What is the best ERP for small manufacturers?

Start with your shop, not a vendor list. Write one line for each criterion below, then score every candidate against it. The right one scores well on the three or four that matter most in your shop.

• Shop type and headcount: job shop, repeat production or assembly, and how many people log in daily.
• Budget: what you can pay each month, and once for setup and training.
• Job costing: whether you need real material and labour cost per job, or only a stock count.
• Customisation: the fields, forms and rules you must change without a developer.
• Data ownership: whether you can export every record at any time and leave without penalty.
• Support: who answers, how fast, and in which time zone.

These are the names that come up most often, listed with what each is generally known for. Deployment matters more than feature lists at this stage, because it decides who looks after the servers.

Most mismatches come from size. Mid-market suites assume a project team, an implementation partner and months of configuration. A 15 person shop has none of that, so the system either stalls or runs half set up. Small-shop tools go the other way: quick to start, but some stop at inventory and never reach job costing or quality records. Decide which end you are closer to before any demo. A shop that expects to pass 100 users within three years can justify a bigger system now.

Pick three candidates that pass the size filter. Give each the same ten real records: five items, two bills of materials, two work orders and one purchase order. Ask the vendor to walk those records through the system rather than a demo dataset. Ask for an export of what you entered. Then price three years rather than one, including the users you will add. The system that handled your records without a workaround and gave your data back is usually the answer.