Decide between simple stock tracking and a manufacturing module before you look at vendors
Some of these tools are inventory trackers that happen to mention manufacturing (Sortly, Craftybase); others build the bill of materials and work order into the core product (MRPeasy, Cin7 Core, Unleashed, Megaventory). If your shop runs make-to-order or batch production with a BOM that changes often, a tracker with a bolted-on manufacturing tab will cost you time in workarounds. Decide this before comparing prices, because a $20/mo tracker and a $499/mo production system are not competing for the same job.
Decide whether lot or serial traceability is a requirement or a nice-to-have
If you sell into food, medical device, aerospace or anything with a recall obligation, traceability is not optional. TODO(editor): verify and state exactly how many of the 15 listings document lot or serial number traceability as a base feature versus a paid tier, then name them. Vendors differ on whether this ships standard (MRPeasy documents it across production and inventory) or sits behind a higher plan (SOS Inventory limits work orders and job costing to its Pro plan).
Decide who administers the system day to day
A plant with no dedicated IT staff needs a tool an operations manager can run without a consultant. Cloud, subscription tools with a flat monthly price (Katana, Zoho Inventory, Sortly) tend to have simpler admin than hybrid or ERP-adjacent platforms (Odoo, NetSuite) that expect someone to own configuration, permissions and module selection over time. If nobody on staff wants to become the system's part-time administrator, weight this heavily against feature count.
Decide what it has to talk to
List the systems this tool must connect to before you shortlist: accounting (QuickBooks Online, Xero), e-commerce channels, shipping carriers, EDI, or a label printer on the floor. Several listings are explicit about this: Fishbowl and SOS Inventory build around QuickBooks integration specifically, Cin7 Core and Unleashed list native Xero/QuickBooks sync, and Finale Inventory lists over 40 sales-channel integrations plus EDI on its Enterprise tier. TODO(editor): confirm which of these integrations are native versus dependent on a third-party connector or Zapier-style middleware before stating it as a comparison point.
Decide on deployment constraints
Most of these 15 are cloud-only. Fishbowl and Odoo publish hybrid deployment; QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise is on-premise only. If your plant network policy or an air-gapped machine floor rules out cloud, that narrows the field to two or three vendors immediately, regardless of feature fit.
Decide what implementation costs beyond the license
A published monthly price rarely covers the whole bill. Sortly's Enterprise pricing, Cin7 Core's Omni tier, and NetSuite's entire pricing model require a sales call rather than a listed number. SOS Inventory charges $25 per month per external connection on top of its base subscription, and Unleashed bills onboarding separately. TODO(editor): tally which listings explicitly disclose implementation, onboarding, or per-connection fees beyond the base subscription, and which are silent on this, before publishing a claim about hidden cost.
Once you've ruled vendors out on the above, compare the remaining three or four on price per seat versus price per month flat, since that's where the real cost difference across a 20-to-500 person plant shows up.
