Ten questions to ask any fire-record supplier.
We are not going to tell you what our competitors are like. Ask them yourself - these are the questions that separate the systems that hold your records from the ones that hold them hostage. Our own answers are underneath each one, in full, so you can hold us to exactly the same standard.
Print it. Take it to every demo.
None of these are trick questions. Every one has a straight answer, and a supplier who cannot give you a straight answer has told you something.
"What does it cost for eight people? Show me now, without booking a call."
A price that only arrives after a demo is a price set by how much they think you will pay. Ask for the number in the room. If it takes a meeting to find out, ask yourself why.
£256 a month - eight slots at £32. The whole list is on our pricing page and you never have to speak to anyone to see it.
"Do you charge per drawing, per record, per report or per gigabyte? Show me the clause."
Ask for the contract clause, not the sales answer. Consumption charges rarely appear on a pricing page - they appear in the terms, as credits or units you buy separately. The bill you were quoted and the bill you get are then two different things.
No drawing charge, no record charge, no report charge, no storage tier. The only number that sets your price is how many people are on your team.
"What happens to my records the day I stop paying? Show me the clause."
This is the most important question on the page, and the one most likely to get a vague answer. Your fire-stopping records are statutory evidence that has to outlive the contract, the job and possibly the building's owner. If they are only readable while your card is being charged, they are not really your records.
Your export keeps working after you stop paying. Not a grace period we grant on request - it is how the software is built: the paywall stops new drawings and new client links, and deliberately never touches export. We hold your data for twelve months from the day your subscription ends, and your console shows the exact deletion date and the days remaining, from the moment you lapse.
"Can I export everything myself, today, without asking permission - and in what format?"
"You can request an export" is a different answer from "there is a button". Ask which. Then ask what comes out: a PDF of a report is not the same as your photographs, your drawings and your data in a form another system can read.
Four exports, all self-serve from the console, all working on a lapsed account: a complete backup of everything as data; a full evidence ZIP with the pack, a CSV of every record, every drawing and every photograph; a spreadsheet with quantities and rates; and the fire door and damper register as a PDF.
"Where is my data held, and who else touches it? Name them."
"UK hosted" is easy to say and it is usually true of the application. The question that separates suppliers is the one underneath: who are your sub-processors, and where are they? Ask for the list and the data processing agreement. Notice how long it takes to arrive.
United Kingdom, London. Our Cyber Essentials assessment, certified 16 July 2026, names the server your records sit on. Ask us for our sub-processor list and our DPA and you get both.
"Is there a minimum term, a notice period, or a minimum number of users I have to buy?"
Minimum seat counts are common and they are rarely on the website - they live in the order form. A five-user floor is an expensive thing for a three-man firm to discover in month two.
No minimum term, no notice period, no minimum number of slots. One slot is a real plan at £32 and you can cancel from the console the same way you started.
"What happens when I put someone on mid-job? And when the job finishes?"
Fire-stopping crews are not a fixed number. Ask both halves of the question - plenty of systems make growing effortless and shrinking a phone call. Ask specifically whether you can reduce it yourself, and when the reduction takes effect.
Add anyone the moment you need them and they record from minute one - nobody has to approve it, and the slot is billed from the day it starts. When the job finishes, tell us and your slot count comes down from your next billing date. We would rather bill you for a slot than have a seal go unrecorded because someone was waiting on a licence.
"If a record is altered after the job is signed off, can I tell? Show me how."
Storing a photograph is not the same as proving it. Almost every system in this category will keep your picture and your date - the question is whether anything would reveal that a record had been quietly edited months later, and whether you or an assessor could demonstrate it. Ask to be shown the mechanism, not the word.
Every record is sealed into a SHA-256 hash chain: each entry carries the fingerprint of the one before it, so changing anything in the past breaks every link after it. Anyone holding a share link can run that check themselves and see the head hash, the number of sealed entries and whether the chain is intact - it is not a report we write for you. Records imported from your old system are labelled imported rather than attested, because we did not witness them and will not pretend otherwise.
"What is your liability cap, and do you exclude liability for losing my data? Show me the clause."
This is the clause nobody reads and it is where the risk actually sits. Caps as low as one month's fees exist in this industry, and some contracts exclude liability for loss of data however it is caused. For a system whose entire job is holding your evidence, that is worth reading before you sign rather than after.
Our cap is the fees you paid in the twelve months before the claim, and we do not carve data loss out of it. Nothing limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence. It is section 10 of our terms, in public, in plain English - and you can read it without asking us for it.
"Which country's courts govern this, and is there a written service level?"
Two separate things, both usually left unasked. Where the servers sit is not the same as which law applies - a UK contractor can find the contract requires them to bring a claim in another hemisphere. And a supplier with no written service level has promised you no availability at all, however good the demonstration looked.
England and Wales, exclusive jurisdiction, section 12. On service levels you get the straight answer rather than the flattering one: we do not publish a contractual SLA either, and as far as we can tell nobody in this category does. What we will not do is imply one exists. If a written service level is a requirement for your client or your framework, ask us and we will tell you in writing what we can commit to - or tell you we cannot.
We would rather you checked than took our word
It would be easy to put up a page telling you what is wrong with everyone else. We would rather give you the questions and let the answers speak, for two reasons.
The first is that we would be marking our own homework. Any comparison we publish is written by the company that wants your money, and you should treat it accordingly - ours included.
The second is that these questions cut both ways. We have answered all ten above, in public, with figures - including the two answers that do not flatter us. If a supplier will not do the same, that is worth more to you than anything we could say about them.
Assaya is new. We have no long customer list and we are not going to invent one. What we can show you is the product, the price, and the exit - today, without a meeting.
Established suppliers in this market have longer track records, wider support hours and certifications we do not hold yet. If that is what decides it for you, it should. Ask them the ten questions anyway.