Of everything on this site, Zoho Inventory is the closest call: the same $29 at the entry tier, a free plan, retainer invoices that record money taken in advance, and a customer portal where a buyer can pay. The difference is what the software thinks an order is. In Zoho an order is a stock movement — items reserved, packed, shipped — and the money is an accounting document beside it. For a piece that does not exist yet, that is the wrong way round.
Zoho Inventory · checked 10 September 2026
We make Ordamo, so we are an interested party. What we can be is checkable: written by the people who built it for their own furniture studio in Buenos Aires, every price taken from the other side’s own page with the date we read it, and their wins listed above ours.
| Zoho Inventory | Ordamo | |
|---|---|---|
| Built around | Stock: items reserved, packed and shipped | Orders: deposits, balances, batch cost |
| Money taken in advance | A retainer invoice, recorded and later applied to an invoice | A deposit on the order, with the date it arrived and the balance still due |
| An order for something not yet made | Needs an item to exist and to move | A line and a price — there is nothing to define first |
| What a production run cost per piece | Composite items cost from their components | A received batch writes what the run really cost onto its products |
| Margin | Sales-by-item reporting | Per order, after the real cost lands |
| A page the customer can open | A portal with sales orders, invoices and retainers, and a Pay Now button | One link per order: what is paid, what is owed, when it will be ready |
| What the plan meters | Orders a month, users and locations — 500, 2 and 2 at $29 | Nothing |
| Users at the entry tier | 2 | The business, on one plan |
| Free plan | 50 orders a month, 1 user | A sample workspace with no card, then $29/mo |
| Invoices and shipping labels | Yes | No |
Built for orders that take weeks to deliver, start in a message and get paid in parts.
Add a customer and their order
Deposit taken, balance still owed, and the date you promised.
Send your customer their order page
One link that updates itself, instead of twenty messages.
Record what the batch cost
What a run really cost, over the pieces it produced. One button puts that on the products it made.
See what you actually made
Revenue, cost and margin per order. Money in, money out, cash on hand.
Zoho's retainer invoice does the bookkeeping correctly: money arrives before the work, sits as a credit, and is applied to an invoice later. What it does not do is live on the order as a state you can see across the business — that $1,900 arrived in March against $3,800 agreed, with the rest due when the piece is delivered in June. One is a ledger entry; the other is the question you ask every week.
Everything in a stock system starts with something that exists in quantities: reserve it, pack it, ship it, count what is left. A commission has none of that shape — there is one of it, it is not made yet, and the only quantities involved are the materials somebody else is buying. You can force it in as a made-to-order item, and then you maintain a fiction in exchange for reports you do not need.
At $29 both bills look identical until you read what they cover: 500 orders a month, two users and two locations there, and here one plan for the business with nothing metered. For a workshop shipping a few dozen pieces a year the order cap is irrelevant and the two-user cap is not — the third person to need a look is the one who costs you the upgrade.
Zoho's customer portal is genuinely useful: the buyer sees sales orders, invoices and retainers, and can pay. What it will not show is where the piece is — because production status is not what a stock portal is for. On a three-month build that is the only thing the customer wants to know.
$0, then $29/mo
The Free plan allows 50 orders a month, 1 user and 2 locations. Standard is $29 a month billed annually with 500 orders a month, 2 users and 2 locations; Professional $79 with 3,000 orders and 4 locations; Premium $129 with 7,500 orders, 6 locations and 2,000 bins each; Enterprise $249 with 15,000 orders, 7 users and 10 locations. Its pricing page publishes the annual figures; the trial is 14 days.
$29/mo
One plan, per business, everything included — however many of you there are, with no cap on orders. $0 today, first charge after 7 days, cancel in one click. 14-day money-back on the first month.
What is in the planWe are not the only answer, and pretending otherwise wastes your afternoon.
Materials, recipes and cost of goods for makers who hold stock, with lot traceability. From $20 a month, with its real tiers from $83 billed annually.
InventoraThe cheap end of maker inventory: materials, production and cost of goods. From $19 a month billed yearly.
QoblexStock, wholesale and production for a multi-channel brand. From $99 a month, orders metered by the year.
The whole categorySix families of tool, what each one answers, and the three questions that pick between them.
It records money taken in advance as a retainer invoice, which is applied against a real invoice later, and the customer can pay it from the portal. That is a correct accounting treatment and it is not the same as a deposit sitting on the order with the balance and its due date. If your weekly question is what is still owed across every open commission, you are assembling that from documents rather than reading it off a screen.
The Free plan allows 50 orders a month with 1 user and 2 locations. Standard is $29 a month billed annually with 500 orders, 2 users and 2 locations, Professional $79, Premium $129 and Enterprise $249, each raising the order, user and location caps. Ordamo is $29 a month for the business with nothing metered. Confirm the current position on zoho.com before deciding on the strength of a number here.
What you sell. If orders are units coming off a shelf and the problem is keeping counts and channels right, Zoho is better than us at that and the suite around it is worth having. If each piece is made after it is sold, paid in parts and delivered in weeks, then the deposit, the readiness date and the real batch cost are the whole job, and that is what this is.
Fifty orders a month is generous for a commission business, so the cap is not what will stop you — the model is. On the free plan you also have one user, no team, and the same requirement that an order be a stock item. It is a fair way to test whether the shape fits before paying anyone.
No, and this is a real difference. Zoho issues invoices, packing slips and shipping labels; Ordamo records what was agreed, what has been paid and what is still owed, and exports it for whoever does your books. If you need a tax document out of the same tool, that is an argument for staying.
Yes, and it is a reasonable split for a business with a stocked catalogue and a commission side: Zoho for stock, invoices and shipping, this for orders that wait and get paid in parts. Nothing is recorded twice except the customer's name and the agreed total.
They are the accounting half of the same suite, and they hold retainers the same way. The gap is identical: correct ledgers, no position per open order, no production cost per piece and no page telling the customer when their piece is ready.
Products carry a units-in-stock count you adjust by hand, with a history of the adjustments, and that is the whole of it: no locations, no bins, no reservations, no reorder points and nothing that moves by itself when an order ships.
Export open sales orders and customers to CSV, import the file as it comes — there is no template, the columns are read for you — then turn each retainer into a deposit on its order with the date the balance is due, and enter the batches currently in production. Start new orders here and let the open ones finish where they are.
Plan names, prices billed annually, the order, user, location and bin caps, the free plan's limits and the 14-day trial read from zoho.com/inventory/pricing on 10 September 2026, which publishes the annual figures. The retainer-invoice behaviour and what the customer portal shows are from Zoho's own help pages for Inventory, read on 9 September 2026. Software pricing moves; confirm with the vendor before deciding on the strength of a figure here.
$0 today · first charge after 7 days · cancel in one click
Built for orders that take weeks to deliver