AssetSonar vs Incident IQ

AssetSonar

EZO's IT-asset product, and the rare asset tracker that publishes a per-asset price and includes a genuine service desk at the higher tier — metered by the one number a 1:1 district has most of.

Where AssetSonar is strong

• ● It publishes real per-asset prices instead of gating every number behind a demo — $0.75 per asset per month for ITAM and $1.08 for ITSM — which makes a district budget line something you can build without a sales call.
• ● Unlimited agents on both plans, so adding technicians, building secretaries or a summer help-desk aide never changes the bill.
• ● The ITSM tier is a real service desk, not a ticket list: request and incident management, problem and change management, a service catalog, multi-channel intake, automated routing, multi-step approvals, SLA policies with business hours and escalation, a knowledge base and a self-service portal.
• ● Custody features deeper than most trackers — check-in and check-out, automatic checkouts, automatic custody transfer, reservations and an availability calendar.
• ● Genuine discovery breadth for a commercial tracker: agent-based discovery, network discovery, MDM integrations, barcode and QR scanning, and RFID tagging.
• ● Procurement and service done properly — purchase orders and requests with multi-tier approvals, vendor management, warranty integration, service triage, and scheduled and recurring maintenance with automated reminders.

What to check before you buy

• The meter is your fleet. At a per-asset rate, a 1:1 district is billed on the number it has most of, and every Chromebook you add is a line item forever.

  Basis: Vendor pricing page quotes ITAM and ITSM as per-asset-per-month rates.

• Packages start at 100 assets, so the smallest sites pay a floor rather than what they use.

  Basis: Vendor pricing FAQ: AssetSonar packages start from 100 assets, with volume-based discounts for higher volumes.

• The help desk is the upgrade. SLA management, the service catalog, the self-service portal, the knowledge base, problem and change management and the CMDB are all marked ITSM-only in the vendor's own comparison table — the difference between $0.75 and $1.08 per asset per month.

  Basis: Vendor's published ITAM-versus-ITSM plan comparison table.

• Software asset management is a third line item on top of either plan, at $5 per asset per year.

  Basis: Vendor pricing FAQ describes Advanced SAM as an add-on available with both ITAM and ITSM plans.

• No SIS or rostering integration — no OneRoster, Clever, ClassLink, PowerSchool, Infinite Campus or Skyward anywhere in EZO's connector catalog, which covers MDM, identity and procurement systems.

  Basis: Absent from EZO's published integrations listing for AssetSonar.

• No student, guardian or enrollment concepts. Checkout is employee custody, so a transfer, a withdrawal or grade rollover is invisible unless someone edits the record.

  Basis: The product's data model tracks assets and users; the custody features are documented as employee check-in and checkout.

• No parent e-signature on a device agreement, no student fee assessment, no family balances, and no funding-source or grant dimension for ESSER, Title or E-Rate reporting.

  Basis: Absent from EZO's documented feature set and plan comparison.

• Device connectors are ingest-oriented. The MDM integrations import device state into AssetSonar; nothing pushes a reviewed set of changes back, so an OU move or disabling a stolen Chromebook stays manual in Google Admin.

  Basis: EZO's integration listing describes MDM connectors as importing device data, with no write-back workflow claimed.

How Chalk compares with AssetSonar →

Incident IQ

A K-12-only operations platform that combines IT ticketing, asset management, facilities work orders, event management, instructional resources, and HR service delivery in a single hosted suite.

Where Incident IQ is strong

• ● The broadest suite in K-12 operations: IT ticketing, assets, facilities, events, resources, and HR service delivery under one portal — the 'one platform, one portal' consolidation story is its most-cited win.
• ● Smart Audits can verify a device's presence automatically from MDM and sign-in activity, so a chunk of an inventory audit completes without anyone physically touching the device.
• ● Mature bulk-deployment tooling built for scale: rapid scan sessions, spare-pool allotments per building, and rollout accuracy checks aimed at large 1:1 distributions.
• ● Native iOS and Android apps with camera barcode scanning and voice lookup for technicians working in hallways and classrooms.
• ● AI ticket assistance for classification, suggested knowledge-base articles at submission time, and ticket summaries.
• ● Warranty status is a first-class field on the asset record and visible inside a ticket, with warranty claim submission through hardware partners.

What to check before you buy

• Hosted SaaS only — there is no self-hosted or on-premises option, so district data lives in the vendor's cloud and the software cannot be run or inspected independently.

  Basis: vendor site offers only a hosted product; no self-host or source distribution is published

• No public pricing. Every cost conversation starts with a sales demo, and pricing scales with student enrollment.

  Basis: vendor pricing page directs all buyers to schedule a demo for a tailored quote

• Price relative to value for smaller districts is the most frequently cited drawback in buyer reviews.

  Basis: recurring theme in public review-site feedback

• Limited customization is the second most cited drawback — districts report workflows and fields being harder to bend to local process than expected.

  Basis: recurring theme in public review-site feedback

• Online fee payment is not native. Collecting money means integrating a third-party processor such as InTouch, MySchoolBucks, Square, Stripe, or Vanco.

  Basis: vendor documents payments as partner integrations rather than a first-party module

• Warranty claim handling depends on hardware reseller partnerships rather than a vendor-neutral claims workflow.

  Basis: vendor documents claims through named hardware partners

• MDM integration is ingest-oriented: iiQ reads device state from Google, Jamf, and Intune rather than pushing a reviewed set of changes back into them.

  Basis: vendor asset documentation describes sync into iiQ, with no diff-preview write-back workflow

• Incident IQ is not an identity provider and does not serve a OneRoster API — it consumes rostering data rather than publishing it to other systems.

  Basis: vendor documents SIS connectors as inbound integrations only

How Chalk compares with Incident IQ →

The third option: Chalk

If you are weighing AssetSonar against Incident IQ, Chalk belongs on the same shortlist. It is the open-source K-12 IT stack: device inventory that fills itself in from Google Admin, Intune, and Jamf against a roster synced from your SIS, a 1:1 circulation desk with agreements and fees, repairs with parts and costs, a help desk that already knows who is asking, and a built-in SAML/OIDC identity provider.

• ✓ Self-host it free forever under AGPL-3.0 — the entire feature set, one binary, your infrastructure — or use the hosted version, priced by fleet size with no per-seat or per-student fees and the price ladder published.
• ✓ Built only for K-12: students, buildings, custody, funding sources, and ChromeOS auto-update expiration are native concepts, not custom fields.
• ✓ Writes back to Google Admin as a reviewed diff — every OU move, disable, and deprovision previewed before it executes — and serves a OneRoster 1.1 API so other district systems can pull the roster from Chalk.
• ✓ Fees are assessed and tracked without touching payment cards, keeping the asset system out of your PCI scope.