A cheap digital form is still a form somebody has to stop and fill in.
GoCanvas gets you off paper. FieldPal gets the technician's hands back. They describe the job out loud, and the structured record assembles itself.
Who this is for
Trades, service and inspection businesses replacing paper with mobile forms. GoCanvas is one of the established options and a perfectly reasonable one. This page is about what happens after the paper is gone.
What GoCanvas does well
Straightforward mobile forms with clean PDF output that looks like the paper document it replaced, which matters far more than software people think when the record goes to a customer or an insurer. A large template library, accessible pricing, and quick to get running without a consultant.
Where FieldPal is different
The technician talks. FieldPal listens, understands the job, and assembles the structured record. No tapping through screens, no removing gloves, no putting the tools down. It runs on phones and tablets and on RealWear head-mounted devices, so it works where holding a tablet isn't an option at all.
Head to head
| Capability | FieldPal Capture | GoCanvas |
|---|---|---|
| Primary input method | Speak naturally | Tap and type |
| Hands-free operation | Yes | No |
| Head-mounted devices (RealWear) | Yes | No |
| Record built from free speech | Yes | No |
| Form building required before use | No | Yes |
| Branded PDF output | Yes | Yes |
| Answers from your manuals and repair history | Yes | No |
| App and template library | No | Extensive |
| Entry-level pricing | Higher | Lower |
The argument
Getting off paper is the easy win
For a small operation moving off carbon-copy pads, GoCanvas is a sound choice and an easy business case. The record becomes legible, searchable and instantly deliverable. Nobody is arguing with that.
But the technician is still stopping work to fill something in. The document changed format. The interruption didn’t.
The time you are actually losing
Here is the part most form projects never measure: for most service operations, the time lost looking things up is greater than the time lost on paperwork.
A technician standing in front of an unfamiliar unit, thumbing through a 400-page PDF on a phone, or ringing the one person in the business who knows: that is the expensive part of the day, and no form product addresses it.
Two problems, one platform
FieldPal Find gives technicians voice access to the manuals, service bulletins and repair history your business already holds. Ask a question out loud, get an answer grounded in your own documentation, with the source shown so it can be checked.
FieldPal Capture handles the write-up as a by-product of doing the job rather than a task at the end of it.
GoCanvas doesn’t do the first of these, and doesn’t claim to. If the paperwork is your only problem, it is a fine answer. If the knowledge is the problem too, one platform beats two.
Which one is right for you
Choose GoCanvas if
- Your priority is getting off paper quickly and cheaply
- Your forms are stable and someone can build them once
- Price per seat is the deciding factor
- Your users can comfortably hold a device while working
Choose FieldPal if
- Your technicians work with their hands and records get written up later
- The work varies too much to be captured well by a fixed form
- You want technical answers and record capture on one platform
- You are deploying to head-mounted devices
Watch a job captured without a single tap
Give us one of the forms your team fills in today. We'll show the same record built from a technician simply describing the work.