Compared honestly · published prices as of July 2026
ItemTally vs a spreadsheet
Around 43% of small businesses run inventory on a spreadsheet, and it’s not a dumb choice: free, yours, and it almost works. If yours is working, keep it. This page is for the day it stops.
What a spreadsheet does well
- It costs €0. Genuinely its strongest feature, and the bar every free tier in this market fails to clear — which is why ours doesn’t cap items.
- It’s completely yours. No vendor, no subscription, no terms of service between you and your data.
- It bends to anything. A column for “ask Maria”, a tab for the van, a colour code only Petra understands — no app is that flexible.
The structural difference
The spreadsheet’s limits are physical. It can’t scan a barcode in a basement or hold a signature when someone borrows the drill. It lives on one laptop, and it drifts — a cell edited is not a movement recorded.
ItemTally does the same job with a ledger underneath: every change is a signed, dated movement, made from any phone on the crew, offline included. “Who has the drill?” stops being a group text.
The numbers, side by side
| The moment | The spreadsheet | ItemTally |
|---|---|---|
| Where it lives | One laptop, and someone’s memory | Every phone on the crew — offline in the garage included |
| Someone takes a drill | A cell gets edited. If they remember. | A name, a due date, a signature — and a nudge if Friday passes |
| Counts drift | Nobody knows until the December panic | A 15-minute count walk posts variances to a ledger |
| “Which one is it?” | Row 214, probably. No photo. | Photographed and labelled — scan the box, see the item |
| What it costs | €0 — genuinely its strongest feature | €0 to start, flat rooms after — and your CSV comes back out free, always |
Switching is one CSV import and an afternoon — and the exit is the same door: full CSV export, free, on every plan, forever.
Try the flat-priced way
Import your CSV in minutes. One writer is free forever — unlimited items, every feature, no card, no trial clock. And your CSV exports back out any day you like.