Software that finally works the way you do.

You’ve seen the parade.

Every couple of years, somebody in the office picks new software. It looks great in the demo. The salesperson says all the right things about “mobile-friendly” and “intuitive interface.” Then it lands in your hands and you find out it was built for the office, not the field.

The required-fields gauntlet that takes 12 taps to open a ticket. The desktop-first layout shoved into a mobile view. The PM checklists generic enough to be useless on any specific unit. The photo upload that needs WiFi. The notes field that times out when you try to dictate. The work-order categories that don’t include “tub faucet leaking when off” so you pick “Other” every single time.

Six months later, the team is back to the spreadsheet, the whiteboard, and the text-message group chat — the actual tools that work. The software still gets paid for. Nobody uses it for what it’s for.

FixGrid was built by someone who lived through that parade. Multiple times. Across multiple property management companies.

20 years in mechanical rooms. FMP credentialed. Then this.

FixGrid was built by George Herlth — a 20-year multifamily maintenance professional with a Facilities Management Professional (FMP) credential through IFMA. The product reflects two decades of being on call at 2am, of make-ready turns that had to finish on Friday so the move-in could happen Saturday, of fire-pump test certificates that disappeared between the contractor’s portal and the owner’s due-diligence request.

The mechanical-room time matters because it’s the difference between “we interviewed a maintenance manager once and built the workflow we thought they described” and “the founder has personally been in that mechanical room at 2am.” You can’t fake field knowledge. It shows up in the small decisions — which fields are required, which workflows are short-circuited, what categories exist by default, where the photo button sits on the screen.

Read the founder’s story on About FixGrid, or the deeper story of how it was built using AI as a development partner on Built With Claude.

Built for the phone in your pocket.

The platform is a Progressive Web App (PWA) — it runs in your phone’s browser without needing the app store. Mobile-first, not mobile-adapted. Thumb-driven workflows from the start.

• Open a ticket in three taps. No required-fields gauntlet, no “please select sub-category” before you’ve typed the title.
• Photo capture that works. Tap, camera opens, take the shot, it attaches. No file picker, no upload progress bar, no separate photo module.
• Voice-to-text notes via your phone’s native dictation. Talk while you work, the structured record gets captured.
• Offline-tolerant. Lose signal in a mechanical room? The interface still works for data already loaded. Changes sync when signal returns.
• Quick-add for common issues. Plumbing leak, HVAC down, electrical — one tap to open, type or speak the title, save.
• Resident contact from the ticket. Phone number lives in the ticket detail. Tap to call or text. No second app required.

Not the ones in the sales deck.

What you actually need from maintenance software — the things that determine whether you use it or whether you’re back to the spreadsheet six months in:

• Ticket queue that respects priority. Urgent stuff floats. Routine work doesn’t bury the leak in apartment 207. You can filter by My Queue, All Property, Unassigned, or Compliance — whatever cut you need at the moment.
• PM schedules that align with how units actually need attention. Not a generic monthly checklist applied to every unit. Cadences that match the equipment, the building age, the climate, the make-ready rotation.
• Asset history at your fingertips. The RTU you’re standing in front of has a complete repair history attached. Last service, parts used, warranty position, prior tech’s notes. No more “is this the third time we’ve replaced this contactor or the fifth?”
• Make-ready turn boards. Visual timeline of which units are in turn, what phase they’re in, who’s on each task, when the move-in is. Not a spreadsheet.
• Compliance logs that auto-fill cadences. The fire-pump churn, the elevator inspection, the backflow preventer test — the system tracks the dates and tells you what’s due. You just do the work and check the box.
• Vendor records in one place. The HVAC contractor’s last service, the elevator contractor’s most recent certificate, the sprinkler vendor’s annual flow test. No more emailing the office asking who has it.

You decide whether the software actually gets used.

Maintenance teams don’t usually pick the software — the property manager or the owner does. But the maintenance team makes or breaks adoption. Software that the field doesn’t use gets paid for and abandoned. Software that the field embraces compounds operational value.

If you want to bring FixGrid up to whoever picks the software at your shop, here’s what gets attention:

• $30/month base, $0.75/unit over 50. Portfolio-wide. No setup fee. No contracts. Way cheaper than what most shops are paying for enterprise CMMS that nobody uses.
• Built by a 20-year maintenance pro with an FMP credential. Domain expertise the salesperson at the other software company can’t match.
• Mobile-first. Your team won’t have to fight to use it on phones — it was built for phones from the start.
• Resident portal closes the resident communication loop without your team fielding follow-up calls. PM and owner care about retention; this is their lever.
• Compliance vault (Grid Apogee) means the AHJ inspection paperwork doesn’t disappear between contractor portals and email archives.
• Lender-ready operating record — matters at refinance, acquisition, insurance renewal. Read the lender-readiness page for the owner-facing version of this argument.

The fastest way to evaluate fit is to try the demo with a property your team actually runs. 30 minutes of demo time on a real property is more useful than any spec sheet.