RackCity AI vs RackPlanner

The honest framing

RackPlanner earned its place. For years it was the only tool that knew what pallet racking was while everyone else drew frames as rectangles in AutoCAD; it counted positions when that was a novelty, and a lot of dealers built their quoting around it. Nothing below should be read as saying it stopped working.

What changed is what people expect software to do. A tool that lives on one Windows machine, is bought once and updated rarely, and hands off to CAD for the deliverable was the norm when RackPlanner was designed. RackCity AI was designed against a different set of assumptions: a browser on any machine, a drawing that starts from a description or a flyer, and a quote that falls out of the layout. The comparison is really between those two sets of assumptions.

Side-by-side comparison

Round 1: Platform & access

RackPlanner is Windows-only desktop software. A Mac or Linux shop is out; a Windows shop is managing installs, licence keys and "which version are you on" across the team. That is not a criticism of the software so much as a description of its era.

RackCity AI runs in the browser on whatever the machine is. Nothing is installed, a new hire gets a link, and a dealer on a laptop at the customer's site opens the same project the office was in that morning. There is no offline mode: no connection, no RackCity AI, which is the one place the desktop model still wins this round.

Round 2: Racking-specific features

This is the closest round, and it splits. Both tools understand pallet racking, count positions, and handle single rows, back-to-back pairs and double-deep.

RackCity AI is ahead on what happens between the rows: columns go in the flue at one switch (Bury Columns on and the rows shift to put them there; off — where a new design starts — the rows pack to your exact aisle and the inspector flags any column left in an aisle), tunnels and dead bays are drawn and subtracted, aisles come out at exactly the width you type with the leftover shown honestly, and the layout can begin from a sentence to Forky AI or from the landlord's flyer (a PDF or a photo) instead of a blank sheet. It also works natively in metric with an EU rack catalog.

RackPlanner is ahead on breadth and on the engineering hand-off: it models rack types RackCity AI doesn't — if the job is drive-in, push-back, cantilever or pallet flow, RackCity AI will tell you it can't draw it — and it exports .dwg for the engineer or the fabricator. RackCity AI's deliverable is a PDF set: the floor plan and an elevation per rack type, plus the bill of materials as CSV or Excel. A stamped engineering set still starts in the engineer's CAD either way; RackPlanner just gets the drawing there in its native format.

Round 3: Collaboration

Neither tool lets two people edit the same layout at the same moment. The difference is where the work lives.

RackPlanner's files live on the PC. To share, you email one; the other person opens it on their licensed copy; changes come back by email and get reconciled by hand. RackCity AI's projects live in the account, so the same layout opens in any browser, every save is a version you can return to, and the PDFs and spreadsheets exported from each version are attached to it. The quote a customer approved in March is still beside the drawing that produced it in September. For a dealer whose desk and whose field laptop are two machines, that is most of what "collaboration" means in practice.

Round 4: Pricing & total cost of ownership

RackPlanner is a one-time licence at about $595 per machine. RackCity AI is free to draw and count in; exports and more than one saved project are $29 a month (Solo, watermarked exports) or $99 (Warehouse Pro, clean exports, unlimited projects).

On a single seat over three years, RackPlanner's $595 against Solo's $1,044 favours RackPlanner. The comparison moves when you count what each price buys:

• Seats: RackPlanner is per machine; five designers is five licences. RackCity AI is per person, and a person who only counts and never exports pays nothing.
• Upgrades: RackPlanner's major versions have historically been paid; RackCity AI's updates arrive as they ship.
• The quote: RackCity AI's price includes the bill of materials and the Pricing Summary from the same drawing. If the RackPlanner workflow is layout in one tool, count into a spreadsheet, quote in a template, the time between those steps is the cost that doesn't appear on either invoice.
• The draft: a layout from a flyer in a minute is worth more to a dealer quoting ten buildings a week than to an engineer drawing one a month. Price that against your own volume.

Round 5: UI and learning curve

RackPlanner's interface is of its generation: dense menus, its own conventions, feedback after the edit rather than during it. It is learnable, and people who learned it are fast in it; a new hire takes a few hours to get there.

RackCity AI is a canvas with a panel: drag a zone, pick the rack type, type the aisle, read the count on the header. The rack dropdowns are a catalog you can type into, and Forky AI takes an instruction in plain language. Most people are producing a layout within the hour, which is the point for a tool a dealer reaches for between calls.

Where RackPlanner still wins

• You need .dwg out. RackPlanner has it; RackCity AI exports PDF, CSV and Excel and doesn't. If the engineer wants the file in their format this week, that decides it.
• You lay out rack types RackCity AI doesn't model yet. Pallet flow, mobile racking, pallet rack on a mezzanine deck. RackCity AI draws selective, drive-in, push-back, cantilever, carton flow and wide-span shelving (since v1.5), and will say so if you ask for anything else.
• You work offline. Remote sites with no signal favour software on the machine.
• You already own it and your quoting is built around it. Switching costs time even when the destination is better.
• You want to pay once. A one-time licence on a single Windows seat is cheaper over three years than a subscription.

Where RackCity AI wins decisively

• You need a layout, a count and a priced quote from one drawing, today
• You start from a customer's flyer or a description more often than from a blank sheet
• Your team is on Macs, or on mixed machines, or works from a laptop in the field
• You want the design, its versions and its exported files to stay together
• You work in metric, or your customers do
• You want to try it before paying anything

Migrating from RackPlanner to RackCity AI

If you use RackPlanner and want to find out, the low-risk path:

1. Open RackCity AI on the next new job and build it there, in parallel with your normal process. The Free plan is enough for the test.
2. Build the same layout in both tools and time each one.
3. Compare the position counts. They should agree within a few percent; if they don't, find out why before trusting either.
4. If RackCity AI wins on time and accuracy, move new projects only. Leave finished RackPlanner jobs where they are.
5. Phase RackPlanner out over six to twelve months as the old jobs close.

Nobody cuts a team over in a week, and nobody should.