Katana Cloud Inventory Reviews 

Disappointing experience after several years as a customer.

We experienced software inaccuracies, reliability issues and frustrating interactions with the team. Subscription prices increased substantially after we joined, but we had already invested so much time in implementation that switching to another ERP was difficult for our small business. We felt stuck.

When we eventually decided to leave, Katana insisted on charging an additional month under its cancellation terms, despite our request for a goodwill exception. Instead of addressing our concerns, we were offered a lower price to stay, even though our decision to leave was final.

Our latest email explaining these issues and asking for a senior review has gone unanswered.

Overall, a costly and frustrating experience, both while using the software and when trying to leave.

They make it extremely difficult to cancel, and continued charging us for several months after I had canceled my subscription. I ultimately had to cancel my card to stop the charges. I also could not get ahold of anyone at the company to resolve the issue. Overall, a very frustrating experience. Did not solve my problem either, I was able to find a free workaround using google scripts which was nice because this is expensive!

If you have a very small business with little sales and not many materials this may be a fit for you. We used them for a year or two but soon after we signed up the system limitations came thick and fast. The nail in the coffin for me was when I asked the support team how to see how much of an ingredient we used in a time period. They told me that we cant see that, but if we pay, and moved up to the next teir we would have that option. THATS CRAZY!! Bare minimum, with any ERP system, you should be able to see how much of an ingredient you have used over a month or week. That should be one of the most basic functions it has at the lowest teir. That is what we got the system for. But no one told us of that limitation when we had our first call with them, Obviously.

Wildly unprofessional.
Kept invoicing despite our emails asking for cancellation and refund.

"Like I have advised, you must cancel within your Katana profile. But since you're seemingly unable to do so, I have gone in and set the termination effective May 1st....as it should be.

We're not reversing todays charge as it is valid as per our terms of service you agreed to. You're free to dispute this with your credit card company if you so choose.

We are considering this matter resolved."

We were early adopters of Katana MRP, using it as our primary manufacturing resource planning system for over six years. In the beginning, Katana delivered exactly what we needed - solid functionality, reasonable pricing, and an easy-to-use interface that worked well for a small manufacturer like us with modest sales order volume. Initially, the pricing was fair and manageable. But once Katana began taking on outside investment and aggressively scaling, things started to change.

Over time, they revamped their pricing model multiple times. At first it was tied to relatively simple metrics like number of users, but later it shifted to limits based on sales order line items, then to sales orders and gross merchandise value (GMV). What sounded sophisticated in their marketing quickly became a huge headache for us: as a small shop selling mostly items around $10 each, our high order count, not our actual revenue, automatically bumped us into higher pricing tiers. So we ended up paying almost the same as companies doing $50 million+ in annual sales, despite using a fraction of the features and resources.

We’ve also experienced price changes mid-subscription period without meaningful notice, and being forced into annual negotiations simply to keep our plan. Year after year, it became clear that the company didn’t care about smaller customers anymore: their strategy seems squarely aimed at upmarket customers with big order volume and deep pockets - which pits small manufacturers like us at a disadvantage.

Frankly, the model feels punitive, not proportional. If your business sells a lot of small-ticket orders, you get punished with pricing far beyond the value you actually consume - and that’s simply not sustainable for a real small manufacturer.

In the end, after dealing with repeated increasing costs and painfully going around in circles with account reps who didn't take the time to understand our business, we pulled the plug and took the time and effort to migrate to a different MRP that met all our requirements. It is faster, easier to use, and roughly ¼ of the cost of Katana’s current pricing. That switch has been night and day for our team - not only financially but also operationally. On the plus side, Katana made it easy for us to export our data and we performed the data migration and cut-over to the new system entirely in-house.

Bottom line: Katana may still work for some companies, especially larger, growing SMBs with high-priced items and few orders, but for small manufacturers with many sales orders and modest item prices, their current pricing strategy simply doesn’t make sense anymore.

Total scam! I do not recommend having any deals.

I just dropped them after 2 and a half years. Their business model is based on how much money you bring in, not on something reasonable, like the amount of resources you consume (though they do have a metric for that, I believe under the starter package it was 50 orders per month). We're a small manufacturing company and only do a single weekly order. We were paying $200/mo for the starter package, but they thought we were making enough money that they would double our cost. We weren't using it to its fullest extent, really just sales/inventory tracking, which were good, to their credit. But to charge someone more just because they make more is a disgusting business model, IMHO.
If you're a larger company and use more of their features and actually rely on them to get things done, it may be worth it. But it was just very disappointing to have to drop them for nothing more than, what appeared to be, greed.

We canceled the subscription, as it’s a simple SaaS tool. However, we were surprised to learn that it requires a 30-day notice period—something typically seen with full-time employees, not software.

Honestly, it feels like we’re hiring a person, not using a tool.

In my six years of experience, I’ve never seen a SaaS product require a notice period to cancel. It’s unexpected and unreasonable for a platform that can be turned off with a click.

Katana is an easy to use solution that connects to Shopify and HubSpot along with QuickBooks Online. It is a great solution to help manage inventory especially for manufacturing businesses.

I can only agree with the other comments here. They keep changing their pricing, and they recently emailed to say they are about to DOUBLE my monthly subscription cost!

Their reasoning is down to them claiming we have maxed out the allowed usage (based on sales data) . But the sales data field is buggy and useless we don't use it!

When I first signed up 2 years ago the rate was already expensive but it had features no other software had. Now they are adding stupid features like "AI" that I have no use for, but suddenly want to increase our subscription cost by 2x and even more if you factor in the last 2 years.

Avoid, I would but I don't have the resources or funds to switch software right now.

The company not only drastically increased its pricing but also changed pricing terms which led to my subscription going from $800 to $4000. Despite calling me twice 30 days before the increase, they failed to mention that my next bill would be five times higher. There was no email communication either. So a year after I joined and set things up, the cheapest plan is now 2.5 times higher than my original subscription price. But wait, there is more :) Since they also changed the terms of pricing, my card was charged $4000 (5 times more than what I signed up for) this billing cycle.
I messaged the company minutes after I was charged, but it's been five days and they are not refunding my money under some bs premises. My guess is their "success" team needs to keep churn stats low, so they do not look bad in front of the investors.

There is still no function where you know who is doing what. We have been promised this, but it has not been implemented.

There are many shortcomings with this software. They lure you in with low subscription fees and promise to fix bugs and weaknesses. None has happened!
For the second time now, they changed their pricing model in two years. We spent many hours and resources implementing Katana and finding workarounds. They announced an increase to our monthly subscription from Monthly to paid Annually and an increase of more than $ 1,000 per month with no additional benefits.
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