Chalk

Comparison

Chalk vs SysAid

A capable ITSM suite with real asset discovery and a working Chromebook sync — priced at $89 per agent, positioned at universities rather than districts, and quietly steering its on-premises line toward the exit.

Pricing: SysAid publishes one price: Professional at $89 per agent per month, which includes 250 managed assets, the AI Copilot for agents and end users, 100,000 automation credits, and two-year retention. Enterprise is custom, starts at 20 agents, and adds sandbox, advanced BI, and longer retention. Patch management is an add-on. Everything else — assets beyond 250, on-premises deployment, education pricing — is quote-only; SysAid's own FAQ still says price depends on administrator count, assets, modules, edition, and deployment platform. For a district the per-agent axis is not the problem: SysAid states end users are unlimited, so six technicians is six seats. The asset axis is the problem, because 250 included assets is two carts. No education discount is published on any SysAid page; third-party sites assert one exists, which we cannot verify.

What both do well

  • Both do the help-desk fundamentals: email-to-ticket, a self-service portal, knowledge base, SLAs, routing and automation, dashboards, and an API.
  • Both keep asset records linked to tickets, and both actually pull ChromeOS devices from Google — which puts SysAid ahead of most general-purpose help desks a district will evaluate.
  • Both charge nothing for end users, so staff and students submitting tickets never appear on the bill.
  • SysAid's ITSM depth is real and Chalk does not match it — Chalk has no change management, no problem management, no patch deployment, no remote control, and no network discovery agent.

Where SysAid is strong

  • A full ITSM process set for the price: incident, request, problem, and change management, SLAs, a self-service portal, knowledge base, workflow automation, dashboards, and a developer API.
  • Genuine IT asset management, not a bolt-on — automatic network discovery, hardware and software inventory, a CMDB with configuration-item relationship mapping, software license management with renewal reminders, patch deployment, and remote control through Splashtop.
  • A real Chromebook integration that pulls from Google Workspace: model, serial, Chrome version, enrollment time, warranty expiry, asset ID, organizational unit, policy sync status, and CPU, memory, and disk. Most general-purpose help desks have nothing like it.
  • SysAid Copilot is included in the published tier rather than sold as a per-agent add-on, covering both agent assistance and an end-user chatbot grounded on your tickets, knowledge base, and documents.
  • Strong independent review standing — 4.5 out of 5 across 522 Capterra reviews, with automation, integrated asset management, and responsive support named repeatedly as strengths.
  • SysAid handled its 2023 zero-day well: it learned of the issue on 2 November, published an advisory with indicators of compromise on 8 November, and shipped a fixed release. That is the behavior you want from a vendor.

What to check before you buy SysAid

  • 250 managed assets are included at $89 per agent. A 1:1 district counts devices in the thousands, so the fleet becomes a negotiated line item immediately — the one axis a district has most of.

    Basis: SysAid's pricing page lists 'Managed assets (250 included)' under the Professional plan, with no published rate for additional assets.

  • The education positioning is higher education, not K-12. The customer logos on both education pages are universities, and the claims are framed around students, faculty, and campus asset variety.

    Basis: SysAid's higher-education and service-desk-for-education pages name University of Michigan, University of Toronto, Queen's University, and University of West London. Neither page mentions school districts.

  • No SIS or rostering integration — no OneRoster, Clever, ClassLink, PowerSchool, Infinite Campus, or Skyward — and no student or guardian data model. Identity sync is enterprise-shaped: Entra, Google Workspace, Okta, ADFS, CAS, Shibboleth, OneLogin.

    Basis: None appear on either education page or in SysAid's integration catalog; the user repositories SysAid documents are corporate directories.

  • The Chromebook integration reads, it does not write, and its user handling is shallow — it maps the most recent recent-user into an Owner field. There is no OU move, no disable, no deprovision, and no annotated-field write-back.

    Basis: SysAid's own Chromebook documentation describes a one-way pull from Google Workspace inventory and the recent-user-to-Owner mapping; the catalog entry is titled Chromebook (Beta).

  • No device check-out to a person as a transaction. Ownership is a synced field, not a custody event, so there are no due dates, no overdue list, no parent-signed agreement, no loaner pool, no lost or stolen lifecycle, and no damage fees.

    Basis: None of those concepts appear anywhere in SysAid's asset management documentation or marketing.

  • On-premises is no longer marketed, and its feature set is visibly thinner. SysAid's own cloud-versus-on-premises comparison documents no Teams integration, no Power BI extract, no Zapier, no SSO connector, no sandbox, and mobile at extra cost — with releases two to three times a year against fortnightly on cloud.

    Basis: SysAid's published cloud-vs-on-prem comparison PDF; its on-premises plan URL now redirects to cloud pricing. We could not verify whether a new on-premises license can still be purchased — treat it as unmarketed rather than proven discontinued.

  • That matters because the security history sits on the self-hosted line, where SysAid's own document says security updates are manual and performed by the customer. CVE-2023-47246 was a critical remote-code-execution flaw in SysAid On-Premise, exploited in the wild and added to CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog; three XXE flaws in 2025 followed, two of which also reached that catalog.

    Basis: NVD entries for CVE-2023-47246 and CVE-2025-2775, CISA KEV listings, SysAid's own advisory, and Rapid7's analysis. Fair reading: SysAid patched each promptly, and security press reports no public exploitation of the 2025 XXE issues — the durable point is patch cadence and who is responsible for applying it, not that the product is insecure.

  • Recurring review themes are consistent: an interface described as dated and not very intuitive, configuration of advanced automation that is time-consuming for new administrators, and built-in reporting that most reviewers end up customizing.

    Basis: Capterra's aggregated review themes across 522 SysAid reviews. G2, TrustRadius, and Gartner Peer Insights block automated reading, so no rating from those sites is cited here.

Where Chalk pulls ahead

  • Chalk syncs your SIS — PowerSchool, Infinite Campus, Skyward, OneRoster 1.1, plus Clever and ClassLink import — so students, staff, schools, and enrollments are in the system before the first ticket is filed, and a device's owner is a rostered student rather than a most-recent-login guess.
  • ChromeOS write-back, not just ingest: OU moves, disable, deprovision, and annotated fields, as a diff you preview and approve, with typed confirmation on destructive actions. Windows arrives from Intune and iPads from Jamf through the same pipeline.
  • Chalk does not charge per agent, and devices are not a metered allowance. Self-hosting is free forever under AGPL-3.0, as a single binary with every module included, so the fleet growing does not change the bill.
  • Self-hosting is Chalk's primary deployment, not a legacy edition — same features, same release, no reduced build. Updates are a single binary swap rather than a manual upgrade two or three times a year.
  • The whole 1:1 loop is native: due dates and overdues, e-signature at the counter, loaners, lost and stolen with police report, attestation campaigns, and repairs that consume parts out of stock. Fee assessment against a student with a family balance — Chalk assesses and records; it never processes payments.
  • Purchase orders, warranty tracked on the device, on the ticket, and in the refresh runway, and funding sources as a managed list, so an ESSER or Title audit is a report rather than a spreadsheet archaeology project.
  • Chalk is itself a SAML 2.0 and OIDC identity provider with a student portal, QR badges, and two-factor authentication, and provisions outward to Google, AD, and Entra.

Common questions

SysAid already syncs Chromebooks. Isn't that the hard part solved?

It is more than most competitors offer and we will give it full credit. But it is a one-way read: SysAid pulls model, serial, warranty, and organizational unit out of Google Workspace and maps the most recent recent-user into an Owner field. That is inventory, not custody. It does not tell you the device was checked out to a named student on 18 August against a signed agreement, that it is nine days overdue, that a loaner went out in its place, or that a $65 screen fee is sitting on the family's balance. And there is no write-back, so you still do OU moves and disables by hand in the Admin console.

What does SysAid cost for a district with 8,000 devices and six technicians?

The agent side is published — $89 per agent per month at Professional, so six technicians is a number you can put in a budget today. The device side is not: the plan includes 250 managed assets and SysAid publishes no rate for the other 7,750, so the fleet becomes a quote. That shape is the thing to model before you compare anything, because districts have few technicians and enormous fleets. Chalk meters by device count on hosted with the help desk included at every rung, and self-hosting is free.

Can we run SysAid on our own servers?

Possibly, but it is not what SysAid sells today. The on-premises plan page now redirects to cloud pricing, and SysAid's own comparison sheet documents on-prem as the thinner product: no Teams, no Power BI extract, no Zapier, no SSO connector, no sandbox, mobile at extra cost, and releases two to three times a year instead of fortnightly. Ask their sales team directly whether a new on-premises license is still available — we could not verify that either way. Chalk's self-hosted build is the same build as everything else, free forever under AGPL-3.0.

Should the 2023 security incident worry us?

It should inform your deployment choice rather than disqualify the vendor. CVE-2023-47246 was a critical remote-code-execution flaw in SysAid On-Premise, exploited in the wild and added to CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog; three further XXE flaws followed in 2025, two of which also reached that catalog. SysAid disclosed quickly, published indicators of compromise, and shipped fixes. The durable point is that every one of these affected the self-hosted line, where SysAid's own documentation says security updates are manual and performed by the customer — so if you self-host anything, budget for someone to actually apply patches.

Does SysAid integrate with PowerSchool or Clever?

No. Neither education page nor the integration catalog names a SIS or rostering provider, and the user repositories SysAid documents are corporate directories — Entra, Google Workspace, Okta, ADFS, Shibboleth. Chalk ships four SIS connectors, imports from Clever and ClassLink, and serves a OneRoster 1.1 API outward to your other vendors.

SysAid markets to education. Doesn't that mean it fits a district?

It markets to higher education, which is a different job. The logos are universities, and the claims are about campus self-service and tracking everything from PCs to library books. A university does not run a 1:1 program where ten thousand minors take a district-owned device home, sign an agreement with a guardian, return it in June, and get charged for a cracked screen. That specific loop — not ticketing, not discovery — is what a K-12 district needs and what Chalk was built around.

Sources

Claims about SysAid 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 SysAid?

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