Written by the Infronest Product & IT Operations Team, who build the asset, procurement and licence modules used by live customer IT teams.
IT Operations
IT Asset Management Tools: Best Options Compared (2026)
The ITAM tools teams use to track hardware, software and licences — compared on discovery, lifecycle, licence compliance, integration and cost.
Most IT asset registers are a spreadsheet that was accurate on the day it was made. The value of an ITAM tool is not storage — it is discovery and lifecycle, so the register stays true without anyone maintaining it by hand.
Basics
What IT asset management tools do
- Discovery — find devices automatically via agents or network scanning instead of manual entry
- Hardware inventory — model, serial, specification, warranty and location
- Software inventory — what is installed where, and which versions
- Assignment — who has which device, and since when
- Lifecycle — procurement, deployment, maintenance, transfer, retirement and disposal
- Licence management — entitlements vs actual installs, renewal dates, compliance exposure
- Reporting — spend, age profile, warranty expiry and refresh planning
The options
Main IT asset management tools
- Snipe-IT — free, open source, clean and popular for straightforward hardware tracking and assignment. Discovery is limited; it expects data in.
- GLPI — free and open source, combining assets with a ticketing system. Strong value; UI feels dated.
- Lansweeper — excellent agentless network discovery; very strong at finding what you did not know you had.
- ServiceNow ITAM — enterprise-grade with deep CMDB and licence management, at enterprise cost and implementation effort.
- Asset Panda — flexible and mobile-friendly, often used beyond IT for general asset tracking.
- ManageEngine AssetExplorer — mid-market ITAM with good licence compliance features.
- Infronest — asset management with requests, transfers, maintenance and licence tracking inside a platform that also runs device management, monitoring and the helpdesk that raises tickets against those assets.
The dividing line
Manual registers vs automatic discovery
Tools split into two groups: those that store what you tell them, and those that find things themselves. Snipe-IT and Asset Panda are excellent registers but rely on your data discipline. Lansweeper and agent-based platforms discover devices and software automatically.
If your main problem is 'we do not know what we own', buy discovery. If it is 'we know what we own but cannot track who has it', a register is enough.
Do not ignore software licence management
- Over-deployment is a real financial risk — audits from major vendors are expensive
- Under-use is equally wasteful — paid seats nobody has opened in six months
- Track entitlements against actual installs, not against purchase orders
- Set renewal alerts at least 60 days out, so renegotiation is possible
- Keep licence records linked to the assets they are installed on
Infronest
Conclusion
Infronest's IT asset management covers hardware and software inventory, assignment, requests, transfers, maintenance, warranty alerts and licence tracking — in the same tenant-isolated workspace as device management, monitoring and the helpdesk. Devices enrolled in MDM populate the asset register automatically instead of being typed in twice.
Start a 14-day free trial at infronest.com — no credit card required.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the best free IT asset management tool?
- Snipe-IT for clean hardware tracking and assignment, or GLPI if you also want ticketing in the same tool. Both are open source; you provide the hosting and maintenance.
- What is the difference between ITAM and CMDB?
- ITAM tracks assets as things you own — cost, ownership, warranty and lifecycle, with a financial emphasis. A CMDB tracks configuration items and, crucially, the relationships between them, to support impact analysis and change management. They overlap but answer different questions.
- Do we need asset management if we already have MDM?
- MDM knows about managed devices. Asset management also covers what MDM cannot enrol — monitors, network gear, printers, spares in storage — plus procurement, cost, warranty and disposal. The strongest setup is both, sharing one record per device.