# SafetyCulture (Mitti) vs Fulcrum vs Custom Software for Inspection Reports > When the report is what you sell, form builders hit limits. How Mitti (formerly SafetyCulture), Fulcrum and owned software compare on report output, offline capture, hosting and cost. **Published:** October 27, 2026 **Updated:** October 28, 2026 **Author:** Matthew Clarkson, Osher Digital **Category:** Business Process Automation **Reading time:** 11 min read **Source:** https://osher.com.au/blog/safetyculture-vs-fulcrum-vs-custom-inspection-software/ --- If your team runs safety checklists and site audits, Mitti (the app most people still call SafetyCulture or iAuditor) is hard to beat on price and ease of use. If your inspectors capture many mapped records per site and need GIS layers offline, Fulcrum is the stronger tool. If the report itself is what you sell, as it is for building and pest inspectors, consulting arborists and engineers, both start to strain. That is the point where your own software can earn its cost. We are Osher Digital, a Brisbane automation and software consultancy. We automated the reports coming out of Fulcrum for a consulting arborist, and later built the same practice its own field app and report platform. We have also built an inspection management portal for a Canberra building and pest firm, and a pay-to-release report portal for an engineering consultancy. This comparison comes from that work and from each vendor's own documentation, checked in October 2026. A note on names first. SafetyCulture renamed itself Mitti on 11 August 2026, and safetyculture.com now redirects to mitti.com. The existing API address still works, so integrations built before the rename keep running. * * * ## The three side by side | | Mitti (formerly SafetyCulture) | Fulcrum | Your own portal and field app | |---|---|---|---| | Best at | Checklists, audits and actions across many sites | Field data with maps, GIS and many records per site | Firms whose report is the product | | Price | Free for up to 10 seats. Premium is listed at $24 a seat a month billed annually, or $29 monthly | US$43 a user a month (Professional) or US$55 (Elite), billed annually, minimum 5 users | A one-off build, quoted on scope, with no seat fees | | Offline | Mobile app: inspections, actions and schedules work offline | Offline capture and cached Esri basemaps | Built offline-first when the work needs it | | Report output | Four layouts with your branding; blocks can be shown or hidden; Word export on Premium | A basic report builder on all plans, an advanced one in HTML, CSS and JavaScript, PDF output | Your own templates, filled from the data | | API and webhooks | Premium and Enterprise | Elite plan | Built to suit | | Australian hosting | Yes, on AWS in Australia for organisations created since March 2022 | Yes, on a separate Australian instance with its own account | Wherever you choose | | Xero | No native integration that we could find | Not listed | Built in where you need it | Mitti's pricing page does not say which currency the $24 is in, so confirm it for your account before you budget. * * * ## When a form builder is enough Mitti is very good at what it was built for. A free tier for up to 10 people, scheduled inspections that you can assign across sites, actions that follow up a failed item, and an app field staff learn in an afternoon. It began as SafetyDocs in Townsville in 2004 and is now based in Sydney, so Australian support hours are not an issue. Reviewers on Capterra Australia give it 4.6 out of 5 from 356 reviews. The limits show up in the report. You can set the logo, cover page, colours, fonts and image size, and hide blocks you do not want. The Compliance and Overview layouts have fixed content, and the help centre documents no way to reorder sections or upload your own report template. The common complaints in reviews are the same two things: per-seat cost as a team grows, and report customisation that needs a higher tier. Fulcrum suits a different job. Its repeatable sections let one inspection hold dozens of child records, each with its own location and timestamp, which is how you record 80 trees on a development site or every defect on a large building. It plots everything on a map, works with Esri, and its workflows can email a PDF, call a webhook or send an SMS when a record changes. Capterra Australia reviewers rate it 4.7 from 238 reviews. The complaints: cost ("the cost has become ridiculous" is a real quote), annual billing only, and reports that are hard to tailor without paying Fulcrum's professional services team to build them. For a lot of firms, one of these two is the right answer and you should stop reading here. If your report is an internal record of a check that happened, a form builder does the job for less than anything we would build. * * * ## Where both start to strain: when the report is the product Building and pest inspectors, consulting arborists and engineers sell a report. The report has to follow a standard, carry the firm's judgement, and stand up when a buyer, a council or a builder reads it closely. The standards are specific. Pre-purchase building inspections sit under AS 4349.1 and timber pest inspections under AS 4349.3. Arborists writing for development applications now work to AS 4970:2025, which replaced the 2009 edition, and councils add their own rules on top. The City of Casey, for example, wants surveyed and numbered trees, canopy spread, trunk diameter at 1.4 metres, and a report less than six months old. Three things then push a form builder past its limits: 1. The output has to read like your firm's work, in your structure. A branded export of a checklist rarely gets there, so someone ends up rebuilding it in Word. 2. A site can mean dozens of items, each with photos and measurements. Mitti's own help centre warns that "an excessive number of repeat sections may impact the app's performance". 3. Most of the effort sits around the report. An agent books, a vendor gives access, a conveyancer wants the report, a contractor drafts sections, and the invoice has to be paid before the final version goes out. A form builder handles none of that. Before you build anything, look at the specialist apps. Building and pest inspectors have tools such as Report Systems App, which lists report forms for AS 4349.1 and AS 4349.3 from $50 a month, and My Inspection App, whose plans start at about $61 a month for 15 reports. Arborists can use ArborCAD for tree protection zone drawings, at $299 a month or $5,990 to buy outright plus GST. If one of these matches how you work, use it. It will cost less than custom software. * * * ## Option 1: keep Fulcrum and automate the report The cheapest way out is often to keep the field app and automate the report behind it. ![Report pipeline: Fulcrum webhook to an n8n workflow that stores photos in Cloudflare R2, fills four Carbone templates and drafts legislation sections with an AI agent, then a person reviews](/images/blog/safetyculture-vs-fulcrum-vs-custom-inspection-software/fulcrum-report-pipeline.webp) LSM Tree Advice, a consulting arborist in South Australia, captured site data in Fulcrum and then cut and pasted it into four Word report templates for every job. We connected a Fulcrum webhook to a self-hosted n8n workflow. It stores the photos in Cloudflare R2, fills all four reports through Carbone, and uses an AI agent backed by Qdrant to draft the sections that depend on legislation. A person reviews every draft. Cutting and pasting fell by more than 80%, and the practice now completes more jobs at higher prices. The [case study](/case-study/automating-report-generation-for-field-services/) has the detail. One thing has changed since then. Fulcrum now sells webhooks and API access on its Elite plan only, so budget US$55 a user a month if you take this route. Our [system integrations](/system-integrations/) page explains how we scope this kind of work. * * * ## Option 2: own the system Some firms outgrow the field app as well. The same arborist practice was paying for an off-the-shelf app it could not shape, and its six report types lived in separate Word documents that shared most of their content. Updating one standards citation meant finding every template that mentioned it. So we built them their own system: an offline-first Android app that records each tree once, with no signal needed on site; a report engine that composes all six report types from one shared content library; and a portal where clients open a preview and pay to unlock the final PDF. The office controls the prompts behind the AI-drafted sections, and everything generated goes into an editor for review. The practice owns the source code. ([Case study](/case-study/custom-arboriculture-portal-and-field-app/)) ![A generated arboricultural report in the practice's own portal, with the job's progress from enquiry to delivery (demo data)](/images/osher/software-generated-report.webp) _A finished report in the practice's own portal. The screens use demo data._ Two more examples of the same idea: ![A job in a custom inspection portal, with six team lanes from booking to accounts, each with its own checklist (demo data)](/images/osher/software-job-workflow.webp) _One job in an inspection portal: six team lanes, each with its own checklist. Demo data._ - A Canberra building and pest firm replaced its legacy booking system with a portal where each job runs as six parallel lanes, one per team, with route-aware scheduling and the shared mailbox filed against the job. Staff change their own packages, prices and message templates, and adding an inspector costs nothing in licences. ([Case study](/case-study/custom-building-inspection-portal/)) - An engineering consultancy was emailing reports, drawings and the Xero invoice together, so clients had the work before they had a reason to pay. Its portal now shows a preview stamped DRAFT on every page, stamped on the server so it cannot be removed in the browser, and releases the files when Xero shows the invoice as paid. ([Case study](/case-study/report-release-automation-for-engineering-firm/)) * * * ## What the numbers look like over three years Take a firm with 15 people who all need full seats, over three years, before any integration work: | | Calculation | Three-year cost | |---|---|---| | Mitti Premium | 15 seats × $24 × 36 months | About $12,960 | | Fulcrum Professional | 15 users × US$43 × 36 months | About US$23,220 | | Fulcrum Elite (for webhooks) | 15 users × US$55 × 36 months | About US$29,700 | | Your own system | One-off build, plus hosting and support | Depends on scope | Seat fees rarely justify a build on their own. On these numbers Mitti is cheaper than most custom work for a firm this size. The case for owning the system is the work around the report: retyping, chasing payment, and coordinating people outside the business. That is where our clients got their time back. * * * ## How to choose - Mostly checklists, audits and corrective actions, and the report is a record: use Mitti. - Many mapped records per site, GIS matters, and a standard PDF is acceptable: use Fulcrum. - A specialist app already produces your standard's report in a format you are happy with: use it. - You are retyping field data into Word, or payment and release are tangled up with the report: automate the report around your current app first, and replace the app only when it is the thing holding you back. If you cannot tell which side of the line you are on, our [Business Process Audit](/services/business-process-audit/) maps the job from booking to paid report in one day onsite and gives you a costed plan you own. Our [custom job management software](/services/custom-job-management-software/) page shows what owned systems look like, or you can [book a 15-minute call](/book-a-call/). * * * ## Frequently asked questions ### Is SafetyCulture the same as Mitti? Yes. SafetyCulture renamed itself Mitti on 11 August 2026. safetyculture.com redirects to mitti.com, and the existing API address still works. ### Can Mitti or Fulcrum produce an AS 4349.1 building inspection report? Both can produce a branded PDF from your inspection data. Mitti documents no way to reorder report sections or upload your own template, and Fulcrum's tailored reports usually need its advanced HTML builder or its professional services team. Firms that need a fixed standards-based format tend to use a specialist building and pest app or their own templates. ### Does Fulcrum keep data in Australia? It can. Fulcrum runs a separate Australian instance where the data stays in Australia, but it needs its own account. Mitti places organisations created since March 2022 in the nearest data centre, which for Australian businesses is its Australian region. ### How much does custom inspection software cost? It depends on the scope: how many report types, how many teams and outside parties, and which systems it has to connect to. We quote once we have mapped the job, and you own the source code with no per-seat fees. Automating the report around an existing app such as Fulcrum is usually a much smaller project than replacing the app.