Compare
There are four realistic alternatives to InkIQ, and three of them are reasonable. Here is an honest read on each — including where they beat us.
Purpose-built for decorators, usually fifteen or more years old. Knows the industry. Was designed before anyone had an inbox problem.
Serious financial and inventory machinery. Has never heard of a stitch count and will need a consultant to learn.
Free, infinitely flexible, and genuinely the right answer for a very small shop. Stops working somewhere around the fourth employee.
An inbox assistant here, a quoting bot there. Each one useful, none of them able to see your price tables or your machines.
| InkIQ | Legacy shop software | General ERP | Spreadsheets | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prices by colour count and stitch count | Native | Usually | Customisation | Manual |
| Opens and analyses artwork files | Yes, every format | No | No | No |
| Reads inbound email into a structured request | Yes | No | No | No |
| Schedules onto real machines with real minimums | Yes | Varies | Generic work centres | No |
| Job costing tied to the quote's own cost model | Yes | Sometimes | Yes | No |
| Accounts receivable, payable and budgets | Yes | Basic | Strong | No |
| Runs on top of an ERP you already own | Yes — Enterprise | No | No | n/a |
| Learns from your team's corrections | Yes | No | No | No |
| Deep financial customisation and multi-entity consolidation | Good | Limited | Best in class | No |
| Cost to start | Subscription + fixed onboarding | Licence + services | Large implementation | Nothing |
Where a competitor is genuinely better, we've said so. If your problem is multi-entity consolidation across twelve legal entities, a general ERP is the right tool and we'll tell you that on the call.
The honest version
If you quote four jobs a week and you know every price by heart, a spreadsheet is faster and cheaper. Come back when the fourth employee starts.
Complex consolidation, statutory reporting across jurisdictions, deep manufacturing resource planning — that's a general ERP's home ground, not ours.
You can run it fully manual and it's still useful — but half of what you'd be paying for is the part you've switched off.
Send us one real enquiry — the email, the purchase order, the artwork, the messy bits — and we'll run it through the agents in the first ten minutes of the call. That's a faster argument than anything we could write here.