Craftybase (now Stocksmith) vs MakerMargin: an honest comparison

Updated September 14, 2026 · 7 min read · Sources checked on publication

We make a competing product, so treat this accordingly — but the most useful thing we can tell you is where Stocksmith is simply the better choice, and it’s a longer list than you might expect from a competitor. There is also a piece of news that makes most comparisons you’ll find online out of date.

What Stocksmith actually is

It is inventory and manufacturing software for people who make things. Not a fee calculator with inventory bolted on — a real production system. Their own rebrand post explains the name change by saying the product was built for hobby crafters back in 2011, and that somewhere along the way the customer became a manufacturer. That is an accurate description of where the product has gone.

What that buys you, concretely:

• Multi-level bills of materials with unlimited depth — materials into components into finished goods, with production runs that deduct stock automatically.
• Cost of goods calculated from your actual purchase prices, recalculated when a supplier’s price moves. This is a real difference: most tools, ours included, use a cost figure you entered once.
• Batch and lot tracking with traceability reports. If you make cosmetics, skincare, food, candles or supplements, this is often a regulatory requirement rather than a convenience, and nothing in the profit-tracker category touches it.
• Live inventory across several sales channels — Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce, Faire, Etsy, Square, Wix and Squarespace — drawing from one stock pool, with stock pushed back to Shopify, WooCommerce, Etsy and Faire.
• Purchase orders, supplier records and reorder alerts, plus inventory valuation for accounting and a QuickBooks integration.
• Unlimited users with no per-seat fee, role-based permissions and an audit trail — built for the point where you hire someone.

What it costs

The metered unit is order lines per month — each product within an order counts as one line, so a three-item order is three lines. Materials, products and users are unlimited on the published tiers. Every plan has a 14-day trial with no card required, which is more generous than ours.

Prices are quoted in USD; Australian customers are charged GST and EU customers VAT on top, per their terms.

When Stocksmith is the right answer

Plainly, and without hedging — buy theirs instead of ours if:

• You need lot or batch traceability for compliance. This isn’t a preference, it’s a legal requirement in several categories, and we don’t do it.
• You sell on more than one channel and need one shared stock pool. An Etsy-only tool cannot stop a wholesale order overselling your Etsy listings.
• You need live inventory — knowing you have 14 candles left, not just what the last 200 orders earned.
• You have staff, and need permissions and an audit trail.
• You carry real inventory and need valuation reports for accrual accounting.
• Your materials prices move often and you want COGS that updates itself.

When it’s more than you need

The honest counterpoint is that the product has deliberately moved upmarket, and the tiers it actually merchandises start at $99/month. If your question is “which of my Etsy products actually make money after Etsy’s fees and my materials?”, that is a much smaller problem than the one Stocksmith solves — and buying a manufacturing system to answer it means configuring bills of materials, production runs and stock levels you don’t otherwise need.

MakerMargin is $12/month or $89/year, Etsy only, and does one thing: read the order file Etsy already exports, apply every Etsy fee correctly, subtract the materials you entered once, and show true profit per product and per month plus a tax-ready year-end summary. It has no inventory, no multi-channel support and no lot tracking, and it is not trying to acquire them.

The straight version

These are different categories of product that happen to share some customers. Stocksmith is a manufacturing and inventory system for makers who have become small manufacturers. We’re a profit answer for Etsy sellers who want to know which products are worth making — and plenty of people who start with us will eventually outgrow us, at which point their product is the right move.

If you want to test the smaller claim before paying anyone: our free fee calculator costs nothing and needs no account, and the margin guide explains what the number should look like.

Stocksmith plan names, prices, order-line limits, trial terms, integrations and the 1 July 2026 rebrand were read from stocksmith.io’s own pricing, features, integrations and legal pages on 14 September 2026; prices are the USD figures published there. Pro and Studio limits are not published on their site, so none are stated here. MakerMargin is our own product and we are not impartial — the factual claims above are the ones we would want a competitor to get right about us.