Comparison
Chalk vs Sortly
The friendliest inventory app in this comparison and the easiest to actually start using — built for supply closets and job sites, priced by how many items you have, which is exactly the wrong meter for a 1:1 fleet.
What both do well
- Both publish every price openly, including a genuinely free way to start, instead of gating the number behind a demo.
- Both scan barcodes and QR codes with a phone and print labels, so counting and auditing need no dedicated scanner hardware.
- Both track quantity items with low-stock alerts, custom fields, photos and activity history, with a documented API and webhook-style notifications.
- Sortly is markedly easier to adopt than Chalk for a non-IT team, and its native mobile apps with offline access are ahead of Chalk's browser-based scanning.
Where Sortly is strong
- Every price is on the page, including a genuinely free tier, with no demo gate anywhere in the funnel.
- The lowest adoption cost in this comparison by a distance: folders, tags, photos and custom fields, usable by a building secretary in an afternoon without an IT project behind it.
- Strong mobile — iOS and Android with offline access, barcode and QR scanning, and label generation from inside the same app, so counting is a phone job rather than a scanner-hardware purchase.
- Alerting that fits consumables well: low stock alerts for reordering and date-based alerts for maintenance and repair schedules, with in-app and email notification.
- More reporting than the price suggests — activity history, inventory summaries, user activity, low stock and item-flow reports, saved custom reports, and report subscriptions delivered on a schedule.
- Real integration surface for a product this simple: webhooks, an API, QuickBooks Online, and Slack and Microsoft Teams notifications, plus purchase orders, pick lists, and check-in and check-out.
What to check before you buy Sortly
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Pricing meters unique items, and a 1:1 district's item count is its student count. At 5,000 items the published tier is $299 per month, and anything past 10,000 items is Enterprise quote-only — a mid-sized district is off the published ladder on device count alone.
Basis: Vendor pricing page item limits: 100 free, 500 Advanced, 2,000 Ultra, 5,000 Premium, 10,000+ Enterprise.
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User licenses are metered too, and tightly: 1 user free, 2 on Advanced, 5 on Ultra, 8 on Premium. A technician team plus building staff crosses into Enterprise quickly.
Basis: Vendor pricing page user-license limits per tier.
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No help desk or ticketing of any kind. A district running Sortly still buys a service desk somewhere else, and the two never see each other.
Basis: Absent from the vendor's published feature list, which covers inventory, alerts, reporting and integrations.
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No MDM or device integrations at all. The published integration list is QuickBooks Online, Slack, Microsoft Teams, webhooks and an API — so ChromeOS, Intune and Jamf data is typed or imported, and serials go stale between imports.
Basis: Vendor features page lists no device-management or directory connectors.
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No SIS or rostering integration and no student, guardian or enrollment concepts — nothing notices a transfer, a withdrawal or grade rollover.
Basis: Absent from the vendor's feature list and from its industry positioning, which addresses inventory rather than student records.
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Check-in and check-out is item custody, not a school-year loan: no due dates on a student device agreement, no e-signature, no damage fee, no family balance and no loaner pool workflow.
Basis: Vendor documents check-in/check-out alongside pick lists and stock tracking, with no agreement or fee concepts published.
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It is an inventory product rather than an IT asset lifecycle product — warranty expiry, depreciation, ChromeOS auto-update expiration and refresh planning are not in the published feature set, though generic date-based alerts can approximate some of it.
Basis: Vendor features page covers custom fields, alerts and reports; no warranty, depreciation or lifecycle module is published.
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Hosted SaaS only, with no self-hosted option, and no SSO or SAML in the published feature list — so it sits outside your single sign-on estate in both directions.
Basis: No self-host or source distribution is offered on the vendor site, and SSO does not appear on the features or pricing pages.
Where Chalk pulls ahead
- Chalk pulls students, staff, schools and enrollments from your SIS over OneRoster 1.1 — PowerSchool, Infinite Campus and Skyward connectors plus Clever and ClassLink import — so a device points at a real student rather than at a line in a list.
- The help desk is the same system as the inventory: SLAs, routing, canned responses, a knowledge base, CSAT and analytics on a ticket that already knows the student and every device assigned to them.
- The full 1:1 circulation loop Sortly's check-out stops short of: due dates and overdues, e-signature at the counter, loaners, lost and stolen with police report, attestation campaigns, and fee assessment with family balances.
- Chalk ingests ChromeOS from Google Admin, Windows from Intune and iPads from Jamf, and writes back to Google — OU moves, disable, deprovision, annotated fields — behind a diff preview you approve.
- Chalk covers the consumables job too: quantity-tracked item classes with low-stock alerts, and parts drawn out of stock against a specific repair, so the parts bin and the device record are the same system.
- Purchase orders, warranty on the device, in the ticket and in the ChromeOS AUE refresh runway, and funding sources as a managed list for ESSER, Title and E-Rate reporting.
- No item meter. 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 — never per seat and never per student.
Common questions
Could we just run our Chromebook fleet in Sortly?
You can put the devices in it, and small schools do. Two things bite at scale. The bill is metered on unique items, so a one-device-per-student program prices on your enrollment — 5,000 items is the $299 per month tier and past 10,000 you are into an Enterprise quote. And there is no Google Admin connector, so every serial, model and enrollment state is imported by hand and drifts the moment someone re-enrolls a device. Chalk syncs ChromeOS from Google Admin and prices by fleet size.
Is Sortly a bad product?
Not remotely, and it is not trying to be what Chalk is. Sortly is the best-designed simple inventory app in this comparison — folders, photos, phone scanning, low-stock alerts, a free tier and every price on the page. For a supply closet, a maintenance shop, an athletics equipment room or a media center's consumables, it is genuinely a good answer and easier to adopt than we are. The reason to look at Chalk is scope: no ticketing, no roster, no MDM sync, and no way to know that item 4417 is with a fourth grader at Lincoln Elementary.
Does Sortly have a help desk?
No, and it does not claim one. There is no ticketing, no SLA, no knowledge base and no self-service portal anywhere in the feature set, so a district running Sortly buys a service desk separately and the two systems never share a record. Chalk's help desk is in the same product at the same price, on a ticket that already knows the student and the device.
How do the user licenses work out for a district?
That is the second meter, and it is the one people miss. One user on the free plan, two on Advanced, five on Ultra, eight on Premium, and twelve or more only on an Enterprise quote. A technician team plus a few building secretaries checking devices in and out crosses that line fast. Chalk does not charge per seat at all — adding technicians, front-office staff or a summer aide never changes the bill.
Can Sortly track a device from purchase order through repair to refresh?
Partly. It has purchase orders, activity history and date-based alerts, so you can improvise a lifecycle. What is not there is the IT-specific spine: warranty expiry as a field that surfaces where you need it, ChromeOS auto-update expiration, a refresh runway report, parts consumed against a specific repair, or a funding source tying the device to the grant that paid for it. Chalk carries those as first-class parts of the device record.
We use Sortly for supplies already. Do we have to move it?
No, and there is a good case for leaving it alone. If Sortly is holding custodial supplies, athletics equipment or classroom consumables, that is exactly its job. Chalk's quantity item classes and low-stock alerts can absorb that work later if you want one system, but nothing about adopting Chalk for devices, the roster or the help desk requires touching a Sortly account that is already working.
Sources
Claims about Sortly 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 Sortly?
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.