Sortly alternatives for distributors
People leave Sortly over the item ceiling, not price and not features. Sortly's plans are bounded by how many unique items you may hold, and a distributor's catalog is the one thing that only ever grows.
That makes the ceiling arrive suddenly rather than gradually. A business taking on a supplier line adds hundreds of SKUs in an afternoon, so the limit is usually hit in the middle of onboarding the very thing that was supposed to grow the business. The evaluation is therefore different in kind from the others on this site. You are not asking which tool is better; you are asking which tool has headroom, and then whether the thing with headroom can also do the parts of your day Sortly was never built for: orders, reservations, receiving against a purchase, roles for people who should not be editing the catalog. Both halves of that question matter, and it is reliably the second one that catches people out.
Last reviewed
Size the catalog before anything else
Count what you will hold in twelve months, not what you hold now. Every other question in this evaluation is downstream of that number, because a system you outgrow in a year costs you a second migration, and a second migration is always more expensive than the first — you have more data and less patience.
Then check whether it sells
The second question is whether the candidate handles the selling half at all: customers, orders, reservations against stock you have not shipped yet, and a document you can send. A tool that tracks items beautifully and knows nothing about orders leaves you running two systems and reconciling them by hand.
Current caps, prices and what each system includes are in the table below, taken from the vendor’s own pricing page on the date shown.
How Sortly compares
| LineraFlow | Sortly | |
|---|---|---|
| Published entry price | $59/mo Starter plan, billed monthly (20% less billed annually) | $49/mo (Advanced, list price) billed monthly |
| Required one-time cost to start | None No onboarding or implementation fee | Not verified Check Sortly’s pricing page |
| First-year total at this tier | $708 12 x $59 billed monthly, no one-time cost | Not computable A required one-time package is not priced publicly. Subscription alone is $588 (billed monthly); ask for the implementation figure in writing before comparing totals |
| Self-serve signup | Yes Sign up and start without talking to sales | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes 14 days, no credit card | 14 days, credit card required |
| Contract term required | None Monthly; cancel anytime | Monthly or yearly; upgrade, downgrade or cancel at any time |
| Users included at this tier | 2 | 2 user licenses (Advanced) |
| Locations included at this tier | 2 | Not verified Check Sortly’s pricing page |
| Orders included per year | 1,500 Rolling year, as published on our pricing page | Not capped vendor does not limit order volume |
| Metered and billed as overage | Nothing Plan limits are caps, not billed overage — you upgrade rather than accrue a bill | Capped on unique items and user seats per tier |
Based on Sortly's publicly listed pricing as of , sourced from https://www.sortly.com/pricing/. Vendors reprice without notice — check the source before making a decision.
What actually happens when a catalog outgrows an item cap?
The tier boundary decides it, so check the current caps in the table below against a catalog count that includes what you plan to add this year, not what you hold today. A cap you cross mid-year is a renegotiation at the worst possible moment, which is why it is worth sizing against growth.
Is an asset-tracking tool the wrong shape for a distributor?
It depends entirely on whether you sell what you track. Tracking what you own is a different problem from selling what you stock: selling adds customers, orders, reservations, pricing and fulfillment on top of the item record. If your tool covers the item and not the order, you will be running the order half somewhere else.
Can I move a photo-heavy catalog into a new system?
Images move, but plan for the attributes rather than the pictures. Photographs are usually the easy part of a migration; the hard part is the structured detail that lived in notes or descriptions, because that is what has to become searchable fields on the other side if it is going to be useful at a counter or on a quote.