Alternatives
Sortly alternatives
A shortlist of the tools genuinely worth evaluating if you are moving away from Sortly — including which of them is a better fit than Stackroom, and when staying put is the right answer.
What is the best alternative to Sortly?
Sortly is an inventory catalogue and Stackroom is an asset lifecycle system, which makes them different products rather than competing ones. Choose Sortly to photograph and count what you hold. Choose Stackroom when equipment is issued to people and you need signed custody, audits, service cover and depreciation.
First, the obvious question
Should you actually leave Sortly?
Switching tools costs more than the subscription. There is a migration, a period where two systems disagree, and the weeks it takes for a team to stop reaching for the old one. It is worth it when the capability you are missing is costing you more than that — and not otherwise.
Sortly is the right tool when your inventory is photo-led and people find things by looking rather than searching. If that describes you, the honest advice is to stay, and the rest of this page will not change it.
The reasons teams give us for moving are consistent:
- The item count stopped making sense. Item-count tiers create an awkward incentive: the more completely you track, the more you pay. Teams tell us they left assets off the books to stay inside a tier, which defeats the point of having a register.
- They needed to know who had it. Cataloguing what you own is a different problem from knowing who is holding it right now. Once equipment moves between people, custody and signatures become the thing you actually need.
- Two teams kept claiming the same equipment. Shared equipment needs reservations with availability checks. Without them, scheduling falls back to a calendar and someone's memory, and the clash surfaces on the morning of the job.
The shortlist
Alternatives to Sortly worth evaluating
Ordered by how close each is to what you are leaving. Not all of these are us.
Stackroom
That is usSortly leads on photo-led cataloguing. Stackroom leads on everything that happens after an item is handed to somebody — custody, clearance, audits, service contracts and book value.
Best for: organisations issuing equipment to people — custody with signatures, bookings, maintenance, cycle-count audits, and an offline-first mobile app. Unlimited users on every plan, including free.
AssetTiger
Inventory & stockroomAssetTiger leads on getting a basic register in place at low cost. Stackroom leads on the operational layer: custody, bookings, maintenance and audits.
Best for: a basic register genuinely meets your needs and budget is the binding constraint.
Stackroom vs AssetTigerFishbowl
Inventory & stockroomFishbowl is inventory and manufacturing software. Stackroom is asset lifecycle and custody software. Neither is a substitute for the other, and we will not pretend to be an inventory system.
Best for: you buy, hold, manufacture or sell goods — anything with a cost of goods sold.
Stackroom vs FishbowlCheqroom
Equipment tracking & checkoutCheqroom leads on a polished, focused checkout experience. Stackroom covers checkout plus maintenance, warranty and audit, without per-seat pricing pressure.
Best for: your workflow is checkout and reservations, full stop, and you want the most polished version of exactly that.
Stackroom vs CheqroomEZOfficeInventory
Equipment tracking & checkoutEZOfficeInventory leads on breadth and configurability for larger deployments. Stackroom leads on speed to value and predictable pricing.
Best for: you need purchase orders and a procurement workflow in the same system as the register.
Stackroom vs EZOfficeInventoryAsset Panda
Equipment tracking & checkoutAsset Panda leads on configurability for bespoke processes. Stackroom leads on working well out of the box, with pricing that does not scale per asset.
Best for: you need bespoke workflow logic that cannot be expressed as request-and-approve — multi-stage conditional routing, for example.
Stackroom vs Asset PandaHow to choose
Three questions that settle it quickly
Does your equipment move?
If it changes hands, you need custody and signatures — a chain, not a location field. If it sits still, a catalogue is enough and anything more is weight.
Does it break, or does it walk?
Breakdowns and servicing point to a CMMS. Disappearance and disputes point to an asset tracker. Whichever costs you more this year should decide it.
Who has to use it?
If the people handling equipment are not the people with licences, the register will always be second-hand. Check how each tool prices users before you check anything else.
FAQ
Sortly alternatives — common questions
What is the best Sortly alternative?
There is no single best one — it depends on what your equipment does. Sortly is an inventory catalogue and Stackroom is an asset lifecycle system, which makes them different products rather than competing ones. Choose Sortly to photograph and count what you hold. Choose Stackroom when equipment is issued to people and you need signed custody, audits, service cover and depreciation.
Why do teams look for a Sortly alternative?
The reasons we hear most often are: the item count stopped making sense; they needed to know who had it; two teams kept claiming the same equipment. If none of those describe you, staying is usually the right call.
Is there a free Sortly alternative?
Stackroom has a free tier with unlimited users that is intended for genuine use rather than as a demo. AssetTiger and Snipe-IT are also worth a look if cost is the binding constraint — Snipe-IT is open source if you can self-host.
Should we move off Sortly at all?
Often not. Sortly is genuinely the better choice when: your inventory is photo-led and people find things by looking rather than searching. Switching has a real cost in time and disruption, and it is only worth it when the thing you are missing is costing you more.
How hard is it to move our data?
Export to CSV and import. Categories, locations and custom fields map across, and existing labels can usually be kept if they carry a code you already track. Most teams import in the morning and run a real checkout the same afternoon.
Trying a Sortly alternative?
Import your data, print a sheet of labels, and run a real checkout the same day. The free tier has unlimited users.