Your stock will grow. Your bill won’t.
Every item scanned, photographed, and findable in seconds — priced by the people who write, never by the items you own.
Free forever for one writer.
The no-ambush pledge
Signed 11 July 2026Hi — I’m Alex. I run a small business, and I built ItemTally because I was tired of inventory tools that treat your growth as their payday: your own register, resold back to you as tiers. So this one runs on three promises.
- Items are never metered.
Ten things or ten thousand — the price is identical. No item tiers, no SKU counts.
- Your price never rises on you.
The rate you join at is yours for as long as you stay. Nobody gets migrated by force.
- Your data is never hostage.
Full CSV export on every plan, free, forever — including the day you leave.
No investors. No exit plan. Built to stay — by someone who runs his own inventory on it.
Here it is, running.
Not a video, not a screenshot: a phone counting stock with no connection, and the register catching up the moment it’s back.
Register
128 items · 5 shown| Item | Code | Qty | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gaffer tape 25 mm | IT-0141 | 14 | In stock |
| Impact driver M18 | IT-0027 | 1 | Out — Jonas K. |
| Zip ties 200 mm | IT-0089 | 3 | Low stock |
| First-aid kit | IT-0102 | 6 | In stock |
| HDMI cable 3 m | IT-0116 | 9 | In stock |
That scan happened offline. The phone app keeps scanning, counting and photographing with no signal — in the basement, in the van, at the venue — and syncs by itself when it’s back. Nothing to remember, nothing lost.
A day in the stockroom, hour by hour
Nordvik El is a crew we made up to show a real day instead of a feature grid. Every screen is the shipped product; nobody here is a testimonial.
Jonas is in the parking garage under the Berg site — no signal, there never is. He scans the van shelf anyway: four impact drivers, one torque wrench, one missing bit set. It syncs itself when the van climbs back into daylight.
Scan-first, fully offline. QR, EAN and Code128; changes queue locally and sync when the signal returns.
Plainly: it will never order stock for you — no purchase orders, ever. PO modules are how inventory apps become ERPs with ERP prices.
Petra hands the good drill to Mikkel, this week’s freelancer. Due back Friday. He signs with his thumb, and that’s the last time anyone has to remember it.
The Logbook. Check-out and check-in, due dates, signatures, reservations with conflict detection, transfers. Violet means “a person has it”.
Plainly: custody, not commerce. It knows who has the drill — not who owes you money.
The spring delivery lands: forty boxes of cable glands and one new ladder. The printer hums for a minute. Every box gets a code; the ladder gets its own.
Label printing. QR and barcode labels on Avery sheets or Brother rolls. Print, stick, scan.
Plainly: two label families, done well — your Avery sheet and Brother roll perfectly, not forty printers badly.
Petra counts Shelf 3 while the coffee brews. Fifteen minutes, two variances — someone forgot to book out sealant in March. She posts the count and the ledger squares itself.
| Item | Expected | Counted | Var |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cable glands M20 | 140 | 140 | — |
| Sealant, grey | 12 | 10 | −2 |
| Junction boxes | 57 | 58 | +1 |
| Conduit clips | 300 | 300 | — |
Counts. Freeze a shelf, walk it with the phone (offline is fine), review variances, post. Amber means “stock needs attention”.
Plainly: no approval chains, no audit theatre — a count sheet that tells the truth.
One glance at Today before locking up. Glands running low — order Monday. One drill due back tomorrow. Nothing red. Nobody takes the stockroom home in their head.
The Today page. Low stock, overdue returns, expiry and warranty alerts — one page, cleared with one tap.
Plainly: one nudge email and one weekly digest. Never a notification centre you have to mute.
One calm email with the week in it — and that’s the whole stock meeting. Petra reads it with the first coffee and archives it by the second sip.
Subject: Your week at Nordvik El — 3 things
The weekly digest. If nothing needs you, it says so and gets out of the way.
The missing features are load-bearing
Every one of those is a doorway to complexity — the thing per-item pricing pays for. We keep them out so the price stays flat and the app stays fast. This list will not shrink.
The Ladder of People
Three rooms. The only thing that changes is how many people can write — items are unlimited in every room, including the free one.
Shelf
Stockroom
Warehouse
Solo? You never need to pay us — Shelf is €0 forever. And a paid room cannot surprise you: the bill is one flat number for the whole crew.
Two ways to price an inventory app
Most tools meter your items: growing your register moves you up their tiers. We charge for the room, flat — and never look at the shelves.
How per-item pricing works
- ↑Features are rationed per tier — offline, API access and export tend to live upstairs.
- ↑The register you build becomes the lever that raises your own price.
How rooms work
- ✓Every feature in every room — the only variable is how many people can write.
- ✓Your growth is your business. It is not our revenue event.
The footnote, with names and numbers
Stated factually, because the pattern deserves naming — not mockery. Published prices as of July 2026.
| Tool | Entry paid price | Items metered? | Offline / export gated? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sortly | $49/mo (regular) | Yes — per tier | Yes — by tier |
| BoxHero | $24/mo + add-ons | Yes — $10 per 1,000 | Quotas sold as add-ons |
| A spreadsheet | €0 | No | No — but see below |
| ItemTally | €19/mo flat (€15 founding) | Never — pledged | Never — offline & CSV on every plan |
In 2024, a forced plan migration turned some Sortly customers’ $49/mo into $499/mo overnight. That event is why promise №2 exists — and why it is signed and dated, not printed in a FAQ.
And the honest comparison: the spreadsheet
Around 43% of small businesses run inventory on a spreadsheet. If yours is working, keep it. Its limits are physical — it can’t scan a barcode, hold a signature, or be in two pockets at once. When that day comes, import your CSV in minutes, and export it back out any time, free, forever.
Hold us to it.
The pledge lives at itemtally.com/pledge — signed, dated, and versioned. If we ever break it, you’ll have the receipt.