How we compare inventory management software
We list 9 inventory platforms sold into the UK, and a published rate card exists for 6 providers. Where a vendor quotes instead, we show a quote rather than an invented figure, because putting a number against a company that refuses to publish one would be a guess dressed as a fact.
The calculator is driven by team size, because that is the axis most vendors here actually price on. Ranking is arithmetic on the published rate at the number of users you enter. Commission never moves a provider, we do not sell prominence, and the cheapest row is whatever the arithmetic says it is.
Prices are what each vendor publishes to a UK buyer. Some are quoted monthly, some are the monthly equivalent of an annual commitment, and some are a US dollar rate card converted at the day's rate, which is why the billing basis matters as much as the figure.
Multichannel order management is the job most UK inventory management software is bought for
Ask a UK seller why they are shopping and the answer is usually not "I want better stock counting". It is that the same item is listed on Amazon, on eBay and on their own store, each place holds its own stock number, and at least one is wrong. You find out by selling something you no longer have, and on a marketplace that costs you a metric as well as an order.
That is a different job from counting stock, and it has two halves.
Keeping one stock figure true. Every channel reads from the same pool, and a sale anywhere decrements it everywhere, fast enough that the next buyer sees the truth. The speed of that sync separates a platform that prevents oversells from one that reports them afterwards.
Routing the order. An order arrives from a marketplace and something has to decide which location picks it, print the label, push tracking back to the channel, and tell the ledger. Once you are past a few dozen orders a day, that routing is more of the day's work than the counting is.
The channel lists are the first place to look, and they differ more than the marketing does. Linnworks lists Amazon, eBay, Shopify, TikTok Shop, WooCommerce, 100+ channels. Brightpearl lists Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, Amazon, eBay, and more. Zoho Inventory lists Shopify, Amazon, eBay, Etsy, WooCommerce, and Cin7 Core lists Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, Amazon. At the other end, Unleashed lists Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and Katana lists Shopify, WooCommerce (core integrations), which are strong lists for a wholesaler or a maker and short ones for somebody whose revenue is mostly marketplace.
Read those rows as a shortlist filter, not a feature tick. If eBay is a third of your turnover and it is not on the list, the rest of the comparison does not matter.
And the honest opposite case: if you sell in a single place, hold stock in a single place and never assemble anything, your store and your ledger are probably already doing this. This category earns its cost when channels multiply, not when SKUs do.
Linnworks, Brightpearl and the quote-only end of inventory management software
The UK has grown its own order-management platforms, and both of the well known ones sit at the end of the table that will not publish a price. Linnworks lists its origin as United Kingdom and so does Brightpearl, which is now part of Sage.
The reason they quote is visible in how they meter. Linnworks describes its model as Quote-only (order-volume tiered + paid add-ons), and its seat allowance reads Quote (order-volume based). Brightpearl describes its model as Quote-only (bespoke, scales as % of revenue), while bundling Unlimited (all plans). Cin7 Omni, the enterprise tier of Cin7, is Quote-only (enterprise tier) and starts from Quote (from 8 users, flexible).
That matters more than it looks. A platform metered on orders or on revenue gets more expensive precisely when the year goes well, without anyone renegotiating. A platform metered on seats does not. Neither is wrong, but they move in opposite directions through peak, and the quote you sign in January is the one you live with.
So the number to write down from a quote is not the monthly figure. It is the axis and the next step on it: what counts as a chargeable order, what happens at the tier boundary, and what a spike costs. Ask what a doubled order volume does to the price before you ask for a discount on today's.
Two other rows matter here. Both Linnworks and Brightpearl list their contract as Annual, where the published-price part of the table more often lists No, which changes what a bad implementation costs you. And the ledger connection differs sharply: Brightpearl lists Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, while Linnworks lists Xero, QuickBooks, Sage (all 3rd-party). If your books are on Sage, that distinction is a real one, because a connector maintained by a third party is a dependency you own and a native one is not.
Add-on modules and the inventory management software price the headline figure hides
Unleashed is the most searched rate card in this category in the UK, and it is a good illustration of why the entry figure is a floor rather than a price.
The plan itself is £269/mo (Core, 3 users), and its model is Per-org with user-based tiers and order-volume add-ons (GBP). Then the modules. Demand forecasting reads Yes (add-on Core), production reads Yes (add-on Core), and analytics reads Yes (Access Analytics add-on Core; included Pro). If forecasting is the reason you are shopping, the entry figure is not your price and never was. Extra locations are the one thing it does include, at Included (multi-warehouse standard).
The rest of the table hides its cost in different places, which is why like-for-like takes a minute:
Seats bundled in blocks. Cin7 Core bundles 5 (Standard), 10 (Pro), 15 (Advanced), inFlow Inventory 2 (Entrepreneur), 5 (Small Business), 10 (Mid-Size) and Fishbowl 2 (Essentials), 5 (Growth), 10 (Scale). A warehouse hand who only scans still consumes a seat, so the person you hire in March can move you a whole rung.
Locations, which some charge for and some do not. Cin7 Core lists Included (unlimited locations on all plans), Katana lists Extra locations billed on usage (rate quoted per account), and Zoho Inventory lists £8/mo per location. inFlow Inventory's allowance reads Yes (Small Business+; Entrepreneur is 1 location), which is the kind of cap you meet on the day you take a unit at a fulfilment centre.
Currency. Cin7 Core prices on a Per-org with user-based tiers (USD) basis and Katana on a Per-org flat + usage-based add-ons (USD) basis, so their pound figures move with the exchange rate without either vendor changing its price. Unleashed, inFlow Inventory and Zoho Inventory publish a genuine sterling rate card.
The low end is real, and it is capped rather than crippled. Zoho Inventory publishes Free / £25/mo with a free allowance of 1 user, and inFlow Inventory starts at £89/mo. Both cap on seats and locations rather than on features, which is the more awkward kind of limit, because you meet it on a good week and during trade. Enter your real headcount and location count in the calculator rather than reading the entry figure off the page.
Bills of materials: when inventory management software has to run production too
If a sale should consume components rather than a finished item, you need a bill of materials, and this is where the table splits cleanly.
The manufacturing row reads Yes (strong) on Katana, Yes (strong) on Cin7 Core and Yes (strong) on Fishbowl. On Unleashed it reads Yes (add-on Core), on inFlow Inventory Yes (assembly), on Brightpearl Yes (add-on) and on Linnworks Yes (limited). Zoho Inventory reads No.
Note the distinction those values are drawing, because vendors blur it. Assembly kits a set from parts you already hold, and most of this table can do that. Production scheduling sequences work over time against capacity and materials you have not bought yet, which is a different product. If you run a workshop, that difference is your whole week.
Traceability is the related row, and it is the one a food, drink, cosmetics or supplement business should read first, because batch recall is not optional for you. Cin7 Core lists Yes (FIFO/FEFO), Fishbowl lists Yes (lot, serial, expiry), Katana lists Yes (Traceability add-on) and Linnworks lists Limited.
VAT, landed cost and post-Brexit importing in UK inventory management software
What an item costs you is not what the supplier invoiced, and since the end of the transition period that gap has widened for anyone buying from the EU.
The pieces work differently and your system has to treat them differently:
Import VAT is recoverable, so it is not part of the cost of the stock. A VAT registered business reclaims it, and most importers now use postponed VAT accounting to declare and recover it on the same return rather than paying it at the border. Capitalising it into the item cost would overstate your margin problem and your closing stock at once.
Customs duty is not recoverable, so it is. Duty, and the freight, insurance and clearance fees alongside it, are part of what the unit actually cost you and belong in the landed figure you price against.
Every EU consignment now needs a declaration. You need an EORI number to import at all, and a commodity code and origin per line to work out whether duty is due. That paperwork has a cost per shipment, and for small frequent orders it is often larger than the duty itself.
None of that is visible in a feature grid, so treat it as a demo question rather than a row. Ask the vendor to add freight and duty to a purchase order in front of you and show you the resulting unit cost, then show you where that cost appears in a margin report. Purchase order handling itself is standard here, and Brightpearl's row reads Yes (Automation Engine), but "has purchase orders" and "can apportion a freight invoice across a container" are not the same claim.
The reason to get it right is that closing stock value is a tax figure, not just a management one. It lands in your accounts and therefore in your Corporation Tax or Self Assessment position, and under Making Tax Digital the ledger holding it is the one filing. A stock system that produces a dated, reconciled valuation with landed cost in it is doing tax work as well as trading work, and that is the part a spreadsheet has never once done well.
Handing fulfilment to a 3PL without losing the stock figure your inventory management software reports
Sooner or later the stock stops being in your building. A 3PL, a marketplace fulfilment programme, or a second unit you rent for peak: each of those is a location in the system whether or not you think of it that way, and the moment stock lives somewhere you cannot walk to, the number on the screen is the only number you have.
The location allowance is the first constraint. Unleashed lists Yes (standard on all plans), Cin7 Core lists Included (unlimited locations on all plans), Linnworks lists Included in quote (multi-warehouse standard) and Brightpearl lists Included (multi-warehouse standard). Zoho Inventory's reads Yes and Katana's reads Yes (1 location included; extra tiered), so an outsourcing decision can move you up a plan before it saves you a single hour.
Then the mechanics, which are where these projects actually fail:
Somebody has to own the discrepancy. A 3PL's count and yours will disagree. Decide before go-live which system is authoritative, how often you reconcile, and who investigates a variance, because "we will look at it later" means never.
Returns need a route back in. A marketplace return that reaches the 3PL and is not booked back to a sellable location is stock you own and cannot sell, and it is the single most common source of a phantom shortage.
Split shipments break naive routing. An order that has to draw from two locations is either handled by the platform or handled by you at a desk.
Support hours matter more than usual here, because a fulfilment problem is a today problem, not a Monday one. Linnworks lists support as 24/7 live chat, phone, email, knowledge base, community, Cin7 Core as 24/7 global support (phone, email, chat); premium add-on available, Unleashed as In-app chat, help centre, phone; tiered success plans; UK office hours coverage and Fishbowl as Phone, email, chat, knowledge base; Mon to Fri business hours (US CST). Business hours in a distant timezone means an overnight wait on the afternoon your stocktake will not reconcile.
Whichever way you go, treat the implementation as the purchase. A capable platform you never finish configuring is worse than a simpler one you actually run.