A cheap Craftybase alternative,
for makers working on their own.
Craftybase grew up. This is for the rest of us. In 2026 it became Stocksmith and said out loud who it's for now: "$100K+ in revenue, employees in the workshop." If you're the maker that positioning leaves out, MadeKeeper is built for you — and it's live today: $19/mo, kept at $19 for as long as you stay, with no order-line meters — ever.
Honest up front: MadeKeeper is live and taking subscriptions. $19/mo for the whole back office, kept for as long as you stay. 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. Etsy sync, Square sync, lot tracking and the tax packet are live; everything marked Building is on the roadmap.
What actually happened
The facts, dated and sourced, because you should check them yourself. And the first fact cuts against the easy story:
Nobody got kicked out. The rebrand finished on 1 July 2026 — the name switched across the product, craftybase.com's front door now sends you to stocksmith.io, and card statements say STOCKSMITH — but their announcement is explicit: "Your pricing, billing date, and plan are all unchanged." If you're an existing customer and the software fits, you were grandfathered, full stop.
The squeeze came earlier, a step at a time. The Wayback Machine has the receipts, and every snapshot below was re-pulled on 22 August 2026 so you are not taking our word for a screenshot — the links go to the captures, not to us. Entry pricing was $9/mo in August 2019, $24/mo by January 2022, and by January 2026 the headline plan was $49/mo — where it still sits today, on a ladder that now runs to $349. Along the way, basics like automatically deducting materials when something sells were gated above the entry tier. Reviewers called it what it felt like: "Company raised prices by 3x," "price went up x5," an "obvious 'money grab'."
Then the rebrand said the quiet part plainly. Their about page describes the customer they're building for now: "proper product businesses — formal LLCs, $100K+ in revenue, employees in the workshop, selling wholesale through Faire alongside their Shopify store" — software "built and positioned specifically for businesses at operational scale." And from the announcement: "somewhere along the way, the customer became a manufacturer."
Today's ladder runs $49 to $349 — and there's a $20 tier in the FAQ. Checked 11 August 2026: stocksmith.io/pricing lists Studio at $49/mo ($41 billed annually) as the "just getting started" plan, then Indie $99, Business $199, Growth $349. And in their pricing FAQ, in their own words: "If you're running a single sales channel with very low order volume, Pro starts at $20/mo." That is their floor, so plainly — if it fits you and you trust the ladder, it may honestly be your cheapest path today.
None of this is a scandal — it's a fifteen-year-old bootstrapped company (their about page says "4.62 out of 5 on Capterra (241 reviews)") choosing its customer. So this page is for the three groups that choice leaves shopping: makers who already walked during the repricing, makers who read "$100K+ and employees" and know that's a different world, and new makers who just landed on a $49 pricing page for a kitchen-table business.
Seven years of Craftybase pricing, from the archive
Nobody publishes this, so here it is. Four dated captures of their own pricing page, each one linked, so you can read the page they were selling on the day. The interesting column is the third one.
| 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 |
And one line worth reading twice. In that 2019 capture, all three plans — including the $9 Starter — list "Material Lot and BIN Tracking" in their own feature list. Today, in Stocksmith's own pricing FAQ: "The Indie plan … includes batch and lot tracking plus traceability reports." Indie is $99/mo. Two dated quotes, seven years apart; the subtraction is yours to do. On MadeKeeper lot tracking is on the $19 plan, and nothing has been moved out of it into a higher plan since.
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. ⚠ The archive links resolve to the raw captures; the 2019 one is indexed under /pricing — a permalink under /site/plans that we published earlier was wrong and led to a 2021 stub, which is fixed here. Craftybase and Stocksmith are trademarks of their owner (Stocksmith Pty Ltd); MadeKeeper is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by either. Prices change — check theirs before you decide anything.
Side by side, honestly
One column is a mature 15-year-old product that is genuinely good at what it now aims at. The other is a live product. The comparison is about who each one is for, what it costs, and the specific gaps makers reported in the old one. MadeKeeper rows are marked Live now or Building — nothing is dressed up as done when it isn't.
| 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) | Studio $49/mo; main plans $99–$349/mo (a $20 single-channel Pro tier sits in their FAQ) |
| Price trust | The rate never rises on you — no scheduled increase, and no tier above it | Entry price went $9 (2019) → $24 (2022) → $49 headline (2026), per Wayback snapshots |
| 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" |
| Ships today | Live now — the app is live, with free to start. Poke around the live demo | Yes — mature, 15 years in |
| 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 |
| The back office on the $19 plan | Yes — reports, lot tracking, consignment, exports: all in the $19, none of them a tier away | Features spread across Studio → Growth; some basics (auto material deduction) moved up-tier over time |
| 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+ |
Stocksmith positioning, pricing, and which tier a feature sits on: per stocksmith.io's about and pricing pages, read 11 August 2026. Historical prices per the archive.org snapshots linked above (the 2019 one was last read 30 July 2026). Reviewer quotes from public Capterra reviews of Craftybase (capterra.com/p/144117/Craftybase/reviews/) — quotes only; MadeKeeper does not count them for you. All of it may change. Craftybase and Stocksmith are trademarks of their owner (Stocksmith Pty Ltd); MadeKeeper is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by either. MadeKeeper rows are marked live or building; see the full live-vs-building list.
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. Nor has the old site gone anywhere: craftybase.com/craft-inventory-software still loads, still markets selling at craft fairs, and still offers “your free 14-day trial. No credit card required.” — checked 29 August 2026. What changed is who the product is built for, not whether you can sign up. 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.
1. Export your data from Stocksmith
Use the export icon on each list page to download your Materials, Products, Purchases, Manufactures and Orders. Each comes down as a CSV. This is a normal, read-only export — it never touches your Stocksmith account, and you do not have to cancel anything first.2. Drop the files into MadeKeeper
Drag them all in at once. MadeKeeper reads each file by its column signature, so there is no renaming and no manual field mapping — materials, products, purchases, production runs and orders all line themselves up.3. Read the preview before anything is written
One summary of exactly what will be created — how many materials, products, lots, batches and sales — plus a review queue for anything that does not resolve cleanly. Nothing touches your account until you say go.4. Commit, and your past rebuilds on its own dates
Purchases become material lots. Production runs become batches, carrying the material and labor costs Craftybase had already computed, frozen. Orders become sales, on the days they actually happened. It runs in one pass and reverses in one click.5. Rebuild your recipes, with your old costs as the target
The one thing that cannot ride along. MadeKeeper shows your old per-unit cost from the export beside each one, so you know when a rebuilt recipe matches what Craftybase had. Your history is already correct without them — recipes only affect future makes.Why nothing double-counts
It is a fair worry: importing years of purchases, makes and sales sounds like a recipe for inflated stock. It is not, and the reason is small. MadeKeeper never re-runs the make-and-sell engine over your history. Your current stock comes straight from Craftybase's own stock-on-hand figure, and the purchases, batches and sales load purely as records — dated, costed, traceable — that do not touch your on-hand counts. One source for what is on the shelf, one full trail behind it. Your past profit-and-loss and true-cost numbers stay exactly what Craftybase already computed, which is the point: the numbers you filed taxes on do not move.
The three honest gaps
Better you hear them now than find them later.
Recipes. No Craftybase export contains the links between a product and its materials, so recipes cannot come across — you rebuild them, with your old per-unit cost shown as a target. Your history is correct without them.
Historical marketplace fees. Craftybase's order export does not carry Etsy or Shopify fees, so net-after-fees on past sales is approximate. Going forward MadeKeeper captures the real fee on each sale.
Your contact list. MadeKeeper does not keep a customer list yet, so buyers are not imported. Sales still carry their channel and totals — just not the person.
Re-dropping the same files later does not double anything: MadeKeeper matches on Craftybase's own row IDs, so a second import updates in place. And you can run both tools side by side for as long as you like — cancel Stocksmith on your own timing, once you are settled.
Questions makers are asking
What happened to Craftybase?
It rebranded to Stocksmith, completing the switch on 1 July 2026 — same product, same team, same data, and craftybase.com's front door now sends you to stocksmith.io. Existing customers' pricing and plans are unchanged. What changed is the positioning: the brand now aims at small manufacturers with $100K+ in revenue and employees.
Did Craftybase kick out its existing customers?
No. Everyone was grandfathered. The squeeze on small makers happened earlier and gradually — entry pricing went from $9/mo in 2019 to $24/mo in 2022 to a $49/mo headline by 2026, and some basics moved up-tier. Order counting is the same story told in numbers: every plan in the 2019 and 2022 pricing captures read “Unlimited Orders, Materials & Products”, and by the January 2026 capture the plans were metered by order line. Many of the makers shopping for alternatives left during that stretch, not on rebrand day.
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's the best Craftybase alternative for small makers?
MadeKeeper is built to be exactly that: the small-maker core Craftybase was loved for — materials, recipes, cost per piece, sales in one place, tax-time reports — plus per-event fair profit, batch makes with labor amortized, a suggested-price coach, lot tracking, money reports, and consignment, all on the $19/mo plan, with no order-line meters and nothing moved out of it into a higher plan later. (There is one optional add-on, MadeKeeper AI at $24/mo, for reading receipts and shelves from a photo.) And your full Craftybase history migrates over, previewed and undoable. The app is live now; start free or walk the live demo first. Etsy sync, Square sync and your own shop page are all live too; what is still being built is buying a shipping label inside the app and a best-customers report; the features page marks which is which.
Does MadeKeeper do everything Craftybase did?
The small-maker core is all here and live — and a few things Craftybase gated up-tier, like lot tracking and consignment, sit on MadeKeeper's $19 plan. What MadeKeeper does not do is the manufacturer's half: BOMs, production scheduling, wholesale operations. If you need those, Stocksmith is the better tool. MadeKeeper is built for the booth and the kitchen table.
What other Craftybase alternatives are there?
Inventora is the other maker-specific one — it puts a “Compare to Craftybase” link in its own footer, so it is shopping in the same aisle on purpose. Checked 29 August 2026, its pricing page lists Starter at “$19 /mo Billed Yearly” — 500 materials, 500 product variants, 2 integrations — with a 7-day free trial, and its homepage lists integrations with Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce, Square, Wix and Squarespace. Read that $19 carefully: it is their annual-billing rate, where MadeKeeper's $19 is month-to-month. If a channel sync you cannot work without is what decides this for you today, go and look at it. MadeKeeper's argument is the Saturday, not the sync.
The $19 plan
$19/mo for the whole back office, kept for as long as you stay. The shop stays free for cost a piece and one fair, with no product cap; the tax packet, Etsy and Square, and more fairs are the $19. You keep that rate for as long as you stay subscribed. Given the history that brought you to this page, plainly: there is no scheduled increase and no tier above this one to be moved up into. No order-line meters, ever — a good month should never raise your bill. It's written into the pricing promise.
The app is live — go use it. The small-maker core is running today: materials and cost per piece, per-event profit, mileage, the tax packet. Makers' answers to "what do you make?" set the order for what MadeKeeper builds next. Start free — no card to start. MadeKeeper asks for one when you subscribe, not before.
It is young, so expect a rough edge here and there — tell me when you hit one and I will fix it. Every MadeKeeper claim on this page is marked live or building, and every claim about Craftybase/Stocksmith is sourced and linked above. That's the deal.
No card to start. $19 for the whole back office, kept for as long as you stay.
Keep reading
The head-to-head and the migration walkthrough used to be separate pages; they are both on this one now, above. What is still worth its own page is the rename — and the version of this written in your craft's own words.
Longer reads, in the guides: what the Stocksmith rename actually changed · the price breakdown, plan by plan · exporting your data from Craftybase · the switch, step by step at length
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