Comparison
AssetTiger vs InvGate Asset Management
Two tools districts shortlist for device tracking and IT operations, compared the way a buying committee actually reads them: what each is, what each does well, and what to check before signing. We build Chalk, a third option in this space — that context is worth knowing as you read, and it is why every claim below carries its basis.
AssetTiger
The cheapest per-asset tracker a district will find, with no feature gating and unlimited users — and no ticketing, no roster, and no way to see a Chromebook that did not arrive on a spreadsheet.
Where AssetTiger is strong
- The lowest per-asset cost in this comparison by a wide margin, on a clean single meter.
- No feature gating between paid tiers — the vendor states explicitly that you upgrade to track more assets, not to unlock capabilities. That is unusually honest packaging and worth conceding.
- Unlimited users on every paid plan, so every building secretary and tech can have an account for free.
- Native iOS and Android apps with barcode and QR scanning, plus label printing from any printer — from a company whose main business is asset tags.
- Check-in and check-out with due dates and overdue alerts, which is more custody machinery than most trackers at this price.
- Deep reporting for the category — a large library of report types and a very granular permission model.
What to check before you buy
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No ticketing or help desk of any kind, and no connectors to one. A district running AssetTiger buys or keeps a separate service desk, and the two never see each other.
Basis: No ticketing capability or integration appears anywhere in AssetTiger's feature list.
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No MDM or device-management ingest at all — nothing pulls from Google Admin, Intune, or Jamf. Every Chromebook enters by CSV import or by hand, and nothing detects a device you did not know about.
Basis: AssetTiger publishes no MDM connectors; this is the largest functional gap for a Chromebook district.
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No SIS or rostering integration — no OneRoster, Clever, ClassLink, or PowerSchool — and no student, guardian, or family concepts. Nothing notices a transfer or a withdrawal.
Basis: None appear in AssetTiger's features or integration documentation.
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No parent e-signature on a device agreement and no student fee assessment or family balances, so damage at collection time is handled outside the system.
Basis: Absent from AssetTiger's documented feature set.
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Fund tracking exists, but it is generic budget allocation rather than grant-program aware — it will not produce the ESSER, Title, or E-Rate attribution an audit asks for without you building the structure by hand.
Basis: AssetTiger lists a fund-tracking feature with a per-plan cap; no grant-program or funding-source-restriction concepts are documented.
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The weakest identity story in this comparison: two-factor plus Google SSO only, with no evidence of SAML support, and certainly no ability to act as an identity provider itself.
Basis: AssetTiger's feature list names 2FA and Google SSO; no SAML or OIDC support is documented.
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The free plan is a 30-day trial, not a free tier. After it lapses the account is view-only, and it is limited to two users during the trial.
Basis: AssetTiger's pricing table labels that column a free 30-day trial; third-party review sites still repeat a legacy free-forever claim that the vendor's page contradicts.
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Stock inventory is a separate paid add-on, and there is no documented link between it and repair records, so consuming a part against a specific repair is not a supported workflow.
Basis: Inventory is listed and priced as an add-on; no repair-to-parts linkage appears in the documentation.
InvGate Asset Management
A serious corporate ITAM platform with real discovery, a CMDB, and an on-premises option — priced per networked device, which is the worst possible meter for a 1:1 district.
Where InvGate Asset Management is strong
- Genuinely strong automated discovery — a lightweight agent, agentless network scanning, integrations, and bulk import covering hardware, servers, containers, databases, and cloud services.
- A real CMDB with automatic relationship discovery and assisted dependency mapping.
- A deep integration catalog: Intune, Jamf, SCCM, Active Directory, Entra ID, Okta, AWS, Azure, VMware, ServiceNow CMDB, Jira Service Management, Zendesk, Slack, Teams, and remote-access tools, plus a documented REST API.
- A genuine on-premises option on Windows Server or RHEL with your choice of database, including support for air-gapped operation — unusual in this category.
- Google Workspace integration that imports ChromeOS devices and users, so Chromebooks do land in the inventory automatically.
- Software asset management with license optimization, metering, deployment, and compliance.
What to check before you buy
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Pricing is per networked device per year, so cost scales directly with fleet size. A district with one Chromebook per student is quoted on the single number it has most of, which is the opposite of a per-technician model.
Basis: InvGate's published pricing page prices Pro per IP device per year and defines an IP device as any asset connected to a network with an IP address.
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Ticketing is a different product. InvGate Asset Management is ITAM only; a help desk means separately licensing InvGate Service Management, which is a second contract and a second bill.
Basis: InvGate sells Asset Management and Service Management as two separately licensed products and describes the ITAM platform as functioning standalone.
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No SIS or rostering integration — no OneRoster, Clever, ClassLink, or PowerSchool. The identity sources in the integration catalog are corporate directories only.
Basis: InvGate's full published integration list names Active Directory, Entra ID, Okta, Google Workspace, and cloud platforms; no education system appears.
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No student or guardian concepts. Asset owners are users and employees, with no enrollment, grade, guardian relationship, or reaction to a mid-year transfer.
Basis: The product's lifecycle and ownership model is employee framed; the vendor's named customers are manufacturing, utilities, aerospace, retail, and insurance.
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No 1:1 device circulation loop — no due dates on a student's device, no overdue workflow, no e-signed parent agreement, no loaner pool, and no lost or stolen lifecycle. The lifecycle modelled is procurement, assignment, and disposal.
Basis: Absent from InvGate's asset lifecycle documentation, which is corporate IT framed.
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No funding-source or grant tracking — no way to attribute devices to ESSER, Title, or E-Rate money for reporting.
Basis: No grant or funding-source dimension appears in the product documentation.
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ChromeOS support is import only. Chromebooks and users come in from Google Workspace; nothing writes back — no OU moves, no disable, no annotated fields.
Basis: InvGate documents the Google Workspace integration as importing users, ChromeOS devices, and organizational data; no write-back is claimed.
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It consumes SSO but is not an identity provider — Okta and Entra ID appear as identity sources it reads, not identity it issues.
Basis: InvGate is configured as a service provider against an external IdP; it is not listed as issuing SAML or OIDC.
The third option: Chalk
If you are weighing AssetTiger against InvGate Asset Management, 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.
See all three on your own roster.
Chalk installs to a populated inventory in about 30 minutes. Self-host free under AGPL-3.0, or let us run it — priced by fleet size, never per seat.