Honest comparison
The Site Book is the best training-compliance choice for small and mid-sized UK builders: add workers once, track CSCS cards, first aid, IPAF and right-to-work evidence with automatic expiry alerts, from £39 a month on the Pro plan alongside the generated CDM pack. Competency Cloud fits contractors that want official CSCS Smart Check verification at scale, Altora fits induction-led competency tracking, and GoContractor fits large multilingual pre-arrival onboarding.
The Site Book is the best training-compliance fit for small and mid-sized UK builders — cert and right-to-work evidence tracking with expiry alerts on the Pro plan (£39/month) alongside the generated CDM pack; Competency Cloud fits contractors that want official CSCS Smart Check verification at scale, Altora fits induction-led competency tracking, and GoContractor fits large multilingual pre-arrival onboarding.
Reviewed
Based on The Site Book plan scope and publicly available vendor pages for Competency Cloud, Altora and GoContractor reviewed on 2026-07-01.
Pricing, fit, and feature coverage side by side.
| Feature | The Site Book | Competency Cloud | Altora | GoContractor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Starter £0; Pro £39/mo or £360/yr; Business £199/mo | From £3.50 per user/month (third-party listings); demo-led on the vendor site | Quote-only; no public per-site or per-user price published — request a demo for a quote. | Subscription, quote-only; a GetApp directory listing indicates ~$4,485/year (indicative, not vendor-published), with no public setup fee |
| Team size | 1 internal user on Pro; up to 5 internal logins and 25 active site portal users on Business | Mid-to-large contractors managing many workers' credentials and competency records across one or more sites | Mid-sized UK contractors managing inductions and contractor competencies across multiple sites | Mid-to-large contractors and multi-project owners managing big, multilingual subcontractor pools |
| Best for | Small UK builders who need CDM documents plus lightweight site H&S operations: RAMS, CPP, COSHH, inductions, toolbox talks, site attendance, site files, document review evidence, subcontractor evidence and worker/visitor portal access. | UK contractors that want to track and verify CSCS and competency credentials at scale, with CSCS Smart Check verification built into a compliance platform | UK construction firms that want online inductions combined with contractor management and competency tracking | Larger general contractors and asset owners who need workers fully inducted, oriented and credential-checked in multiple languages BEFORE they arrive on site, then feed that compliance into an existing access-control or badging system. |
| Not ideal for | New product (launched 2025) -smaller customer base and shorter track record than established tools like HandsHQ. | Does not author the UK CDM pack — no RAMS, CPP or COSHH; it tracks and verifies credentials, it does not produce the compliance documents. | Does not generate the UK CDM pack — no RAMS, CPP or COSHH document creation. | Narrow point solution: it owns onboarding/orientation but does not generate UK CDM documents (RAMS/CPP/COSHH) or run site operations after arrival. |
| RAMS | AI-generated, site-specific, edit in-browser. | — | — | — |
| CPP | Full Construction Phase Plans - not just RAMS. | — | — | — |
| COSHH | Standalone COSHH document + site-specific register, SDS upload with extraction, and an expert-reviewed substance library. | — | — | — |
| Method statements | — | — | — | |
| Site inductions | Workers sign from their phone - key H&S details readable in 9 languages. | Compliance and competency tracking can support induction prerequisites, but it is not a fixed induction-gating engine that hard-stops entry. | Online induction is a core product, with reusable induction content workers complete before site access. | Core strength: standardized online site orientations/inductions completed before arrival, and only 100%-compliant workers are granted access via integrated badging. Source: gocontractor. |
| Multilingual inductions (9 languages) | Workers read and acknowledge key H&S details in 9 languages; the language used is recorded in the audit trail and translations are site-team reviewable. | — | — | — |
| Worker cert tracking | Cert plus right-to-work evidence records, with expiry reminders. | Official CSCS Smart Check IT Partner; verifies CSCS/CPCS/NPORS/EUSR. | Competency and credential tracking for workers and contractors is part of the contractor-management suite. | Monitors and manages worker qualifications/training and automatically alerts workers and subcontractors about expiring certifications. Source: gocontractor.com general-contractors page. |
| Incident log | — | — | ||
| Permits to work | — | — | ||
| Site diary | — | — | — | |
| Subcontractor tracking | — | — | — | |
| Toolbox talks | — | — | ||
| Site attendance | Business includes check-in/check-out and live H&S attendance. | Induction and access records show who is cleared to work; live attendance/sign-in is not the primary focus. | Provides worker check-in/check-out showing who is and isn't on site, but is positioned as compliance access rather than full T&A hours/timesheet capture. Source: gocontractor. | |
| Site portal | Business includes up to 25 active site portal users. | — | — | — |
| Site files | Drawings, plans, H&S docs, procedures, RAMS, CPP and emergency information. | — | — | — |
| Document review | Business document status, reviewer notes and review history. | — | — | — |
| Subcontractor evidence | Business evidence record, review and archive workflow. | — | — | — |
| Site inspections | Business inspections with checklist items. | — | — | |
| Corrective actions | Business corrective actions with owner, due date and completion state. | — | — | — |
| PCPP import | Upload an existing PCPP and reuse the structure. | — | — | — |
| Document checking | — | — | — | |
| Data export | Includes the Audit Pack: one merged, audit-ready compliance-evidence PDF. | — | — | — |
| AI chat | — | — | — | |
| RAMS / CPP / COSHH generation | The flagship: generates site-specific UK RAMS, CPP and COSHH from a plain-English brief. | |||
| Right to work | Right-to-work evidence records with expiry reminders, alongside cert tracking. | Contractor onboarding captures documents; not positioned as a dedicated right-to-work share-code workflow. | Workers upload credentials and documents during onboarding, but vendor pages do not describe a formal UK right-to-work share-code verification flow specifically. | |
| Mobile app | Workers sign and get inducted from their phone browser with nothing to install; a native builder app is in development, not yet in the public app stores. | Native iOS/Android app. | Mobile induction completion and contractor onboarding. | Mobile-first: workers complete orientation and carry a scannable QR profile from their phone. Source: gocontractor.com product pages. |
| QR / mobile sign-in | Site Control (per-site tier) adds a permanent entrance QR for sign-in/out from the worker's phone. | Induction completion gates access; on-site sign-in is lighter than dedicated VMS sign-in tools. | Every worker gets a scannable QR code tied to their worker profile; software-only with no proprietary hardware. Source: gocontractor.com/who-we-serve/solutions-general-contractors. | |
| Contractor self-onboarding | Site Control (per-site tier) adds contractor self-join via the entrance QR with CSCS upload and approval. | — | Contractors self-onboard, complete inductions and submit competencies before working. | Designed around self-service pre-enrolment: workers and subcontractors complete onboarding and upload credentials online before reaching site. Source: gocontractor.com product pages. |
| RFIs | Site Control (per-site tier) adds RFIs - create, attach, comment, answer and close. | |||
| Biometric access | — | |||
| Physical access control | — | |||
| Multi-company isolation | — | — | Contractor companies are managed per client; test-verified per-company data isolation is not a published claim. | Built around prequalified subcontractors and per-worker profiles, implying contractor-scoped data, but no test-verified multi-company isolation model is publicly documented. |
| Multi-site dashboard & exports | — | — | Central management of inductions and contractor competencies across sites and projects. | Provides automated multi-project reporting and analytics across onboarding/compliance without manual compilation. Source: gocontractor.com product/general-contractors pages. |
| GPS clock-in | — | — | — | |
| CIS payroll | — | — | — | |
| Live people-on-site | — | — | — | Check-in/out shows who is and isn't on the worksite, but vendor pages do not describe a dedicated muster/evacuation roll-call view. |
| Document-review evidence | — | — | — | Captures completion of orientation/training modules and credential uploads, which evidences acknowledgement, but is not a version-specific document read/acknowledge audit chain. |
| Handover sign-off | — | — | — | |
| Plant / asset management | — | — | — | |
| Workforce scheduling | — | — | — | |
| Offline mode | — | — | — | Offline behaviour is not clearly documented on vendor pages; treat as unknown rather than a confirmed offline-capable mode. |
Training compliance is the quiet half of CDM competence: the cards and certificates are easy to collect on day one and easy to let lapse by month six. The tools in this comparison attack that differently — The Site Book keeps a per-worker evidence record with expiry alerts inside the same tool that writes the CDM pack, Competency Cloud verifies credentials against the official CSCS Smart Check rail at scale, and Altora and GoContractor fold competency tracking into induction and onboarding flows for bigger contractor pools.
At-a-glance fit per product - pulled from the same data that drives the snapshot table.
Pick the option that matches how your team actually works.
Choose The Site Book if you run a 1-25 person crew and want worker cert tracking that just works: CSCS cards, first aid, IPAF tickets and right-to-work evidence recorded once per worker, expiry alerts before anything lapses, and the records travelling with each worker onto every project — in the same tool that generates your RAMS, CPP and site inductions, on the Pro plan at £39 a month.
Recommended for: Small and mid-sized builders tracking certs across a crew
Choose Competency Cloud when verified-against-the-official-rail matters more than document generation: it is an official CSCS Smart Check IT Partner, so card checks run against the live CSCS/CPCS/NPORS/EUSR record rather than a photo of the card, with a training-matrix/LMS behind it. It does not author RAMS, CPP or COSHH, so the CDM pack lives elsewhere.
Recommended for: Contractors verifying CSCS credentials at scale
Choose GoContractor when the problem is high-volume pre-arrival onboarding: workers are inducted, oriented and credential-checked in their own language before they reach the gate, with credential-expiry alerts and compliance reporting across many projects. It is quote-only and aimed at large general contractors and asset owners.
Recommended for: Large contractors onboarding multilingual subcontractor pools
Strengths, weaknesses, fit, and the sources every claim came from.
The Site Book Ltd
Starter £0; Pro £39/mo or £360/yr; Business £199/mo
Competency Cloud (Chipmunk Data Ltd)
From £3.50 per user/month (third-party listings); demo-led on the vendor site
Altora
Quote-only; no public per-site or per-user price published — request a demo for a quote.
GoContractor (Safety Plus)
Subscription, quote-only; a GetApp directory listing indicates ~$4,485/year (indicative, not vendor-published), with no public setup fee
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Short, straight answers - the same questions real builders ask.
Each worker's cards and certificates (CSCS, first aid, plant tickets such as IPAF), the expiry date of every one, and evidence that you checked them, plus right-to-work records where you engage workers directly. The practical test is whether the tool warns you before something lapses rather than after. The Site Book keeps cert and right-to-work evidence per worker, with automatic expiry reminders and records that follow the worker onto every project.
CDM 2015 requires anyone appointing a worker to a construction site to ensure they have, or are obtaining, the necessary skills, knowledge, training and experience for the work. The regulations do not mandate specific software, but you must be able to demonstrate the checks were made, which in practice means keeping current records of cards, certificates and training against each worker, with expiry dates that someone is actually watching.
No. The Site Book records the card: workers upload a photo of their CSCS card, your team reviews it, and expiry reminders fire before it lapses. Verification against the official CSCS Smart Check rail is a separate step you can run with the free official app, or through an official IT Partner platform such as Competency Cloud. Many firms pair the two: verify on first contact, then track the evidence.
A training matrix is a grid of workers against qualifications: who holds what, when it expires, and where the gaps are. Principal contractors and auditors ask for one because it answers the competence question at a glance. You need the information rather than the spreadsheet. Competency Cloud builds a full matrix and LMS; The Site Book keeps the same per-worker cert picture with expiry alerts and exports it in the Audit Pack.
The spread is wide. The Site Book includes cert and right-to-work tracking on the Pro plan at £39/month or £360/year, with Business at £199/month. Competency Cloud starts around £3.50 per user/month on third-party listings, which scales with headcount. Altora and GoContractor are quote-only enterprise sales. For a small UK crew, a flat monthly plan that already includes the CDM document generation usually beats per-user pricing.
Based on The Site Book plan scope and publicly available vendor pages for Competency Cloud, Altora and GoContractor reviewed on 2026-07-01.
Every pricing, feature, and fit claim in this comparison is pulled from public vendor documentation and cross-checked against independent sources. The “source basis” footer on each product card lists the exact URLs and the date we fetched them. We revisit this page at least every 90 days - last reviewed on .