An honest comparison for UK locksmith businesses deciding where to run their operations. Both products do real work. They do not solve the same problem.
Corem8
A subscription ops platform that lets you run dispatch, payouts, follow-up, and reporting under your own brand. You bring the leads from wherever you want. Customers stay yours forever.
Locksafe
A consumer-facing booking platform that finds customers, vets locksmiths, and takes a commission per job. Useful as a lead source. Locksafe keeps the customer relationship.
These two products are often compared because they both touch UK locksmith jobs. They sit at completely different layers of the business.
Locksafe acquires customers, books the job, and pays the locksmith. The locksmith is a worker on the platform. If the locksmith leaves, the customers stay with Locksafe.
Corem8is the operating system inside the locksmith's business. The locksmith brings their own customers (from any source, including Locksafe if they want). Every interaction, invoice, and follow-up goes out under the locksmith's brand. If the locksmith ever leaves Corem8, the customers belong to the locksmith.
You can use both. Many locksmiths will run their core business on Corem8 and treat Locksafe as one of several lead sources plugged into the inbox. What you should not do is rely on Locksafe alone.
The most important comparison. Everything else flows from how each product makes money.
| Feature | Corem8 | Locksafe | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who owns the customer relationship | You do. Customers stay in your CRM under your brand. | Locksafe does. Customers book through their platform. | Corem8 wins If a locksmith leaves Locksafe, the customers do not follow. |
| Monetisation | Per-seat monthly subscription. Predictable cost. | Commission per job (estimated 15-25%, undisclosed publicly). | Depends Commission can be cheaper at very low volume, but punishes growth. |
| Brand displayed to the customer | Your trading name on every invoice, message, and PDF. | Locksafe branded. | Corem8 wins |
| Lead source flexibility | Bring leads from Bark, Checkatrade, Google Ads, your website, walk-ins, anywhere. | Leads come from the Locksafe marketplace only. | Corem8 wins |
Where the products overlap on capability, and where they diverge.
| Feature | Corem8 | Locksafe | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Multi-engineer firm support | First-class. Add your engineers, set per-engineer payouts. | Available, but buggy at time of writing (bug reports outstanding). | Corem8 wins |
| Real-time dispatch board | Yes. Designed around locksmith dispatch reality. | Yes, customer-facing booking flow. | Tie |
| GPS arrival tracking | Yes. | Yes. | Tie |
| Customer-signed completion PDF receipts | Yes, branded with your trading name. | Yes, Locksafe-branded. | Tie |
| Subcontractor payout tracking | Yes, with per-job margin visibility. | Stripe Connect handles payouts but no payout-vs-margin reporting. | Corem8 wins |
| Accounting integration (Xero / QuickBooks) | Yes. Sync invoices and customers. | Not documented. | Corem8 wins |
| AI features | Job summaries, customer message drafts, KB-grounded answers. Customer enables per-account. | AI voice phone intake (Bland.ai) for inbound calls. | Depends Different scope. Both are useful for different stages of the lead. |
| Mobile app | Mobile app in active development. Web works on mobile today. | Mobile-first web; native app not confirmed. | Tie |
B2B buyers, lawyers, and investors look at compliance hygiene before they look at features. The gap here is wide.
| Feature | Corem8 | Locksafe | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| UK company registered at Companies House | Core M8 Ltd. See footer for company number. | No registered UK company found at Companies House (searched 2026-05-20). | Corem8 wins Statutory under Companies Act 2006 s.82 for any UK Ltd. |
| ICO Data Protection registration | Registered (see footer for ICO number). | No ICO registration disclosed on site. | Corem8 wins |
| Statutory company info on website | Registered name, number, and office address shown in footer on every page. | Mobile phone number and email only. No registered address. | Corem8 wins |
| Published Data Processing Agreement | Yes. Article 28 UK GDPR compliant. Counter-signature on request. | No DPA published. | Corem8 wins |
| Public sub-processor list with transfer mechanisms | Yes. Full list with SCCs + UK IDTA references. | Sub-processors listed in privacy policy, but no transfer mechanism stated. | Corem8 wins |
| Vulnerability disclosure policy + security.txt | Yes. RFC 9116 security.txt + policy at /security. | None published. | Corem8 wins |
| Accessibility statement | Yes. WCAG 2.1 AA targeted, honest about limitations. | Yes. WCAG 2.1 AA targeted. | Tie |
| Customer ownership in terms of service | Customer owns customer data. Locked in writing. | Terms prohibit bypassing the platform for direct contact. | Corem8 wins |
Compliance findings on Locksafe verified via Companies House search (no UK registration found), site audit (no published DPA, no sub-processor transfer mechanisms, no registered address, no security.txt) as of 2026-05-20. Corem8's compliance posture is detailed at /security, /sub-processors, and /dpa.
We will not lie to you about this.
In those cases, sign up to Locksafe and accept jobs. There is no shame in using a marketplace at the beginning. The trap is when the marketplace becomes your entire business and you can never leave.
If you are running on Locksafe today and want to take ownership of your customer base, here is the migration path.
Locksafe's data deletion route covers your account. Before requesting deletion, download any data you can: locksmith profiles, completed jobs, customer contact details you have legitimate access to.
CSV imports for engineers, customers, and historical jobs are supported. Our team will help with the first import.
Plug Bark, Checkatrade, your website forms, and even a Locksafe-forwarding mailbox into the Corem8 leads inbox. Every lead lands in your back-office.
From the moment you switch, every quote, invoice, and follow-up goes out branded as your business. Customers reconnect with you directly.
We do not encourage breaking any contractual term you owe Locksafe (or any other platform). Follow their terms for account closure, payout reconciliation, and outstanding jobs before fully switching.
If you want to be a worker on someone else's platform, use Locksafe.
If you want to be the platform, use Corem8.
Most growing locksmith businesses end up wanting the second thing. They start by being one of many on a marketplace and quickly realise the customers were never theirs to begin with. Corem8 exists so you do not have to repeat that lesson.
All claims about Locksafe.uk are based on a public-surface audit of the locksafe.uk website conducted on 2026-05-20, including its homepage, terms, privacy policy, refund policy, vulnerable customers policy, cooling-off page, accessibility page, sitemap, robots.txt, sub-processor disclosures, and locksmith signup flow.
Companies House and ICO register searches were performed on 2026-05-20 and 2026-05-21 with zero matching active records for Locksafe.uk.
All claims about Corem8 are based on Core M8 Ltd's product documentation, the published security page, sub-processor list, and DPA.
If you spot a factual error in this comparison, please write to hello@corem8.com with the correction. We will update this page promptly.