Rentman comes up constantly when production people go looking for equipment software, and for good reason. It is a mature, well-built platform with a real following in AV and event production. It is also, for most individual camera owners, solving a problem they do not have.
This is a comparison between two tools that barely overlap. Worth reading if you are trying to work out which category you actually need, because picking the wrong one is expensive in both directions.
What each tool is actually for
Rentman is resource planning software for companies that run crewed production jobs. Its center of gravity is scheduling: who is working which job, what equipment is committed where, what still needs to be packed and transported, and whether two overlapping bookings are about to collide. Equipment tracking is one module among several, alongside crew planning, project management, and quoting.
Rental IQ is rental analytics for equipment owners. Its center of gravity is the individual asset: what this specific lens has earned, how much of its purchase price it has paid back, how often it actually goes out, and what it is worth today. There is no crew, no project planning, and no quoting.
The distinction matters because the two answer different questions. Rentman answers can we execute this job. Rental IQ answers was buying this gear a good idea.
Where Rentman is clearly better
If any of these describe your situation, Rentman is the right tool and this comparison ends here.
- You schedule crew. Rentman handles availability, assignments, and conflicts across people, not just gear. Rental IQ has nothing here.
- You run overlapping projects. Planning equipment across simultaneous jobs, spotting collisions before they happen, and producing packing lists is core Rentman functionality.
- You quote and invoice through the same system. Rentman produces quotations and handles the commercial workflow end to end.
- You sub-rent. When you regularly rent in gear you do not own to fill a job, Rentman models that. Rental IQ assumes the gear is yours.
- You have a team. Multi-user access with roles is built in. Rental IQ is built around a single operator today.
- You need warehouse logistics. Transport planning and serialized check-in and check-out at scale are Rentman's territory.
Where Rental IQ is clearly better
- Per-item ROI. Rental IQ tracks accumulated earnings against purchase price for each asset individually, so you can see which specific items carry your business and which never leave the shelf. Project-level reporting cannot surface this, because a profitable job says nothing about whether every item on it earned its keep.
- Payback tracking. Each item shows how far along it is toward paying for itself, and how long that is likely to take at its current earning rate.
- Depreciation and resale value. Gear loses value on a curve, and camera bodies lose it fast. Rental IQ tracks current resale value alongside earnings so you can see your total position rather than just income.
- Sharegrid history with real numbers. Import your Sharegrid CSV and the 15 percent service fee gets applied automatically. Working from gross rates overstates returns by roughly that margin before discounts, which is how gear that looks profitable turns out not to be.
- Purchase modeling. Before you buy, project what payback would look like at realistic utilization.
- Price and setup time. Free for up to 5 items, $7 per month for unlimited. You can have your inventory in and analyzed the same afternoon.
Who should pick what
Pick Rentman if you run a production or AV company with crew, overlapping jobs, and a warehouse. The operational complexity you are managing is exactly what it was designed for, and no analytics tool substitutes for scheduling.
Pick Rental IQ if you own gear and rent it out, whether on Sharegrid, directly, or as kit fees on jobs you work. Your hard questions are about ownership, not logistics: what to buy next, what to sell, what to charge, and whether any of this is actually working.
Use both if you run a crewed operation and still want per-item ownership economics that project-level reporting cannot give you. They do not conflict, though you would be maintaining records in two systems.
The honest summary
Rentman is a better product than Rental IQ at what Rentman does. It is more mature, broader, and built by a larger team over more years. If you need resource planning, use it.
But a lot of camera owners end up evaluating platforms like Rentman because it is what surfaces when you search for equipment software, then either pay for scheduling and logistics they never touch, or bounce off the complexity and go back to a spreadsheet. Neither outcome answers the question that sent them looking, which is usually some version of is my gear making money.
That question deserves a tool built for it.