Zivni vs Repsly vs FieldAssist: Which Wins for Multi-Country FMCG?

A distributor in Dubai called me last month. He runs operations across UAE, Oman, and Bahrain — 340 field reps, 12,000 outlets, three currencies, two languages, and a finance team that wants everything in one dashboard. He'd trialed Repsly. Then FieldAssist. Then us. His question was simple: "Which of you is actually built for this?"

Honest answer? All three can technically do multi-country. But how they handle it is wildly different, and that's where most buyers get burned.

So let me break it down the way I'd explain it to a friend over coffee, not the way our sales deck would.

The three platforms, in plain English

Repsly is a Boston-based product. Clean UI, strong in North America and Europe, good for merchandising-heavy teams. Their DNA is retail execution — shelf audits, planogram compliance, in-store surveys. If you're a US or UK brand pushing product into Whole Foods or Tesco, Repsly feels natural. Pricing usually starts around $29/user/month and climbs quickly once you add modules.

FieldAssist is Indian-built and dominant in South Asia. They understand distributor-led FMCG deeply — the whole primary/secondary/tertiary sales chain, order taking, scheme management, van sales. Strong in India, growing in the Middle East and Africa. Pricing isn't public but expect enterprise-style quoting once you cross 100 users.

Zivni (yes, that's us) started because I kept seeing FMCG companies in the GCC and Pakistan stitching together three tools to do one job. We built for multi-country from day one — multi-currency, Arabic and English, distributor hierarchies that cross borders, and pricing that doesn't punish you for growing. Starts at $5/user/month with modular add-ons so you pay for what you actually use.

That's the surface. Now the messy parts.

Where each one actually breaks

Here's the thing nobody tells you in a demo: multi-country isn't just about supporting different currencies. It's about tax rules, distributor commission structures that differ by market, SIM-based GPS restrictions in Saudi versus UAE, Arabic RTL interfaces that don't break when a rep writes a note, and offline mode in areas of Karachi or Muscat where 4G disappears for 20 minutes at a time.

Repsly struggles with the distributor layer. It's built for direct field teams — your reps, your merchandisers. The moment you introduce a distributor who has their own reps, who report to their own managers, who then roll up into your view? It gets clunky. I've seen teams build workarounds in spreadsheets on the side. Which defeats the point.

FieldAssist handles distributor complexity really well — probably better than anyone in the Indian market. But their multi-country story is newer. If you're running the UK and Saudi on the same tenant, expect some friction with tax logic, VAT reporting, and the reporting layer feeling India-first. Their voice order entry is decent but not great in Arabic (I've tested it).

Zivni? I'll admit what we're not. We're not the best pick if you're a purely US-based team selling into American grocery chains — Repsly probably fits you better and has more retailer-specific integrations. We're also younger than FieldAssist, so if you need a 15-year vendor track record for procurement, that's a fair objection.

But for a team running FMCG operations across, say, Riyadh, Lahore, Manchester, and Dallas on one platform? That's exactly what we built. Voice orders work in Arabic, Urdu, and English. GPS attendance handles the Saudi Absher requirements. AI shelf photo analysis reads Arabic SKU labels (this took us 8 months to get right, and we got it wrong twice before it worked). ERP integrations with SAP, Oracle NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics, and Odoo are pre-built, not custom projects.

The pricing math nobody does upfront

Look, I'll show you the math I wish someone had shown me when I was buying software.

Say you have 200 reps across four countries. Repsly at $29/user with the modules you'll actually need (photo audits, advanced reporting, integrations) usually lands around $45-55/user effectively. That's $108,000 to $132,000 a year.

FieldAssist enterprise contracts I've seen for similar team sizes come in around $18-25/user/month once negotiated, so roughly $43,000 to $60,000 annually. Plus implementation fees which are rarely under $15,000.

Zivni for the same team, with beat planning, GPS attendance, voice orders, shelf AI, and ERP integration turned on — usually works out to $12-14/user/month. Around $29,000 to $34,000 a year. Implementation is included for teams over 50 users.

I'm not telling you this to sell you. I'm telling you because in the FMCG sales software comparison conversations I have every week, buyers focus on features and forget the three-year total cost. And in FMCG, margins are thin enough that a $70,000 annual difference is a real number.

So which one wins?

Depends entirely on where you operate and how your business is structured.

If you're US or UK direct-to-retail with heavy merchandising needs and no distributor complexity — Repsly. Genuinely good product for that shape of business.

If you're India-heavy with growing Middle East operations and you need deep scheme and trade promotion management — FieldAssist has earned its reputation.

If you're running FMCG or CPG across the GCC, Pakistan, UK, and US, with distributors in the mix, Arabic and English users, and you want one platform instead of three — that's the exact gap Zivni fills. It's why we exist.

The distributor from Dubai I mentioned at the start? He picked us. Not because we're better at everything (we're not), but because his specific mess — three countries, two languages, distributor-led, needed to plug into his existing SAP setup — matched what we built for.

The worst decision you can make is picking based on a demo. Pick based on a two-week pilot with your actual reps, in your actual territories, with your actual product catalog loaded. Any vendor who won't give you that is telling you something. What are they hiding?