CorePlanvs
Micromine
Micromine: Choose it if your need is geological modelling and mine planning rather than drilling programme operations
CorePlan
Drilling programme management for mineral exploration teams and drilling contractors
As of 31 August 2026, CorePlan starts at $1350/month. Perth built software that replaces the spreadsheets and paper plods used to plan, run and invoice exploration drilling. Softwr lists it under Mining. CorePlan is made by SpringTech Pty Ltd (CorePlan), available on Web, iOS, Android.
Overview
What CorePlan does
CorePlan covers the operational layer of a drilling programme: hole planning, rig scheduling, daily plod capture from the field, sample tracking, core yard workflow, contractor invoicing reconciliation and compliance reporting. It sits between the geological modelling packages and the finance system, which is the gap most exploration teams currently fill with Excel and email. What distinguishes it commercially is that it is sold to both sides of the same job. Mining and exploration companies buy it to control drilling spend; drilling contractors buy it to submit plods and invoice. When both parties are on the platform the monthly reconciliation between what the contractor billed and what the geologist recorded stops being a dispute conducted over PDFs. That two sided position is unusual in mining software and is the real reason it spread through the Western Australian contractor base. Buyers are junior to mid tier explorers and drilling contractors, mostly in Australia, West Africa and the Americas. The trade off is that pricing is usage based on plods or shifts and billed annually with monthly overage, so a programme that runs hot for a quarter produces an overage invoice that was not in the budget. Only the entry tier price is published; everything above it is a sales conversation.
What people use it for
- A junior explorer running a two rig programme that wants cost per metre visible weekly instead of when the contractor invoice arrives
- A drilling contractor with crews across several client sites submitting plods digitally to cut invoice disputes
- An exploration manager reconciling contractor billing against recorded shift hours before approving payment
- A multi project mid tier miner consolidating hole planning and sample dispatch across sites that currently each run their own spreadsheet
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The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about CorePlan.
- Pricing is usage based on plods or shifts and billed annually with overage calculated monthly, so an intense drilling quarter generates an unbudgeted overage invoice, and finance teams that need a fixed annual number will struggle to get one.
- Only the Starter tier price is published; Professional, Enterprise and Corporate are all quote only, so comparing CorePlan against a competitor requires entering a sales process before you know the number.
- Core modules are unbundled: field operations, advanced analytics and custom forms are separately priced add-ons that each start in the hundreds of dollars per month, so the realistic monthly cost is well above the advertised entry price.
- It is a drilling operations system, not a geological database or modelling package, so it must sit alongside acQuire, Datashed or equivalent and the integration between them is a project rather than a switch.
- The customer base and support depth are concentrated in Australia and the company is small and venture funded, which means teams in the Americas or Africa get thinner local implementation support and carry the usual supplier concentration risk on a system that sits in the middle of drilling spend.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of CorePlan
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- CorePlanvsImago
Imago: Better if the specific problem is core photography and imagery management rather than shift and cost tracking
- CorePlanvsDeswik Suite
Deswik Suite: More appropriate for production mine planning and scheduling at operating mines rather than exploration drilling
Pricing
What CorePlan costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Starter
$1,350 /mo
- One project
- Up to two rigs
- Digital plods and rig scheduling
- Billed annually with monthly overage
- Standard reporting
Professional
On request
- Multi-project management for mid-tier explorers
- Higher rig and shift allowances
- Priced on quotation
Enterprise
On request
- Large-scale operations
- Complex data integration
- Priced on quotation
Field Operations add-on
$800 /mo
- Pre-starts and inspections
- Field compliance forms
- From this price
Advanced Analytics add-on
$550 /mo
- Cost per metre and productivity analysis
- Downtime reporting
- From this price
Capabilities
Features
Digital plods
Field capture of daily drilling records offline, replacing paper and rekeying
Rig scheduling
Rig, crew and hole allocation across multiple projects and sites
Contractor reconciliation
Compares contractor invoices against recorded shift data before payment
Sample and core tracking
Chain of custody from hole to core yard to laboratory dispatch
Field Operations module
Add-on covering pre-starts, inspections and field compliance forms
Advanced Analytics
Add-on for drilling cost per metre, productivity and downtime analysis
Forms subscription
Add-on custom form builder for site specific compliance capture
Interoperability service
Custom priced data exchange with corporate systems and geological databases
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is CorePlan a geological database?
No. It manages drilling operations, plods, scheduling and sample dispatch. Geological data still lives in acQuire, Datashed or similar.
Can drilling contractors use it too?
Yes, and that is the point. Contractors submit plods on the same platform their client uses, which removes the invoice reconciliation argument.
What does it actually cost?
Starter is 1,350 US dollars a month for one project and two rigs, billed annually. Everything above that is quoted, and the analytics and field modules add several hundred dollars a month each.
Does it work without mobile signal?
Yes, field capture works offline and syncs when the rig comes back into coverage.
Keep looking
Where to go from CorePlan
- CorePlan alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- CorePlan pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- CorePlan badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Mining softwareThe full category
- Best Mining softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Mining software for
Compare CorePlan with
- Micromine
- Imago
- Deswik Suite
- Wenco
- Leapfrog Geo
- Surpac
- Geoscience ANALYST
- Dassault Systemes GEOVIA
- Promine
- acQuire GIM Suite
- Caterpillar MineStar
- Minemax
- OptiMine
- Vulcan
- 3DEC
- Seequent Central
- Surpac
- Promine
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for CorePlan, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
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