I usually have kept a record of my car’s records (fillups, oil changes and maintenance) since my first car using a notebook, an excel spreadsheet, paper trail in folders and more recently scanning those papers.

As the trend to move data more and more into the cloud becomes mainstream, a number of Web 2.0 sites focused on this particular niche have started to appear.

RepairPal and Driverside have both taken upon the task of keeping your electronic records for your car. Additionally these sites serve to educate its users on how not to get ripped off when looking to get your car repaired. Members will also be able to rate those mechanics, see helpful tips and look at common problems related to that repair.

After looking at both of these and looking for the cars I own as well as the cars I’d like to buy, I must say that they both have their appeal.

Driverside has the most amount of users, which is important if you like to interact with other car owners and get their feedback on particular issues. It also has the most features like pre-populating your services for you to check off as they are due, as opposed to having to enter them like with RepairPal.

Now RepairPal is definitely much cleaner than Driverside which is rather busy, making it easier to navigate through as well as finding what a repair cost would be in your area or a specific part.

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