Craftybase alternative for solo makers — free to start, $19/mo flat
If you need a Craftybase alternative that stays free to start and $19/mo flat with no order-line meters, MadeKeeper is built for the solo maker Stocksmith’s “$100K+ / employees” positioning left out.
No card to start. The shop stays free for cost a piece and one fair — no product cap. The tax packet, Etsy and Square, and more fairs are the $19.
Side by side, honestly
| MadeKeeper | Stocksmith (was Craftybase) | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Small makers — craft fairs, farmers markets, Etsy | "$100K+ in revenue, employees in the workshop" (their about page) |
| Price | $19/mo, kept at $19 for as long as you stay (see the pricing promise). Everything is in the $19; MadeKeeper AI is the one optional add-on at $24/mo | Studio $49/mo; main plans $99–$349/mo (a $20 single-channel Pro tier sits in their FAQ) |
| Order-line meters | Never. A good month should not raise your software bill | Every plan in their 2019 and 2022 pricing captures read "Unlimited Orders, Materials & Products." Today's published tiers meter them — 1,000/mo on Indie, up to 5,000 on Business, 5,000+ on Growth, and their FAQ defines the unit: "Each product within an order counts as one order line" |
| Materials, recipes & cost per piece | Live now — the core, kept faithfully: materials in, recipe, make, costs roll up automatically | Yes — automatic cost-per-piece math is their most-loved feature, and it's earned |
| Setup before you see value | Live now — a guided ten-minute wizard, or paste a sheet / drop a CSV or Excel file with its columns auto-mapped. Every import previews before it writes and undoes in one click | Reviewers on getting started: "I need like a week to set up," "overwhelming" |
| Bring your Craftybase history over | Live now — not just a catalog: your full history migrates, purchases to lots, production runs to batches, orders to sales, all on their original dates — previewed first, one click to undo | Its own export is your way out; MadeKeeper reads it back in |
| Craft-fair / per-event profit | Live now — booth fee, miles, hours netted to profit per fair, ranked, so you know which markets to keep. Free calculator too | Their site covers the craft-fair day — "record your craft show sales in seconds, reconcile your stock automatically." No page found where it nets a booth fee, the drive and your hours into what that Saturday actually earned |
| Stock counts pushed back to channels | Building — finished-goods counts pushed back up to your shop | A Capterra reviewer describes it as one-way: "no additional sync option that pushes product counts up to Shopify, Amazon, Etsy." Their pricing page does list automatic stock sync from the Business tier ($199/mo) — worth asking them what it covers |
| Off the recipe path | Forgiving by design — buy-and-resell items and selling off raw materials are first-class, live today | Recipe-centric; reviewers say it fits "handmade which uses set recipes without a lot of variation" |
| Mileage & Schedule C packet | Live now — drives at the IRS rate; the packet maps to Schedule C with inventory at cost, for any range (year, quarter, month, custom), and exports as CSV | Schedule C reporting is a strength ("life/marriage saver at tax time" — Capterra reviewer) |
| Lot tracking & recall traceability | Live now — lot numbers follow a material into the batch and out to the sale, on the $19 plan | Yes — batch & lot tracking and traceability reports start on the Indie tier ($99/mo), per their pricing |
| Money-insight reports | Live now — best-sellers, most-profitable pieces, channel mix, revenue over time, all included on the $19 plan | Reporting is a genuine strength — mature, and part of why makers stayed |
| Maturity | Young. Shipped 2026, and it shows in places — tell me where and I fix it | Fifteen years in — "We've been building this alongside our customers for fifteen years," and the edge cases show it. This is a real advantage and it is theirs |
| Recipes & bills of materials | Flat product-to-materials recipes, rebuilt after a migration because no Craftybase export contains them | Yes — multi-level component assemblies and sub-assemblies, which is the manufacturer's half of the job |
| Wholesale operations | Not building it | Yes — their about page names "selling wholesale through Faire alongside their Shopify store" as who they build for |
| BOMs & production scheduling | Not building it — we're not for manufacturers | Yes — scheduling on Business+ |
MadeKeeper rows are marked Live now or Building — nothing is dressed up as done when it isn't. Stocksmith positioning, pricing, and which tier a feature sits on: per stocksmith.io's about and pricing pages, read 11 August 2026. Reviewer quotes from public Capterra reviews of Craftybase (capterra.com/p/144117/Craftybase/reviews/) — quotes only; MadeKeeper does not count them for you. Craftybase and Stocksmith are trademarks of their owner (Stocksmith Pty Ltd); MadeKeeper is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by either.
Seven years of Craftybase pricing, from the archive
Nobody publishes this, so here it is.
| The capture | Cheapest plan, billed monthly | What that page said about order volume |
|---|---|---|
| 2 August 2019 | Starter, $9/mo — "Our basic plan with no sales channels." Above it: Pro $15, Studio $25 | "Unlimited Orders, Materials & Products" — on all three plans. The phrase "order line" does not appear on the page |
| 19 January 2022 | Pro, $24/mo — "Best for solo businesses starting out and selling on one sales channel" | "Unlimited Orders, Materials & Products" — still on every plan, and "order line" still appears nowhere on it |
| 4 January 2026 | Studio, $49/mo, with a $20 Pro tier beneath it | Metered by plan: "Order Lines /mo … 25 250 1,000 5,000 5,000+" across Pro, Studio, Indie, Business and Growth |
| Today (read 11 Aug 2026) | Studio, $49/mo ($41 billed annually); then Indie $99, Business $199, Growth $349. Their FAQ: "Pro starts at $20/mo" | Metered on the published tiers — 1,000/mo on Indie, up to 5,000 on Business, 5,000+ on Growth |
Sources, in order: archive.org captures of craftybase.com/pricing at 2 August 2019, 19 January 2022 and 4 January 2026, each linked above and all three re-pulled 22 August 2026; and stocksmith.io/pricing, read 11 August 2026. Quotes are verbatim from those pages. Prices change — check theirs before you decide anything.
To be fair — when you should stay put
You're already a Craftybase customer
Their announcement says your pricing, billing date, and plan are unchanged by the rebrand. If the software fits and the price you're grandfathered at is fair, there's no fire to flee. This page is for makers shopping at the new prices, not a reason to leave working software.
You're actually a small manufacturer
Employees, wholesale through Faire, production batches, lot numbers for compliance — that's exactly who Stocksmith says it's for now, and fifteen years of product shows. MadeKeeper isn't building any of that. Stay, and godspeed.
If you do move: bring the whole history, free
Leaving usually means one of two bad options — retype years of records, or start from zero and lose your past. Neither is necessary. Export from Stocksmith, drop the files in, and your history rebuilds itself on the dates it really happened. It previews before it writes, it undoes in one click, and it costs nothing beyond the plan. Most small makers are done in an afternoon.
Questions makers are asking
How much does Craftybase (now Stocksmith) cost?
Checked 11 August 2026: Studio $49/mo ($41 billed annually), Indie $99, Business $199, Growth $349 — with order lines metered on the published tiers (1,000/mo on Indie, up to 5,000 on Business, 5,000+ on Growth). Their pricing FAQ also says Pro "starts at $20/mo" for a single sales channel at very low order volume.
What does not come across from a Craftybase export?
Three honest gaps. Recipes and bills of materials — no Craftybase export contains the links between a product and its materials, so you rebuild them, with your old per-unit cost shown as a target. Historical marketplace fees — the order export does not include Etsy or Shopify fees, so net-after-fees on past sales is approximate; going forward MadeKeeper captures the real fee per sale. And contacts — MadeKeeper does not keep a customer list yet, so buyers are not imported. Materials, products, current stock, purchases, makes and sales all come over.