Comparisons

Inventoros vs Sortly: Plans, Limits and Where Each Fits

•5 min read•By Inventoros Team
Inventoros vs Sortly: Plans, Limits and Where Each Fits

Sortly's plans are capped by items and users: 100 items and one user free, 500 and two on Advanced, 2,000 and five on Ultra, 5,000 and eight on Premium. Inventoros has no caps, and you run it yourself. Which is better depends on how big you are, who will run the software, and whether you need orders and purchasing. We make Inventoros, so we've used Sortly's own pricing page for every Sortly figure and said where Sortly is the better choice.

Sortly's plans

From Sortly's pricing page in November 2026. Prices are per month on monthly billing.

Plan Price Items Users Custom fields
Free $0 100 1 1
Advanced $49 500 2 5
Ultra $149 2,000 5 10
Premium $299 5,000 8 20
Enterprise Quote 10,000+ 12+ Unlimited

On the page, purchase orders are listed only under Ultra, and API and webhooks only under Enterprise. Yearly billing is cheaper: Ultra shows $74 a month billed annually, with a first-year discount for new yearly subscriptions.

Side by side

Sortly Inventoros
How you get it Hosted by the vendor Self-hosted on your server
Cost Subscription by items and users Free, plus your hosting and time
Where data lives Vendor's servers Your server
Organising stock Folders, tags, custom fields Products, variants, categories, locations, warehouses
Purchase orders Ultra and above Included
Orders, payments, returns Not listed on the pricing page Included, with a customer portal
API and webhooks Enterprise REST and GraphQL APIs and signed webhooks, with no tier
Users 1 to 12+ by plan Unlimited, no per-seat fees
Setup Sign up and start Install on a server, one command on Linux

Inventoros is open source under AGPL-3.0, so you can read, change and run the code.

When Sortly is the better choice

  • Nobody on your team wants to run a server. Hosted means no installs, updates or backups.
  • You track equipment or supplies by item and location, not a stream of orders and purchase orders.
  • The main job is mobile: a van, a job site or a stockroom with a phone.
  • You're small. At 500 items and two users, Advanced costs $49 a month, and that is hard to beat once you count your own time.

When Inventoros is the better choice

  • You want to own the data, in a database you can query, back up and export.
  • Per-user pricing hurts. A picker or part-time buyer costs nothing extra.
  • You need more than a list: orders, purchase orders, receiving, returns, several warehouses, transfers and counts.
  • You need to integrate, and don't want an enterprise quote to get an API.

Three years at 2,000 items and five users

That's the size Ultra is built for. All Sortly figures use monthly billing unless noted. The self-hosted line assumes a $12 a month server (Inventoros recommends 2 GB of memory), 6 hours of setup, 2 hours of upkeep a month, and $50 an hour.

Sortly, 3 years, monthly billing
  Advanced  $49  x 36   =  $1,764   (500 items, 2 users)
  Ultra     $149 x 36   =  $5,364   (2,000 items, 5 users)
  Premium   $299 x 36   = $10,764   (5,000 items, 8 users)

Inventoros self-hosted, 3 years
  Year 1   server 144 + setup 300 + upkeep 1,200   = $1,644
  Year 2   server 144 + upkeep 1,200               = $1,344
  Year 3   server 144 + upkeep 1,200               = $1,344
  Total                                            = $4,332

At 2,000 items and five users, self-hosting is about $1,000 cheaper than Ultra on monthly billing. It's not cheaper everywhere, though:

  • Yearly billing changes it. Taking Sortly's page at face value (Ultra at $74 a month billed annually in year one, and 20% off the yearly price after that) gives roughly $3,750 over three years, which is less than $4,332.
  • The hour is the lever. At $100 an hour the self-hosted total is $8,232, well above Ultra. At $25 it's $2,382.
  • Below 500 items and two users, Advanced at $1,764 for three years is cheaper than running a server.

So price alone doesn't settle it at this size. Ownership, seat limits and what the product covers should.

Moving from Sortly

  1. Export your items. Sortly's pricing page mentions importing from a spreadsheet, so find the export option in your account first.
  2. Map the columns to Inventoros fields: name, SKU, quantity, location, price.
  3. Clean the data, especially duplicate SKUs and blank locations. See how to create a SKU system.
  4. Import a small batch first. Inventoros imports products from CSV and reports results row by row, so you can see which rows failed and why.
  5. Count a handful of items to confirm the quantities. See cycle counting.
  6. Switch over when the imported stock matches the shelf, and keep the old export until you've run a full count.

Try Inventoros

Inventoros is free to download and run. The installation guide sets up a server with one command, and the Docker guide covers containers. If you'd rather not run it, Artifact Brands offers managed hosting. See features.

FAQ

Is Inventoros a free alternative to Sortly? The software is free and open source, but you host it, so you pay for a server and some upkeep. It suits you if you want to own your data or avoid per-user pricing, and not if you don't want to run anything.

Does Inventoros have a mobile app? It's a web application that works in a phone or tablet browser, including camera barcode scanning. It's not a separate native app. If a native app is essential, weigh that.

Can I import my Sortly data into Inventoros? Through a CSV and the product import, which reports results row by row. Start with a small batch to check your column mapping.

Which is better for a small business? A small team that wants zero maintenance is often better on a hosted plan. A small team that wants flat costs, an API, orders and purchase orders in one place is often better self-hosting.

Sortly prices and limits from its pricing page, November 2026.

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