Towbook vs. TowMarX: Feature Comparison for Towing Dispatch

What is Towbook?

Towbook is a well-known towing management platform that has served the towing industry for years. It focuses primarily on helping individual towing companies manage their operations — dispatch management, impound tracking, digital invoicing, driver management, and customer records.

Towbook's core strength is single-company operational efficiency. If you own a tow company with 5-20 trucks, Towbook helps you manage your fleet, track your jobs, handle impound inventory, and generate invoices. It includes a driver app for job acceptance and status updates.

The platform is widely used and has a strong reputation among tow company operators for its comprehensive single-company management features.

What is TowMarX?

TowMarX is a network marketplace platform built for multi-company dispatch and towing network management. Rather than focusing on a single company's internal operations, TowMarX connects dispatchers (dealerships, fleets, auto shops) with multiple independent tow companies through a shared platform.

TowMarX's core strength is the network marketplace — the ability to create dispatch networks, recruit operators, set rate cards, and manage cross-company job routing. It's designed for businesses that dispatch to outside operators, not just their own fleet.

The platform uses SMS-based dispatch instead of requiring drivers to download an app, which dramatically reduces onboarding friction for operators joining a network. Drivers receive a text, tap a link, and accept or decline — from any phone with a browser.

Feature comparison: where each platform excels

Towbook excels in single-company management features: impound lot tracking with inventory management, detailed invoicing with custom templates, a dedicated driver app with in-app communication, customer relationship management (CRM) for repeat clients, and motor club integration for receiving dispatches from AAA and similar services.

TowMarX excels in multi-company and network features: a network marketplace where anyone can create, join, or discover dispatch networks, cross-tenant dispatch that routes jobs from one company to drivers at another company, transparent pricing engines with full formula visibility for every job, SMS-based dispatch requiring no app download for drivers, and real-time GPS tracking with geofence arrival confirmation.

Both platforms offer core dispatch management, job tracking, and photo documentation. The difference is primarily in their architecture: Towbook is built around a single company's operations, while TowMarX is built around the relationships between companies.

Pricing comparison

Towbook uses per-truck pricing that scales with your fleet size. Plans typically start at around $29 per month for a single truck and scale upward based on features and truck count. This model works well for tow companies that want to pay proportionally to their fleet size.

TowMarX uses a tiered subscription model: a free plan (5 jobs/month, join networks only), Starter at $19/month (1 network, unlimited jobs), Pro at $39/month (up to 3 networks), and Business at $79/month (unlimited networks). All paid plans include a $3 per-job platform fee.

For tow companies joining networks as operators, TowMarX is free. This asymmetric pricing model is designed to maximize operator adoption — the more operators on the platform, the more valuable it becomes for dispatchers.

The right pricing model depends on your use case. A single tow company managing its own fleet may find Towbook's per-truck model more predictable. A business dispatching to outside operators or building a network will typically find TowMarX more cost-effective.

Which platform is right for your business?

Choose Towbook if you own a tow company and primarily need to manage your own trucks, drivers, and impound operations. It's the better fit for companies that receive dispatches from motor clubs and want integration with those systems, and for operators who want a comprehensive single-company management tool.

Choose TowMarX if you're a dealership, fleet, or auto shop that dispatches tow jobs to outside operators. It's the right choice if you want to build or join a dispatch network, if you need cross-company dispatch capabilities, or if you want to create your own motor club-style operation.

Some businesses use both: Towbook for internal fleet management and TowMarX for network-based dispatch. This combination covers both single-company operations and multi-company marketplace functionality.

The marketplace advantage

The fundamental architectural difference between the two platforms is the marketplace model. Towbook connects a company to its own resources (trucks, drivers, impound lots). TowMarX connects companies to each other through networks.

This marketplace architecture creates network effects that don't exist in single-company software. Every new operator on TowMarX makes the platform more valuable for dispatchers (better coverage, faster response times). Every new dispatcher makes it more valuable for operators (more job volume).

For the towing industry — which is 85% small operators with 1-5 trucks — this marketplace model solves the fundamental discovery problem: how do capable operators find steady, fairly-priced work, and how do businesses find reliable operators without calling around?

The platform that solves this discovery problem at scale will likely become the default infrastructure for the industry — similar to how ride-sharing platforms became the default for personal transportation.

Frequently Asked Questions