If you run a home staging business, you've probably pieced together some combination of spreadsheets, a notes app, and a group text to manage your inventory, jobs, and team. It works — until it doesn't. And at some point, every growing staging company hits the wall where the manual system breaks down.
The good news: there are purpose-built tools for this. The bad news: most review articles in this space are either hopelessly out of date or written by people who've never actually staged a home. This one is different.
We reviewed five of the most-used software tools in the home staging industry — objectively, including our own. We looked at inventory management, project tracking, team coordination, mobile access, and pricing. Here's what we found.
This guide is published by StageCore. We've done our best to be fair and accurate about every tool listed here, including our own. We recommend you try any software free before paying — most of the tools below offer a trial or free tier.
Not all business software is built with staging companies in mind. Most general-purpose tools make you adapt your workflow to fit the software — the opposite of what you need. Before evaluating any platform, here are the capabilities that actually matter for a staging business:
Your furniture is your business. The software needs to track every item by location, status, and availability — not just store a list. Generic inventory tools track quantity; staging businesses need to track movement between warehouse, transport, and property in real time.
Each property is a project with its own inventory list, team assignment, schedule, and timeline. The software should let you manage multiple active jobs simultaneously without losing visibility into any of them.
If you have even one other person on your team, you need a tool that keeps everyone on the same page — same inventory data, same job details, same schedule — without relying on group texts to communicate changes.
A lot of your work happens away from a desk. Checking items in and out at the warehouse, updating job status at a property, reviewing availability before a client call — the software needs to work as well on a phone as it does on a laptop.
This is underrated. The ability to automatically generate an optimized packing list from a job's assigned inventory saves significant time before every deployment — and reduces the chance of arriving on-site missing something.
StageCore is the newest entrant on this list and the most purpose-built. It was designed from scratch for home staging workflows — not adapted from warehouse management or construction software. The platform combines AI-powered inventory cataloging, real-time project tracking, team scheduling, and load list generation in a single app.
The standout feature is the AI inventory detection: point your phone's camera at any piece of furniture, and the computer vision model identifies it, categorizes it, and logs it to your inventory automatically. For companies that are constantly adding new pieces, this alone saves hours per week of manual data entry.
StageForce is the most established purpose-built platform for home staging businesses, trusted by staging companies across 20+ countries. Built by stagers for stagers, it covers the full operational stack: inventory management with RFID and QR tag support, project management from lead to de-stage, client CRM, invoicing with Stripe integration, and a standout e-commerce feature that turns every stage into a store — letting you sell inventory directly to clients right from the job.
The platform is modular: start with just inventory management ($49/month) or project/CRM ($49/month), or get everything bundled in the Professional plan at $89/month. All plans include unlimited users, unlimited projects, unlimited photos, and a 30-day free trial. This is the right choice for established staging operations that want a mature, proven system with deep feature coverage and the ability to monetize their inventory.
Hutch is the most established software built specifically for home staging companies. It covers the three critical areas — inventory management, project tracking, and client CRM — in a single platform designed around how stagers actually work. It supports 10,000+ inventory items, unlimited projects, and team member access, making it a solid option for larger staging operations.
The main limitation compared to StageCore is the absence of AI-assisted cataloging — inventory still needs to be entered manually. For companies with large, constantly-changing inventory, that difference adds up quickly. Pricing also starts significantly higher at $99/month.
Sortly is one of the most popular general-purpose inventory management apps in use today, and plenty of staging companies use it for tracking furniture. Its photo-based organization, QR code and barcode scanning, and clean mobile interface make it easy to get started. Over 15,000 businesses across industries use it.
The problem for staging companies is that Sortly stops at inventory. There's no project management, no job-based load list generation, no team scheduling, and no staging-specific workflow. You'll end up running Sortly alongside a separate project tool, a separate scheduling tool, and probably a separate spreadsheet for load lists — which is most of the problem you were trying to solve in the first place.
Houzz Pro is a business management platform built for interior designers, architects, and home professionals — and home stagers fit broadly within that category. It's strong on client-facing tools: proposals, mood boards, invoicing, and a professional client portal. If a polished client experience is your priority, Houzz Pro delivers.
Where it falls short for staging companies is the operational side. Inventory management is limited — Houzz Pro is built around project design, not furniture logistics. There's no concept of a "warehouse," no item check-out/check-in by job, no load list generation. For the operational demands of a staging company (tracking which sofa is at which property, building packing lists, managing team deployments), you'll need other tools alongside it.
17Hats is a CRM built for service-based small businesses, and it has a following among independent home stagers who appreciate its contract automation, invoice templates, and scheduling features. The platform is particularly good at managing the administrative side of client relationships — follow-ups, questionnaires, proposals, and payment collection — and it integrates well with calendar tools for scheduling staging and de-staging appointments.
Like Houzz Pro, however, 17Hats is not a staging operations tool. There is no inventory management, no furniture tracking, no load lists, and no concept of managing what goes into a truck for a specific job. It's a client relationship tool, not a staging operations tool — a meaningful distinction for anyone running a team with significant inventory.
Here's how all six tools stack up on the features that matter most to staging companies.
| Feature | StageCore | StageForce | Hutch | Sortly | Houzz Pro | 17Hats |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built for staging | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ~ | ✗ |
| AI inventory cataloging | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Real-time inventory tracking | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Job / project management | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ~ | ✗ |
| Auto load list generation | ✓ | ~ | ~ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Team scheduling | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ~ | ✓ |
| Multi-user (unlimited) | ✓ | ✓ | ~ | ~ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Mobile app | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Client CRM | ~ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Invoicing / contracts | ✗ | ✓ | ~ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free tier available | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Starting price | Free | $49/mo | $99/mo | Free | ~$65/mo | ~$45/mo |
✓ = Yes ✗ = No ~ = Partial / limited. Pricing as of April 2026.
Most of the tools in this comparison do one or two things well. Sortly is a solid inventory tracker. 17Hats handles client admin cleanly. Houzz Pro looks professional in front of clients. But staging operations are end-to-end — and the moment you need multiple tools running side by side to manage a single job, the system starts to break.
StageCore wins for most staging companies for one primary reason: it's the only platform that covers the full operational workflow in a single place — from the moment a new piece of furniture arrives (AI catalogs it automatically) to the moment a job closes out (every item gets checked back in and returned to available inventory). No tool-switching, no data entry across multiple apps, no "which spreadsheet is current" conversations with your team.
The AI cataloging is the other meaningful differentiator. Every other tool on this list requires manual entry for new inventory items. StageCore eliminates that entirely — a camera photo is all it takes. For staging companies that are actively buying and rotating furniture, that's a significant operational advantage that compounds over time.
StageForce is the closest full-platform competitor — it's been purpose-built for staging companies for years and covers inventory, projects, CRM, invoicing, and e-commerce in one place. For established businesses that need RFID asset tracking, built-in invoicing, and a 30-day trial to evaluate before committing, it's worth serious consideration. The key differentiator StageCore holds over StageForce is AI-powered cataloging: StageForce still requires manual entry for new inventory, which adds real overhead for companies actively buying and rotating furniture. Hutch is another purpose-built option for larger companies that want a built-in CRM, though its $99/month starting price and lack of AI cataloging make it harder to justify against both StageCore and StageForce.
If you need invoicing, contract management, or a polished client portal, the honest answer is that you may want to pair StageCore with a tool like 17Hats or Houzz Pro — or consider StageForce if you want those features native. StageCore is focused on the operational core — inventory and projects — and does that better than anything else on this list.
For inventory management and job operations: StageCore. For a full-featured staging platform with CRM and invoicing: StageForce. For a complete client CRM alongside operations: StageCore + 17Hats or Houzz Pro. For pure inventory only with no project needs: Sortly.
Start with the free plan — no credit card, no time limit. Catalog your inventory with AI, run your first job, and see the difference a purpose-built platform makes.