About Craftybase
Craftybase pricing
Craftybase does not have a free version but does offer a free trial. Craftybase paid version starts at US$39.00/month.
Alternatives to Craftybase
Craftybase Reviews
Feature rating
- Industry: Retail
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
It's what every artisan needs
Once I understood that it takes time and effort to start using (and then keep using) Craftybase, it became much easier to run my business. I actually let Craftybase run ME. The customer service is top-notch (although I do wish they didn't run on UK time) and I'd be lost without it.
Pros
I love this software because the developers understand how a small manufacturing business works. They don't load you down with confusing features - just what you need when you need it. It has helped me get completely organized with raw materials, track all production, determine pricing and just basically keep everything straight. If you're a maker and you're not using it, you need to be.
Cons
I sometimes feel the software tries to be all things to all people. I really don't see why the accounting aspects are necessary and feel they are sometimes lacking.
- Industry: Retail
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Weekly for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Big learning curve but well thought out
I have faith that Craftybase will prove to be the right option for us. I think that once I *do* have it set up to fit our particular business, that it will be immensely helpful and far superior to the excel spreadsheets we were using.
Pros
The price point is excellent for the functions that you get in return. You can get technical support through email and they are quick to respond and very professional with their help.
Cons
Switching over from my previous inventory system to CraftyBase has been a HUGE learning curve. It's taken me so many hours of research and back and forth communication with their customer service team to try and set things up for my businesses particular situation. I'm still not properly set up after exchanging over 40 emails with them (wish they offered a tier where you could get direct phone support with an approved Craftybase consultant).
Reasons for Choosing Craftybase
We needed a more complex inventory management system that synced up directly to our sales platform and handled a larger variety of functions and calculations.Switched From
Microsoft ExcelReasons for Switching to Craftybase
The pricing was FAR better than any of the others and seemed to offer lots of features for the price.- Industry: Luxury Goods & Jewelry
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Weekly for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Great product but terrrible customer support
None, I was hoping to use it as an essential took to keeping out business in check. I don't know how but if you look at programs like Shopify - they offer such great support and for the same price. I believe you could offer better support if you could grow your business but how fast is the business growing if you have people like me just giving up.
Pros
I loved the fact that it had all the categories I needed to keep up with production and material use.
Cons
What I didn't like is the 24 to 48 hours to get a response and the fact that the data base goes down. I have a small team. Having to wait 24 to 48 hours to sort something out isn't feasible. We kept just going manual and I finally decided the time required to keep it up to date just wasn't worth it if we kept having stumbling blocks.
- Industry: Fine Art
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Weekly for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Solid Product with a Moderate Learning Curve
Overall it's been good. I would recommend it to any other vendor if asked. There is absolutely some time required upfront to get it going but once that's done the automation saves me an hour hour or two each and every event we do. My time has value and even at minimum wage in my area I don't need but an event or three to have paid for the subscription each month. I've been that vendor making paper notes of sales at events then taking them home to file and process and after setting this up I wouldn't go back.Craftybase also tracking my COGS, inventory, helping with tax forms and tracking my expenses is just icing on the cake. Absolute time savers that free me up for other tasks to help grow my business. Each piece by itself doesn't sound like much of a savings but they add up and they add up faster than I thought they would. For us increasing our sales almost 100% over last year just means we buy more materials and setup a few extra manufactures to deepen our stock levels. The actual paperwork did not increase 100%. For the system auto-importing 200 sales a month is the same as 100 sales a month. The more sales we make the more time Crafybase saves us.
Pros
Sales integration and inventory are the biggest winners. Put some thought into and setup the SKU's correctly across your channels and a majority of the paperwork is taken care of for you. That's worth hours after each event. If you have relatively static items building a recipe for manufacturing inventory is almost as easy. Once those are seeded correctly it's just a minute to record that you made X number of an item. COGS is updated, stocks are updated and expenses are tracked.
Cons
Learning curve was moderately steep. This wasn't unexpected as my day job is in setting up production systems so I have an idea of the complexity that is needed. Expect to spend a moderate amount of time building and then probably heavily modifying what you setup that you thought was correct. You just don't know what you don't know until you start using it and realizing how it actually goes together as an entire system.Depending on your business type some shortcuts might be needed. We do jewelry sales and a variety of categories needed to be combined for our sanity. If I tracked each and every bead, gem or finding that we used we would have nearly 2,000 unique entries in the materials tab. As an example in our case some additional thought and planning had to be devised to combine all the generic ear hook styles together and build them as a trackable unit in grams. This would be repeated for the several hundred bead styles we use. Glass, gemstone, crystal, wood, 4mm, 6mm, 8mm, 10mm etc. We aren't trying to track the 10's of thousands of beads we inventory so they are categorized by price points and then inventoried and tracked by weight.These aren't quite con's just a reality of having moved into an inventory system after a year of not having a proper one and the width of material options that we had. A business that sold soap might only have a couple dozen oil options, some jars and wicks to track. This would be much easier to directly track specific items.
- Industry: Retail
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Weekly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Perfect for small craft business owners!
Craftybase is essential to helping me run my Handmade Etsy-based small business in addition to my 9-5 job, and everyday duties of 'homeowner', 'wife' and 'mom'. It is a great tool to streamline major business functions.
Pros
I can enter all my materials (in my case: various beads, wire, packaging materials, etc) and even set "recipes" for popular items so that when someone purchases an item, I can "Manufacture" it in the software and my materials are automatically deducted according to the recipe I set. I then get warnings anytime a specific material runs low. It's literally hands-off inventory management!
Cons
It's a LOT of data to input in the beginning. The time invested up front is well worth it though!
