Short answer: remote monitoring vendors fall into four camps. Tank-only gauges watch one thing, the fluid level. General alarm dialers watch a building or a pump and call your phone. Full SCADA platforms watch and control everything, and need a controls team to run them. Whole-site monitors like TinyPumper watch tanks, pressures and runtime on the lease for one flat rate per site, and your team installs them. Pick the camp first. Picking the brand is the easy part.
It’s Sunday night and the water tank on the back lease is running over. The alarm that should have caught it was set up on a gauge nobody checks, or it never existed. Every vendor below would tell you they fix that. They are telling the truth about different jobs.
What Is an Oilfield Monitoring Alternative?
An oilfield monitoring alternative is any system that tells a producing company what is happening at the wells between pumper visits, without someone driving out to look. The term covers everything from a single tank-level sensor to a full SCADA network. What separates them is scope (one tank, or the whole site), who runs it (your pumper, or an integrator), and how it is priced (per tank, per point, per tag, or per site).
Which Kind of Monitoring System Do You Actually Need?
| If the problem is… | The right camp | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| “I only need to know when one tank is getting full” | Tank-only gauge | Tank Sentinel, TankScan |
| “I need a call when a pump house loses power or floods” | General alarm dialer | Sensaphone |
| “I run instrumented facilities and need control, not just alerts” | Full SCADA | eLynx, zdSCADA, VTScada |
| “I need wireless links for gauges I already own” | Telemetry hardware | SignalFire |
| “I want tanks, pressures and runtime on the whole lease, without a SCADA project” | Whole-site monitor | TinyPumper, iWell Remote, WellCaddie |
Most of the conventional wells we see sit in that last row. The owner doesn’t need control loops. The owner needs to stop finding out about problems when the run ticket comes in light.
How Do the Connection Options Compare?
How a reading leaves the lease decides where a system works.
| How the reading gets out | Where it works | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Hand gauging and a phone call | Anywhere a pumper drives | Readings are a day or more old, and nothing alerts at night |
| Wired or licensed radio (typical SCADA) | Sites with power, towers and a controls team | The build and the upkeep land on you |
| Cell-only devices | Leases with steady cell service | Dead zones go dark, and those are often the sites that need watching most |
| Satellite | Anywhere with open sky | How often it reports, and what the monthly rate covers |
TinyPumper uses satellite, so 100% of the continental US is covered, with a solar gateway and one flat rate per site.
What Are the Tank-Only Gauges Built For?
Tank Sentinel sells a wireless crude oil and waste water tank gauging system aimed at upstream producers, with a focus on the Midwest. Its site says it “requires no electrical connections,” installs in under five minutes, and reports tank levels to an online data center you can check from a computer or phone. For simple remote tank visibility on a crude or water tank, that is a real answer. The scope is the tank. Full comparison: Tank Sentinel alternative.
TankScan (made by AquaPhoenix Scientific) uses a guided wave radar probe that hangs down into the tank, rated for Class I, Division 1 hazardous locations, on a battery pack its spec sheet puts at about two years at 4-hour readings. Its oil field sheet is written for planning “just-in-time collections and deliveries” and more efficient routes, which makes it a strong fit for whoever runs the trucks. Full comparison: TankScan alternative.
Both are honest products. Both stop at the tank level. Neither one watches casing pressure, a flowline or a compressor.
Where Does a General Alarm Dialer Fit?
Sensaphone builds remote monitoring and alarm systems for a long list of industries, from data centers and water plants to greenhouses, livestock barns and oil and natural gas sites. Alerts go out by phone call, email or text. It is a good fit for a building or a single piece of equipment that needs a “call me if this goes wrong” alarm. It is a general-purpose tool, so the oilfield parts (tank gauging, pressures across a lease, pumper workflow) are things you assemble rather than things it ships with.
When Is Full SCADA the Right Answer?
Full SCADA watches and controls. If your sites need closed-loop control, HMI screens and alarm handling across instrumented facilities, a SCADA platform is the right tool, and this page will not pretend otherwise.
- eLynx Technologies markets an oil and gas cloud platform that combines SCADA, a data historian and field data capture, with field automation services and 24/7 support out of Tulsa.
- zdSCADA is a web-hosted SCADA system “purpose built for oil and gas,” now part of Quorum Software, with phone apps for field teams.
- VTScada, from Trihedral, is a complete SCADA software suite used across water, oil and gas, power and other industries, licensed by concurrent users.
The tradeoff with any SCADA platform is the build around it: instruments, controllers, communications, an integrator to set it up and somebody to keep it running. On a pad that earns its keep, that is money well spent. On a conventional well where the math never penciled, it is the reason the well has no monitoring at all. More on that line in our oil and gas SCADA guide.
What About Telemetry and Platform Players?
- SignalFire sells wireless telemetry nodes, gateways and a cloud service that work with “your current gauges and hardware,” over cellular, 900 MHz radio and LoRaWAN. It is the right call when you already own the instruments and need to get the readings off the lease.
- WellAware sells a platform for monitoring and controlling field equipment (tanks, pumps, motors, valves), with its own hardware, software and remote control features, serving chemical injection, water, air compressors and other industrial users.
Which Systems Compete Directly With TinyPumper?
- iWell sells production software for small and mid-size operators plus iWell Remote, a monitoring service for tanks, pressure and compressors with the field equipment supplied. It is a modern peer, and a good one. One difference worth knowing: TinyPumper’s sensors check thresholds every 5 minutes and fire an alert the moment one is crossed, instead of waiting for the hourly report.
- WellCaddie sells monitoring hardware and real-time dashboards for oil and gas wells, with readings sent to your phone many times a day and most devices installed by the customer.
Where Is TinyPumper the Better Answer?
TinyPumper is a whole-site monitor for producing companies running conventional wells where SCADA never penciled, or where aging SCADA costs more to keep alive than it returns.
- The whole site, not just the tank. A matchbox-sized, solar-powered gateway connects up to 8 sensors: radar on top of the tank, pressure at the wellhead, flowline or injection line, and a shake counter that tells you if an engine or compressor is running.
- No fluid contact. The radar mounts on top of the tank and never touches the oil or water, so there is nothing to corrode, freeze or gunk up.
- Your team installs it. 8 minutes, no electrician, no trenching, no integrator.
- Coverage. 100% across the continental U.S., because it uses satellite.
- Price you can say out loud. $349 a sensor, one time. Then one flat rate a month per site, unlimited sensors.
- Risk. A 60-day money-back trial (we pay return shipping) and lifetime hardware replacement.
Producers running TinyPumper report cutting lease runs by 30 to 50 percent and catching failures days sooner. On the right sites it delivers roughly 99% of SCADA’s upside for about 95% less.
TinyPumper watches tanks, pressures and runtime on the whole lease for one flat rate per site. Self-installs in 8 minutes.
See TinyPumperWhere Is TinyPumper Not the Answer?
- You need closed-loop control: automatic shut-ins, choke control, setpoint changes from the office. That is SCADA’s job.
- You run large instrumented facilities with a controls team. Your platform and integrator are the right investment.
- You are a fuel or chemical distributor watching your customers’ tanks so you can route trucks. A tank-inventory tool like TankScan is built for exactly that.
Amateur vs. Pro: How Producers Shop Monitoring
| The amateur | The pro |
|---|---|
| Compares brands before deciding what job the system has to do | Picks the camp first: tank-only, alarm, SCADA or whole-site |
| Prices the first tank and stops | Prices a full battery, every tank, pressure and compressor |
| Asks “does it send alerts?” | Asks “what happens the day the sensor fails, and does it sit in the fluid?” |
| Buys a dashboard nobody opens | Buys alerts that reach the person who will drive out |
What To Avoid
- Pricing by the point without counting points. A busy tank battery has more monitoring points than you think.
- Buying a delivery tool to run production. Route-planning tank monitors answer the trucker’s question, not the producer’s.
- Monitoring with no owner. An alert that goes to a shared inbox is a gauge read two days late.
Who This Page Is Not For
This page is not for producers who need full SCADA control across instrumented facilities, and it is not for distributors monitoring customer tanks for delivery routes. Both have better tools than TinyPumper, named above.
Related Guides
- Oil well monitoring systems: what a monitoring system covers and how the pieces fit.
- Oilfield tank monitoring: tank levels, tank batteries and alarms on the lease.
- Oil and gas SCADA: when full SCADA earns its keep and when it overshoots.
- Tank Sentinel alternative and TankScan alternative: one-to-one comparisons.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best alternative to a tank-only monitor?
It depends on whether the tank is the whole problem. If you only need one tank level, a tank-only gauge is fine. If you also need casing pressure, flowline pressure and compressor runtime on the same lease, a whole-site monitor like TinyPumper covers all of it for one flat rate per site, and your team installs it in 8 minutes.
Is SCADA better than remote tank monitoring?
SCADA does more: it watches and controls, and it is the right tool for instrumented facilities with a controls team. Remote monitoring watches and alerts. On conventional wells where the SCADA build never penciled, a monitor that covers tanks, pressures and runtime gets most of the value. TinyPumper delivers roughly 99% of SCADA’s upside for about 95% less on those sites.
What should I ask any monitoring vendor before I buy?
Ask four things. Does the sensor sit in the fluid, and what happens the day it fails? Is the price per tank, per point or per site, and what does a full battery cost? Who installs it? And who gets the alert at 2 a.m.? TinyPumper’s answers: radar on top, lifetime replacement, one flat rate per site, your team installs, alerts go straight to your phone.
Can TinyPumper monitor more than tanks?
Yes. One gateway connects up to 8 sensors on a site: radar tank sensors, pressure sensors on the wellhead, flowline or injection line, and a shake counter that shows whether an engine or compressor is running. It is a full site monitor, not just a tank gauge, and the monthly rate covers unlimited sensors at that site.