Cloud inventory
Count stock from any device. No servers, no spreadsheets emailed around. Real-time sync from the back room to the truck to your laptop.
Most small businesses don't lose money on theft. They lose it on stock they thought they had, items they ordered twice, and the half-hour someone spends every week reconciling a spreadsheet that three people edited at once. Cloud-based inventory management fixes the last part for good.
StockZip puts your stock count in one place — a database that lives in the cloud, syncs to every phone and laptop on your team, and stays accurate whether the person making the change is at headquarters or on a roof with one bar of signal. No installs. No “the server's down again.” You sign up, add your first items, and start scanning.
About 85% of small businesses still run inventory on spreadsheets. The number sounds high until you've actually tried to scale one. Two people open the file. They both edit the same row. One saves over the other. Now you have two different counts, no audit trail, and nobody remembers who was right.
Spreadsheets work for a week. They break the moment a second person joins the team, or you need to know what stock looked like last Tuesday. There's no version history that survives, no role-based access, no way to scan a barcode and update a row.
On-prem inventory software fixes the multi-user problem but adds a different one. Someone has to install it. Someone has to back it up. Someone has to upgrade it. If the office internet goes down, so does inventory — even if you're standing in the warehouse next to the server. And if you want a tech in the field to see live stock, you need a VPN, a public IP, or both.
Cloud-based inventory management splits the difference. Your data lives in a managed database, encrypted at rest, backed up daily, with row-level security so each company sees only its own records. Anyone on your team — with the right permission — can read or write from any device. The version-conflict problem disappears because there's one record, not five copies.
A 10-person team that switches from a shared spreadsheet to a cloud inventory system typically saves three to five hours a week on reconciliation alone. Bigger teams save more.
“Cloud” gets used loosely. Here's what it means with StockZip: your data lives on managed Postgres in a tier-1 data center. Updates roll out automatically. The mobile apps are native iOS and Android, not web wrappers, so they work in airplane mode. Sync is real-time over WebSocket, not “refresh and pray.”
What it doesn't mean: you have to be online every second. You don't. The mobile app caches what you need and queues writes when you're offline.
Open StockZip on a phone, a tablet, and a laptop. Change a quantity on the phone. The other two screens update within a second. There's no refresh button to hunt for, no “is this the latest version?” question. Every device in your team sees the same number at the same time. That sounds basic. It's the single biggest thing spreadsheets can't do.
The cloud is only useful if you can use it where the work happens. Warehouses have dead zones. Basements have no signal. Trucks lose coverage between towns. The StockZip mobile app handles all of that — scan items, adjust quantities, check things in or out without a connection. The moment your phone reconnects, every change syncs in order. No lost edits, no manual reconciliation.
Daily backups run without you setting anything up. We keep multi-region copies, and you can request a point-in-time restore if you ever need one. On top of that, every record is protected by row-level security — admins control who can edit, who can count, and who can only view. You won't accidentally show your full vendor pricing to a part-time staffer.
Whether you have 50 SKUs or 50,000, the database scales without you sizing it. You don't pay for unused capacity, and you don't get rate-limited the day before Black Friday. Updates ship continuously — bug fixes land in hours, features in weeks, with zero downtime on your end.
| Criteria | On-prem ERP | StockZip (cloud) |
|---|---|---|
| Setup time | Days to weeks | About 10 minutes |
| IT staff needed | Yes — install, patch, back up | None |
| Accessibility | Local network or VPN | Any device, anywhere |
| Updates | Manual, with scheduled downtime | Automatic, zero downtime |
| Cost model | Upfront license + hardware + maintenance | Monthly per user |
| Mobile access | Often a separate, paid module | Included on iOS and Android |
| Security responsibility | Yours | Managed encryption, backups, RLS |
| Multi-location | Needs site-to-site networking | Works out of the box |
Free for solo use up to 100 items. Paid plans start at a flat monthly price per user and unlock barcode scanning, multi-location, and integrations. There's no setup fee, no minimum seat count, and you can cancel any month. See the full breakdown at /pricing — and if you're not sure which tier fits, the free plan is enough to run a real small operation.
You don't need a demo call to find out if StockZip fits. Sign up, add five items, and try a count from your phone. If it doesn't click in 10 minutes, close the tab — no credit card required.
Simple, affordable inventory software for shops, services, and side hustles.
Native iOS and Android scanning with offline-first sync wherever the work happens.
Scan and adjust quantities without signal. Changes queue locally and sync on reconnect.
Straight answers about spreadsheets, scanners, offline work, existing systems, and the free period.
Yes. Your data is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest, hosted on managed Postgres with row-level security so each team only sees its own records. Backups run daily, and we publish our security posture at /security.