AssetSonar vs Reftab

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 →

Reftab

A well-designed asset tracker with a real free-forever tier, self-serve signup, and no sales call — and, like the rest of its class, no help desk, no roster, and no student.

Where Reftab is strong

• ●The only genuinely free-forever tier in this comparison, and a generous one — unlimited custom fields and locations, reservations with calendars, advanced reports with export, mobile apps, and barcode check-in/check-out at no cost.
• ●SSO and two-factor authentication at the lowest paid tier rather than gated to enterprise, which is unusual and district-friendly.
• ●Unlimited platform users on every tier, so the bill never grows because you added staff.
• ●Native iOS and Android apps with barcode scanning, plus a barcode designer and custom email templates.
• ●Strong MDM breadth at the top tier — Intune, Jamf Pro and Jamf School, Kandji, Mosyle, NinjaOne, FleetDM, and Apple Business Manager — plus vendor warranty sync from Dell, CDW, Lenovo, and Apple.
• ●A Google Workspace integration that imports Chromebooks and mobile devices daily, with configurable field mapping and optional auto-assignment to the Google-assigned user.

What to check before you buy

• No native help desk or ticketing with SLAs. Jira Cloud and Zendesk connectors exist to surface assets on someone else's ticket, and they are top-tier features — so a district buys a service desk separately either way.

  Basis: Reftab's integration listing offers Jira and Zendesk plugins rather than native ticketing; no SLA capability appears in any tier.

• No SIS or rostering integration — no OneRoster, Clever, ClassLink, or PowerSchool — and no student, guardian, or family concepts. Nothing reacts to a transfer, a withdrawal, or grade rollover.

  Basis: None appear in Reftab's integration catalog or documentation; the identity integrations are corporate directories.

• Signature capture is staff-side custody acknowledgement, not a parent or guardian e-signature on a device agreement, and it sits behind a mid-tier upgrade.

  Basis: Reftab lists signature capture as a Pro-tier feature; no guardian entity or agreement workflow exists in the data model.

• No student fee assessment and no family balances, so damage recovered at collection time is tracked outside the system.

  Basis: Absent from Reftab's documented feature set across all tiers.

• No funding-source or grant tracking for ESSER, Title, or E-Rate attribution.

  Basis: No funding-source dimension appears in Reftab's documentation.

• ChromeOS support is import only and syncs once daily. Nothing writes back, so OU moves and disabling a stolen Chromebook remain manual work in Google Admin.

  Basis: Reftab's Google Workspace integration guide documents a daily one-way import with field mapping; no write-back is described.

• The MDM connectors that make the inventory self-maintaining — Intune, Jamf, Kandji, Mosyle, Apple Business Manager — are all top-tier features, which is a meaningful jump from the tier where SSO lives.

  Basis: Reftab's pricing page places all MDM, vendor, and IdP integrations at the Business tier.

• It consumes SSO but is not an identity provider. Okta, Entra ID, SAML 2.0, SCIM, and LDAP are identity it reads, not identity it issues — and the IdP user-provisioning integrations are top-tier only.

  Basis: Reftab is configured as a service provider against an external IdP; provisioning integrations are listed at the Business tier.

How Chalk compares with Reftab →

The third option: Chalk

If you are weighing AssetSonar against Reftab, 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.