tool feels familiar to everyone who owns a smartphone.

Work Orders Without the Overhead

Creating a work order in Coast takes about 15 seconds. Tap "new task," snap a photo of the broken asset, add a description, assign it, and set priority. Done. There's no dropdown hell, no mandatory fields for asset category taxonomy, no form that takes longer to fill out than the actual repair.

For teams under 50 people, this simplicity is a feature, not a bug. You won't find complex PM scheduling with meter-based triggers or condition-based maintenance rules. But you will find a system your team actually uses every day. That trade-off is worth it for restaurants, hotels, property management companies, and small facilities teams.

Checklists and Scheduling

The checklist builder handles opening procedures, closing procedures, safety walk-arounds, and equipment inspection rounds. Managers create templates, assign them to recurring schedules, and get notified when they're completed—or more importantly, when they're missed. For franchise operators running 10+ locations, this visibility alone justifies the subscription.

Shift scheduling is basic but functional. You can build weekly schedules, let staff see their shifts in-app, and handle swap requests. It's not replacing Deputy or When I Work for complex labor scheduling, but for teams that just need to know who's on shift and what they need to do when they get there, it's enough.

Where Coast Falls Short

Enterprise-grade asset management isn't here. You won't find hierarchical asset trees, depreciation tracking, or spare parts inventory with min/max reorder points. Large facilities with 5,000+ assets and complex PM programs will outgrow Coast fast. The reporting is improving but still lags behind established CMMS tools like Limble or UpKeep for maintenance KPI tracking.

Who Should Pick Coast

Restaurants, hotels, retail stores, and property management companies with frontline teams that refuse to adopt traditional CMMS tools. If your biggest problem is adoption—not feature depth—Coast solves it.