Cin7 vs Zoho Inventory

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.

Zoho Inventory is the stock and order management app in Zoho's finance suite, built by Zoho Corporation, the Chennai, India based maker of Zoho CRM and Zoho Books, founded in 1996. It gives small product businesses one place to track stock, take sales orders, buy from vendors and ship packages, with inventory levels synced across every channel they sell on.

Core features include multi-warehouse stock, transfer orders, serial and batch tracking, barcode scanning, composite items for kits and assemblies, reorder points with low-stock alerts, and customer and vendor portals. It connects to Shopify, Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Walmart and WooCommerce, and to carriers such as UPS, USPS, FedEx, DHL and Canada Post. Pricing is per organization, not per seat: a free plan, then four paid tiers capped by monthly orders, users and locations.

It suits small online sellers and wholesalers who want something more structured than spreadsheets without an ERP project, and it is strongest when paired with Zoho Books. Manufacturers with bills of materials and production planning are better served by Katana, and larger multi-brand retailers by Cin7. inFlow is the closest rival; ShipStation handles shipping, not stock.

Buying tip: the order caps matter more than the user counts. Standard allows 500 orders a month and Premium 3,000; extra blocks of 500 orders cost $9 a month, so a fast-growing store can outgrow a tier quickly. Annual billing cuts roughly 17 to 26 percent depending on the tier, and the 14-day trial lets you test channel sync before paying.