IoTPortal vs TagoIO, ThingsBoard and Datacake: an honest comparison for installers
Choosing a multi-tenant IoT platform is a business decision, not just a technical one. Here's what we found digging into the competition - without overselling what we have or hiding what we still lack.
Search "multi-tenant IoT platform" and you'll find a long list of options, most solving the same problem in similar ways: separating each client's data, authenticating devices by certificate instead of shared passwords, and automating alerts. Where they actually differ is price, how early they charge for white-labeling, and how isolated one client really is from the rest.
TagoIO / TagoRUN
A serious platform with years in the market. TagoIO's own blog admits the cost can get out of range for small teams - their reseller model (TagoRUN) has historically started with a setup fee in the thousands of dollars before the monthly cost even kicks in. Strong if you already have a large integrator's budget; heavy if you're just starting to resell.
ThingsBoard
Open-source at its core, which earns real technical trust. But white-labeling - what you actually need to resell under your own name - is only available from the paid "Pilot" tier up (well above what our most expensive plan costs). On the free or entry tier, your clients see the ThingsBoard name, not yours.
Ubidots
Reasonable entry price, but with a real ceiling: the number of clients/organizations you can manage is capped before you have to move to a custom Enterprise plan (read: a sales call, no public pricing). If your plan is to grow past a handful of clients, that ceiling arrives fast.
Datacake and Kilo
Datacake offers white-labeling starting at a more accessible price point than the above, with a large library of pre-built device templates - strong if your hardware catalog is varied. Kilo is the newest and closest to our Starter tier on price (free up to a few devices, flat after that) - worth a look if price is your top priority and you don't need a rules engine or Node-RED.
Where IoTPortal fits
We're not competing to be "an IoT platform for everything" - AWS IoT, Azure IoT, and the bigger platforms above already own that ground. Our spot is more specific: the stack a technical installer or consultant - someone who already knows what Mosquitto, Node-RED, InfluxDB and Grafana are - would otherwise have to build and secure themselves for every new client, already built and multi-tenant from day one.
Its own certificate per device
Real X.509 authentication on every plan, from the cheapest one - not an enterprise-tier upsell, which is how most competitors handle it.
No setup fee, unlimited clients
Starting at $17/mo flat, no per-client charge or account cap - a combination none of the above offer together from their entry tier.
Two tiers, not one
A basic rules engine included on every plan, plus Node-RED in a fully dedicated container per Admin for anyone who needs more - most competitors only offer one tier of automation.
Where we still have real ground to cover: configurable custom domain/subdomain branding (we're building it), and we don't yet have public customer case studies to show track record - something the rest of this list does have. If that matters to you today, it's worth knowing before you decide.