Packaged tank monitoring vs a custom site platform
Both watch a tank. One watches your estate: every site, every vendor's console, and the inspection record that has to survive an audit.
The short answer
Buy the packaged monitor if you run a handful of tanks from one ATG vendor and need a level and a text message. Build a custom platform once you're spanning several sites, several console generations, or you need the inspection record and the alarm log living in the same system your compliance evidence depends on.
Packaged monitors and ATG vendor portals do one job well: levels and alarms, per site, from their own hardware. What they don't do is span an estate. A chain of any age runs several console generations at once, and each one publishes data differently. Normalising that into one triage view is exactly what a packaged tool was never built for.
The case for buying, not building
Packaged tank monitors and your ATG console's own portal are mature products aimed at one problem: know the level, hear the alarm. If your estate is small and your hardware is uniform, that's the right amount of software.
You'll be running in days, the support line is someone else's job, and you're not paying for engineering an estate-wide platform doesn't need yet. That's real value, and we say so on the audit call rather than talk you out of it.
- 01One ATG vendor, one console generation, a handful of sites: the packaged portal already does this well.
- 02You need a level and a text message, not a compliance record spanning contractors and clients.
- 03Running next month matters more than owning the platform.
What each one actually does
Category-level comparison. No vendor pricing here; ATG and telemetry vendors quote per site and per console, and you'd confirm that directly with them.
What it watches
Packaged monitor / ATG vendor portal
Levels and alarms from its own hardware, per site.
Custom site platform
Levels, alarms, inspections, deficiencies and vendor work orders, across every site and every console generation you run.
Multi-vendor estates
Packaged monitor / ATG vendor portal
One vendor's data, in that vendor's shape. A second ATG brand means a second portal, a second login.
Custom site platform
Normalises alarm codes and severity across Veeder-Root, Franklin Fueling, OPW and the rest into one triage view.
The inspection record
Packaged monitor / ATG vendor portal
Not its job. Walkthroughs still live in a binder or a separate app.
Custom site platform
Scheduled, per-asset, per-site, photo-backed and immutable, in the same system as the alarm that triggered it.
Alarm triage
Packaged monitor / ATG vendor portal
Raises what the console raises. Thresholds are usually fleet-wide, not tuned per site.
Custom site platform
De-duplicates, prioritises and escalates on top of the certified method, with thresholds set per site and a log of who acknowledged what.
Vendor and contractor access
Packaged monitor / ATG vendor portal
Typically your login only. A contractor gets your credentials or no access at all.
Custom site platform
Multi-tenant separation: a contractor sees the work order assigned to them, and nothing else.
Time to running
Packaged monitor / ATG vendor portal
Days. It's a subscription and a login.
Custom site platform
Weeks to months, scoped from a diagnostic. This is engineering, not a subscription.
The point operators actually outgrow it
What we hear from operators who've moved past a packaged monitor is narrower than "we need a platform." It's three specific things.
Triage has to work across sites and across vendors. An estate of any age carries several console generations, each publishing alarms in its own shape. The inspection record has to sit in the same system as the alarm. Otherwise your compliance evidence lives in a binder while your telemetry lives in a portal, and an inspector asking for both gets two different answers. And every party has to see only theirs. Your contractor gets access to the sites assigned to them, and nobody else's. That's a breach question, not a bug.
- 01Several console generations across your sites, not one uniform fleet.
- 02The alarm and the inspection record need to live in one place, not two.
- 03Contractors and clients need their own access, not a shared login.
- How many ATG vendors?One: portal works. Several: normalise or build.
- Where does the record live?Separate from the alarm, or the same system?
- Who else needs access?Just you, or contractors and clients too?
One yes toward the right column is a conversation. Two or three is usually a build.
How to choose
Write down what you're actually being asked for before you compare a single feature list. "We need to see the level" and "we need to prove the inspection happened" send you to different products entirely.
- 01Choose the packaged monitor if you run one ATG vendor, a handful of sites, and you need a level and an alarm text.
- 02Choose a custom platform if your estate spans multiple console generations and one triage view has to cover all of them.
- 03Choose a custom platform if the inspection record and the alarm log need to sit in the same system a regulator can query.
- 04Choose neither yet if you can't say which of the above you actually have. The audit answers that for free before anyone recommends a direction.
Some of the systems we have shipped
Questions operators ask
01Can a packaged tank monitor become our release detection method?+
Release detection has to meet the performance standards in 40 CFR 280.43 and be certified as a method, whichever product you buy. A packaged monitor's alarms sit on top of whatever certified method your site already runs. Neither a packaged tool nor a custom platform substitutes for that certification.
02Do we have to replace our ATG hardware to build a custom platform?+
No. A custom platform reads from your existing gauges and consoles; it doesn't ask you to re-hardware a site. What changes is the software layer that normalises and triages what those consoles already report.
03What does TankAware actually run on?+
TankAware is our custom site platform for Sutherland Excavating Ltd. in Canada. It runs tank telemetry, predictive alerts, an inspection engine with deficiency-to-work-order escalation, a vendor portal, and five permission tiers with per-organisation isolation. It's the shape this comparison describes on the custom side.
04We're a single-site operator. Should we skip the custom platform entirely?+
Probably, at least for now. A single site with one ATG vendor is exactly the case a packaged monitor was built for. We'll tell you that plainly on the audit call rather than sell you more than you need.
05How much does the custom option cost compared to a subscription?+
We don't publish figures for either side, and a packaged monitor's pricing is a question for that vendor. A custom build is quoted from a diagnostic, fixed after that, so the number reflects your actual estate rather than a guess.
Related
- Site monitoring for fuel and oilfield →What we build once a packaged monitor stops being enough.
- What should a tank monitoring system alert on? →Triage on top of the certified method, not instead of it.
- How to prove a fuel site inspection happened →What the record has to survive when an inspector asks.
- Oil and gas →The hub: all eight areas, and which page owns each one.
