When a GPS company licenses a white label tracking platform, the feature list gets most of the attention. But the deployment decision — whose servers the platform runs on — has a larger effect on your economics, your tender eligibility and your operational workload than any individual feature.
Get it right and your software cost stops growing while your revenue keeps climbing. Get it wrong and you either pay per vehicle forever or you hire a DevOps team you did not budget for.
This article explains both deployment models offered with Fleeto, who each suits, and how to decide.
The two models
Model 1 — Self-hosted on your infrastructure, annual licence fee
Fleeto is installed and configured on your own server. You hold a licence to use the platform, renewed annually for a fixed licence fee.
What that means practically:
The application and the database run on hardware you procure and control — a cloud instance in your own account, a colocated server, or on-premise equipment.
Your data stays in your jurisdiction.
Your software cost is fixed regardless of how many vehicles you add.
Royex installs, configures and maintains the platform under your maintenance agreement, delivering updates, security patches and new modules.
An important clarification, because the industry is often deliberately vague here: this is a licence to use the platform, not a transfer of source code. You brand, operate and sell the software. Royex retains and maintains the underlying codebase. You get the operational control and data sovereignty of self-hosting without becoming a software development company.
Model 2 — Royex-hosted, per vehicle per month
Fleeto runs on Royex infrastructure and you pay per vehicle per month, with:
No setup cost.
No minimum commitment.
Fully branded platform and branded iOS and Android mobile applications included.
Pricing to you is wholesale; your retail price and margin are entirely your decision. You add vehicles as you win them and pay for nothing you have not sold.
Which model suits which company
Choose Royex-hosted if…
You are starting or entering a new market. No capital outlay, no server procurement, no infrastructure skills required. You can be selling a branded premium tracking service within weeks.
Your unit count is still modest. Below the crossover point, per-vehicle billing is genuinely cheaper than a fixed licence plus infrastructure.
Your growth is unpredictable. With no minimum commitment, seasonality and churn cost you nothing.
You do not want operational responsibility. Uptime, backups, scaling and monitoring sit with Royex.
You are testing before committing. Many partners run hosted for six to twelve months, prove the market, then migrate.
Choose self-hosted if…
You are bidding on data-residency contracts. Government, defence, utility, municipal, banking and some enterprise tenders require data held in-country on infrastructure the contractor controls. Vendor-hosted platforms are frequently disqualified outright. This single factor justifies self-hosting for many partners, regardless of cost.
You are past the crossover point. Once your annual per-vehicle spend exceeds the fixed licence fee plus infrastructure and operations cost, every additional vehicle is nearly pure margin.
You have specific security or compliance obligations. Your own network controls, your own audit posture, your own penetration testing schedule.
You want integration proximity. Running the platform inside your own environment simplifies integration with your billing, CRM or customer systems.
You are building enterprise value. A branded platform operating under a fixed licence on infrastructure you control presents very differently to an acquirer than a per-unit reselling arrangement.
The migration path most partners take
The two models are not a permanent fork. A common and sensible sequence:
Launch on Royex-hosted. Zero setup cost, zero commitment. Publish your branded apps and custom domain. Sell.
Validate. Prove device performance, customer demand, support load and pricing in your market.
Watch the crossover. Track your monthly per-vehicle spend against the fixed annual licence plus infrastructure estimate.
Migrate when the numbers cross — or earlier, if a data-residency tender makes self-hosting a revenue opportunity rather than a cost decision.
What runs identically in both models
The deployment choice does not reduce the product. Both models deliver the full platform:
Tracking core — live map (Leaflet or Google Maps), trip playback at 1x, 2x, 3x and 5x, geofencing as polygon, circle and corridor, group-based vehicle organisation, per-vehicle mini dashboards, route history by date range, concurrent operation at 2,000+ vehicles.
Alerts — customer-defined rules per vehicle or fleet-wide on speed threshold, idle time, crash and harsh driving events, fuel level, temperature and ignition, plus geofence entry, exit and pass, delivered by in-system notification, SMS and email to up to five recipients.
Fuel management — consumption analytics, BLE fuel sensor support, refuel and drain detection, theft identification.
Maintenance — service scheduling, OBD diagnostics, vehicle health monitoring, maintenance-due alerts.
Driver behaviour — scorecards for harsh braking, acceleration and cornering, trip itinerary detail, Arabic-language driver reporting.
Cargo and cold chain — BLE temperature and humidity sensors for reefer, food and pharmaceutical fleets.
Toll automation — Salik and Darb detection derived automatically from GPS position, eliminating manual reconciliation.
Dispatch and last mile — live operations board, multi-stop route assignment, proof of delivery capture.
Finance — expense tracking, branded invoices, exports to QuickBooks, Zoho and Xero.
AI agents — Robotic Eye (plain-language fleet assistant in English or Arabic), AI Doctor (predictive maintenance before breakdown), AI Route Planner (multi-stop optimisation against traffic, vehicle type and availability), plus Live Route Monitor, Speeding Alert AI, Idle Time Reducer and Maintenance Due Alerter.
Branded driver app — your brand, works offline, installs natively on Android and iOS.
Branding is complete in both models
Every screen, report, invoice and email carries your logo and your domain. You get a branded web platform on a custom domain and fully branded iOS and Android applications under your identity. Your customers never see the name Fleeto. Hosting location does not change this.
The dealer hierarchy works the same way
Fleeto’s three-tier structure applies in both deployments. Super Admin holds full platform control, billing plan configuration and dealer creation. Dealer/Reseller creates and manages end-customer accounts, handles billing and payments, blocks and unblocks customers, and assigns rights. End Customer tracks vehicles and assets, views reports and alerts, monitors drivers and manages their own units and users. Rights inherit downward and never exceed the parent account.
Whether the servers are yours or ours, you run your own customer base independently.
Device support in both models
Fleeto supports multiple branded IoT and GPS device families, integrated at protocol level — including Teltonika FMB and FMC series over Codec 8 and Codec 8E via TCP/UDP, plus BLE sensor ecosystems for fuel, temperature and humidity. New device brands and models are integrated on request, to your requirements, in either deployment.
If you self-host, the device server runs in your environment, which some enterprise and government customers specifically require.
Practical infrastructure guidance for self-hosting
If you are considering self-hosted deployment, the questions worth answering early:
Sizing. Concurrent device connections, message frequency and retention period drive specification more than vehicle count alone.
Retention policy. How long must historical position data remain queryable? Tenders often specify this, and it is the main driver of storage cost.
Redundancy. Do your customer SLAs require failover, and is your infrastructure budget consistent with those commitments?
Backup and recovery. Tested restores, not just scheduled backups.
Jurisdiction. Where must the data physically reside for the contracts you intend to win?
Network. Static addressing and firewall rules for device traffic.
Royex handles installation, configuration and ongoing maintenance under your agreement, and can advise on sizing during the pilot.
Pilot before you decide
We support pilot deployments — typically two or three devices on nominated vehicles — so you can validate protocol decoding, data accuracy, reporting output and branding before committing to either model. Running the pilot on the hosted plan costs nothing in setup and carries no minimum commitment.
Customisation applies to both
We undertake customisation and modification to client requirements — bespoke reports for a specific tender, additional modules for verticals such as school transport, waste collection or cold chain distribution, market-specific workflows, third-party and ERP integrations, and new device support. This applies whether you self-host or use our platform.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I host Fleeto on my own server? Yes. Self-hosted deployment on your own infrastructure is available under a fixed annual licence fee granting the right to use the platform. Royex installs, configures and maintains it under your agreement.
Do I get the source code if I self-host? No. Self-hosting gives you infrastructure control and data residency, but the arrangement remains a licence to use the platform. Royex retains and maintains the codebase and delivers updates, patches and new modules.
What does our hosted model cost? It is billed per vehicle per month at wholesale rates, with no setup cost and no minimum commitment. Your retail pricing and margin are yours to set.
Which model is cheaper? Hosted is cheaper below the crossover point; self-hosted is cheaper above it. The crossover is where annual per-vehicle spend exceeds the fixed licence fee plus your infrastructure and operations cost.
Why would I need data residency? Government, defence, utility, municipal and banking tenders commonly require data held in-country on contractor-controlled infrastructure. Self-hosting makes you eligible for contracts that exclude vendor-hosted platforms.
Can I switch from hosted to self-hosted later? Yes, and it is the usual path — launch hosted with no capital risk, then migrate once volume or a data-residency opportunity justifies it.
Is the feature set identical in both models? Yes. Full tracking, alerts, fuel, maintenance, driver behaviour, cold chain, toll detection, dispatch, finance, AI agents, complete branding and branded mobile apps in both.
Who maintains the platform if I self-host? We do, under your maintenance agreement — updates, security patches, new modules and support. You are responsible for the server infrastructure itself.
About Fleeto — Flexible Infrastructure for White-Label Fleet Management
When you offer GPS tracking under your own brand, the technology behind it needs to be flexible enough to match your business model. Fleeto gives GPS providers and fleet businesses a powerful platform for delivering branded tracking and fleet management services without having to build the entire technology stack themselves.
Fleeto combines real-time GPS tracking with fleet management capabilities including driver management, fuel monitoring, route optimization, maintenance scheduling, vehicle diagnostics, and detailed telematics data. This gives businesses a complete operational platform rather than a basic vehicle-location tracking system.
For providers looking to launch their own branded service, Fleeto works as a white-label fleet management platform, allowing the technology to become part of their own product offering. Businesses can create a branded experience while relying on a proven platform to handle the core tracking and management capabilities behind the scenes.
Whether your priority is maintaining greater control over your infrastructure or simplifying the technical side of running a tracking service, Fleeto provides the foundation to build and scale around your requirements. This makes it easier for GPS companies to focus on their customers, sales, and service delivery while Fleeto handles the technology powering the fleet experience.