ARI PartSmart earned its reputation as a back-office electronic parts catalog: pull in the OEM catalogs a dealership is authorized for, render exploded diagrams, and produce accurate picklists that feed a dealer management system. For a counter person building a service work order, it is hard to beat.
The friction shows up the moment you try to sell those same parts online. Microfiche tools were designed for trained staff behind a counter, not for a rider standing in a garage with a phone. If your parts e-commerce is growing, the search that brought you here — "PartSmart alternative" — is usually a symptom of that mismatch rather than a complaint about the catalog itself.
First, diagnose the need
Do you want to replace counter lookup, or add a customer-facing lookup on your website? These are different problems. Many dealers keep a microfiche tool for the counter and add a storefront widget for online — they aren't mutually exclusive, and the comparison below assumes you may end up running two layers on purpose.
Who each option is for
Three categories show up in every shortlist, and they answer three different questions. Before comparing features, work out which sentence describes your dealership today.
- "My parts counter is slow and picklists are wrong." You need a counter catalog: PartSmart or another electronic microfiche tool wired into the DMS your service department already uses. Nothing customer-facing will fix a counter workflow.
- "I don't really have a dealership website yet." You are shopping for an eCatalog website platform — a hosted dealer site that arrives with an OEM catalog attached. You are buying a website as much as a catalog.
- "I already sell online and my parts pages are the weak spot." You need the lookup inside the storefront you already run, with your own checkout and your own customer data. That is the storefront-embedded category.
Category A: counter microfiche and DMS fiche
This is PartSmart's own category, shared with HLSM's online microfiche and electronic parts finder products and with fiche modules offered inside dealer systems such as DX1. They differ on catalog freshness, interface, and which DMS platforms they plug into, but they solve the same job: a trained user looks up a part accurately and pushes it onto a work order or a purchase order.
- Choose one when: your complaint is pricing, catalog freshness, interface speed, or DMS compatibility at the counter.
- Don't expect: any improvement to online conversion. The customer never sees these tools, so a lateral move inside this category cannot move an e-commerce number.
- Worth knowing: breadth claims are about the catalogs the vendor can supply, not the catalogs you may display. What you can actually open still depends on your authorized catalog and your brand agreements.
Category B: eCatalog website platforms
Vendors in this category — LeadVenture and similar dealer-website providers — put a consumer-facing OEM catalog on a hosted dealership website, with add-to-cart from diagram hotspots. This is genuinely customer-facing, which microfiche is not, and for a dealership without a real e-commerce presence it can be the shortest route to one.
- Choose one when: you want a done-for-you dealership website and are willing to run on the vendor's platform.
- The catch: if you already run Shopify, WooCommerce, or a custom store, you often have to migrate or maintain a second, disconnected site — two carts, two analytics setups, two places where a price can be wrong.
- Ask early: who owns the domain, the theme, the customer list, and the order data if you leave.
Category C: storefront-embedded fiche widgets
The alternative most online dealers are actually looking for: keep the storefront you already run, and embed the lookup into it. An online parts fiche renders as a widget on your own pages — brand, year, riding type, and model selection, then a diagram category, then the numbered exploded drawing with a linked parts list beside it. A live compatibility check sits on the product page, and aftermarket cross-sell follows the shopper's bike. Checkout stays native.
This is where Parts Finder Software operates. It is not a general-purpose catalog archive. It is focused on authorized KTM, Husqvarna, GasGas, Beta and similar dealers, going deep on the brands those dealerships actually sell, and it is documented capability by capability on the features page. If the vocabulary in this comparison is new, the parts fiche explainer covers how printed microfiche became the online diagram.
In practice the shopper's path looks like this: pick the bike (or reuse a saved one from My Garage), open a diagram category, land on the exploded drawing, tap a reference number, and see the matching product row with price and availability. Products that cannot be bought directly fall back to a request-quote flow instead of a dead end. Superseded numbers are resolved to their current replacement where the catalog provides one, and deep links reopen a preselected motorcycle or diagram so staff can send a customer straight to the right assembly. None of that requires the customer to know what a fiche is.
The comparison, as of September 2026
Category-level comparison only: individual vendors change packaging frequently, and only Parts Finder Software's own pricing is stated, because it is published. Treat every "quote-based" cell as a question for that vendor rather than a criticism.
| What you are comparing |
Counter microfiche / DMS fiche ARI PartSmart, HLSM online microfiche, DX1 fiche |
eCatalog website platforms |
Storefront-embedded fiche widgets Parts Finder Software |
|---|---|---|---|
| OEM data scope | Broad multi-brand catalogs; what you can open depends on your authorized catalog | Broad, tied to the platform's catalog agreements and your franchises | Deep on a focused brand set; also depends on your authorized catalog and data rights |
| Counter or storefront workflow | Counter staff building work orders and purchase orders | The shopper, on the vendor's hosted dealer site | The shopper, on your own storefront; staff can use the same page |
| Mobile | Built for desktop monitors at a parts desk | Varies by platform and theme | Touch-friendly diagram viewer and responsive parts list across phone, tablet, desktop |
| Shopify / website integration | Counter-side by design; some vendors sell a separate web fiche add-on for dealer sites | Usually means running the vendor's website platform | Widgets placed in your active Shopify theme, using Shopify catalog, customer, and cart context |
| DMS sync | Native to the dealer system it ships with | Depends on the platform and the connectors it offers | Lightspeed configuration and web-order integration, scoped per dealer as custom work |
| Onboarding and ownership | License and staff training; data stays inside the DMS | Site build or migration; the vendor owns the platform you sell on | Catalog onboarding and product mapping scoped up front; you keep the store, checkout, and customer data |
| Pricing model | Quote-based | Quote-based, often bundled with the website | Published monthly SaaS: $299 Starter, $599 Professional, $999 Enterprise, with a 14-day money-back guarantee on the initial payment. See what each tier includes. |
Where Parts Finder Software is not the answer
An honest comparison has to include the cases where the storefront-embedded category loses, and where a PartSmart-style tool or an eCatalog platform is simply the better purchase.
- You are a broad multi-franchise dealership. If your counter serves a dozen marques, a focused OEM widget set will not cover them. Breadth is exactly what the counter catalog category is good at.
- Your bottleneck is the service department. Work orders, technician picklists, and parts-department purchasing live in the DMS. A storefront widget does not touch that workflow.
- You are not on Shopify. The documented storefront modules are built primarily around Shopify; other storefronts are assessed as custom work rather than assumed.
- You do not hold the data rights. Dealers must be authorized and must hold permission for the catalog, diagram, document, pricing, and stock data shown on their storefront. Parts Finder Software is not an official application of any vehicle brand.
- Your catalog data is not ready. Coverage, product mapping, imagery, fitment, and stock quality depend on the sources you can supply. Thin data produces a thin lookup, whichever vendor renders it.
- You need it free. The entry tier is $299 per month. If online parts are not yet a revenue line, that is a real cost to justify.
A decision checklist
Run these seven questions before you book any demo. They separate the three categories faster than any feature list.
- 1. Who is the user you are trying to unblock — a counter employee, or a customer on a phone?
- 2. Which brands are you authorized to display, and does the shortlisted tool cover those specifically?
- 3. Do you already have a storefront you intend to keep, and what happens to it if you buy a website platform?
- 4. Does the diagram viewer work with a thumb, or does it assume a mouse and a large monitor?
- 5. Are supersessions resolved before a shopper sees a price, or after they call you?
- 6. What does the DMS side actually require — a one-way stock feed, or web orders written back?
- 7. Who owns the customer records, the order data, and the domain at the end of the contract?
Proof, and the honest recommendation
The clearest evidence we can point to is a dealership that had this exact problem. ASM Shop in Norway was running parts lookups through phone calls, emailed lists copied from legacy PDF sheets, and desktop-only microfiche grids that would not load usefully on a phone. After moving the lookup into their own storefront, pre-sales support load was cut in half, the returns rate became negligible, and monthly parts revenue scaled significantly. The full write-up, including what they deployed and in what order, is in the ASM Shop case study.
So: if your counter workflow is the problem, replace like with like — a different microfiche tool, chosen on catalog freshness and DMS fit. If your online parts revenue is the problem, no microfiche alternative will fix it, because the customer never touches those tools. Add a storefront-embedded fitment layer instead, and keep the counter tool you already trust.
For the full landscape, see our parts fiche and lookup software guide. To understand the returns angle specifically, read how fitment widgets cut OEM returns. And for the end-to-end online playbook, see selling OEM powersports parts online.