Configura CET Alternative for Rack Dealers

The short answer

The right Configura CET alternative for a rack dealer depends on what CET does for you. If you specify from manufacturer catalogs, order through your ERP and sell with 3D renderings, stay in CET. If you need a pallet rack layout, a Material List and a priced Pricing Summary from a customer’s drawing, in a browser and free to start, RackCity AI is the lighter alternative.

What CET Material Handling does well

Configura offers two CET products for material handling: CET Material Handling, the full platform, and CET Essentials for Material Handling, which Configura says was “developed for 3PLs, integrators, smaller manufacturers and warehouse managers” and uses “product placeholders—dynamic product symbols not attached to a specific brand.” Its material handling page names its users as system integrators, manufacturers of pallet racks and conveyors, and 3PLs. A rack dealer is usually the first of those.

Four things stand out on Configura’s own pages, and they are real strengths:

• Manufacturer catalogs. CET Material Handling lets you “specify products from multiple manufacturers in the same program,” and “prices are also automatically and instantly updated as products are added to the drawing space.” Its comparison table lists the bill of materials as “accurate pricing via manufacturers” on CET Material Handling and “general pricing components” on Essentials. Configura keeps adding lines: in 2025 it announced BEUMER Group’s pallet conveyor portfolio for CET Material Handling.
• Breadth beyond racking. The Essentials extensions cover pallet racking, deep racking (“push-back, drive-in, and pallet flow”), cantilever, shelving, mezzanines, conveyors, AS/RS cranes and guarding.
• 3D presentation. Configura describes “renderings, fly-through videos, 360 panoramas” and letting “the customer walk around their new warehouse using Virtual Reality,” plus 3D PDFs.
• Ordering. Configura says CET connects to ERP and CRM systems to send orders straight to production, and generates “elevations and installation documents with a click of a button.”

The industry noticed. Configura reports that CET Material Handling won MHI’s Best IT Innovation Award at MODEX 2024, selected from nearly 200 submissions. CET is also built for teams: “several members of the team can work on the same project together.” It is software you download from Configura and run on your own computer, and Configura publishes system recommendations so you can check “if your hardware is up to speed to run CET smoothly.”

Where RackCity AI fits, and where it doesn’t

RackCity AI does a narrower job: from a building to a pallet rack layout, a count and a priced quote. It runs in any modern browser on Windows, Mac or Linux, and on a phone, with nothing to install.

Where it fits. Forky AI, the built-in assistant, drafts an editable layout from a sentence (“200 by 400 ft, 32 ft clear, back-to-back selective, 12 ft aisles”) or from the drawing the customer sent: a PDF, a PNG, JPG or TIFF photo or scan, or a DWG or DXF. It reads the building, racks it and says what it assumed; you edit by hand or keep talking to it. Pallet positions are counted as the design changes, and the Material List counts the frames, beams, decks and hardware from the same layout. Overwrite its unit costs with your own, add fee lines for freight, installation or engineering, and export the Pricing Summary PDF, the Layout PDF (plans, elevations and schedules) and the Material List as CSV or Excel.

For a dealer’s team, Enterprise puts your logo in place of ours in the app and on every export, adds the DWG and DXF export (each element on its own layer, for AutoCAD, BricsCAD or any CAD program), and files team projects by customer in one shared workspace with admin and member roles.

Where it doesn’t. Say these plainly before anyone switches:

• No manufacturer catalog integration. The Material List counts generic components and you price them. There are no manufacturer part numbers, no ordering link and no ERP or CRM connection.
• No 3D walkthrough. The floor plan is 2D. Solo and Warehouse Pro add a 3D view of one rack bay type (frame, beams, decking, loads), not the building.
• A shorter list of systems. RackCity AI models multiple racking systems: selective pallet rack (single-row, back-to-back and double-deep), drive-in, the 2-way pallet shuttle, push-back, cantilever, carton flow and wide-span shelving. Pallet flow, mobile racking and pallet racking on a mezzanine deck are not supported, and conveyors and AS/RS are not on the list.
• No structural calculation. RackCity AI gives no capacity rating and stamps nothing. A pallet-position count describes the modeled layout, not an approved installation; the stamped calculations a permit needs come from a licensed engineer.

Side-by-side comparison

What each one costs

Configura states its prices on the CET Essentials page: CET Essentials for Material Handling is billed annually at $1,580 (or $155 monthly), and CET Material Handling annually at $2,640 (or $330 monthly). Manufacturer extensions are on CET Material Handling only; Essentials “does not work with manufacturer products made in CET MH.” The same page still carries a sign-up offer dated May 2023, so ask Configura for a current quote before you budget.

RackCity AI is free to start. The Free plan lays out, counts, drafts with Forky AI on a limited number of requests and keeps one cloud project; where it starts charging is sending the drawing out. Solo is $30 a month (watermarked exports, the 3D bay view) and Warehouse Pro is $100 a month (clean exports, unlimited projects), or 20% less billed annually. Enterprise is quoted by a person and invoiced; its price is not published. Current details are on the pricing page.

When CET is the right pick

• You sell manufacturer lines that publish their products in CET, and the quote has to carry their part numbers and prices.
• Orders go from the drawing into your ERP or CRM, or straight to production.
• The job includes conveyors, AS/RS, pallet flow, guarding or multi-level structures alongside the racking.
• The sale rides on 3D: renderings, fly-throughs or a VR walk through the customer’s building.
• Your team already designs in CET, and its standards and libraries are built there.

When RackCity AI is the right pick

• The job is pallet racking, and what you need is a layout, a count and a priced quote, today.
• Jobs arrive as a landlord’s flyer, a PDF plan, a photo or a DWG, and you would rather Forky AI drafted from it than redraw it.
• You price from your own costs, or quote steel from more than one source.
• Your people work across machines, a Mac or a phone at the customer’s site included, and want nothing to install.
• You want to try it on a real job before paying anything.
• Your team wants its own branding on every drawing and quote, and DWG and DXF for the CAD desk, on Enterprise.

Running both

The two are not exclusive. A dealer with CET seats for its manufacturer-line jobs can use RackCity AI at the front of the funnel: a customer sends a flyer, Forky AI drafts the layout, and the count and a budget Pricing Summary go back the same day. If the job is won, the agreed layout becomes the brief for the CET drawing.

To test it, take the last job you quoted in CET, build it in RackCity AI on the Free plan, and compare the counts and the clock. Our dealer quoting guide walks through the quote step by step.

Frequently asked questions