Comparison
Chalk vs 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.
What both do well
- Both put the help desk and the asset inventory in one system, with SLAs, routing, a knowledge base and a self-service portal on a ticket that knows the device.
- Both publish their prices openly instead of gating every number behind a demo, and neither charges per technician seat.
- Both do purchase orders with approvals, warranty tracking, scheduled maintenance, audits, custom fields, and barcode or QR scanning with a documented API.
- AssetSonar's discovery and software asset management — agent-based and network discovery, license optimization, SaaS reclamation — are capabilities Chalk does not have at all.
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 AssetSonar
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Where Chalk pulls ahead
- Chalk syncs your SIS — PowerSchool, Infinite Campus, Skyward, OneRoster 1.1 CSV or API, plus Clever and ClassLink import — and serves a OneRoster 1.1 API outward, so a device points at a real student rather than at an employee record you maintained by hand.
- One tier. The help desk with SLAs, routing, knowledge base, CSAT and analytics is in the same product as the inventory, not the difference between two per-asset rates.
- Chalk writes back to Google Admin — OU moves, disable, deprovision, annotated fields — as a diff you preview and approve, with typed confirmation on destructive actions. AssetSonar's device connectors import only.
- The 1:1 machinery AssetSonar's custody features stop short of: due dates and overdues on a student loan, e-signature at the counter, loaners, lost and stolen with police report, attestation campaigns, and fee assessment with family balances and insurance handling.
- Purchase orders, warranty on the device, in the ticket and in the ChromeOS AUE refresh runway, and funding sources as a managed list built for ESSER and Title reporting.
- Chalk is itself a SAML 2.0 and OIDC identity provider with a student portal and QR badges, and provisions outward to Google, Active Directory and Entra ID.
- No per-asset meter and no 100-asset floor: self-hosting Chalk is free forever under AGPL-3.0 as a single binary with every module included, and the hosted ladder is priced by fleet size rather than per seat or per student.
Common questions
Is AssetSonar's help desk any good?
Yes, and it is the best of the general-purpose asset trackers in this comparison. The ITSM tier has incident, 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 — that is a real service desk, not a ticket queue bolted onto an inventory. The trade is that it is the higher of two per-asset rates, so the desk is priced by how many devices you own rather than how many tickets you handle.
How does per-asset pricing land for a 1:1 district?
It lands on the number you have most of. At $0.75 per asset per month for ITAM or $1.08 for ITSM, a one-device-per-student program is priced on the fleet, and volume discounts start at 1,000 assets. Credit where it is due — those figures are published, agents are unlimited, and that combination is rare. Run the arithmetic at your real device count against Chalk's published fleet-size ladder, and remember that self-hosting Chalk is free forever under AGPL-3.0 with no meter at all.
Does AssetSonar know which student has the Chromebook?
Not as a student. It has genuinely good custody features — checkout, automatic checkout, automatic custody transfer, reservations, an availability calendar — but the person on the other end is a user record, not a roster identity. There is no OneRoster, Clever or ClassLink connector, so nothing notices a transfer between buildings, a withdrawal, or grade rollover in August. In Chalk the device points at a student the SIS keeps current, so a withdrawal surfaces the device as outstanding on its own.
AssetSonar syncs from MDM. Isn't that the same as Chalk's device module?
For getting devices in, largely yes. The difference is the direction of travel: those connectors import, so when you need to move a Chromebook to a different organizational unit or disable a stolen one, you go back to Google Admin and do it by hand. Chalk plans those as change sets, shows you the exact diff, and commits only after you approve it, with typed confirmation on the destructive ones.
What does AssetSonar do that Chalk does not?
Software asset management, and discovery. With the Advanced SAM add-on it discovers installed and SaaS software, normalizes a license catalog, tracks utilization, flags renewals and reclaims unused seats — Chalk has none of that. It also does agent-based and network discovery, RFID tagging, and a wider MDM connector list. If license compliance and shadow SaaS are the problem on your desk, that is a real answer and we do not have one.
Can we run AssetSonar for the district's IT gear and Chalk for the 1:1 program?
You could, and the split is coherent — but it is two per-asset bills and two inventories to reconcile, and the devices most likely to appear in both are exactly the ones students carry. The more common reason to look at Chalk is that the roster, the circulation desk, the fees and the ChromeOS write-back are all inside one product, and self-hosting it costs nothing under AGPL-3.0.
Sources
Claims about AssetSonar above are drawn from these pages, checked when this comparison was written. If something has changed, tell us and we will correct it.
Trying Chalk beside AssetSonar?
Chalk installs to a populated inventory from your SIS and Google Admin in about 30 minutes. Self-host it free forever under AGPL-3.0, or let us run it — priced by fleet size, never per seat or per student.