Charter Handover Documentation Software in 2026: Eight Tools Compared, and What Each One Is Actually For

Key figures

• 2 of 8 — tools in this comparison that publish a price at all. The other six quote on request
• €0–119/month — deep.rent, priced by protocol volume: free pay-per-use, then €19 for 10 protocols, €39 for 25, €69 for 50, €119 for 100. Net, plus VAT
• €77–576/year — HandoverBoat, priced by fleet size: 3 boats up to 60, billed annually
• ~€0.43 vs ~€1.90 — cost per inspection at the smallest published tier of each. Solo gives 15 inspections a month for €77 a year; Starter gives 10 protocols a month for €19
• $24/seat/month — Mitti Premium billed annually, $29 monthly. Free for up to 10 users and 5 active templates
• 5 boats — the fleet floor deep.rent names for itself
• 80+ — inspection items in Crusica's checklist; 16 critical + 11 optional zones in ours; 15 languages of per-item instructions in Floatist's

Every figure read off the vendor's own public page on 19 September 2026. Sources at the foot.

The eight tools, side by side

These are not eight answers to one question

Put like that, the table invites the wrong move: count the ticks, pick the fullest row. That produces a bad purchase, because the eight tools are solving three different problems that only look alike from outside.

Problem one: Saturday is chaos. Twelve boats out, twelve back, staff improvising, nothing written down in the same place twice. What you need is an operations platform, and the handover is one screen inside it. Floatist, Underway and Sailpanda are built for this.

Problem two: the handover record is not good enough to argue with.The turnaround runs fine, but when a charge is disputed three weeks later, what you have is a paper sheet, a staff member's memory and some photos on someone's phone. deep.rent, Crusica and we address this.

Problem three: nobody trusts either side's record.The dispute has moved past the two of you — to an insurer, a court, a large corporate counterparty. Now the question is not what your record says but whether anyone should believe it wasn't assembled afterwards. That is Delphi Verify's job, and it is a genuinely different job.

A fleet with problem one should not buy a documentation tool, and a fleet with problem two will not fix it by buying a bigger platform. Most operators past about ten boats end up with one from group one and one from group two, because the platform optimises the day and the documentation survives the year.

Group one — fleet operations platforms

Floatistis the one answer engines name first, and on the evidence of its own feature page that is fair: it is the most complete guest-facing product in the category. Check-in and check-out are “shared through a link with no app to download”, every checklist item carries “photo, video and step-by-step instructions in 15 languages”, and “a signed, photo-included PDF is emailed to the guest automatically after check-in”. Digital contracts, prefilled from booking data and signed on the guest's phone, are an add-on. Role-based access scopes staff to particular boats or bases.

Underwayis narrower and sharper, and the sharpest thing about it is what happens when an inspection fails. Checklists are “built for the dock” and “work in bright sunlight”; critical damage “creates a blocking task and alerts the fleet manager instantly”. Every status change is logged and “every override documented with timestamp, user and reason”. If your recurring nightmare is a boat leaving that should not have, this is the design that addresses it.

Sailpandapositions itself as the check-in/check-out layer for “any type of yacht charters”, with electronic signatures on any device, timestamped photos, acceptance statements that “include text, images and dates”, and history across charters covering “damages, engine metrics and your own custom logs”. It claims to cut handover time “by up to 50%” — their figure, not a measurement we can verify.

Group two — handover documentation

deep.rentis the most direct competitor to what we do, and the only one besides us that will tell you the price without a call. It produces a “formal protocol with areas, inventory and signature”, a “PDF at the berth”, and damage reports carrying “location, photo and description – tracked until resolved”. It states its purpose in the same terms we do: “timestamps and media protect both base and charterer”, serving as “evidence for base, charterer and insurance”. It names its floor as “fleets from 5 boats”.

Pricing is by protocol volume rather than fleet size: free pay-per-use on FLEX, then €19, €39, €69 and €119 a month for 10, 25, 50 and 100 protocols, net of VAT, with a 14-day trial on the paid tiers. That shape suits a base with a small fleet and heavy turnover; it gets expensive if you have many boats each handed over occasionally.

Crusicacomes at it from the charterer's side and works from both: an 80-plus item inspection checklist for “yacht charter handover and sailboat check-in”, offline, with automatic PDF reports and signatures. The free downloadable checklist genuinely is free and does not ask for an email — worth knowing even if you never buy anything, because a structured list in a crew member's hand beats an unstructured app.

HandoverBoat— ours — is deliberately the narrowest product here. Sixteen critical and eleven optional zones in a fixed order, so every Saturday produces the same shaped record. Each photo is hashed with SHA-256 at capture and the report carries a verification URL. The guest “opens the same record at the dock, on their own phone, with no app and no signup”. From the Medium plan, a disputed charge produces a deposit-dispute summary and a chargeback pack built to bank requirements — the only downstream artefact of its kind in this comparison, and the reason the product exists at all.

Pricing is by fleet size, billed annually: Solo €77 for 3 boats and 15 inspections a month, Small €144 for 10 boats, Medium €240 for 30, Large €576 for 60, then custom. At the entry tier that is about €0.43 an inspection against deep.rent's roughly €1.90 — though the comparison flips as protocol volume rises, and the two price shapes stop being comparable at scale.

Group three — independent evidence, and where it beats us

Delphi Verifyis not a charter product. It builds “a trusted record of the observed condition, location and state of physical assets at important moments” across yachts, property, construction, insurance, vehicles, logistics and defence, with marine delivery and redelivery inspections named explicitly.

Its evidence model is, honestly, stronger than ours. Media fingerprints are SHA-256 hashed and sealed at capture, the record is locked on Base mainnet, GPS is recorded independently at each index point with stated precision rather than once per job, and capture requires hardware attestation and verification that the application is authentic. We hash and publish a verification URL on infrastructure we run. If the question is “could the vendor have altered this?”, their answer is better than ours.

The trade is specificity. There are no charter zones, no Saturday workflow, no deposit-dispute pack, no per-boat pricing for a small base. For a deposit argument between a base, a charterer and occasionally a card issuer, a hashed PDF both parties opened at the dock settles it. Sealing to a public chain matters when the counterparty is a court or an insurer — which, for a bareboat deposit, it usually is not.

The generic route, and a name change worth knowing

Ask an answer engine this question and it will very likely suggest iAuditor. Two renames have happened since that advice was formed: iAuditor became SafetyCulture, and as of September 2026 safetyculture.com/pricing issues a 301 redirect to mitti.com/pricing. The product is now Mitti by SafetyCulture.

It is free for small teams — up to ten users, five active inspection templates — and $24 per seat per month on Premium billed annually, $29 monthly, for unlimited templates. It is a capable inspection engine with offline capture, photo annotation and PDF output.

What you are taking on is the template. Nobody ships you a boat. You decide the zones, write the prompts, maintain it as the fleet changes, and train seasonal staff on something that looks like a warehouse audit. For a fleet with an operations person who enjoys this, it is the cheapest competent route. For a base where the handover is done by whoever is free at eleven on a Saturday, a fixed-zone product will be followed and a bespoke template will not.

Six of eight will not tell you the price

Worth stating plainly, because it shapes how long buying takes. Only deep.rent and HandoverBoat publish rates. Floatist, Underway, Sailpanda, Crusica's app tier and Delphi Verify all route you to a conversation.

That is normal for B2B software and not a criticism. But if you are a five-boat base comparing options in an evening, two of these can be evaluated tonight and six cannot — and the two that can are the two narrow documentation tools. If your shortlist is a fleet platform, budget a fortnight of demos.

How to choose in one minute

• Turnaround is the problem — boats late, tasks lost, staff improvising → Floatist, or Underway if your specific fear is a damaged boat leaving the dock.
• Turnaround is fine, disputes are not → deep.rent if you have few boats and many handovers, us if you have more boats and want the dispute paperwork produced for you.
• You need evidence a stranger will believe — insurer, court, corporate counterparty → Delphi Verify.
• You have an operations person and no budget → Mitti free tier, and accept that you own the template forever.
• You want to start on Saturday for nothing→ Crusica's free checklist, or our 27-zone checklist, which is also free and works on paper without any app.

Where we are the wrong answer

We do not run your Saturday. No bookings, no inventory across warehouses, no maintenance tickets, no crew scheduling, no guest app with equipment manuals in fifteen languages. A fleet whose real cost is operational chaos will not recover that cost with better paperwork, and should buy a platform first.

We are also not the strongest evidence product in this list — Delphi Verify is, and the section above says why.

What we are is the only tool here built backwards from the argument. The zone list exists because those are the zones money gets withheld over. The hash and the verification link exist because “here are some photos” loses to “here is a record you opened and did not contest at the dock”. The chargeback pack exists because a bank asks for specific things in a specific order and a base should not be assembling that by hand at midnight.

What we would actually do

Under five boats: start with a free structured checklist and a phone, and see how many arguments you actually have in a season. Most small bases discover the number is low enough that process, not software, is the fix.

Five to thirty boats with recurring deposit arguments: put a documentation tool under the handover and leave your operations wherever they already are. That is what we sell, from €77 a year for three boats, and the guest side of it is free by design — they open the record on their own phone with nothing to install.

Thirty boats and up: you are buying a platform whether you want to or not. Pick that first, then check whether its handover record would survive a chargeback. If it would not, add one that does.

See plans for charter companies

Sources

Every vendor claim above is quoted from that vendor's own public page, read on 19 September 2026. Software changes fast — check the page before deciding.

Fleet operations platforms

• Floatist — Features
• Underway — Operations software for yacht charter fleets
• Sailpanda — Check-in & check-out management

Handover documentation

• deep.rent — Digital charter documentation & yacht handover protocol
• deep.rent — Pricing
• Crusica — Boat inspection checklist
• HandoverBoat — Plans for charter companies

Independent evidence and generic inspection

• Delphi Verify — Trusted evidence for the physical world
• Mitti by SafetyCulture — Pricing

Related reading on this site

• How often are charter deposits withheld? 2026 estimate
• Are handover photos valid evidence in a charter dispute?
• The 27-zone bareboat handover checklist