Inventory planning alternatives
Opinionated breakdowns of the planning tools scaling brands shortlist most often. Picks ranked by fit, trade-offs spelled out, and a clear answer to which one is right for your shape of business.
NetStock
ERP-led, built for the mid-market
NetStock is genuinely strong for mid-market manufacturers, distributors, and retailers running an ERP like NetSuite, SAP Business One, or Acumatica, with a planning team to operate it. For scaling consumer brands selling on Shopify, Amazon, and retail, it's the wrong shape: an ERP dependency, a fixed planning workflow, and enterprise-style pricing and implementation.
See NetStock alternativesInventory Planner (by Sage)
Established and feature-rich, but rigid
Inventory Planner has been around since 2012 and it handles POs and replenishment well. But the workflows are fixed, the interface is dense, and anything non-standard (forecasting nuance, range planning, cashflow, costs) ends up in spreadsheets around it. Since the Sage acquisition, existing customers have also reported steep price rises at renewal. You adapt to it, not the other way round.
See Inventory Planner alternativesPrediko
Modern and off-the-shelf, if your brand is simple
Prediko is a good off-the-shelf planner for a Shopify-only brand with straightforward products and suppliers. It's modern, affordable, and quick to start. The moment your requirements aren't standard (a forecast you need to steer, MOQs at more than one level, a complex range, landed costs, cashflow, a second channel, a system to connect), too much ends up in spreadsheets next to it.
See Prediko alternativesCin7
Does everything, and feels like it
Cin7 (Core and Omni) covers everything from stock records to the warehouse floor, POS, B2B portals, and EDI, but forecasting is a separately priced add-on and the whole thing is heavyweight, enterprise-style software. Brands we work with have watched it shrink into a PO and month-end tool one person maintains. If you need planning and inventory your team will use, more than tills and EDI, it's the wrong shape.
See Cin7 alternativesNot finding the tool you're evaluating?
We're building out comparison pages for the most-shortlisted tools in our customer interviews. Brightpearl and Unleashed are next. If you're weighing a tool we haven't covered yet, book a call and we'll walk you through how Lumina would compare against it, based on your requirements.
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