PDI Technologies Competitors in 2026, Product by Product

PDI's suite covers the wholesale back office, fuel pricing, dispatch and in-truck software, convenience-store point of sale and back office, propane, loyalty, fleet payments, analytics and network security, and PDI owns GasBuddy. Much of that came from companies PDI bought since 2016. A competitor usually takes on one or two of those parts. Six vendors in this guide sell a wholesale back office against PDI Enterprise, and DTN sells the price data and terminal tools used beside one. Fewer go further, and PDI is alone among them in loyalty, consumer apps and network security.

What PDI sells

PDI Enterprise is the wholesale back office: financials, inventory, order processing, a customer portal and fuel excise tax reporting. PDI Fuel Pricing sets wholesale and retail prices. It grew out of IIS FuelsPricing, which PDI bought in July 2018, and launched in North America in March 2019. PDI Logistics schedules loads, runs software in the truck and automates ordering, built from TelaPoint, Intellifuel and TouchStar. For stores, PDI sells point of sale, a back and head office, and CStore Essentials for independent operators. Its propane and commercial fueling product came from Blue Cow. Then come the consumer and payment pieces: loyalty, fleet payments, PDI Insights analytics, network management and GasBuddy.

PDI still supports the jobber systems it bought along the way: Factor, DM2, Firestream, Pinnacle and Abilis. Customers on those products have a support queue, and over time they are moved toward PDI Enterprise. Jobbers on those systems make up a good share of the operators shopping for a new back office.

PDI competitors and alternatives, product by product

The wholesale back office

Most moves off PDI start with the back office, and the test is the bill of lading, the terminal's ticket for each load: how far it travels before anyone keys it again. AIMS COMPAS Commander and Series2K's S2K Jobber are built around that path. COMPAS posts once from bill of lading to invoice, keeps inventory by tank and reports excise tax for every state, and S2K pulls supplier invoices, rack prices (the posted terminal prices) and loads into one system. ADD Energy E3 and Red River's RR Fuel carry propane and delivery work beside bulk fuel. FastDragon Fuel Jobber and iRely Petroleum run commissioned-agent or consignment stations beside wholesale, which matters to a jobber with agent sites. Where each of these keeps its general ledger is in our guide to petroleum accounting software.

DTN stands beside the back office. Its Fuel Admin brings electronic bills of lading into whichever accounting system a jobber runs, and its rack and market data feed the price lists.

Fuel pricing

PDI Fuel Pricing is the one stand-alone pricing product on this list. The others build pricing into the back office, and DTN supplies the inputs through FastRacks, Fuel Buyer and Price Admin.

A jobber that leans on PDI Fuel Pricing for a long list of dealer formulas can keep it and change the back office, provided the new system loads PDI's price file each morning, the list of every dealer's price for the day that the invoices carry. Ask to see that file load in the demo.

Dispatch and the driver

PDI Logistics covers scheduling, dispatch and in-truck software. ADD's Raven Mobile Delivery puts E3 in the truck, and FastDragon's hauling module dispatches a jobber's own trucks and invoices at the stop. Red River's RR Fuel sequences stops and coordinates deliveries, and iRely sells logistics management with its propane and fuel delivery product. The question for a jobber is where the driver's ticket goes: straight to the invoice, or to a person who keys it in.

DTN's Guardian3, TIMS and TABS belong to a different job. They run terminal automation and allocation for terminal operators and fuel buyers.

Convenience stores

PDI sells store point of sale, which came from Orbis, a back and head office, and CStore Essentials. Most of the other vendors here have a back office for stores too, and Red River adds its own Vanguard registers. For a jobber the difference is how the store side meets the wholesale side when the same owner holds both. FastDragon's c-store module runs under the same login as the wholesale side and flags shrink, and Series2K's back office runs anything from a single station to a thousand. Our guide to software for fuel jobbers with convenience stores works through a load from the wholesale company to its own stores.

Propane and heating oil

PDI's propane and commercial fueling product came from Blue Cow. ADD Energy E3 serves propane and heating oil dealers, Red River's RR Fuel handles propane, and iRely sells propane and fuel delivery software.

Fleet cards and cardlock

PDI sells fleet payments and a private-label fleet program. Red River's Pioneer Card Processor runs branded fuel cards and house accounts, the customers a jobber bills on its own credit terms, and its Sentinel card reader serves cardlock sites, unattended pumps that run on a fleet card. iRely sells unattended card fueling, and AIMS adds cardlock data entry as a module. FastDragon's fleet product is in development.

Loyalty, apps and network security

Loyalty programs, a consumer app with GasBuddy's audience and managed network security come from PDI alone among these vendors. An operator that depends on those pieces keeps PDI for them or buys them from a specialist, then connects them to whichever back office it picks.

A 30-million-gallon jobber on four PDI products

A jobber sells 30 million gallons a year out of one office. That is about 3,500 loads a year, close to 10 a day, on 4 trucks. It supplies 46 dealer accounts and 9 commissioned-agent stations and owns 4 stores. Its systems are PDI Enterprise, PDI Logistics, PDI Fuel Pricing and PDI's store back office.

Each morning it prices 46 dealers and sets the street price at 9 agent stations. It settles those 9 stations daily, which comes to 3,285 settlements a year.

Each choice below leaves a different number of handoffs between vendors. A handoff is a file or feed between two systems that someone in the office checks when a number looks wrong.

The delivery-ticket handoff carries about 3,500 loads a year. The price-file handoff carries 46 dealer prices and 9 street prices every morning, and the 3,285 agent settlements depend on it.

Several vendors cover most of this jobber's work in one system. ADD pairs E3 with Raven in the truck, eStore in the stores and dealer settlement for consignees. iRely's petroleum back office comes with consignment, logistics and convenience-store products. FastDragon runs the back office, agent settlement, hauling and the stores together. Red River covers the back office, dispatch and the stores.

Where PDI is the right answer

PDI is the one vendor here that sells loyalty, payments, store systems, dispatch and the wholesale back office under one contract, and it serves more than 200,000 sites in more than 60 countries. A chain that wants all of that from a single supplier, with an in-house team to run it, gets it from PDI.

Who owns PDI

PDI Technologies, formerly Professional Datasolutions, is based in Alpharetta, Georgia. Luminate Capital backed it in 2015, and TA Associates came in after. Insight Venture Partners invested in March 2019, with Genstar and TA keeping minority stakes.

If you run Factor, DM2, Firestream, Pinnacle or Abilis

Ask PDI in writing how long your product will be supported and what a move to PDI Enterprise involves. Pull your customer list, ship-to locations, price formulas and open receivables into files now, on your own schedule. Then put the questions below to two or three of the vendors in the table, PDI included.

Questions to ask any vendor replacing part of PDI

1. Which of my PDI products does yours replace, and which stay?
   Name each one: Enterprise, Logistics, Fuel Pricing, the store systems. For each product that stays, have the vendor show where its data enters their system.
2. Load my PDI customer export on screen.
   Bring customers, ship-to locations and price formulas from your own PDI system. A vendor that has moved PDI customers before can open a converted record in the demo.
3. How do my open receivables and history come across?
   Open invoices, unapplied credits and customer history: ask how far back the conversion goes and who checks the totals against PDI before go-live.
4. How does tomorrow's dealer price list go out?
   Change one rack price and follow it to the price each dealer sees and to the street price at a commissioned-agent station.
5. Can a driver's ticket become the invoice in one step?
   Follow one delivery from the truck to the customer invoice and the inventory entry.
6. Settle one agent station on screen.
   Gallons sold, card receipts, the agent's commission and the amount due, signed off by a named person, in one pass.
7. Who maintains the links to the PDI products I keep?
   Price files and store data can change format when either side updates. Get the owner of each link named in the contract.
8. Who owns your company today?
   Ownership sets the roadmap. Ask what the vendor has retired since its last change of hands.

Our review of petroleum wholesale software adds eight more, written for any back office.

Where FastDragon fits

FastDragon is built for the jobber, petroleum marketer, wholesaler or c-store owner who wants the same depth as PDI Enterprise at a lower all-in cost, from one site to dozens, up to about 100 million gallons a year. Wholesale, agent stations, company stores, trucks and the general ledger run under one login, quoted to what you run. FastDragon's own guide to switching from PDI walks through the conversion.

Whatever you replace first, bring one real day to the demo: a morning's price list, one agent settlement and one truck's tickets.