Honest comparison
Papertrail is excellent for equipment owners — adventure parks, rope-access teams, wind farms — inspecting their own PPE and lifting gear. Core is built for the inspection service company going on site to inspect equipment for many different customers.
For the Inspection Service Business. Not Just for Inspecting Your Own Kit.
Papertrail is excellent if you own and inspect your own equipment — climbing centres, rope access, wind farms. Core is built for the inspection company going on site for many customers, with job scheduling, branches, technician utilisation, billing handoff, and a branded portal for every client.
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Which one is right for you?
A straight call. We'd rather you self-select the right fit than push the wrong tool.
Choose Papertrail if…
- You are an equipment owner — adventure park, climbing centre, rope-access company, wind-farm operator — managing inspections of your own kit.
- PPE and height-safety equipment dominate your inventory, with little crane, hoist, or proof-load workflow.
- You want a frictionless 45-day free trial and published tiered pricing before talking to a sales team.
- PartnerHub-style record sharing with your equipment suppliers is genuinely valuable to you.
Choose Core if…
- Your business is providing inspection and certification services to other companies, with technicians dispatched to customer sites.
- You inspect cranes, hoists, lifting beams, and rigging alongside PPE — not just PPE.
- You operate across AU/NZ, UK, US, or Canada and need ASNZ or ASME compliance, not only LOLER.
- Branded customer portals at your custom subdomain are part of how you retain and grow accounts.
- You need multi-branch job dispatch, technician utilisation reporting, and service-charge capture at the point of inspection.
Where Core wins
Three reasons inspection businesses switch to Core
The service-company motion, end to end
Papertrail is built around an asset register an equipment owner manages — climbing harnesses they own, rope kit they inspect for themselves. Core is built for the loop that runs an inspection company: quote a customer, schedule a technician across branches, dispatch the job, enforce competency rules, capture time and service charges in-app, generate certificates, push them into the customer's branded portal, and hand off to billing. Different centre of gravity, different workflow design.Heavy-lift and rigging scope, not just PPE
Papertrail's customer base is strongest in adventure safety, rope access, arboriculture, and PPE management — and they're genuinely excellent in those niches. Core's scope is wider: overhead cranes, mobile cranes, tower cranes, hoists, lifting beams, shackles, eye bolts, plate clamps, vacuum lifters, magnets, and load testing — alongside PPE and height-safety equipment. AS 4991 below-the-hook device certification, AS 2550 crane major inspections, and ASME B30 retirement criteria are all native.Multi-region compliance, not LOLER-only
Papertrail's compliance focus is LOLER, IRATA, and work-at-height PPE standards. For UK adventure and rope-access operations, that's the right framework. Core covers LOLER alongside ASNZ 2550 (AU/NZ), ASME B30 (US/Canada), and the LEEA Code of Practice — first-class, not bolt-ons. Service companies with international customers or plans to expand don't run parallel systems per region.
Side-by-side: Core vs Papertrail
| Capability | Core | Papertrail | What this means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Built for | Inspection service companies | Equipment owners (PPE/adventure focus) | Different centre of gravity drives different workflow design. |
| Multi-branch service operations | Native (cross-branch jobs, branch dashboards) | Limited | Core handles the multi-location service-company motion. |
| Crane / hoist coverage | Deep (overhead, mobile, tower, load testing) | Light | Core covers the heavy-lift family Papertrail under-serves. |
| Timesheets and service charges | Captured at the point of inspection | Add-on or external | Job profitability data flows directly to billing in Core. |
| Multi-inspect batches | Native | Limited | Batch capture for 100+ items per visit. |
| ASNZ / ASME compliance | Native (AS 4991, AS 2550, ASME B30) | Light | Critical for AU/NZ and US/Canada operators. |
| PPE product directory | Standard | 15,000+ pre-loaded items | Papertrail's onboarding accelerator for adventure / rope access. |
| NFC scanning | Supported via standard mobile | Native focus | Papertrail's hardware-cost story for PPE owners. |
| Restrictive competencies | Enforced at scheduling | Tracked | Core makes competency a scheduling constraint, not just a record. |
| Free trial | Demo + scoped trial | 45 days, no credit card | Papertrail's evaluation flow is genuinely frictionless. |
Why Core, in five lines
Built for the inspection service business
Quote → schedule → inspect → certify → bill is the workflow. Most competitors stop at 'inspection completed'.
Multi-region compliance in one platform
LOLER, ASNZ 2550, ASME B30, and LEEA Code of Practice ship together — not as separately purchased modules.
Unlimited customer logins
Every one of your customers gets a branded portal to view equipment and certificates — no per-portal-seat charge.
Multi-inspect for batch capture
Inspect 200 chain slings as a single batch with shared metadata. Drill into defects only.
Restrictive competencies enforced
Only certified technicians can be scheduled to certain inspection types — competency becomes an operational rule, not just a data field.
FAQ
Is Papertrail LOLER-compliant? Yes — Papertrail is a LEEA Associate Member and ships a thorough-examination workflow. Core also handles LOLER ROTE natively. The differentiator isn't LOLER itself — it's industry focus. Papertrail is strongest in PPE and adventure safety. Core is built for crane, sling, and rigging service operations.
What does Papertrail cost?
I run a wind-farm operator — am I Papertrail or Core?
Does Core have a free trial?