Arka Inventory vs Zoho Inventory

A sales rep gives a customer a delivery date, and the stock behind that date was already committed to another order. The mistake is rarely the rep's. The numbers sat in a system the rep does not work in.

That gap between where stock is recorded and where promises are made decides most moves away from Zoho Inventory, more than any feature count. A manufacturer quoting from Salesforce feels it daily. A trader with one shop and a handful of orders a day does not.

Below you get both vendors' published plans side by side, a six-point stay-or-move test, and a yearly cost sheet to complete with your own numbers. We publish this page, and Arka Inventory is one of the two products compared.

We wrote it for manufacturers and wholesale distributors in India whose sales teams quote from Salesforce, and who are weighing a move from Zoho Inventory.

• If your sales team works in Salesforce and you make or distribute physical goods, choose Arka Inventory: it is Salesforce-native (built on the Salesforce platform itself), while Zoho Inventory is built within the Zoho ecosystem.
• Run the six-point test below: two or more fails means a trial of Arka Inventory is worth your 15 days.
• Our 15-day trial gives full access to all features with no card, so you can run the six checks on your own stock.

Arka Inventory is the Zoho Inventory alternative we recommend for Indian manufacturers and wholesale distributors whose sales teams work in Salesforce, because stock, commitments and incoming supply sit in Salesforce itself. By our own count, more than 30 paying business customers use Arka Inventory.

Choose Arka Inventory when stock decisions are made by people who work in Salesforce, when you make products as well as sell them, or when you need to trace lots and serial numbers. Five reasons, each tied to a fact:

1. Arka Inventory is Salesforce-native, so available stock, reserved stock and incoming purchases appear where the quote is written. Zoho Inventory is built within the Zoho ecosystem and lists Salesforce as an integration. For the wider options, see Salesforce inventory management: four routes and their costs.
2. Our available-to-promise view (the stock you can confidently commit to a customer after existing reservations and incoming supply) combines stock by warehouse, committed and reserved stock, incoming stock, lead times and material availability.
3. Bills of material, production and kitting are on our Advance plan. HCPL Hexmoto and Meta Power Solutions, a transformer manufacturer, run inventory and operations on Arka Inventory.
4. Our Enterprise plan adds lot, batch, expiry and serial tracking, landed cost and bin tracking.
5. Standard setup guidance, configuration assistance and onboarding support are included. Support runs Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 6 PM IST, with a 24-hour response target.

Move if you fail two or more of these six checks. The thresholds are our recommendation, not an industry standard. Each check takes under an hour.

1. Quote visibility. Take five recent quotes. Could the rep see stock already committed to other customers at the time? Pass: yes, on screen. Fail: they asked the warehouse or checked another system.
2. Order headroom. Count orders for your busiest month in the last three. Pass: below 80% of your plan's monthly order limit (Zoho's are 500, 3,000, 7,500 and 15,000). Fail: above it.
3. Location headroom. Count warehouses and stock-holding sites. Pass: within your plan's location limit. Fail: you are paying for add-on locations or working around the limit.
4. Bill of materials. Build one product with five components, receive 10 units of each, make 2. Pass: component stock falls automatically. See bill of materials software for what to look for.
5. Raw materials. Can you stock a component you never sell, without giving it a sales price? Pass: yes.
6. Traceability. Trace one shipped lot or serial number back to its supplier receipt and forward to every customer. Pass: under 10 minutes. See serial number tracking for the setup.

Fail two or more: start our 15-day trial and run the same six checks there. Fail one or none: trial Arka Inventory anyway if your reps quote from Salesforce.

For five users, our Basic plan costs $4,404 a year and Advance $7,860, against $948 a year on Zoho Inventory Premium. For ten users, Basic is $6,924, Advance $10,980, and Zoho Plus $1,548. All figures are the dollar prices both vendors publish, billed or paid yearly (as of October 2026).

Arka Inventory runs on Salesforce, so Salesforce licences are a separate cost for teams that do not already hold them.

Our working: Basic is $199 including 1 user plus $42 per extra user; Advance is $499 including 2 users plus $52 per extra user; yearly is monthly times 12. Zoho Premium includes 5 users and Plus 10, from Zoho's pricing page. These are our calculations from list prices, not quotes.

Zoho add-ons are $7.50 a month per extra user, $7.50 per extra 500 orders and $10 per extra location, billed annually. Lot, batch, serial tracking, landed cost and bin tracking are on our Enterprise plan, which is quoted on request, so the Basic and Advance figures exclude them. Ask us for an Enterprise quote. Our pricing page shows all three plans, and our software cost guide covers the wider budget.