ARKA 360 is AI-assisted 3D solar design and proposal generation; Solar Spine is an operations system that runs a project from lead to handover.
In short
ARKA 360 is a solar design and proposal software platform. Its core product is a 3D solar design engine with AI-assisted shading analysis, roof layout modelling, and a proposal generator the vendor claims turns a design into a PDF proposal and permit package in under five minutes. A "Lead Management" CRM exists as a paid add-on on top of every India design-software tier, but the product's own comparison pages target other design tools (PVsyst, Aurora Solar, HelioScope, OpenSolar), not CRM platforms — that framing matters. The company is US-headquartered with a Bengaluru office, an India pricing page in rupees, and published SOC 2 compliance. Vendor claims 5,000+ users across 25+ countries, 700,000+ completed projects, and 900,000+ designs.
ARKA 360 is built for installers and engineers who design and sell residential and commercial solar systems globally. Its India go-to-market is credible: it publishes pricing in rupees, runs a support office in Bengaluru with an India phone number, and shows India customer testimonials from Panasonic's EPC head, Penta Solarex, and Addwatt Power. The product hits a real pain point that Solar Spine does not attempt to replace: turning out a believable financial proposal with CAD drawings and shade modelling. Where an EPC uses ARKA 360 today, it likely stays with ARKA 360 (or a design-only competitor) for the design and proposal step, and moves only sales and operations into Solar Spine. The two products do not compete directly: ARKA 360 stops at the proposal; it does not run a project through installation, DISCOM approval, instalment collection, or handover.
An EPC that picks ARKA 360 gets a global design platform with real depth on the engineering step, and India-specific pricing. An EPC that picks Solar Spine gets an operations system designed around Indian solar compliance (DISCOM net-metering, PM Surya Ghar subsidy tracking, GST invoicing), payment-instalment gating, and a flat monthly price that scales to any team size. The decision between them is not really a choice: it is whether a team's constraint is the design step (ARKA 360) or the sales-and-operations step (Solar Spine). Most Indian EPCs that operate at scale use both.
Where ARKA 360 wins
- ARKA 360 wins entirely on design and proposal generation. The 3D roof modelling with AI-assisted shading analysis is the point; turning that into a financial proposal and permit package in under five minutes is a real, deep product that Solar Spine does not attempt to replace.
- An established global brand with credible scale signals: 5,000+ users, 700,000+ completed projects, 900,000+ designs across 25+ countries, SOC 2 compliance, an active blog, and named enterprise integrations with Salesforce and DocuSign.
- ARKA 360 has made a real investment in India: a dedicated INR pricing page with GST called out, a Bengaluru office and India support phone line, and published case studies featuring named India EPCs and channel leaders. Most global design tools have not.
Where Solar Spine wins
- Solar Spine costs a flat ₹10,000 a month for unlimited users, no per-user surcharge, and no project-volume cap. ARKA 360 charges per seat (one user per tier) plus a ₹10,000 one-time onboarding fee plus 18% GST, so a five-person sales and operations team costs materially more and less predictably.
- Solar Spine runs the full project lifecycle: sales stages, instalment collection with payment gates that stop work until each threshold is met, DISCOM net-metering steps tracked automatically, PM Surya Ghar subsidy status and GBI redemption as dated tasks, and document verification gates that lock a project until ops confirms a photo is correct. ARKA 360 stops at the proposal.
- Stage gates and escalation turn work into a system. A stage cannot be advanced until the checklist is complete, so a job never stalls in an ambiguous state. Every night a late task climbs one rung of the org chart, so the sales manager sees escalated work the next morning without being told. This forces prioritisation; it scales to any team size.
- Solar Spine invoices the customer with GST built into the system, and generates payment schedules like 10/70/20 with due dates and outstanding balance visible to the whole team. ARKA 360 has no equivalent for the EPC's own customer invoicing or instalment collection.
- Solar Spine hosts data in a Postgres database in Mumbai with row-level security that fences every workspace, so an EPC's data is isolated at the database level, not by application policy. Identity documents are visible only to the project chain. Documents live in a private store with no shared public URLs.
Best for
ARKA 360 is built for engineers and proposal writers who turn solar designs into financial models and CAD files under time pressure.
Not for
ARKA 360 has no project-execution layer: no instalment tracking, no DISCOM workflows, no document verification gates, and no escalation of overdue work. Solar Spine has no design tool, no shading analysis, and no proposal generator. Neither tool is suitable for an EPC that has no in-house design capability or no in-house sales operations.
Pricing
ARKA 360
Per-seat, tiered by design volume (monthly or annual, plus 18% GST and a ₹10,000 one-time onboarding fee). Lite capped at 360 projects yearly; Basic and Premium unlimited. Each tier includes one user; additional seats not priced publicly. Lead management (CRM) is a separate paid add-on, price undisclosed. Enterprise is custom. Read directly from arka360.com/pricing-in.
| Tier | ₹ / user / month | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Lite (India) | ₹7,500 | ₹7,500/mo or ₹46,000/yr. Capped 360 residential projects/yr, designs up to 25 kW. Plus 18% GST and ₹10,000 one-time onboarding. 1 user. CRM is a paid add-on. Read directly on arka360.com/pricing-in. |
| Basic (India) | ₹11,500 | ₹11,500/mo or ₹70,000/yr. Unlimited residential and commercial. Micro-inverter design included. Plus 18% GST and ₹10,000 one-time onboarding. 1 user. CRM is a paid add-on. Read directly on arka360.com/pricing-in. |
| Premium (India) | ₹16,500 | ₹16,500/mo or ₹1,00,000/yr. Adds SLD export, optimizer design, manual stringing, SketchUp/PVSyst export, and API integration. Plus 18% GST and ₹10,000 one-time onboarding. 1 user. CRM is a paid add-on. Read directly on arka360.com/pricing-in. |
| Enterprise | Not published | Custom. API integration, advanced user management, custom development, and premium support. Contact sales. |
Read from https://www.arka360.com/pricing-in on 8 September 2026
Solar Spine
Solar Spine price list, the same numbers Razorpay charges
Feature by feature
| Capability | ARKA 360 | Solar Spine |
|---|---|---|
| Solar-specific | ||
| Solar sales and install stages out of the box | Partly. Configurable lead pipeline where users map their own stages on import, but no prebuilt post-sale install-execution stages (DISCOM approval, installation, commissioning, handover). | Yes. 7 sales stages and 17 project stages seeded on day one, all editable. |
| Stage checklists that change with loan, subsidy and DISCOM | No. No per-stage task-checklist feature that varies by loan, subsidy or DISCOM found on the CRM product page or help centre. | Yes. 57 checklist items; loan, subsidy and DISCOM-specific tasks appear only where they apply. |
| DISCOM net-metering steps tracked | No. Net metering appears only as an educational blog post, not as a tracked field or task in the product. | Yes. Net-meter paperwork branches for BRPL, BYPL, TPDDL, PVVNL, NPCL, DHBVN and UHBVN. |
| PM Surya Ghar and subsidy tracking | No. No PM Surya Ghar application-tracking feature found; subsidy content is blog coverage only, not an in-product workflow. | Yes. PMSG submission, DCR certificate, GBI and central subsidy redemption as dated tasks. |
| kW as a native field with kW reporting | Yes. kW is a native, load-bearing field. Lite plan explicitly capped at 25 kW per design; case studies report in kW/MWp. | Yes. Every deal and project carries capacity; dashboards and targets report in kW. |
| Roof design, shading and proposal generation | Yes. This is the entire core product: AI-assisted 3D roof design, shading analysis, and proposal generation claimed to deliver within five minutes. | No. Solar Spine does not do roof design. Use a design tool and track the job here. |
| Execution | ||
| Tasks written automatically with due dates when a stage opens | Partly. Vendor claims automated follow-ups and reminders, but no evidence that tasks are auto-created with due dates specifically when a pipeline stage opens. | Yes. Nobody types the checklist; each task carries the date it was given when the stage opened. |
| Overdue work escalates up the org chart on its own | No. No mention of overdue work escalating up an org chart found anywhere. | Yes. Every night a late task climbs one rung and keeps climbing until someone acts. |
| A stage cannot be advanced with open checklist items | No. No evidence that a lead or deal is blocked from advancing while checklist items remain open. | Yes. The advance button is unavailable until the stage's items are closed. |
| Documents verified by ops before work proceeds | No. Product produces permit packages as an output, but no evidence of document-upload-plus-ops-verification gating progress to the next stage. | Yes. A document is done when ops marks it correct; a rejection goes back to the person who photographed it. |
| A different first screen per role | Partly. Vendor states sales and operations dashboards exist, but no evidence of distinct first-screens for owner, telecaller or field roles. | Yes. Nine roles, nine first screens, from telecaller to director. |
| Field use on a phone: photos, tasks, call outcomes | Partly. Separate ArkaGo mobile app enables lead tracking, reminders and self-led site surveys; no confirmation of site-photo capture or call-outcome logging as CRM fields. | Yes. Every screen works on a phone; documents are photographed at the customer's house. |
| Money | ||
| Instalment schedule per project | No. Financial modelling covers customer-facing loan, PPA and lease options for the proposal, not an EPC-side instalment collection schedule (e.g. 10/70/20). | Yes. 10/70/20 or whatever you agreed, with due dates and outstanding balance visible to all. |
| Material cannot dispatch until payment is collected | No. No inventory, procurement or material-dispatch module exists in the product at all. | Yes. Thresholds per stage, set by the workspace; the default is the one the first customer ran. |
| Daily overdue payment alerts to owner and manager | No. No payment-collection tracking feature found, so no daily overdue-payment alert capability either. | Yes. 7 am every day, to the person who owns the collection and their manager. |
| A bounced cheque reopens the instalment | No. No payment or instalment tracking exists in the product. | Yes. Yes |
| GST invoices and quotes from the same record | No. ARKA charges 18% GST on its own subscription, but no evidence the product generates GST-compliant invoices and quotes for the EPC's own customers. | Yes. Invoice creation is a stage in the pipeline; the subscription itself is GST-invoiced too. |
| Leads and calling | ||
| Meta lead ads land in the system within minutes | No. Named integrations are HubSpot, HighLevel, DocuSign, Salesforce, Zoho and Nearmap; no native Meta or Facebook Lead Ads integration listed anywhere. | Yes. Ad leads arrive marked hot at the top of the calling queue inside five minutes. |
| PIN-code check on incoming leads | No. No PIN-code serviceability check found. | Yes. Leads outside the PIN codes you serve are kept out of the AI caller's queue. |
| AI caller that qualifies leads and books visits | No. No AI voice-calling or telecaller feature exists; ARKA's AI claims concern design optimisation (shading, layout) only. | Yes. Optional. Calls 9 am to 9 pm IST, books the visit on a named salesperson's day, hands off with notes. |
| Built-in telecalling queue with daily batches and outcomes | No. No built-in telecalling queue or daily-batch calling workflow found. | Yes. Queues built and ordered before the caller sits down; one outcome vocabulary for humans and the AI. |
| Lead outcomes written back to Meta | No. No Meta or Facebook lead-outcome writeback found; consistent with no native Meta Lead Ads integration. | Yes. Qualified, converted and disqualified statuses flow back through the lead sheet into Meta's Conversions API, so the account optimises for buyers, not form-fillers. |
| WhatsApp messaging and automation | Partly. ArkaGo mobile app enables one-way WhatsApp share of a PDF proposal via the OS share-sheet, but no two-way messaging, broadcast templates, automation or WhatsApp Business API integration inside the CRM itself. | Partly. Click-to-chat and logged WhatsApp interactions. No automated messaging. |
| Reporting | ||
| Owner dashboard: kW against target, cash due, stuck projects | Partly. Vendor claims comprehensive status on all leads, proposals and installations, plus business analytics, but no kW-vs-target or cash-due framing confirmed. | Yes. Yes |
| Per-person monthly targets and attainment | No. No per-person monthly target or attainment feature found. | Yes. Yes |
| Ask the business a question in plain English | No. No natural-language business-query or conversational-BI feature found; AI is applied to design, not data questions. | Yes. Director and GM only. Finding, evidence, table, caveat, next step, from live data. |
| One-click export of everything | Partly. Help centre documents per-artifact downloads (PDF reports, CAD layouts) and bulk CSV or Excel lead import, but no documented one-click export of all account data. | Yes. Excel export any time. No lock-in. |
| Data | ||
| Data hosted in India | No. Privacy policy states the company is headquartered in the United States and data may be transferred to the US; no India-hosting commitment found. | Yes. Postgres in Mumbai (ap-south-1); documents in a private store. |
| Pricing and support | ||
| Pricing model | No. Per-seat licensing (1 user per tier) combined with a project-volume cap on entry tier, not a flat per-company unlimited-user price. | Yes. Flat per company: ₹10,000 a month or ₹99,999 a year plus GST. Unlimited users. |
| Prices published in INR | Yes. A dedicated India pricing page publishes all three tiers in rupees with 18% GST called out explicitly. | Yes. Yes |
| Free trial without a card | No. There is no self-serve trial; the signup form is a Schedule Demo request that ends in Our team will be in touch. | Yes. 30 days, no card, no call. |
| Setup or onboarding fee | Yes. A ₹10,000 one-time onboarding fee is charged on top of every India subscription tier. | Yes. None. Send the filled setup form and the workspace configures itself. |
| India-based support in IST | Partly. Bengaluru office with an India support phone number and email confirmed, but no explicit statement of IST support hours found. | Yes. Email, replies within one business day, from Mumbai. |
Switching from ARKA 360
- Export lead data from ARKA 360 as CSV or Excel. ARKA 360's help centre documents bulk lead import in CSV format, which implies a CSV export path likely exists for leads even though it is not formally documented. That data feeds into Solar Spine's calling queue and customer import.
- Map ARKA 360's pipeline stages onto Solar Spine's prebuilt solar sales and install stage set (7 sales stages and 17 project stages). ARKA 360 stages are user-defined and generic; the mapping is manual, not automatic.
- Design data stays in ARKA 360 or moves to another design tool. Solar Spine does not replace ARKA 360's design studio, so an EPC migrating off ARKA 360's CRM would likely keep ARKA 360 (or a design-only competitor) for 3D design and proposal generation and move only sales and operations data into Solar Spine.
- Reconstruct payment schedules and subsidy status manually. ARKA 360 has no payment-instalment, subsidy-status or DISCOM-workflow fields to export, since those features do not exist in the product. If an EPC was tracking instalments and subsidy progress in a spreadsheet alongside ARKA 360, that data sources the Solar Spine import.
- Connect Solar Spine to ARKA 360 if your team keeps using both: ask Solar Spine support about API paths for a two-way lead handoff. The two products do not integrate natively.
Questions people ask
Can I use ARKA 360 and Solar Spine together?
Yes. Most Indian EPCs that operate at scale will keep ARKA 360 (or another design tool) for proposal generation and move their sales and operations into Solar Spine. The two products do not compete; they address different steps in the workflow. Design happens in ARKA 360, operations happen in Solar Spine, and the handoff is usually a CSV export of qualified leads.
Does Solar Spine replace ARKA 360's design tool?
No. Solar Spine does not generate rooftop designs, shading models or PDF proposals. If your team uses ARKA 360 for design today, you would keep using it after moving operations to Solar Spine. Solar Spine is the system that runs a project after the proposal is signed.
What data can I bring from ARKA 360 to Solar Spine?
Lead records (name, company, contact info, deal value) export as CSV from ARKA 360 and import into Solar Spine's calling queue and customer database. Payment history, subsidy status and DISCOM workflow do not exist in ARKA 360, so those must come from spreadsheets or other tools your team was already using alongside ARKA 360. Design files stay in ARKA 360.
Which is cheaper for a 12-person team?
Solar Spine, for any team above one person. Solar Spine costs a flat ₹10,000 a month, or ₹99,999 a year, plus 18% GST, for the whole team regardless of size. ARKA 360 prices per seat, each tier shipping with one user: a Basic seat is ₹11,500 a month or ₹70,000 a year, a Premium seat ₹16,500 a month or ₹1,00,000 a year, both plus 18% GST, a ₹10,000 one-time onboarding fee, and CRM sold as a separate add-on. Every ARKA 360 user beyond the first adds to that bill; Solar Spine's price does not move.
Where is my data hosted?
ARKA 360 data may be transferred to and processed in the United States, per their privacy policy. Solar Spine data is hosted in a Postgres database in Mumbai (ap-south-1) with row-level security fencing every workspace. Choose Solar Spine if you need data to stay in India.
What happens if I need design tools and operations together?
You will use both. ARKA 360 is design software; Solar Spine is operations software. An EPC that needs both buys both. This is the standard for the industry: design tools (PVsyst, Aurora Solar, ARKA 360, OpenSolar) do one thing; CRM and operations platforms do another. The integration is usually CSV export and manual stage mapping.
Other comparisons
Run one real project through it this month. You will know by the end of it.
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