Pilla

Pilla is an AI work management platform for deskless industries. Its home page puts the promise as deskless work done without the constant chasing: you turn processes you already know into workflows your team follows on any device, and Pilla runs routine work on autopilot, checks it against your standards and follows up when needed. It is written for operators and managers, not for developers. Pilla was founded by Liam Jones, who says on the company's comparison page that he spent more than 10 years running hospitality operations, food safety and frontline teams. The company is Your Pilla Ltd, registered under company number 11639238.

What you build and how

You build a workflow on a canvas, starting from a process you already run. The home page describes three moves. First, set exactly what should happen: turn the process into clear, scheduled steps that show your team what to do, how to do it and when. Second, your team completes and records the work, following the workflow on any device and recording the same evidence as they go. Third, Pilla checks and follows up, comparing completed work with your rules and alerting the right person or system.

The step builder offers 20 step types. The examples on the page show a tick-box confirmation (floor mopped, signs removed), a numeric reading from a digital probe with a stated safe range of 1 to 5 °C, a quick 1 to 5 score, a location pin dropped at the start of a shift, a photo of the cleaned area and a signature to sign off the work. You can put written, photo or video instructions right beside each step, so the guidance sits next to the work. The sign-off stays with the work and creates a record as the work happens, with the person's name and completion time shown in the examples.

The automation layer is where the AI sits. The home page lets you tell Pilla how to handle checking and follow-up in plain sentences, with examples such as checking a photo and messaging the team if it still looks dirty, messaging on Teams if a signature is empty, sending a Slack message if a rating is 4 or 5, or adding a manager's name to a log in a document once the work is signed off. 3 jobs are named: prepare people by bringing each person the context they need before they start, check the work against the rules you set, and handle the follow-up by updating the right person or connected app. The comparison page describes the idea as Pilla fetching, deciding and acting while the work is happening, with you keeping the judgment calls.

Reporting is the last piece. The page says you can see what was completed on time, what ran late and what was missed across every team, location and workflow, without asking anyone for an update.

What the end user gets is a web app and mobile apps that Pilla ships itself. The page lists what Pilla takes off your plate: a tenant-safe database and record layer, so you never design schemas or isolate accounts; login, sessions and role-based access; web and mobile clients; offline storage and reconnection; media capture, uploads, storage and video processing; push alerts and real-time updates; the integration and API layer; and hosting, releases and maintenance. The footer points to an integrations page, a developers page, a help center and an FAQ, and offers a mobile app download. The text shown does not name the integrations, so check the list against your own tools.

You start by describing the work, or by attaching the paperwork you want to turn into a digital workflow.

What the pages state

Pricing is published. The comparison page lists Pay as you go at £199 a month with 1,500 processed workflows included, then 15p for each further workflow, and Enterprise from £999 a month. The unit is the processed workflow, not the person: the page says people are unlimited and that you pay for usage based on workflows. No free plan or trial is mentioned on the pages shown.

The same page is Pilla's own comparison against Clappia, GoCanvas, ProntoForms and FastField, so its figures about those tools are Pilla's reading of their public documentation, taken on 16 September 2026, and Jones says he has not lived in a paid account of any of them. The page lists GoCanvas Essentials at $29 per user per month billed annually with a 3-user minimum, ProntoForms (renamed TrueContext in 2023) Digital from $400 per month for the team, FastField Core at $24 per seat per month, and Clappia Starter at $6 per user per month billed yearly. That contrast is useful context: those tools charge by seat, Pilla by workflow.

The page is also candid about the limits. Under its own cons it lists no live GPS tracking or white-label launcher, no general no-code app studio, and the fact that you rebuild existing apps on the canvas. It states that Pilla was not built as a general no-code app studio, a live GPS tracker or a white-label container app. Security, compliance certifications, hosting regions, open-source licensing and self-hosting are not described in the text shown, although the footer links a security page.

Who it suits and who it does not

Pilla suits an operator running shift-based, repeatable work: opening and closing checks, cleaning routines, temperature logs, handovers. The examples lean on hospitality and food safety, which matches the founder's background, and the usage-based model fits a team with many staff but a modest number of completed workflows, since people are not charged. The offline sync and phone-first design suit staff who work away from a desk.

It is not a general app builder, and the company says so. If you need custom databases, a customer portal or a white-label branded app, you want a different tool. Teams moving an existing Clappia app have to rebuild it as a canvas workflow. And because the pages show no free plan and charge by processed workflow, a team with very high volumes of small checks should estimate its monthly count before committing.