Sortly is a clean, well-built inventory app — great for counting stock and scanning barcodes. But if you make products, you need more than quantities. You need to know what each product costs to make, whether your prices cover those costs, and what your COGS are at tax time. That's where Craftybase comes in.
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Heads up: We make Craftybase, so we're obviously biased. We've tried to be fair — including being upfront about where Sortly genuinely does a better job. If Sortly fits your needs, that's completely fine.
Credit where it's due — Sortly is a polished app with real strengths.
Sortly's folder-and-photo approach makes it easy to find things. If your inventory is mostly static — equipment, supplies, office items — it's genuinely one of the most approachable tools out there.
Sortly's mobile scanning and custom QR label printing work well for tracking physical assets across locations. If your main job is "find it and count it," Sortly handles that smoothly.
Sortly works without internet and syncs when you reconnect — useful for warehouses, job sites, or anywhere Wi-Fi is unreliable. Craftybase is cloud-based and requires a connection.
You can be up and running in minutes. Snap photos, create folders, start counting. For simple asset tracking, the setup curve is genuinely low.
Sortly was built for asset tracking, not product businesses. Here's where the gap shows.
If you make candles, soap, jewellery, or any handmade product, you need to define what goes into each item and calculate the cost. Sortly tracks quantities — how many of something you have — but it can't tell you what that thing costs to make. No recipes, no material breakdowns, no cost-per-unit calculation. You're back to a spreadsheet for the most important number in your business.
When tax time arrives, you need your cost of goods sold for Schedule C. Sortly doesn't calculate COGS — it doesn't know what your products cost to make, so it can't tell you what you spent producing the ones you sold. Most makers on Sortly end up doing this calculation manually, which is exactly the kind of midnight spreadsheet work that software should be handling for you.
Sortly doesn't connect to the sales channels makers actually use. No Etsy sync. No Shopify. No Amazon. If you sell online, your orders don't flow in, your stock doesn't adjust, and your costs don't update. You're manually entering sales data — or just not tracking them at all.
Sortly lets you add a single price field per item — but it doesn't track how material costs change over time, how much of each material goes into each product, or how price increases from your suppliers affect your margins. For a business where materials are your biggest expense, that's a significant blind spot.
Comparing Sortly Advanced ($29/mo) vs Craftybase Pro ($24/mo) — the entry point for small businesses on each platform.
| Sortly — Advanced | Craftybase — Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly price (billed yearly) | $29/mo | $24/mo |
| Recipe / BOM costing | Not available | ✔️ Multi-level recipes with cost roll-up |
| Automatic COGS calculation | Not available | ✔️ GAAP-compliant, tax-ready reports |
| Cost per unit tracking | Single price field only | ✔️ Auto-calculated from materials + labour |
| Etsy / Shopify / Amazon sync | Not available | ✔️ All channels on all plans |
| Material inventory tracking | General item tracking (no material/product distinction) | ✔️ Separate materials, components & products |
| Auto-deduct materials on manufacture | Not available | ✔️ Batch manufacture with auto-deduction |
| Barcode / QR scanning | ✔️ With custom label printing | ✔️ Barcode scanning |
| Offline mobile access | ✔️ Full offline sync | Not available — cloud-based |
| Built for handmade / artisan makers | No — general asset tracking | ✔️ Purpose-built for makers since 2015 |
Pricing reflects publicly available data as of March 2026. Sortly's yearly plans currently offer a 50% first-year discount on select tiers.
The #1 reason makers switch from Sortly: they need to know what their products actually cost to make. Craftybase tracks every material, every batch, every labour hour and rolls it up into a real cost per unit automatically. When your supplier raises prices, your product costs update across the board.
In Sortly, everything is just an "item." There's no concept of materials going into products. Craftybase understands the relationship: when you manufacture a batch of 24 candles, the wax, fragrance, and wicks are automatically deducted. What you see in the app is what's actually on your shelf.
Sortly doesn't connect to Etsy, Shopify, or Amazon. Craftybase does — on every plan. Orders import automatically, stock adjusts, and COGS updates in real time. No more manually entering sales or wondering if your numbers match.
Craftybase connects with Etsy, Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce, Wix, Square, PayPal, and Faire. Your full channel mix, covered from day one.
Different tools for different jobs. Here's where Sortly wins.
Sortly works without internet and syncs when you reconnect. Craftybase is fully cloud-based — you need a connection to use it. If you do most of your inventory work in a warehouse or at job sites without reliable Wi-Fi, Sortly's offline mode is a genuine advantage.
Sortly lets you generate and print custom QR code labels for physical asset tracking. If your main job is tagging and locating equipment, tools, or supplies across multiple sites, Sortly's label workflow is more polished for that use case.
Sortly's photo-and-folder approach is intuitive for non-product inventory. If you're tracking office equipment, construction supplies, or static assets that don't get assembled into products, it's a faster way to organise and find things.
If you don't manufacture products — you just buy, store, and sell — Sortly's setup is faster. Craftybase's material-recipe-product structure is powerful but unnecessary if you're not making things. Don't pay for complexity you won't use.
Both tools offer multiple tiers. Here's how they line up for the features makers actually need.
| Sortly | Craftybase | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry tier | Advanced — $29/mo yearly | Pro — $24/mo yearly |
| Mid tier | Ultra — $74/mo yearly | Studio — $49/mo yearly |
| Recipe costing available from | Not available on any plan | All plans — starting at $24/mo |
| COGS reports available from | Not available on any plan | All plans — starting at $24/mo |
| Sales channel sync available from | Not available on any plan | All plans — starting at $24/mo |
| Free trial | 14 days | 14 days, no credit card |
Sortly pricing as of March 2026. They occasionally run first-year discounts on yearly plans.
Import orders automatically and sync stock levels across all your channels — so you never oversell or run out of stock.
I'm impressed with the ability to track minute quantities of essential oils and other materials used in multiple products. I love the conversion from purchase to tracking units, and love the ability to make components and recipes.
Craftybase makes it easy to create my formulas and automatically calculates what I need to use, when to re-order, how much it costs me to make my products, and so much more. I literally could not function without it!
This report makes tax time almost enjoyable. No more lists and spreadsheets — I just run the report for the time I need, and it's done!
Craftybase has given me the tools amp; resources to accurately track my materials, recipes, and inventory. I love that I can build out my recipes and make adjustments to see my cost in real time.
We do not know what we would do without this application. Spreadsheets and confusing documents is a thing of the past now!
I love that the app keeps track of how much material I have on hand and how much it costs me exactly… This allows me to really know how much my products cost me to make and how much I should charge.
My favourite feature is the software's ability to calculate the cost of our products in real-time, taking into account the increase in the costs of raw materials.
Craftybase is an instrumental part of our bookkeeping. Having a business that manufactures products with countless raw materials, Craftybase keeps us organized and helps us have a clear picture of the health of our business.
I love that Craftybase keeps track of the cost of materials over time including shipping. As costs creep up I can make sure my product prices reflect that reality.
Craftybase allows us to be lean with our materials inventory so we won't have any overage of inventory. It provides a great easy-to-use analysis of COGS to help us better manage our margins.
Craftybase helps me keep my sales automatically entered into my system so that I can get on with doing the fun part: the creative products I make!
It's super important that we can record and trace ingredient lots and production batches. Craftybase has made this process streamlined and easy to stay organized.
Sortly free alternative
If you're outgrowing Sortly's free plan, the question isn't "which free app next?" — it's "what do I actually need my software to do?" A free tool that still can't tell you what your products cost to make is just a shinier version of the same gap. Craftybase starts at $24/mo and gives you the one number that matters most: your real cost per product.
It depends on what kind of business you run. If you make products — candles, soap, jewellery, food, cosmetics — Craftybase is built specifically for you. It tracks materials, calculates what each product costs to make, generates COGS reports for tax time, and syncs with Etsy, Shopify, and Amazon. Sortly is better suited for businesses that track equipment, supplies, or assets that don't get manufactured into products.
No. Sortly tracks items by quantity and location but doesn't support recipes, bills of materials, or cost-per-unit calculations. If you need to define what materials go into each product and calculate the cost automatically, you'll need a tool built for manufacturing like Craftybase. This is the most common reason makers switch.
No. Because Sortly doesn't track what products cost to make, it can't generate cost of goods sold reports. For Schedule C, you'd need to calculate COGS separately — usually in a spreadsheet. Craftybase calculates COGS automatically from your recipes, material purchases, and manufacturing records, giving you tax-ready numbers without the manual work.
No. Sortly's only accounting integration is QuickBooks Online (on Premium plans and above). It doesn't connect to Etsy, Shopify, Amazon, or other sales channels. Craftybase integrates with all major maker sales channels on every plan — orders sync automatically, inventory adjusts, and costs update without manual entry.
Craftybase starts at $24/mo (billed yearly) — less than Sortly's $29/mo Advanced plan. The key difference is what you get: Craftybase includes recipe costing, COGS reports, and sales channel sync on every plan. Sortly doesn't offer these features at any price point. Both offer 14-day free trials, so you can compare them side by side before committing.
14 days free, no credit card, no sales call. Set up your first recipe, import your materials, and see your real cost per product — usually within the first session.
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