Chalk

Comparison

Chalk vs 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.

Pricing: Published per-IP-device, per-year pricing across a fixed-price Starter tier, a per-device Pro tier with a minimum annual commitment, and a quote-based Enterprise tier with its own floor. The counting rule is the important part for a district: an IP device is anything on the network with an IP address — computers, mobiles, network gear — and each one includes an allowance for a small number of non-IP assets such as monitors and furniture. Because the meter is devices rather than technicians, a 1:1 district's bill scales directly with student headcount. Full ticketing is a separate product, InvGate Service Management, licensed separately. Formerly named InvGate Insight; renamed in 2024. No education SKU or discount is published.

What both do well

  • Both can run on your own infrastructure rather than only in a vendor cloud.
  • Both ingest devices from Google Workspace, Intune, and Jamf into a single inventory.
  • Both track warranty and support end-of-life dates to drive refresh planning, and both expose a documented REST API.
  • InvGate's automated network discovery, CMDB, dependency mapping, and software license management are all genuinely deeper than Chalk's — Chalk has no discovery agent and no CMDB at all.

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 InvGate Asset Management

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

Where Chalk pulls ahead

  • Chalk does not meter devices. Self-hosting is free forever under AGPL-3.0 as a single binary, so a 1:1 rollout that doubles your fleet does not double the bill.
  • Devices and the help desk are one product at one price — SLAs, routing, knowledge base, CSAT, and analytics included — rather than two separately licensed InvGate products.
  • Chalk syncs your SIS — PowerSchool, Infinite Campus, Skyward, OneRoster 1.1, plus Clever and ClassLink import — and serves a OneRoster 1.1 API outward, so devices and tickets carry a real student with a school, a grade, and an enrollment.
  • ChromeOS write-back, not just import: OU moves, disable, deprovision, and annotated fields, planned as a diff you preview and approve, with typed confirmation on destructive actions.
  • The complete 1:1 loop — due dates and overdues, e-signature at the desk, loaners, lost and stolen with police report, attestation campaigns, repairs consuming parts out of stock with low-stock alerts, and fee assessment for damage.
  • Purchase orders, warranty surfaced on the device, on the ticket, and in the 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, AD, and Entra.

Common questions

What does per-IP-device pricing mean for a district with 8,000 Chromebooks?

It means your bill is a function of your student count. Every networked device is billable, and a 1:1 program is nothing but networked devices, so the fleet that makes you a school is the same fleet that makes you expensive. That is a fine model for a manufacturer with 400 laptops and a lot of chairs, and a punishing one for a district. Get a real quote at your actual device count before comparing anything, and note that full ticketing is a separate InvGate product on top.

InvGate imports Chromebooks from Google. Isn't that the K-12 integration we need?

It is genuinely useful and we will not diminish it — Chromebooks and users do land in the inventory automatically. Two things it is not. It is import only, so when you need to move a device to a different OU or disable a stolen Chromebook, you are back in the Google Admin console doing it by hand. And it brings in Google accounts, not your roster: it cannot tell you which of those accounts is a 4th grader at Lincoln who transferred in last month, because that lives in your SIS and InvGate does not connect to one.

Do we need InvGate Service Management too?

If you want ticketing, yes — Asset Management is deliberately standalone ITAM, and the help desk is a separate product with its own license. That is two contracts, two renewal dates, and a per-device meter on one of them. In Chalk the help desk and the device inventory are the same system at every tier, which is also why a ticket can already know the student and every device assigned to them.

Is InvGate's CMDB and discovery worth it for a school district?

It depends on whether you have the estate that justifies it. If you run a substantial server, database, and cloud footprint and need dependency mapping, InvGate's discovery is real and Chalk does not compete — we have no discovery agent and no CMDB. Most districts' complexity is not there. It is in thousands of student-held devices with due dates, damage, signatures, and funding sources attached, and that is the part InvGate does not model.

Can we self-host InvGate?

Yes, and that is a real advantage over most of this category — Windows Server or RHEL, your choice of database, and air-gapped operation is supported. The caveat the vendor states themselves is that on-premises deployments get features later than the cloud. Chalk self-hosts too, as a single binary under AGPL-3.0, free permanently, with no feature difference between the self-hosted build and the hosted one.

Does InvGate handle device agreements and damage fees?

No. There is no e-signature workflow for a device agreement, no due date on a student's device, no loaner pool, and no fee ledger — the financials module is budgets and vendor spend. Chalk does all of those natively, including fee assessment with family balances and insurance handling. Chalk assesses and records what is owed; it never processes payments.

Sources

Claims about InvGate Asset Management 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 InvGate Asset Management?

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.

See pricing Self-host on GitHub