A cheap Stocksmith alternative for a kitchen-table business.
Stocksmith is Craftybase renamed — same fifteen-year-old software, now pointed at "proper product businesses" with six figures in revenue and staff in the workshop. If you found it looking for a way to price your work and survive tax season, its plans run $49 to $349/mo, with a $20 single-channel Pro tier in their FAQ. MadeKeeper is the tool for the maker that positioning skips — and it's live today: $19/mo, kept at $19 for as long as you stay, with no order-line meters, ever.
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.
What you actually get for $19
The small-maker core, kept faithfully — plus the things a kitchen-table business needs that a manufacturing tool never bothered with.
True cost per piece
Materials in, a recipe, a batch make with your labor amortized across it — costs roll up automatically.Per-event fair profit
Booth fee, round-trip miles at the IRS rate, and your hours netted against what sold — ranked across your season.Lot tracking, included
Lot numbers follow a material into the batch and out to the sale — on the $19 plan, not a tier away.A Schedule C tax packet
P&L and inventory-at-cost mapped to Schedule C, for any range — year, quarter, month, custom — exported as CSV.Your history comes with you
Export from Stocksmith, drop the files in, and your whole past migrates on its original dates — previewed first, undone in one click. How the migration works →Straight about what's live
Materials and true cost per piece, batch "makes" with your labor amortized in, the suggested-price coach, product variants, sales that drain stock, the market-day quick-sale screen, lot tracking, the was-this-fair-worth-it event math, money-insight reports, multi-location consignment, the cure/best-by heads-up engine, mileage, expenses, and the Schedule C tax packet are all in the app today, with guided setup and the full Craftybase history migration to get you started. So are Etsy order sync, Square card sync, your own shop page, a Buy button on your own Square account, and custom-order requests off a piece you already sold. On the $24 MadeKeeper AI plan you also get receipts, shelves and recipe cards read from a photo — photo reads are on that plan; hand entry is how the $19 shop starts. Still building: your own books answered in plain words, buying a shipping label inside the app, and a best-customers report. MadeKeeper does not send marketing email to your buyers and is not going to: every maker here sends from one shared reputation, and a quote that has to arrive matters more than a mailing list. Nothing above is dressed up as done when it is not. See the full live-vs-building list →
Questions people ask
How much does Stocksmith cost?
Checked 11 August 2026, stocksmith.io/pricing lists Studio at $49/mo ($41 billed annually), Indie at $99/mo, Business at $199/mo, and Growth at $349/mo, 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.
Should I switch off Stocksmith?
Not always. If you already have a Stocksmith account and you were grandfathered at a price that works, and the software fits, there is no reason to move. And if you genuinely run at manufacturing scale — employees, wholesale through Faire, production scheduling — Stocksmith is the better tool and MadeKeeper is not trying to be. The switch makes sense if you are shopping their current ladder for a kitchen-table business, which is a different thing than the software was first built for.