Comparison
Duro vs Oracle, and where ManyRows fits
These two sit at opposite ends of the range, and a shortlist with both on it usually means the size of the problem has not been settled yet. Oracle is a full enterprise system that reaches the shop floor and the ERP. Duro is a focused cloud tool that gets a bill of materials out of your CAD package and into a component library. Deciding between them is really deciding how much system you actually need, and that is worth answering before either sales conversation starts. The third column is the middle most teams turn out to want.
The Duro and Oracle columns below say what each product is built for, in its own terms, taken from our full write-up of Duro and Oracle Agile PLM. We have not run the two against each other, and nothing here claims one beats the other. Read it as two self-descriptions side by side, with ours in the third column.
| Capability | Duro | Oracle | ManyRows |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entity types, and base types over them | Hardware categories | Classes and subclasses | Both, in a form |
| One field, reused across types, tuned per type | Category specs | Per-class attributes | Yes |
| Derived fields that follow a reference | Not its focus | Yes | Reverse and lookup |
| Relationships that carry their own data | Not its focus | Yes | The link is a record |
| The BOM line is a record you design | Line attributes | Structure attributes | Yes |
| Effectivity on two axes at once | Revisions | Dates and unit numbers | Dates and unit numbers |
| Someone to build the model with you | Guided onboarding | Implementation partner | Free on Pro and above |
| Multi-level BOM | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Where-used, multi-level | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Approved alternates per line | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Formulas with co-products and by-products | Not its focus | Yes | Yes |
| Fixed vs variable line quantities | Not its focus | Yes | Yes |
| Several BOM planes per product | One structure | Yes | Yes |
| Import a BOM from a CAD or spreadsheet export | Built in | Via integration | Built in |
| Delegation and departed-approver handover | Approvals | Yes | Yes |
| Immutable revisions with the sign-off manifest | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Several change requests released as one decision | One at a time | Yes | Yes |
| Test rounds with verdicts and dispositions | Not its focus | Yes | Yes |
| Measured values against a spec | Not its focus | Yes | Yes |
| Costed BOM with wastage and landed cost | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Lot genealogy and recall trace | Not its focus | Yes | Yes |
| Price you can work out yourself | Quoted per seat | Quoted per deployment | Listed on the site |
| Free trial | Trial | Through sales | 7 days, no card |
| Export the whole project and re-import it | Export tooling | Export tooling | One request |
| Full REST API on every record | Included | Included | Included |
| Outbound webhooks when something changes | Via API | Via integration platform | Built in, signed |
| Custom development when something is genuinely missing | Roadmap request | Partner-built extension | Free on Pro and above |
When one of these two is the right answer
If you need deep ERP and shop-floor integration, regulatory submissions, or a rollout across thousands of seats and dozens of sites, Oracle is the more complete system and the honest recommendation. If your bottleneck is getting a CAD bill of materials in without re-keying, with a component library that already understands parametric part specs, Duro is purpose-built for that and further along than we are. ManyRows is for the ground between: real change control, revisions and multi-level BOMs, on a data model you define, without an implementation project in front of it.
Questions
- How do we tell which end of this range we are actually at?
- A rough test: if the change you are worried about has to reach a shop floor, a regulator or an ERP, you are at the Oracle end and should scope it properly. If the pain is that two people hold different versions of the same bill of materials and both are confident, you are at the other end, and the fix is governance rather than a manufacturing stack.
- Is ManyRows just a lighter Oracle?
- No, and framing it that way would be misleading. It is a typed product data platform where you define the entity types and fields, then switch on the machinery each one needs. That is a different shape to a suite you configure, not a reduced version of one.
- We build hardware. Is Duro the safer pick?
- For CAD ingest and parametric component data, it is built for exactly that. Where we would put ourselves in the conversation is if the hardware is not the only product line, or if you want change requests with named approvers and immutable revisions over the top of it, on pricing you can read without a call.
- What does governance look like without an enterprise rollout?
- A change request opens a working copy you can edit as long as you like. It routes to a named approver roster and applies in one transaction or not at all, and every applied change welds a numbered revision with the approval reason attached that nothing in the product can rewrite. It is opt-in per entity type, so the types that do not warrant it stay a straight edit.
- Can we start small and see?
- That is the point of a free plan and a seven day trial with no card. Model one product type, import a real bill of materials, and judge it on your own data rather than a demo dataset.