Craftybase Reviews

Pros

Designed for solo crafters or small businesses
Affordable pricing
Accommodates both raw materials and components I manufacture (many small business products are for retailers who buy and resell finished goods)

Cons

Does not permit copying recipes for components, just final products
Does not generate pick lists to manufacture orders
Must set up for either creating batches for inventory or creating products for specific orders, and I have different product lines that fit one model or the other but can't justify dual subscriptions to set them up as separate businesses
Not integrated with Xero for accounting

Pros

I think it has many perks for handmade vendors who are small - it's tough to scale up but until you do, the recipes feature is perfect for keeping track of components. and the platform is really user friendly and designed well.

Cons

Quality is amazing, but pricing not so much. For many years it was reasonable but recently they raised it too high and the benefits do not equal the pricing increase. I have been with them for so long that moving at this point is difficult, and requires inventory counts and closing my shop to move it over, so I have yet to move. I felt like legacy clients had quite a shock when the price went up x5 (literally my price went up that much without exaggeration). It is tough to recommend to people I know because once you do the work to enter all your items and create the recipes, moving it when they can raise prices unexpectedly is why most people do not trust subscription-based services.

Pros

It accurately tracks ingredients for my recipes

Cons

It does not sync with BigCommerce, there is a lag MOST of the time when updating information, the price is outrageous compared to other options on the market today

Pros

I like how easy it is to use and helps with product manufacturing, inventory control, sales and expenses.

Cons

Sometimes it can be very detailed, and while that is good, at first it was something I had a hard time with.

Pros

The ease of setting up everything and the user interface is very friendly and easy to navigate.

Cons

We had some trouble with the "Product Bundle" process when compenentizing our products, a lot of our wholesale sales channels include "Tester" products which is the same as the product. This created duplicates of products in Crafty which resulted in us having to spend more time fixing issues.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Craftybase

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Craftybase

Pros

It's online and supports multiple sales channels. It pulls items out of my inventory and has been a life/marriage saver at tax time (I'm a sole proprietorship) and it's ease of use for tallying annual reports is fabulous. I do handcrafts so QuickBooks really is not designed for this industry.

Cons

The tech support is great and they work really quickly to get back to you in short time. In an ideal world, it would be 24/7, but their response time is great.

Pros

It is affordable for start ups compare to the bigger systems like trunk and gets the job done.

Cons

I hate the integration with the sales channels as it is very limited. I have been waiting for them to integrate with bigcommerce for 2 years now and their integration with square is horrible because it doesn’t bring in the items purchased and customer details. Instead it comes as a custom order and so it does pull from the inventory which means I have to delete the imported sales and re - enter it so it reduces the inventory. Time consuming.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Craftybase

Reasons for Switching to Craftybase

Pros

-automatically imports orders from multiple channels
-automatically creates manufactures for products and decreases material stock levels
-keeps track of all my expenses
-provides tons of various reports to help during tax time
-customer service is easy to reach and always helpful

Cons

There's nothing I don't like about craftybase!

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Craftybase

Pros

The power in this is amazing! I can search through all my materials by color or fiber content or size or date purchased, etc. It's a lifesaver for me to be able to see my materials with photos and all the data I need.

The recipes/manufactures and the way it calculates COGS is super powerful. I can start typing the name of the material and enter the amount — and it calculates the actual cost of materials used based on date of manufacture. Very helpful for makers who have some supply left of an old lower price and new supply purchased at a higher price. Craftybase will average the cost to figure out what your current COGS is.

Cons

Being a cloud software, it requires a subscription, which is a bit pricey. And there have been periods of downtime (though they communicate well about outages in the Facebook group).

It takes a while to set everything up, and there is a bit of a learning curve.

Pros

Ability to integrate with other platforms and easily track sales and expenses. Actually costing out to get COGS is definitely high on the list.

Cons

There are some limits to reporting - there are some improvements that can be made in that area.

Pros

We love the ease of use with Craftybase. We have a ton of items that we sell indiviually as ingredients, as well as combined to make other products on our shelves. Craftybase allows us to build these "components" as well keeping track of each individual ingredient. This is by far the most accurate and easiest way we've found to keep track of inventory, and recipes.

Cons

There is a bit of a learning curve when first starting out, but that is mostly because we had to learn the terms that Craftybase uses, and the functionality behind some of the features. There are tons of good walk-throughs in the system, as well as good examples. Customer service isn't the most reachable. If you have a question, it may take a day to hear back, and they only have email. There is no live chat, or phone support. There's no onboarding calls or dedicated support staff to really help you hit the ground running, so you'll have to spend some time really learning the system, and try and send questions that you don't need immediate answers to.

Pros

It has helped us realize our disorganization with materials and where we may have spent unnecessary money. Also has been an amazing help with ensuring that we are charging properly for our product.

Cons

The only issue we have had is not a problem with Craftybase but more with how we run our business. It did take some time for me to understand how everything connected within the program, but they do have good tutorials, which I should have read ahead of time. We discovered during our set up that we were not consistent across our sales channels with product names which caused extra work on our part but was again our fault. The program has made us think a lot more about the business side and organizing everything.

Pros

I like being the robustness of the reports craftybase offers. I like how it helps me to track my inventory in a detailed way. I like how it helps me figure out the cost of my item and helps me to automatically figure out the least amount I should charge for it on each channel. It integrates with my accounts on amazon and shopify, which makes inventory a breeze.

Cons

I don't love paying every month. Also, recently, I had to do some projections for how much of something to buy. I'd like it to have a feature that would look at my average usage of something over the last year, per month, and how much was currently in stock to tell me how much I should by.

Pros

The software does the thing a small manufacturer like me needs most: keeps an inventory of supplies, manufactures, etc. It does it well, for the most part.

It also handles multiple sales channels well, and gives me a good idea of costs.

Cons

The difficulty comes when you, say, want to sell off some of your inventory, or make a gift basket from your manufactured goods, or sometimes sell a pack of two instead of one. The software does not handle that well at all.

It also isn't a full-fledged bookeeping program (you can't issue a credit, for instance). I'm not sure it needs to be, but it is a caveat.

Pros

I love that I can track materials I use and that each material can be linked to several different products. I can quickly see which materials I need to buy.
I also love that I do not have to manually enter any of my sales and my daily accounting is done automatically. I can easily compare sales this month to sales this month last year without having to do any calculations on my own.

Cons

There is a lot of set up to get the materials all entered and then assign them to the products. I sell over 100 products in my shop with each one requiring many different materials. By the time I had every material entered and connected to all my products I had already discontinued some products and added others. My shop is a little too complex to be handled by just myself. To make this software work for me I would need to hire someone to help with updating the inventory numbers, yet I am to small to afford help.
This software would be perfect for a shop with 10-30 products if the products only use a couple of materials each.
I also don't like that I have to manually attach my shipping costs to the correlating order.

Pros

I love their customer service. Whenever I have questions or wants, I just reach out and they are quick to respond and very helpful

Cons

I wish the inventory synced with Shopify so that my inventory everywhere was correct.

Pros

Affordable with different tiers and features. Great inventory program for small handmade business. Integrates well with e-commerce platforms and Etsy. Great response time with customer service. Web based and accessible from any computer. Ease of running different reports.

Cons

Would like to see some additional customization options with bundles/gift boxes and recipes. Would like to be able to add amounts of materials in more than one type of measurement (metric, US customary units) Also more customizations with reports

Pros

Great functionality! It has everything I need to run my handcrafted skincare business. I can sync my eCommerce channels with my inventory and keep track of raw materials and packaging materials, whole loaves of soap (product components) down to individual bars(products). Craftybase also gives me monthly reports for local sales tax purposes. Thank you for making my life easier!

Cons

It takes a little getting used to, but once you have everything set up it runs smoothly. Searching the help section is easy and you can always reach out and ask for help.

Pros

Craftybase integrates almost seamlessly with both Etsy and Shopify. Every time I have had a question or issue, custom service is super helpful and quick. I’ve been using the software for over 5 years, and over that time the developers have listened to community feedback and greatly increased the efficiency and functionality of the software. Once you understand the terminology, you can manipulate the software to benefit your business needs.

Cons

Could use more bulk edit functionality, and the ability to back edit where a change in a material is automatically reflect in all product recipes and all previous manufactures.

Pros

i like the reports you can run like schedule C, but I found the numbers to be off from Etsy.

Cons

Company raised prices by 3x while my business took a massive hit. Could not believe how much more they wanted for what little i did.

Pros

I love the ease and accuracy of this program. It helps keep our inventory in check, along with organizing our business I would recommend this program to anyone and everyone!! I tried a handful of different methods and programs and this is by far my favorite!

Cons

The pricing may be a little steep, but I am so happy with the product, that I am willing to pay the price.

Pros

My absolute favorite thing about the software is the ease of tracking inventory levels. Not only finished products but also supplies.

Cons

It's not possible to change a classification/category once you create it. Inventoriable vs non-inventoriable or one product type vs another

Pros

It is very easy to use and is much cheaper than similiar software.

Cons

So far there is nothing I do not like about this software. I have had no problems and have not had to call customer service.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Craftybase

Pros

It promises a lot. Looks nice simple and clean

Cons

Expensive, poor integrations, no cuctomizations at all. Simple errors not fixed tru years

Pros

The affordability and ability to keep track of materials used.

Cons

I would like it to be a little easier to figure out how to invoice for specific variations (expiration dates and lot numbers) of product.

Alternatives Considered