Sortly alternative: inventory, or equipment?

Sortly is good at what it is for, and what it is for is organising things you own. If your equipment also gets booked, borrowed and repaired, you are asking a different set of questions. Here is where the line falls.

In this comparison

• Inventory, or equipment?
• Three signs you have outgrown an inventory app
• What each one does
• What each one costs
• Where Sortly is the better choice
• What switching involves
• How we researched this

Inventory, or equipment?

Sortly is an inventory app, and a well-made one: photos, folders, quantities, custom fields, and a mobile app people genuinely enjoy using. Ease of use is its highest-rated attribute on Capterra, it has a free tier, and 15,000 businesses use it. We are not going to tell you it is complicated or that we are simpler — we would lose that argument, and it would not be true.

The question is what you need the software to answer.

An inventory app answers what do we have, how many, and where is it? That is a question about stock. Shared equipment asks a different set: who has this right now, when is it coming back, is it already promised to someone next Tuesday, when was it last serviced, and what broke? Those are questions about a process with people in it, and they need reservations, checkouts with due dates, and a maintenance history — not a better list.

Sortly has checkout, on its Ultra tier. It does not have reservations, a booking calendar or conflict detection at any tier, and its maintenance is date-based reminders rather than a repair workflow. That is not a criticism — it is an inventory product, and those are equipment-operations features.

Three signs you have outgrown an inventory app

1. Gear leaves the shelf

   You need checkout accountability with a due date and an overdue alert — not a note typed into a custom field, and not a shared spreadsheet running alongside the app that is supposed to have replaced it.

2. People book ahead

   Two crews, one camera, same Tuesday. You need a calendar that makes the clash impossible at the moment of booking, rather than a group chat that reveals it on the morning it matters.

3. Equipment needs upkeep

   Service schedules, faults reported with photos, repair history per item. A reminder on a date tells you something is due; it does not track whether anyone did it, what it cost, or what was wrong.

If none of those three describes you, Sortly is very likely the better tool and this page has done its job.

What each one does

Sortly details as published on sortly.com, July 2026.

Two rows there deserve a sentence each rather than a mark.

Checkout on the Ultra tier. Knowing who has something is the first thing most people want from equipment software, and in Sortly it starts at $149/month list. In Itefy it is on the $15 plan, with due dates and overdue alerts attached. That single line is the reason most people arrive on this page.

Item history. Sortly limits activity-history lookback below Enterprise. If the history of an item is how you settle arguments about who broke what, check what your tier actually retains before you rely on it.

What each one costs

Sortly’s list prices are $49/month for Advanced (500 items, 2 users), $149 for Ultra (2,000 items, 5 users) and $299 for Premium (5,000 items, 8 users), with a quote-only Enterprise tier above that. Users are a hard tier limit rather than something you can add — a third user means moving from Advanced to Ultra, which is a $100/month step.

Itefy is $15/month for 500 items and 3 users, $39 for 2,000 and 5, $79 for 10,000 and 10, with extra seats at $3–5/month.

Sortly list prices, sortly.com, July 2026. Sortly discounts the first year heavily; the figures above are list, because list is what you renew at. Itefy prices are yearly-billing rates.

Where Sortly is the better choice

Consumables. If your job is counting supplies rather than lending equipment, Sortly is built for it and we are not: minimum quantities, low-stock alerts, purchase orders, pick lists and stock counts are core to their product and adjacent to ours. Some teams run both, and that is a perfectly reasonable answer.

The free tier. 100 items and one user, genuinely free. We have nothing to match it — our answer is a 14-day trial of everything with no credit card, and then $15/month.

The mobile app. Sortly started as a mobile product and it shows. Ours runs in the phone’s browser and installs to the home screen; it is capable and it is on every plan, but we would not claim it beats theirs on polish.

Simplicity. Worth saying plainly, since every vendor claims it: Sortly is genuinely easy to pick up, that is their highest-rated attribute, and adding bookings and maintenance to a product does not make it simpler. If the smallest possible learning curve is your priority and you do not need the workflow, take theirs.

What switching involves

Export your inventory from Sortly to CSV, then import it with Itefy’s guided wizard — it maps your columns to Itefy fields and lets you review and adjust every row before anything is created. Pictures, custom fields and quantities come across, and existing QR labels keep working.

One thing to plan for: Sortly organises by folders and Itefy organises by locations, types and categories. The import wizard will map a folder column onto whichever of those you choose, but it is worth deciding which before you start rather than halfway through.

How we researched this

• We have not used Sortly. Everything here comes from their published pricing and feature pages and public review sites, checked in July 2026.
• Prices quoted are list prices. Sortly discounts the first year substantially; we have used list because that is the renewal figure.
• We have deliberately not published specific customers’ renewal figures. They circulate on review sites, we cannot verify them, and a page like this asserting them would be disparagement rather than comparison. Check your own renewal quote instead.
• If we have got something wrong, tell us at support@itefy.com and we will correct it.

Questions people ask

• Does Sortly have equipment reservations?
  No. Sortly has no reservations, booking calendar or conflict detection at any tier. It has check-in/check-out on its Ultra plan and above. Advance booking is an equipment-operations feature rather than an inventory one, which is the core difference between the two products.
• How much is check-in/check-out in Sortly?
  It starts on the Ultra tier, $149/month list price. In Itefy, checkouts with due dates and overdue alerts are on every plan, starting at $15/month.
• Is Itefy simpler than Sortly?
  No, and we would not claim it. Sortly is a focused inventory app with a very low learning curve, and it is rated highly for exactly that. Itefy does more — bookings, checkouts, maintenance — and more capability is more to learn. The question is whether you need the extra workflow, not which is easier.
• Does Itefy have a free plan like Sortly?
  No. Sortly’s free tier gives you 100 items and one user. Itefy has a 14-day trial of every feature with no credit card required, then plans from $15/month; your data stays exportable for 30 days if you decide against it.
• Can Itefy handle consumables as well?
  Yes — inventory tracking with quantities and low-stock alerts is included. Sortly goes further on the stock side, with purchase orders, pick lists and stock counts. If consumables are the main job rather than a sideline, they are the stronger choice.