Cin7 vs Katana

Cin7 is a cloud inventory and order management platform for product businesses that sell across several channels. The company started in New Zealand and in 2021 acquired DEAR Systems, whose product became Cin7 Core; the original platform continues as Cin7 Omni for larger, more complex operations. Both keep stock, orders, purchasing and fulfilment in sync across webshops, marketplaces, wholesale buyers and physical stores.

Core covers multi-warehouse stock, purchasing and supplier management, light manufacturing with bills of materials and assembly, a B2B wholesale portal, point of sale and integrations with Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce and accounting tools such as Xero and QuickBooks. Omni adds deeper EDI, 3PL and retail features for higher volume and more custom processes. Pricing is subscription based with tiers that scale by users, sales channels and order volume, and implementation and onboarding services are often recommended.

Cin7 fits growing brands that have outgrown spreadsheets or the inventory features of a single store platform, especially those mixing B2C and B2B. It is expensive for small single-channel shops, needs real setup effort and has a dense interface. Katana is stronger for manufacturing-centric businesses, Linnworks for marketplace-heavy sellers, Zoho Inventory and inFlow are cheaper for smaller catalogues, and NetSuite suits companies that want a full ERP.

Katana is a cloud manufacturing ERP built in Tallinn, Estonia, for small and mid-size manufacturers and brands that make their own products. It gives a real-time view of raw materials, work in progress and finished goods, and ties sales orders to production and purchasing so a business knows what it can make, what it needs to buy and when orders will ship.

Core modules cover inventory across multiple locations, multilevel bills of materials and recipes, production scheduling with a drag-and-drop priority list, purchasing with reorder points, batch and serial number tracking, and a shop floor app for operators. Native integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, Amazon, QuickBooks Online and Xero sync sales orders and accounting, and an API and Zapier extend it further. A free plan covers up to 30 SKUs with unlimited users, while the custom-priced Advantage plan adds unlimited SKUs, custom integrations and a success manager on an annual contract.

Katana fits cosmetics, food and beverage, furniture, apparel and electronics makers that sell online or wholesale and have outgrown spreadsheets. Growing businesses may find the jump to custom pricing steep, and large manufacturers needing complex costing, quality management or multi-entity accounting will look at full ERPs. MRPeasy is a cheaper, more traditional alternative, Cin7 and inFlow focus on inventory for resellers, and Odoo offers manufacturing within a broader open-source ERP.