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Field Service · head to head

Brightly Asset Essentials vs CentralSquare Asset Management

Brightly Asset Essentials logo

Brightly Asset Essentials

Field Service

CMMS and asset management for schools, local government, healthcare estates and manufacturing, now part of Siemens

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
CentralSquare Asset Management logo

CentralSquare Asset Management

Government

Public sector enterprise asset management, sold for years as Lucity

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Brightly Asset Essentials nothing about the pricing is published, the official pricing page has been removed, and quotes are per organisation, so buyers cannot benchmark and negotiating leverage depends entirely on running a competitive process.; CentralSquare Asset Management the Lucity name is now only a suffix on a CentralSquare product, so long-standing customers should confirm which capabilities carry forward under the current release rather than assuming continuity from the Lucity they know.
  • They diverge on capability: Brightly Asset Essentials covers Work orders and requests, CentralSquare Asset Management covers Esri ArcGIS integration.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Brightly Asset Essentials and CentralSquare Asset Management actually diverge.

Attributes where Brightly Asset Essentials and CentralSquare Asset Management differ
AttributeBrightly Asset EssentialsCentralSquare Asset Management
PlatformsWeb, iOS, AndroidWeb, iOS, Android, Cloud, On-premise
CategoryField ServiceGovernment

Identical on both: starting price (On request), pricing model (quote), free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Brightly Asset Essentials

  • Work orders and requests
  • Preventive maintenance
  • Asset registers
  • Capital planning
  • Inventory
  • Mobile app
  • Energy and sustainability
  • Reporting

Only in CentralSquare Asset Management

  • Esri ArcGIS integration
  • Public works asset breadth
  • Citizen request intake
  • Condition assessment
  • Inspections
  • Suite integration

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Brightly Asset Essentials

  • A school district consolidating maintenance requests from fifty buildings into one queue with a portal teachers can usenot CentralSquare Asset Management
  • A municipal public works department that must justify replacement capital to a council with condition-based evidencenot CentralSquare Asset Management
  • A healthcare estate tracking statutory compliance tasks and producing audit evidence on demandnot CentralSquare Asset Management
  • A senior living operator standardising preventive maintenance across sites with a mobile app technicians will actually opennot CentralSquare Asset Management

CentralSquare Asset Management

  • A city consolidating streets, water, parks and facilities maintenance into one asset register instead of four departmental spreadsheetsnot Brightly Asset Essentials
  • A county needing auditable stormwater and backflow inspection records for a regulatory programmenot Brightly Asset Essentials
  • A public works department wanting citizen-reported potholes and blocked drains to become work orders without manual re-keyingnot Brightly Asset Essentials
  • A municipality already running CentralSquare finance that wants asset and work costs to land in the general ledger without an integration projectnot Brightly Asset Essentials

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Brightly Asset Essentials

  • Nothing about the pricing is published, the official pricing page has been removed, and quotes are per organisation, so buyers cannot benchmark and negotiating leverage depends entirely on running a competitive process.
  • Implementation and data migration are quoted separately and commonly add five figures to a mid-size deployment, which is not visible when comparing headline subscription numbers.
  • Siemens ownership has pointed the roadmap at building and infrastructure integration, so industrial maintenance features compete for attention with Siemens Smart Infrastructure priorities.
  • Capability is split across separate Brightly products, so functionality shown in a demo may require an additional module and an additional line on the contract.
  • Reporting is fixed-template heavy and getting a non-standard report often means exporting to a spreadsheet, which undermines the case for consolidating on one system.

CentralSquare Asset Management

  • The Lucity name is now only a suffix on a CentralSquare product, so long-standing customers should confirm which capabilities carry forward under the current release rather than assuming continuity from the Lucity they know.
  • CentralSquare is private-equity owned and grew by acquisition, so asset management competes for development attention against public safety and finance products with larger revenue, and its roadmap is not independently controlled.
  • Pricing is unpublished and quoted per municipality, and asset management is often presented alongside other suite modules, so a department must work to get a clean, unbundled number it can defend at council.
  • Esri ArcGIS is effectively a prerequisite for the spatial capability that makes the product worth buying, and that licence is a separate cost the software quote will not include.
  • It is North America focused, aligned to United States municipal practice, funding structures and regulatory programmes, which limits its fit for local authorities elsewhere.

Pricing, plan by plan

Brightly Asset Essentials

On request
  • Asset Essentials$undefined/year
    • Priced by named users and modules, quoted per organisation
    • Implementation, data migration and training quoted separately
    • Multi-year agreements are the norm for public-sector buyers

CentralSquare Asset Management

On request
  • CentralSquare Asset Management$undefined/year
    • Subscription or on-premise licensing, quoted per municipality
    • Priced on population, module selection and user counts
    • Esri ArcGIS licensing purchased separately

Which should you pick?

Choose Brightly Asset Essentials if

  • You need work orders and requests.
  • You work on Web, iOS, Android.
  • You also want preventive maintenance.
Brightly Asset Essentials review

Choose CentralSquare Asset Management if

  • You need esri arcgis integration.
  • You work on Web, iOS, Android, Cloud, On-premise.
  • You also want public works asset breadth.
CentralSquare Asset Management review

Questions people ask

Is Brightly Asset Essentials or CentralSquare Asset Management better?
Neither clearly leads. Brightly Asset Essentials starts at On request and CentralSquare Asset Management at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Brightly Asset Essentials or CentralSquare Asset Management?
Brightly Asset Essentials starts at On request and CentralSquare Asset Management at On request.
Does Brightly Asset Essentials or CentralSquare Asset Management run on more platforms?
Brightly Asset Essentials runs on Web, iOS, Android. CentralSquare Asset Management runs on Web, iOS, Android, Cloud, On-premise.
What is Brightly Asset Essentials best used for?
Brightly Asset Essentials is most often used for a school district consolidating maintenance requests from fifty buildings into one queue with a portal teachers can use, a municipal public works department that must justify replacement capital to a council with condition-based evidence, a healthcare estate tracking statutory compliance tasks and producing audit evidence on demand, a senior living operator standardising preventive maintenance across sites with a mobile app technicians will actually open. Of those, a school district consolidating maintenance requests from fifty buildings into one queue with a portal teachers can use and a municipal public works department that must justify replacement capital to a council with condition-based evidence are not what CentralSquare Asset Management is typically brought in for.
What can Brightly Asset Essentials do that CentralSquare Asset Management cannot?
Brightly Asset Essentials covers Work orders and requests, Preventive maintenance, Asset registers, Capital planning. CentralSquare Asset Management covers Esri ArcGIS integration, Public works asset breadth, Citizen request intake, Condition assessment.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Brightly Asset Essentials: Who owns Brightly?

Siemens, which acquired it in 2022 for around 1.58 billion USD. It sits within Siemens Smart Infrastructure.

CentralSquare Asset Management: Can I still buy Lucity?

Not under that name alone. It is sold as CentralSquare Asset Management powered by Lucity, and quotes and contracts will use the CentralSquare name.

Brightly Asset Essentials: What does Asset Essentials cost?

Not published. It is quoted by user count and modules, with implementation priced separately.

CentralSquare Asset Management: Do I need Esri?

In practice yes. The spatial asset handling that distinguishes the product depends on ArcGIS, licensed separately from Esri.

Brightly Asset Essentials: Is it suitable for manufacturing?

It can run a plant, but the product heritage and roadmap are estates and infrastructure, so plant-specific features lag purpose-built industrial CMMS.

CentralSquare Asset Management: Is it cloud only?

No. Both hosted subscription and on-premise deployment are available, which matters for municipalities with data residency or network policy constraints.

Brightly Asset Essentials: Is there a free tier or trial?

No published free tier. Evaluation is through a sales-led demo.

CentralSquare Asset Management: Is pricing published?

No. It is quoted per municipality based on population, modules and users, usually through a public procurement process.

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