A fleet under 100 devices does not need most of what asset management software sells. It needs six fields that are current, one place to keep them, and somebody who owns the record. The widely recommended free option is a trial, and the genuinely free one needs a server.
TL;DR
- Below about 50 devices in one place, a spreadsheet maintained by the person who sees the devices beats any database.
- The trigger is not device count. It is devices in places the maintainer cannot walk to.
- Snipe-IT’s self-hosted edition is genuinely free and open source, and the cost is a server somebody has to run.
- AssetTiger’s 250-asset tier is a 30-day trial on its own pricing page, not a permanent free plan.
- Six fields do the work. The one that matters most is the date somebody last confirmed the row was true.
- Buy for the reconciliation, not the feature list. An unreconciled register decays at about the rate you issue devices.
What a small fleet actually needs
Six fields, and the list is shorter than any product page. Serial number, because it is the only identifier that survives a reimage. Assigned person, as an individual rather than a team. Delivery address, because for remote staff it is usually the only location you hold. Issue date, which turns a decision about whether to chase or replace into arithmetic.
Then two that almost nobody adds. A last-verified date with the method, so a current row can be told apart from one typed in two years ago. And a data obligation state, open or closed, which is the field a security questionnaire asks about and the one most registers cannot produce.
Everything else is optional at this size. Depreciation schedules, contract management, software licence tracking and procurement workflows are all real features for larger estates and all configuration work you will not finish.
When a spreadsheet is still right
Under about 50 devices in one building, with one person who can see them, a sheet with those six columns is more accurate than a database. Its accuracy comes from the maintainer’s direct knowledge rather than from a process, and buying software moves the record further from the person who knows the truth.
The real trigger is visibility rather than count. A 40-device fleet spread across six countries has a worse register than a 120-device fleet in one office, because every row in the first is second-hand. So the question to ask is not how many devices you have. It is how many you could physically go and look at this week.
The two real options at this size
| Snipe-IT, self-hosted | Free and open source | A real register with check-in and out, custom fields, audits and labels. You run the server, the updates and the backups |
| Snipe-IT, hosted | Published tiers | Basic is $39.99 monthly or $399.99 a year. Same product, somebody else’s server |
| AssetTiger | Published by asset count | $20 a month for 500 assets, $40 for 2,500, reducing to $18 and $37 on annual billing, with unlimited users |
| A spreadsheet | Free | Six columns, one owner. Fails when the owner stops seeing the devices |
Both published vendors are honest about their pricing, which is less common in this category than it should be. Several well-known platforms in the wider asset management market publish nothing at all and require a demo first.
The free tier that is not one
This is worth stating plainly because it appears as a free option in a lot of roundups. AssetTiger’s 250-asset tier is described on its own pricing page as a 30-day trial rather than a permanent free plan. It is a perfectly reasonable trial and it is not what somebody searching for free asset management software is hoping to find.
The genuinely free option is Snipe-IT’s self-hosted edition, which is open source and is a complete register rather than a limited one. The cost is not zero, it is just not a licence: a small server, operating system updates, database backups and somebody who notices when any of those stop. For a team with any technical capacity that is a few hours a year. For a team without one it is a dependency on a volunteer.
A worked example
A 60-person company with 78 devices moved from a spreadsheet to a hosted register because the spreadsheet had become unreliable. The migration took a morning and the register was accurate on the day it launched.
Fourteen months later a sample of 20 rows found 6 of them wrong. Four people had left and their devices were still assigned. One machine had been replaced and both records were open. One address was two house moves old. Nothing about the software had failed, and nobody had reconciled the register against anything since the day it was created.
The fix was not a better tool. It was a 30-minute quarterly check against three sources, and the accuracy went back above 90 per cent within two quarters without any change of product.
Making it stay accurate
What to do:
- Pick one owner by name. A register owned by a team is owned by nobody.
- Capture the serial and the delivery address at despatch, from the order, not from an HR record afterwards.
- Add a last-verified date with the method to every row, and backfill it as blank rather than guessing.
- Reconcile quarterly against three sources: your management console, your purchase records and your leaver list.
- Count the discrepancies each source produced, because that tells you which process is leaking.
- Sample 20 rows at random twice a year, publish the accuracy percentage, and keep the number.
The reconciliation is the part that decides whether the purchase was worth anything. A register nobody checks decays at roughly the rate you issue and recover devices, which at 100 devices is fast enough to matter within a year.
Disclosure: RemoAsset is owned by the same people who publish PeopleOpsHQ. It is a lifecycle platform rather than a register, and the reason it is relevant at this size is that it despatches the device, so the serial and the address come from the order instead of being entered afterwards. It publishes no price and requires a demo, it is much weaker for hardware it did not supply, and it is not a certified disposal vendor. The register-first options above are compared in our IT asset management comparison.
Final thoughts
At under 100 devices the software decision is small and the ownership decision is not. Two credible products publish their prices, one of them is genuinely free if you can run a server, and either will hold six fields perfectly well.
What separates a useful register from a decorative one is a named owner, a last-verified date and a quarterly reconciliation that produces a number. Get those three in place first, in whatever you are using now, and the tool choice afterwards takes an afternoon.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best IT asset management software for a small fleet?
Snipe-IT or AssetTiger, and both publish their pricing on their own sites, which is unusual in this category and is itself a reason to shortlist them. Snipe-IT self-hosted is free and open source and is a complete register rather than a limited one; its hosted tiers and AssetTiger’s asset-count tiers are both listed in full in the table above. Either will hold the six fields a small fleet needs, so the decision turns on whether you can run a server.
Is there a genuinely free asset management tool?
Yes. Snipe-IT’s self-hosted edition is free and open source, with check-in and check-out, custom fields, audits and label support. The cost is a server, operating system updates and database backups that somebody has to own, which is a few hours a year for a team with technical capacity. Be careful with other products described as free, since AssetTiger’s widely cited 250-asset tier is a 30-day trial on its own pricing page rather than a permanent plan.
At how many devices do you need asset management software?
Device count is the wrong trigger. The one that matters is how many devices the person maintaining the record could physically go and look at this week, because a spreadsheet’s accuracy comes from direct knowledge. A 40-device fleet across six countries usually has a worse register than a 120-device fleet in one office. Once most rows are second-hand, you need a system and a reconciliation process rather than a better sheet.
Which fields does a small asset register need?
Six. Serial number, because it survives a reimage or a change of tagging scheme. The assigned individual, since a team cannot post a laptop back. The delivery address, usually the only location you hold for remote staff. The issue date, which turns chase-or-replace into arithmetic. A last-verified date with the method used. And a data obligation state, open or closed, which is what a security questionnaire asks about and what most registers cannot produce.
How do you stop an asset register going stale?
Name one owner, then reconcile quarterly against three sources: your device management console, your purchase records and your leaver list. Count the discrepancies each source produces separately, because that identifies which process is leaking rather than just correcting rows. Sample 20 rows at random twice a year and publish the accuracy percentage with the date, which converts an invisible maintenance task into a number with a trend somebody will keep resourcing.
Should a small team self-host or buy hosted?
Self-host if somebody on the team already runs servers and will notice when updates or backups stop, since the licence saving is real and the product is the same. Buy hosted if that person does not exist or would be doing it as a favour, because an asset register that goes unpatched for a year is a liability rather than a saving. The hosted figures above are small enough that the decision rarely turns on cost alone.
