Who Each One Is Actually For

What It Actually Costs

These platforms use different subscription models, so a direct price comparison requires understanding what each plan includes.

Sortly limits the number of unique items, users, and active jobs available under each edition.

Zoho Inventory primarily limits monthly transaction volumes, users, locations, and edition-specific features.

Both vendors offer discounts for annual billing, but Sortly's current first-year promotion requires special attention.

Current subscription comparison

US pricing checked November 12, 2026. Zoho Inventory figures use monthly equivalents of annual billing. Sortly figures in this table use regular month-to-month prices before first-year annual promotions. Subscription allowances and features differ substantially. Sources: Sortly pricing and Zoho Inventory pricing .

Sortly pricing: introductory vs renewal rates

Sortly's current annual-billing offer advertises approximately 50% off the first year for eligible new subscriptions.

After the first year, its published terms provide a 20% annual-billing discount rather than repeating the original promotional discount.

This matters because the price displayed during signup may be substantially lower than the amount paid in subsequent years.

First-year figures are Sortly's advertised monthly equivalents of annual promotional subscriptions: Advanced $288/year, Ultra $888/year, and Premium $1,788/year. Subsequent-year figures are estimates applying the advertised 20% annual discount to current regular monthly list rates. Actual renewal invoices, contract terms, taxes, and future pricing may differ.

For example, Sortly Premium supports 5,000 unique items and eight users.

Its first-year annual promotional price is currently advertised at $149 per month, billed annually.

Under the published subsequent-year discount, that becomes approximately $239.20 per month.

On regular month-to-month billing, Premium costs $299 per month.

Do not use the first-year promotional rate as the ongoing cost of ownership.

For multi-year budgeting, use the expected renewal price and obtain written confirmation of the applicable terms.

What Sortly means by unique items

Sortly does not count every physical unit against its unique-item allowance.

A unique item is an individual inventory record, identified by Sortly's internal item ID.

For example, 5,000 identical screws represented by one item record do not consume 5,000 unique-item slots.

That may represent one unique item with a quantity of 5,000.

Different product variants or separately defined records, however, may each consume their own unique-item allowance.

This distinction matters when comparing Sortly's pricing model with Zoho Inventory.

A business with thousands of physical units is not necessarily a business with thousands of unique items.

The subscription calculation should use the actual number of distinct records the organization needs to manage.

Sortly item, user, and active-job limits

Active jobs are particularly relevant for contractors, facilities teams, maintenance organizations, and service businesses.

Sortly allows items to be associated with jobs, projects, work orders, tickets, and requests.

That makes it possible to track materials and equipment allocated to a job, used during the project, or returned afterward.

Closed jobs do not count against the active-job allowance.

These are inventory and asset-assignment workflows, not a complete manufacturing MRP or production scheduling system.

Zoho Inventory pricing and capacity

Zoho Inventory's current US editions are Free, Standard, Premium, Plus, and Enterprise.

Its published subscription tiers are primarily structured around transaction volume, users, locations, and feature availability.

Month-to-month pricing is higher: $39 for Standard, $99 for Premium, $159 for Plus, and $299 for Enterprise.

Zoho Inventory also has separate monthly allowances for invoices, purchase orders, and bills.

For example, Standard includes 500 orders, 500 invoices, 300 purchase orders, and 300 bills per month.

As a business grows, those additional transaction limits need to be considered alongside sales-order volume.

The published annual-billing add-on prices include:

• Additional user: $7.50 per month
• 500 additional monthly orders: $7.50 per month
• Additional location: $10 per month
• 50 advanced autoscans: $8 per month
• Advanced Warehousing add-on: $124.17 per month

These add-ons are subject to edition eligibility and the vendor's current subscription terms.

Zoho Inventory does not publish a Sortly-style unique-item pricing tier.

That can make it attractive for businesses with large product catalogs and modest transaction volume.

However, that does not mean Zoho guarantees unlimited SKUs or unlimited system capacity.

Organizations with unusually large catalogs should confirm any applicable item, API, import, or performance limits.

Official sources: Zoho Inventory US pricing and detailed edition and transaction limits .

What does 5,000 unique items actually cost?

The original comparison used an example of a business managing 5,000 items.

That example is useful, but it needs accurate billing qualifications.

On subscription price alone, Zoho Inventory Standard can be substantially cheaper for a large catalog with relatively low monthly order volume.

But that comparison has important limitations.

Sortly Premium includes eight users and specialized asset-tracking features.

Zoho Standard includes only three users and is intended for commercial inventory and order management.

If the business needs eight Zoho users, more locations, higher transaction volume, or advanced inventory features, its actual Zoho subscription will be higher.

And if the business needs equipment check-in/check-out and visual job-site tracking, Zoho Inventory may require additional configuration or another application.

The price difference is meaningful only when the selected product actually supports the required workflow.

Where Sortly Genuinely Wins

Zenatta is a Zoho Premium Partner, so that perspective is worth knowing. Sortly has meaningful advantages for organizations managing internal inventory and equipment.

Mobile-first scanning and photo records

Sortly is designed for employees who need to identify and update inventory while moving through warehouses, storage rooms, job sites, and other locations.

Its mobile app supports item photographs, QR and barcode scanning, quantity adjustments, and location-based organization.

Photo-based item records are particularly useful when products or equipment are difficult to identify using names or SKU numbers alone.

For example, a maintenance technician searching for a particular tool may find a photograph faster than interpreting an inventory description.

Sortly also supports generating QR and barcode labels for eligible subscriptions.

This makes it useful for organizations with staff who work primarily from their phones.

Zoho Inventory also has mobile inventory capabilities.

It supports mobile workflows, item images, barcode functionality, and stock management.

The difference is that Sortly emphasizes visual inventory management as a primary workflow, while Zoho Inventory combines mobile inventory with broader order management.

Equipment and asset tracking

Sortly is particularly well suited to tracking equipment, tools, supplies, and other assets that a business owns but does not necessarily sell.

Examples include:

• Construction tools moving between job sites
• IT equipment assigned to employees
• Medical and laboratory supplies
• Film and photography equipment
• Maintenance tools and replacement parts
• Facilities equipment stored across multiple buildings

Sortly's check-in/check-out functionality helps organizations record when equipment is issued or returned.

Its item records can also store photographs, custom fields, tags, and location information.

That makes it useful for answering questions such as:

What equipment do we own? Where is it? Who has it? What condition is it in?

Zoho Inventory can track stock quantities and locations, but its standard workflow is oriented toward purchasing, stocking, selling, and fulfilling products.

An organization focused primarily on internal equipment may find Sortly a more natural fit.

Active jobs and project-related inventory

Sortly supports associating inventory with active jobs.

This can help construction, maintenance, and service teams track which materials or equipment are allocated to a particular project.

A company may assign equipment to a job, record material usage, and document what was returned after the work ends.

This supports practical field operations without requiring a complete commercial order-management system.

However, Sortly's jobs should not be confused with full project management or manufacturing production planning.

They are primarily designed to connect inventory with the work that uses it.

Simpler setup for asset-focused teams

For straightforward equipment and supply tracking, Sortly can be relatively simple to implement.

Organizations can create item records, upload photographs, assign custom fields, and organize inventory into locations and folders.

They can then use mobile scanning to update quantities and record movements.

That may require less configuration than implementing a full sales-order and warehouse workflow.

However, a large Sortly deployment with thousands of assets, many locations, and complex user permissions still requires data preparation, process design, and training.

Simplicity is an advantage for the right use case, not a guarantee that every implementation can be completed immediately.

Where Zoho Inventory Wins

End-to-end order management

Zoho Inventory's strongest differentiator is its commercial transaction workflow.

It supports more than recording which products are in stock.

Businesses can manage:

• Sales orders and customer transactions
• Purchase orders and vendor relationships
• Inventory availability and committed stock
• Backorders and dropshipping
• Picklists and packing operations
• Shipping labels and carrier integrations
• Invoices and payment-related workflows
• Returns, credits, and stock adjustments

These processes are connected through the commercial inventory lifecycle.

For example, an ecommerce order can enter Zoho Inventory, reduce available stock, move through picking and packing, generate shipping information, and produce the relevant accounting transaction.

The exact automation depends on the edition, integrations, and configuration.

Sortly has purchasing and invoicing functionality, but it is not built around the same comprehensive sales-order-to-shipping workflow.

That is the main reason Zoho Inventory is generally the better choice for businesses selling physical products.

Purchase orders and invoicing

It would be inaccurate to say Sortly does not support purchase orders or invoices.

Sortly Ultra and higher editions support purchase orders.

Its purchase-order workflows include vendor information, approval-related functionality, receiving, partial receiving, and PDF exports.

Sortly's current documentation specifies a maximum of 100 items per purchase order.

Premium and Enterprise also support invoicing.

Those editions allow users to generate invoices from inventory data and track invoice payment status.

They also support sending eligible invoices and purchase orders to QuickBooks Online.

These are useful inventory-related transaction capabilities.

But Zoho Inventory provides a broader commercial order-management system.

Its purchase orders, sales orders, packages, shipments, invoices, returns, and inventory records operate within a connected workflow.

The important distinction is not whether a purchase-order or invoice feature exists.

It is how deeply that functionality connects to purchasing, fulfillment, sales, and accounting.

Official references: Sortly purchase orders , Sortly invoicing , and Sortly QuickBooks Online integration .

Large catalogs without a published unique-item pricing tier

Zoho Inventory does not structure its published subscription prices around the same unique-item allowances used by Sortly.

Its primary published subscription limits include order volume, users, locations, invoices, purchase orders, and bills.

That can make the pricing model attractive for businesses with a large number of distinct products but relatively few orders.

For example, a specialized parts distributor may maintain thousands of SKUs while processing only a few hundred orders per month.

In that situation, Zoho Inventory Standard may be a suitable starting point, provided its users, locations, transactions, and features meet the business requirements.

This does not mean Zoho Inventory guarantees unlimited item records.

Businesses with unusually large catalogs should verify any applicable technical, API, import, and performance limits before implementation.

Native integration with Zoho Books

Zoho Inventory has a particularly strong accounting relationship with Zoho Books.

When the applications are connected through the appropriate Zoho organization, they share a common underlying accounting and inventory data foundation.

Supported records include items, contacts, sales orders, purchase orders, invoices, bills, and related transactions.

This reduces duplicate data entry and helps keep inventory operations aligned with accounting.

For example, a sales transaction processed in Zoho Inventory can be reflected in Zoho Books.

Inventory valuation and related financial reporting can then be reviewed through the connected accounting environment.

The integration does not eliminate the need for correct accounting setup.

Opening stock values, item costs, account mappings, adjustments, and transaction history still need to be validated.

Incorrect initial data can produce inaccurate stock valuation even within a tightly integrated system.

The practical advantage is that Zoho Books and Zoho Inventory are designed to operate together, rather than requiring a separate custom inventory-to-accounting integration.

Official reference: Zoho Books and Inventory integration .

QuickBooks Online integration

Zoho Inventory also supports QuickBooks Online integration.

This is useful for organizations that want more comprehensive order and inventory management without replacing their accounting software.

The integration synchronizes supported customer, vendor, item, and financial information according to the configured data flows.

Zoho Inventory can send eligible invoices, bills, credit notes, vendor credits, and related information into QuickBooks Online.

Synchronization direction and field availability vary by record type.

Sortly Premium and Enterprise also integrate with QuickBooks Online.

Their supported workflow is more narrowly focused on exporting eligible invoices and purchase orders.

Both products support QuickBooks Online, but the integration scope is different.

Businesses should evaluate whether they need inventory-related document exports or a broader order-to-accounting workflow.

Batch, serial, bin, and multi-location management

Zoho Inventory provides capabilities for more involved stock-management operations.

Standard supports multiple inventory locations, while higher editions add more advanced traceability and warehouse functionality.

The current Premium edition includes capabilities such as:

• Serial-number tracking
• Batch tracking
• Unit-of-measure conversion
• Barcode generation
• Stock counting
• Bin management

Premium supports up to 500 bins per location.

Enterprise increases that published allowance to 5,000 bins per location.

Zoho also offers an Advanced Warehousing add-on for eligible plans.

These features can be important for businesses that need detailed product traceability, structured warehouses, and commercial fulfillment.

Sortly supports location and folder organization, custom fields, quantities, scanning, and movement tracking.

However, the products differ in the depth of warehouse, traceability, and order-fulfillment processes.

For operations requiring batch, serial, bin, and commercial fulfillment controls, Zoho Inventory is generally the more appropriate starting point.

What Switching Actually Involves

Zenatta has not completed a Sortly-specific migration that we are presenting as a firsthand case study.

The guidance below is based on the products' documented capabilities and general inventory migration principles.

We have worked on comparable inventory and operational integrations, including projects where unit-of-measure mapping and stock reconciliation were important considerations.

Migrating from Sortly to Zoho Inventory should not be treated as simply uploading a CSV.

The complexity depends on the number of items, photographs, locations, jobs, purchasing records, and workflows being replaced.

• Export the complete inventory dataset Sortly supports exporting inventory information to CSV or Excel. The available export includes item details, custom fields, quantities, tags, pricing, locations, and folder organization. Preserve the original Sortly identifiers alongside SKU information. Do not assume every source item has a unique SKU or that Sortly and Zoho identify item variants in the same way.
• Preserve photographs and image relationships Sortly's standard CSV and Excel exports include image URLs, rather than embedding the original image files. PDF exports can contain embedded photographs. Its Dropbox export provides access to original image files alongside inventory data. That means photographs can be preserved. The migration task is to map each exported image to the appropriate Zoho Inventory item. Confirm how the destination will store those images and whether existing URLs will remain accessible.
• Map unique items, SKUs, and variants Sortly uses its internal item IDs to distinguish unique records. Zoho Inventory uses its own item and SKU structure. Define how source records will map to destination items. Identify duplicate SKUs, product variants, inactive items, and records that should be consolidated. Test the mapping on representative records before importing the entire catalog.
• Translate folders into locations and bins Sortly often uses folders and subfolders to represent storage areas, rooms, buildings, or job sites. Zoho Inventory organizes inventory through locations, and eligible editions provide bin management. Not every Sortly folder should automatically become a separate warehouse. Determine which folders represent physical inventory locations, which are categories, and which are temporary job assignments. Recreate the appropriate destination structure before importing quantities.
• Verify units of measure carefully On a comparable inventory integration, Zenatta had to verify unit-of-measure handling between systems as a discrete task. That was not a Sortly-specific migration. Boxes, cases, individual units, and other measurements do not always mean the same thing across applications. A quantity of ten cases is not equivalent to ten individual units. Define conversion rules and validate quantity precision. Incorrect conversions can distort stock quantities, item costs, purchasing requirements, and inventory valuation.
• Review active jobs and check-in/check-out history Sortly supports associating items with active jobs and tracking equipment check-in and check-out. These workflows do not necessarily have direct equivalents in Zoho Inventory. Identify which assignments, checkout records, job histories, and equipment movements need to remain accessible. If the destination cannot reproduce the required workflow, consider a complementary asset-management application or a custom solution. Do not remove the existing system until critical operational responsibilities have been reassigned.
• Review open purchase orders and invoices Sortly Ultra and higher editions support purchase orders. Premium and Enterprise also support invoicing. Open purchasing documents, partially received orders, and outstanding invoices may require separate migration or reconciliation. Determine whether historical documents should be preserved as reference records, imported, or recreated in the destination. Avoid duplicate purchase orders, receiving transactions, and invoices.
• Reconcile inventory quantities at cutover Select a clear migration cutover date. Control or temporarily pause relevant inventory movements while opening quantities are reconciled. Compare source and destination totals by item and location. Validate item costs and the resulting inventory valuation. Resolve differences before allowing normal operations to resume. This is a standard inventory migration safeguard, not a claim that Zenatta performed this exact Sortly cutover.
• Test the new operational workflow Importing the item catalog does not establish a working inventory-management process. If moving to Zoho Inventory, test purchasing, sales orders, stock allocation, fulfillment, invoicing, and accounting. If moving to Sortly, test scanning, check-in/check-out, job assignments, mobile access, and reporting. Confirm user permissions and required integrations. Complete operational testing before cancelling the previous platform.

Official references: Sortly inventory and photo exports and Zoho Inventory documentation .

Can You Use Both?

Yes. Some organizations may benefit from separating internal asset tracking from commercial inventory.

For example, a business may use Sortly to manage tools, equipment, and internal supplies across multiple locations.

The same business may use Zoho Inventory for products it sells, including purchasing, order fulfillment, shipping, and accounting.

This can be a sensible division when the two systems own different categories of inventory.

However, the organization should define which application is authoritative for each item and movement.

If the same physical stock is represented in both applications, updates must be coordinated.

Otherwise, a tool checked out in Sortly could still appear available in Zoho, or a component consumed in an order could remain unchanged in Sortly.

Two inventory systems without clear ownership create two sets of numbers to reconcile.

The simplest dual-platform approach is often to use separate item categories with clearly documented responsibilities.

So, Which Should You Pick?

The deciding question is not simply whether you own inventory.

It is what happens to that inventory throughout your operation.

If the business primarily needs to locate, issue, and track assets, Sortly may be the better fit.

If the business needs to purchase, sell, fulfill, ship, and account for products, Zoho Inventory is generally the stronger starting point.

And if both workflows are important, evaluate whether the organization should use separate tools with clearly defined data ownership.

Common Questions