Fishbowl Alternatives for Small Manufacturers 2027: 5 Picks

The category decision comes before the vendor list

Small manufacturers searching for Fishbowl alternatives are usually choosing between three categories, not three brands. The first is a manufacturing-first tool with bills of materials, work orders and material planning. The second is a broader business system that treats manufacturing as one module. The third is keeping Fishbowl for inventory and adding a production tool beside it. Fishbowl's own pricing page makes the split visible, because it states that its inventory plans do not include manufacturing (BOMs, work orders, MRP). If you run production orders today, the fair comparison is between a manufacturing product and Fishbowl's separate Advanced tier, not between Fishbowl Inventory and its rivals.

A plain definition helps here. Manufacturing resource planning (MRP) software works out what materials to buy and what to build from customer demand and a bill of materials, so a shop can schedule production instead of reacting to shortages.

TL;DR: If you need work orders and BOMs at a small-shop price, shortlist Katana, MRPeasy and inFlow first. If you want one broader system that covers more business functions, shortlist Odoo or Acumatica, and expect to wait for a quote before you know the price.

Key Takeaways

• Fishbowl's inventory plans leave out manufacturing, so price the production tier as its own line before you compare totals.

• Katana's free plan suits small catalogs only, and its paid Advantage plan is scoped by quote.

• MRPeasy, Odoo and inFlow publish prices you can budget from, while Acumatica publishes none and prices by application, usage and deployment rather than by seat.

• A lower subscription can cost more once you add onboarding, data migration and the work of connecting the system to QuickBooks or Xero.

• Ask each vendor for its API or export answer in writing before you sign, because any automation layer depends on it.

• An automation layer sits above your system of record. It does not replace the production records inside that system.

How we evaluated these tools

We weighted six criteria before writing the profiles. The weights are our analysis, not vendor data, so change them to fit your shop. Pricing came only from the vendor pricing pages we opened for this guide, and where a vendor publishes no price, the table says Quote-based. Product scope came from pricing and product pages, a vendor developer reference, and one partner page. Where a page did not state something, the tables say "not stated" rather than assuming the feature exists or is missing.

Use the weights as a starting point. A shop with a large catalog should raise the SKU limit weight, and a shop with clean, exportable data should lower the migration weight.

Who this is for

This guide is written for an owner or operations lead at a small manufacturer who is close to choosing a Fishbowl replacement and needs a shortlist to take into quote requests. The size thresholds that define "small" are not uniform. The Census Bureau notes that the definition of "small" varies by industry, according to U.S. Census Bureau, so check the size standard for your own NAICS code rather than assume a headcount cutoff. Most manufacturers are small by any common measure. Manufacturing firms with fewer than 20 employees: 74% according to NAM (year not stated on the page).

Red flags: your production is mostly engineered-to-order with costing rules nobody has written down; your customers require a quality or audit record that a tool's public pages do not describe; or no one on staff will own the data migration and its cleanup.

What the feature pages commit to

The table below records only what each vendor's pages say. Each row is drawn from the pricing or product page named in the profiles that follow.

A cell that reads "not stated" means the page did not say it. That is not evidence the feature is missing, so confirm it with the vendor before you rule a product out.

Pricing checked and what it costs to run

Pricing checked October 26, 2026. Every row in the table below comes from the vendor's own pricing page, and the paragraphs around the table cite the pages where individual prices appear.

Fishbowl's Advanced Manufacturing tier starts at $675 a month according to Fishbowl (page undated, copyright 2026). The page says advanced pricing is always confirmed by quote, so treat $675 as a floor, not a budget. Fishbowl's inventory tiers are published: Essentials, Growth and Scale run from $229 to $729 a month, billed annually, for two, five and ten users, according to Fishbowl. The same page's comparison table also lists manufacturing items as add-ons, which conflicts with the statement that inventory plans exclude manufacturing, so get the add-on price in writing.

MRPeasy's Professional plan costs $69 per user per month according to MRPeasy. The page lists per-user rates on every tier, and the trial is shown as 15 + 15 days with no card required. Odoo's pricing page lists a Standard plan at US$31.10 and US$38.90 per user, and a Custom plan at US$61.00 and US$76.20 per user, according to Odoo. The page does not say which figure is monthly and which is annual, and its footnote says the discount applies for 12 months for initial users ordered. Ask Odoo for the monthly rate in writing before you build a budget on either number.

Each figure in the table comes from the vendor page cited in the text above or in the profiles below. Odoo's per-user figures appear without a clear monthly or annual label, so treat them as list figures until a quote confirms them.

Illustrative case, not a customer: a shop with six people who need system access and about 400 active SKUs. At the $69 per user per month Professional price cited above, six users come to $414 a month, or $4,968 a year. The $675 a month Advanced Manufacturing starting price cited above comes to $8,100 a year for a team of that size, which leaves a $3,132 annual gap at the starting prices. That gap is not like for like, because Fishbowl's figure is a starting point before quote and the two products scope manufacturing differently. The 400 SKUs also rule out Katana's free plan, which is capped at 30 SKUs, as the Katana profile below explains. If the shop chose Katana, its API exposes manufacturing_orders, and that endpoint accepts a status filter with the value IN_PROGRESS, so a proposed workflow could read open production without a manual export.

Vendor profiles, read as buying evidence

Each profile starts with what the vendor's pages state, then gives our read on who should choose it. The facts and the judgment are kept apart on purpose.

Katana

Katana's free plan caps at 30 SKUs according to Katana, and the page describes the free plan as $0 with no card required and unlimited users. Katana's Advantage plan has no fixed price. The page says it is personalized to the business, sold on an annual contract, and covers unlimited SKUs and a dedicated Customer Success Manager within one agreed scope.

Our read: Katana fits a shop that wants manufacturing orders and inventory in one system and either fits inside the free catalog or is ready to scope a contract. Its limitations are the SKU cap on the free plan and the quote-only paid tier, which means you cannot budget before a sales call. For implementation, ask exactly what the scoped work includes, because the page bundles the subscription, custom builds and success management into one price. The evidence for the API claim is in Katana's developer reference, which documents a list endpoint for manufacturing orders sorted with the most recent first. Choose Katana if your catalog fits the cap or you want a single scoped price. Walk away if your catalog is well past the cap and you want to see a number before a call.

MRPeasy

MRPeasy's Unlimited plan costs $149 per user per month according to MRPeasy, with a minimum of two users. The lower tiers are priced per user as well, so the table above shows the full ladder. The page lists API and webhooks only on the paid Unlimited tier, and the customer portal, quality control and serial numbers start at Professional.

Our read: MRPeasy fits a small shop that wants per-user pricing with a published ladder and a trial before it buys. Its limitations are that the features you may need for customer self-service and quality tracking sit on higher tiers, and that integration access requires the top plan, so price that plan if you plan to connect other systems. The trial is listed as 15 + 15 days, and the page does not explain the two periods, so ask what each one covers before you start. Choose MRPeasy if you want per-user cost you can predict, and walk away if you need API access on a lower plan, which the page does not offer.

Odoo

Odoo's pricing page lists a one-app free plan, along with Standard and Custom plans that include all apps. Its Custom plan lists External API, Studio, multi-company support and on-premise deployment, and the page notes that Odoo.sh hosting is not included in the listed price.

Our read: Odoo fits a shop that wants production, purchasing, sales and accounting in one system and has someone who can configure several apps. Its limitations are that per-user pricing rises with every person who needs a seat, and the page shows two unlabeled sets of figures for each plan. Implementation is a project, not an install, so plan the rollout one app at a time. Choose Odoo if you want one system with room to grow, and walk away if you only need BOMs and work orders, because you may pay for modules you do not use.

inFlow

The Growth plan on inFlow is $399 a month according to inFlow, billed annually, for five team members. The page lists Start Up, Growth, Scale and Expansion tiers, and it says all four include manufacture orders, bills of materials and production management, along with all inventory features.

Our read: inFlow fits a small shop that wants manufacturing features on a per-plan price, without counting every user as a seat. Its limitations are the onboarding fee and the inconsistency on that fee. The page lists a one-time $499 onboarding package as optional on the manufacturing listing but says it is required on most plans, so confirm which applies before you sign. Choose inFlow if a fixed monthly price for a set team size matters more to you than per-user flexibility. Walk away if you need an API or export path you cannot confirm on the page.

Acumatica

Acumatica's pricing page publishes no plan prices. It says pricing is tailored using three factors, which are applications, usage and resources, and deployment, and it states that you pay "not for user seats." The custom pricing review is booked through a call, according to Acumatica. A partner page from DSD Business Systems describes MRP that generates time-phased manufacturing and purchasing plans, along with optional estimating, product configurator and advanced planning modules.

Our read: Acumatica fits a manufacturer with multi-site or make-to-order complexity, a budget for a partner-led implementation, and the discipline to scope modules before signing. Its limitations are the quote-only pricing and the optional modules, which make the first year hard to budget. The partner, not the vendor, typically explains deployment costs. Choose Acumatica if the complexity is real, and walk away if you want a published price on the site before you talk to anyone.

Fishbowl Advanced (the stay option)

Staying with Fishbowl means buying the Advanced Manufacturing tier, whose starting price is the $675 a month cited above, with final pricing set by quote. Fishbowl's inventory plans, which remain published, cover the inventory side only.

Our read: staying fits a shop that already runs Fishbowl Inventory well, has its QuickBooks or Xero sync working, and needs production data added rather than a new system. The limitation is that the Advanced price depends on users and deployment, so you will not know the real cost until you get a quote. Choose this route if your pain is production scheduling on top of stable inventory, and walk away from it if the inventory process itself is the problem you need to fix.

Keeping the shop and QuickBooks in step

The pain most owners describe after switching is not the ERP itself but the handoffs between production, bookkeeping and the inbox. An orchestration layer watches those handoffs. US Tech Automations describes its service as a managed build, in which its team maps the process, designs the workflow on its own platform, and then monitors and maintains it. Its public integrations list names QuickBooks, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Sheets, HubSpot and Stripe, and it does not name an ERP. Any link to Katana, MRPeasy, Odoo, inFlow or Acumatica would therefore be a scoped custom build that starts with the ERP's API or a file export.

A proposed reorder workflow, configurable but not a live deployment, would start when an open manufacturing order or a stock level crosses a threshold in the ERP. The action would draft a purchase request from the bill of materials and write it to a Google Sheets queue, so the output is a request a buyer can approve in one step. Prerequisites are a scheduled export or API access from the chosen ERP, a mapping of part numbers between the ERP and the sheet, and a named buyer who owns the approval. The human review point is that nothing becomes a purchase order until the buyer approves the draft, and a stale export should block the run rather than let it guess.

A proposed collections workflow would start when a QuickBooks invoice passes its due date. The action would draft a reminder email in Gmail, and the output would be a logged row in Google Sheets for the weekly collections review. Prerequisites are a QuickBooks connection authorized by the company's admin and a reminder template the owner has approved in advance. The human review point is that a person approves each reminder before it sends, and any invoice with a dispute flag stays out of the batch until someone clears it.

The realistic alternative to a managed build is stitching these steps together in Zapier, Make or n8n, or building them in-house. Those tools can keep run histories, retries, error branches and audit evidence when they are configured that way, so they are a fair option for a shop with one technically minded person. The buyer still has to design and own observability, idempotency (so a retried run does not post a duplicate bill), escalation paths, access controls and ongoing maintenance after each ERP update. A proposed design with US Tech Automations would configure the same pieces as a managed build, but the prerequisites and review points above still apply.

Common mistakes when replacing Fishbowl

• Comparing Fishbowl Inventory's price with a manufacturing product's price, when the Advanced tier is the fair comparison.

• Treating a free plan as a production plan without checking its catalog limit.

• Buying on per-user price for a team where most people never log in from the shop floor.

• Leaving the API or export question until after signing.

• Budgeting the subscription alone, without onboarding, data cleanup and the cost of connecting to QuickBooks or Xero.

• Assuming a "not stated" cell on a pricing page means the feature is missing.

Decision checklist before requesting quotes

• List the production steps you need tracked: BOMs, work orders, routings and shop-floor labor.
• Count active SKUs and count, separately, the people who need a login.
• Ask each vendor for a written quote that shows onboarding, support and add-on lines.
• Ask for the API or export method and the exact plan that includes it.
• Confirm how the new system will sync with QuickBooks or Xero during cutover.
• Name one owner for the data migration and one approver for any automated step.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free Fishbowl alternative for a small manufacturer?

Yes, Katana offers a free plan, but it is built for a small catalog, so it suits only a shop that fits inside that limit. Check the SKU count before you assume the free tier will run production.

Does Fishbowl Inventory include bills of materials and work orders?

No, Fishbowl's inventory plans state that they do not include manufacturing, so BOMs, work orders and MRP sit in the separate Advanced tier. Ask for the Advanced quote if production is part of your problem.

Which alternatives publish per-user prices?

MRPeasy and Odoo publish per-user prices, inFlow publishes per-plan prices by team size, and Acumatica publishes no prices and does not charge per seat.

Is the lowest subscription the cheapest option?

No. Onboarding fees, data migration and the work of connecting the system to QuickBooks or Xero can outweigh a lower monthly price over the first year.

Where does an automation layer fit next to an ERP?

An automation layer sits above the ERP, reads and writes through an API or export, and handles approvals and handoffs, but it does not replace the production records inside the ERP.

When NOT to use US Tech Automations: if you have no system of record for production yet, buy a manufacturing tool first, because an automation layer cannot create BOMs or work orders for you. If your bookkeeping and inventory already work and the only gap is a few recurring emails, a native reminder feature in your current system or a single Zapier flow is simpler. If the ERP you choose offers a native connector to the tools you already use, that connector is usually the lower-maintenance route.

Conclusion

Start with the category decision: a manufacturing-first tool, a broader business system, or Fishbowl plus a production tool beside it. Use the criteria table to shortlist two or three vendors, then ask each one for a written quote, an API or export answer, and a migration plan with named owners. The public pages are clear about what they say, and the quote conversation is where the remaining numbers become real. If you want to see how US Tech Automations configures an approval-and-handoff layer over a system you already run, see how US Tech Automations configures this.