If you build batteries, trailers, reefers, tires, brakes or other components for commercial vehicles, you may be interested in the real cost breakdown to own connected truck and trailer fleet for monitoring. Running them as connected products on Blues comes down to three cost lines. You buy each connectivity hardware, Notecard, once, and its cellular service is included for 10 years. You pay for Notehub event, as your fleet sends data, at a per-event rate that drops as your volume grows. And you budget the installation and application work that stays with your team.
This guide prices each line with current Blues pricing, from a 100-device pilot to a 5,000-device deployment, so you can quote OEMs and fleets a predictable per-device cost for the life of your product.
Still deciding whether to build connectivity in-house? Start with What it costs to build or buy connected devices. This guide assumes you’re building on Blues.
The Blues cost path at a glance
- Notecard Cellular: a one-time purchase from $49, with 500MB of data and 10 years of cellular service included. No SIM to manage, no subscription and no carrier contract. Volume pricing for deployments of 5,000+ units.
- Notehub Essential (fewer than 500 devices): the first 5,000 events are free every month, then $0.00075 per event.
- Notehub Enterprise (500+ devices): commit to an annual event volume for 50% to 70% off the Essential rate, with Dedicated Success, starting at $1,000 a month.
- Always free: Blues-generated events, such as geolocation and session data, and routing your events to multiple destinations.
What does it cost to run a connected truck product on Blues?
A 10-year operating budget on Blues has a short list of lines. Here’s what each one costs and what it covers.
| Cost line | What you pay | What it covers |
| Notecard Cellular | One-time, from $49 per unit. Volume pricing for 5,000+ units. | Embedded SIM, GPS, accelerometer and secure element, plus 500MB of cellular data and 10 years of service, with no subscription or contract |
| Notehub Essential (fewer than 500 devices) | First 5,000 events free each month, then $0.00075 per Event* | Routing device data to your cloud, fleet management and over-the-air firmware updates |
| Notehub Enterprise (500+ devices) | Committed annual event volume at 50% to 70% off the Essential rate, paid annually in advance | Everything in Essential, plus price protection for the length of your agreement |
| Dedicated Success | $1,000 per month, included in every Enterprise agreement | 4-hour support response, assigned technical account manager, Notehub project and fleet configuration support, and solution architecture and code security reviews |
| Data beyond 500MB | Additional $10 per 500MB in North America, $15 per 500MB globally | Additional cellular data for any device that outgrows its included allowance |
| Satellite (Starnote, Notecard for Skylo) | Pay-as-you-go beyond 10KB | Satellite connectivity outside cellular coverage, with no satellite plan or monthly subscription |
Your team owns physical installation, your application and its cloud hosting. The next section shows how much of everything else Blues takes off your plate.
*What is an Event?
An Event is a record Notehub creates each time you, your devices, or your cloud apps send data or commands through your Notehub project. You pay for every Event except Platform Events, which are Blues-provided metadata that help you make sure your devices stay connected and healthy”
What does Blues take off your budget?
Building connectivity yourself turns several engineering problems into costs you carry every year your product is in the field. Here’s what each one looks like with Blues.
| Cost area | Building it yourself | With Blues |
| Cellular service | A data plan and carrier contract for every device, renewed for the life of the product | 500MB and 10 years of service included in the Notecard price, with no subscription or contract |
| Field provisioning | $1,000 to $3,750 per technician day to configure SIMs, network settings and cloud credentials, once labor, travel and downtime are counted | Notecard works out of the box with an embedded SIM and connects to Notehub without manually provisioned keys or certificates |
| Cloud platform | Ingest, routing, storage and device management, plus the engineers who run it | Notehub routes data to your cloud, manages fleets and delivers OTA updates. Routing to multiple destinations is free, and Blues-generated events aren’t billed. |
| Security | Credential handling, vulnerability management and patching for the life of the device | A hardware secure element with keys manufactured into the chip. Data is encrypted on the device and sent through off-internet tunnels to Notehub. |
| Software fixes in the field | A technician visit for each change | Notecard Outboard Firmware Update replaces host firmware remotely, and a failed update can be recovered remotely |
Field provisioning grows fastest with fleet size because it’s paid per technician day. As the build-or-buy guide puts it, a trailer OEM retrofitting 5,000 units feels it as a multi-year line item rather than a launch expense. With Notecard, connectivity setup leaves the field visit entirely.
How much does field installation cost when you deploy on Blues?
Installing devices on trucks and trailers already in service still takes technician time. What changes with Blues is what the technician has to do. Notecard Cellular needs no cellular plan or SIM to manage and connects to Notehub without manually provisioned keys or certificates, so carrier activation and credential setup drop out of the visit. The technician mounts the device, wires power and confirms it’s reporting to Notehub.
Use this worksheet to budget a retrofit program:
| Line | Formula |
| Technician days | Devices to install ÷ completed installations per technician day |
| Labor cost | Technician days × your loaded daily labor cost |
| Other field costs | Travel + installation materials + vehicle downtime + repeat visits |
| Connectivity setup | Not needed on site with Notecard: no SIM activation, carrier setup or credential provisioning |
For trailers and reefers already in service, schedule installs around yard access and maintenance windows. Fewer steps per visit means more installations per technician day, and that’s the number that drives the whole worksheet.
How do Notehub event costs scale from 100 to 10,000 devices?
A Notehub event is a single message a device sends to Notehub, such as one JSON note carrying several sensor readings. Notehub bills per event, not per sensor reading or network sync. Any number of values can share one event, in JSON or binary, and a single event can be up to 128KB. Blues-generated events, such as geolocation and session data, are free.
| Devices | Events per device | Plan | Fleet events per year | Est. annual Notehub cost | Per device per year |
| 100 | 4 per hour | Essential | 3,456,000 | $2,547 | $25.47 |
| 1,000 | 4 per hour | Enterprise, 25M tier | 34,560,000 | $12,960 | $12.96 |
| 5,000 | 4 per hour | Enterprise, 175M tier | 172,800,000 | $56,609 | $11.32 |
| 10,000 | 1 per hour | Enterprise, 75M tier | 86,400,000 | $31,034 | $3.10 |
How to read this table. Event counts are totals for the whole fleet, using 30-day months. Enterprise costs vary depending on the committed number of events and support tier. This is a baseline calculation, without a support tier etc. This may not reflect your final Enterprise plan.
Essential rows. 100 devices sending one event an hour send 100 × 24 × 30 = 72,000 events a month. The first 5,000 are free, so the fleet pays for 67,000 × $0.00075 = $50.25 a month, or $603 a year. At four events an hour, the same 5,000 free events come off a larger total (288,000), which is why the cost is $2,547.
Enterprise rows. Each row uses the smallest listed commitment tier that covers the fleet’s yearly events. A 1,000-device fleet sending 34M events a year fits the 25M tier: 34M × $0.000375 = $12,960
Why cost per device falls with scale. Dedicated Success is a fixed $12,000 a year, and the per-event rate drops as your commitment grows. A 5,000-device fleet reporting hourly pays about $6 per device per year for Notehub, and that includes a 4-hour support response and an assigned technical account manager. At 1,000 devices reporting hourly, more than half of the annual figure is Dedicated Success, the support you want in place while a rollout ramps.
Formulas. Essential: max(0, monthly fleet events – 5,000) × $0.00075. Enterprise: the smallest commitment tier that covers your annual fleet events × that tier’s per-event price, plus additional support, technical design review, SLA, etc. Ask Blues for a quote at your committed volume.
What does a 5,000-device deployment cost on Blues over 10 years?
Here’s the full Blues cost path for 5,000 devices, the volume where Notecard volume pricing applies. Each device sends one event per hour.
| Cost line | 10-year total | Per device |
| Notecard Cellular hardware (5,000 × $49 list price) | $245,000 | $49.00 |
| Cellular service (500MB and 10 years) | Included | $0.00 |
| Notehub Enterprise events (50M tier × 10 years) | $183,550 | $36.71 |
| Total | $428,550 | $85.71 |
That’s about $0.71 per device per month for the hardware, 10 years of cellular service, cloud data routing, fleet management, and over-the-air updates. It’s a number you can build into your product’s price and quote to OEMs and fleets up front.
This example uses list pricing, so volume pricing on Notecard for 5,000+ units lowers the hardware line. It assumes each device stays within its included 500MB and that today’s Enterprise rates carry through renewals; your agreement’s price protection covers its own term. Installation and your application hosting are budgeted separately.
What happens to cost when trucks cross borders or leave coverage?
On Blues, covering more countries and routes is a hardware choice you make once at design time. Match the Notecard model to the countries and routes your product will operate in, and check Notecard certifications by device.
Every Notecard, whether cellular, Wi-Fi, LoRa or satellite, uses the same API, so you can change the radio for a deployment without rewriting your host application. Some Notecard Cellular models support LTE-M, a cellular technology built for devices on the move, which suits assets that travel across regions. In Notehub, you can group devices into fleets by geography or customer to track usage per market and target firmware updates to a specific group.
Data planning. 500MB spread across 120 months averages about 4.2MB a month. Model your reporting interval and payload size against that average, with headroom for retries and firmware updates. If a device needs more, additional data costs $10 per 500MB in North America and $15 per 500MB globally.
Satellite. Starnote for Skylo adds satellite failover to a Notecard design for $54, and Notecard for Skylo combines cellular, Wi-Fi and satellite on one module. Satellite usage is pay-as-you-go beyond 10KB, with no satellite plan or monthly subscription. Decide which data has to arrive while a truck is outside cellular coverage, and budget satellite messages for that data.
How do over-the-air updates cut field service cost?
Every software fix you ship over the air is a technician visit you don’t pay for. With Notecard Outboard Firmware Update, you can remotely replace the entire host firmware on deployed devices. Notecard keeps its Notehub connection through the update and supports remote recovery, so a failed update doesn’t require a truck roll. For smaller changes, Notehub environment variables change device behavior without a firmware update, set per device, per fleet or across a whole project.
A technician day costs $1,000 to $3,750 once labor, travel and downtime are counted, so every change you push from Notehub instead of a service bay stays in your budget. Physical repairs and installation still need a technician; software changes don’t. For more on the operational side, see Truck Roll Reduction.
Frequently asked questions
What is a Notehub event?
An Event is a record Notehub creates each time you, your devices, or your cloud apps send data or commands through your Notehub project. There are two ways Notehub bills. One is if you exceed the included data amount. For cellular, the included data is 500 MB, and for satellite, it’s 10KB. Notehub bills per Event, not per reading, and a single Event can hold any number of values, up to 8 KB. Blues-generated Events, such as geolocation and session data, are free.
Does Blues Notecard require a monthly subscription?
No. Notecard Cellular includes 500MB of data and 10 years of cellular service with no subscription fees or contracts. The recurring line on Blues is Notehub event processing. On Essential, the first 5,000 events each month are free, then $0.00075 per event. On Enterprise, you commit to an annual event volume at 50% to 70% off that rate.
How many Notehub events does a trailer device generate?
It depends on how often the device reports and how your firmware groups values into events. One event per hour is about 720 billable events per device per month; four per hour is about 2,880. Because many readings can share one event and Blues-generated events are free, event design is the main lever on your Notehub bill.
What does a 5,000-device Blues deployment cost?
At one event per device per hour, a 5,000-device fleet sends about 43.2 million events a year, which fits the 50M Enterprise tier at $18,355 a year. With Dedicated Success included at $12,000 a year, Notehub totals $30,355, or about $6 per device per year. Over 10 years, adding Notecard Cellular at the $49 list price brings the total to about $110 per device, with 10 years of cellular service included. Volume pricing for 5,000+ units lowers the hardware figure.
What does Notehub Enterprise include?
Enterprise is for fleets of 500 or more devices. You commit to an annual event volume upfront and pay 50% to 70% less per event than the Essential rate, with price protection for the length of your agreement. Every Enterprise agreement includes Dedicated Success at $1,000 a month: a 4-hour support response, an assigned technical account manager, Notehub project and fleet configuration support, and reviews of solution architecture and code security.
What happens if a device uses more than 500MB of data?
Additional data costs $10 per 500MB in North America and $15 per 500MB globally. Spread over 10 years, the included 500MB averages about 4.2MB a month, so model your reporting interval, payload size, retries and firmware updates against that figure to see whether you’ll need more.
How should I budget for tracking outside cellular coverage?
Add satellite as its own line. Starnote for Skylo adds satellite failover to a Notecard design for $54, and Notecard for Skylo combines cellular, Wi-Fi and satellite on one module. Satellite usage is pay-as-you-go beyond 10KB, with no satellite plan or monthly subscription. It’s $0.75 per KB for overage. Budget messages for the data that must arrive while a truck is out of cellular range.
Build your connected product’s cost model on Blues
Blues gives you a cost path you can quote for the life of your product: a one-time Notecard price with 10 years of cellular service included, and Notehub pricing that gets cheaper per event as your fleet grows. Clarios, which produces more than 150 million batteries a year, built IdleLess with Battery Manager on Blues to give fleets real-time battery health data.
Tell us how many devices you plan to deploy, how often they’ll report and where they’ll operate, and we’ll help you model the full 10-year cost.
Talk to Blues about your connected trucking product
