Q&A with Patrick O’Meara, Founder of Maintainly: Rethinking CMMS for Modern Maintenance Teams
By Gui
Maintenance teams need more than clipboards and spreadsheets to stay ahead. That’s where Maintainly comes in - a cloud-based CMMS designed to make maintenance management easier for small and medium-sized businesses across industries like education, manufacturing, hospitality, and property management. We sat down with Maintainly founder Patrick O’Meara to discuss how the platform began, what sets it apart, and how it’s helping organisations integrate preventive maintenance and asset management into the modern era.
Q. Patrick, for those who haven’t heard of Maintainly, how would you describe what it does?
A: Maintainly is a modern, cloud-based maintenance management software, commonly know as CMMS, that's built for the way maintenance teams actually work today. Maintainly helps maintenance teams of all sizes manage work orders, assets, and preventive maintenance programs from anywhere - on desktop, tablet, or mobile. What makes Maintainly unique is how simple and intuitive it is to use, especially for small and medium-sized businesses that don’t have a full-time IT department or perhaps support or senior engineers, and companies that don't have months to implement and train staff.
Q: What inspired you to start Maintainly?
A: I’d spent years making web-based software applications for clients in various industries, and saw, in the facilities management space, how a client was still relying on spreadsheets, paper logs, or overly complex systems that created more frustration than value. We wanted to build a CMMS that’s powerful yet approachable - one that gives you the core functionality you need for asset management, preventive maintenance, and work order tracking but without unnecessary complexity.
Q: Who is Maintainly designed for?
A: Maintainly is mainly built with small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in mind - companies that need structure and visibility but don’t want to be locked into an enterprise-level platform, or simply don't have a need for such a huge package. We work with teams across a wide range of industries, including education, manufacturing and factories, hospitality and hotels, property management, healthcare, and even nonprofits. Basically, if you manage physical equipment, facilities, or any kind of recurring maintenance, Maintainly can make your life easier.
Q: What’s your approach to development and innovation at Maintainly?
A: We’re very customer-driven. We spend a lot of time listening to maintenance managers and technicians, understanding their real-world workflows. Every feature we build is designed to remove friction, not add it. We believe that maintenance management software should fit naturally into your day-to-day operations. Our development approach focuses on speed, simplicity, and adaptability, giving teams the tools they need to manage preventive maintenance schedules, track downtime, and make data-driven decisions.
Our guiding principle is that great software doesn't take weeks or months to learn, nor implement, so which appeals to small and medium-sized companies that want simplicity and structure.
Q: How does Maintainly help teams improve their preventive maintenance programs?
A: Preventive maintenance is one of the most valuable ways to extend asset life and reduce unplanned downtime. And everybody is trying to eek out more performance, and to make the useful life of their assets last longer. Maintainly helps by automating the scheduling, tracking, and completion of recurring tasks, whether it’s equipment servicing, safety checks, inspections, or meter readings. You can see what’s coming up, assign jobs, track costs, and measure performance. For SMBs, this is often the first step toward moving from reactive to proactive maintenance.
Q: What are some of the biggest challenges you see small and medium-sized maintenance teams facing today?
A: Two things: lack of visibility and lack of time. Many smaller teams are stretched thin. They’re responsible for everything from fixing equipment to reporting on compliance. Without a proper CMMS, they spend more time chasing information than doing the work. Maintainly solves that by centralizing everything - work orders, asset data, inventory, and maintenance history - in one easy-to-access place. The challenge for these teams is therefore finding a little time and taking the step of getting started with a maintenance system like Maintainly that'll then save them more time later.
Q: There are a lot of CMMS platforms on the market. What makes Maintainly stand out?
A: Our goal isn’t to be the biggest - it’s to be the most usable. Maintainly stands out because it’s easy to set up, simple to learn, and built with smaller teams in mind. We combine powerful functionality, like real-time asset tracking, preventive maintenance scheduling, and cost reporting, with an interface that’s clean and intuitive. We also have native iOS and Android apps for use in the field. That’s why so many small and medium-sized businesses choose Maintainly over more complex systems.
Q: How does mobility factor into your approach?
A: Mobility is huge. Maintenance doesn’t happen behind a desk - it happens in the field, on the shop floor, or in different buildings. Maintainly’s mobile-friendly CMMS means technicians can create, update, and close work orders directly from their phone or tablet. It improves accountability and saves a lot of time. Teams in education, like schools and universities, hospitality, like hotels, and all kinds of manufacturing environments, especially value being able to capture data on the go, without paperwork or delays.
Q: What kind of support and onboarding do you provide for new customers?
A: We make onboarding quick and approachable. Most of our customers are up and running within a day or two. We provide guided setup, online resources, and real human support. We understand that small and medium-sized businesses often don’t have dedicated IT teams or engineering leads, so we make sure getting started with Maintainly doesn’t require one. Our goal is for customers to see value almost immediately.
Q: How do you measure success - both for Maintainly and for your customers?
A: For us, success is when customers tell us they’ve cut downtime, improved preventive maintenance compliance, or gained full visibility into their maintenance costs for the first time. We know we’re doing our job when teams say, “I can’t imagine going back to how we did it before.” Internally, we measure success by adoption and retention — because if people keep using Maintainly every day, that’s the ultimate validation that it’s working for them.
Q: What’s next for Maintainly?
A: We’re constantly improving the platform based on customer feedback. Right now, we’re focusing on UI, deeper analytics and integrations improving the mobile experience. Our mission is to help organizations of all sizes, but especially smaller ones, get the same level of operational visibility and control that enterprise systems offer - without the price tag or complexity.
Final Thoughts
Maintainly is redefining what a CMMS can be for small and medium-sized businesses. With a focus on usability, automation, and proactive maintenance, it’s quickly becoming the go-to choice for industries like education, hospitality, manufacturing, and property management, helping teams move from reactive fixes to a culture of continuous improvement.
