Twenty-one tools that made-to-order businesses shop against each other, compared on four things: what each is built around, whether it holds a deposit and a balance, whether it knows what the piece cost, and the page the customer gets. Entry prices run from free to $299 a month.
Nothing ranked · no affiliate links · Ordamo is one of the twenty-one · re-checked 21 September 2026
If you read one section, read this one. Every name links to the full comparison, including where to stay with what you already have.
You sell before you build, take a deposit, and need to know what the piece earned
Ordamo
$29 a month, one plan, nothing metered
One order carrying the deposit, the balance, the promised date and what the run really cost. It is the row the other twenty-one leave empty, and the only reason to pick us over any of them.
You run on a spreadsheet and it is still working
Google Sheets, Airtable, Notion
Free, then $10–$20 a seat
Stay. It stops being enough at the point where a formula and somebody's memory are the only things holding the money — promised weeks colliding, margin that only appears at the month's close, a total owed that lives in your head.
You hold stock of things you make more than once
From $19–$20 a month, and the metered tiers run well above it
Inventory and cost of goods, done properly, down to the gram with lot numbers behind it. What is missing is not a feature: there is no order in them waiting on a balance, because they were not built to hold one.
Work orders, routings, capacity and materials planned against demand. Right if you have the floor. A great deal of machinery if what you actually have is one invoice from a workshop per run.
Both take a deposit, and Dubsado will chase the balance on a schedule for you. Neither one asks what the thing cost to make, so the margin question stays open after the invoice is paid.
You need the deposit taken inside a Shopify checkout
From $29 a month, on top of your Shopify plan
It does the one thing we deliberately stay out of: taking the money, holding the card and charging the balance later. Worth reading for what happens after the checkout closes, which is where we begin.
You want one system for everything, and someone to run it
From $9 a user, or $99 a month for five — plus the implementation
These two can genuinely do what we do and a great deal more. What you are buying with them is a project: apps configured, a per-user bill, and somebody whose job is partly keeping it that way.
Does the thing exist before it is ordered?
If it does, you are shopping for inventory or fulfilment and the middle group below is the right shelf. If it does not, most of that group is weight you will carry and never use.
Does money arrive before the thing does?
A deposit now and the balance on delivery is the line that eliminates whole families at once. An invoicing tool models it as a document that closes; a storefront models it as a checkout that already ended.
Do you need to know what the piece cost?
Not what a category of product usually costs — what this run cost, against the order it was sold on. That column is empty for most of the table, and it is the one we were built for.
The long version, with the six families side by side rather than the products, is in what kind of tool a made-to-order business needs.
Every cell is the answer that competitor's own comparison page gives, shortened — follow the name for the full one. Alphabetical, so the order argues nothing, and we sit in it like everyone else.
| Built around | Deposit and balance | What a piece cost | A page the customer opens | Entry price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Airtable | Tables you design | Two fields and a formula you build | A rollup you write and re-check | A shared view, once you tidy one into shape | $0, then $20/user/mo |
| Craftybasenow Stocksmith | Materials, recipes and stocked units | Marked paid — no schedule behind it | Recipe cost, per repeatable product | No | From $20/mo |
| Downpay | Collecting a split payment in a Shopify checkout | Yes — taken at checkout, balance auto-charged | Not part of it | A portal for their split-payment orders | From $29/mo |
| Dubsado | Clients and projects for a service business | A payment schedule, with automatic reminders | Not part of it | A portal of documents, forms and invoices | $35/mo or $335/year |
| Google Sheets | A grid you design | Two cells and a formula | A second tab and a division you maintain | Share the file, or copy a message by hand | $0 |
| HoneyBook | Clients and projects for a service business | Deposits and flexible instalments on an invoice | Not part of it | A client portal of documents and invoices | $29/mo billed yearly |
| Inventora | Materials, products and channel stock | Not a payment schedule — stock, production, COGS | A product cost, per repeatable product | No | From $19/mo |
| Katana | A production floor: work orders, routings, capacity | Not a concept an MRP has | From its manufacturing order and bill of materials | No | From $299/mo |
| Notion | Documents, with databases as views inside them | Two properties and a formula you build | A rollup you write and re-check | A page you publish and keep | $0, then $10/seat/mo |
| Odoo | Apps you assemble into a process of your own | Yes — a down payment invoice, then the balance | In the Manufacturing app, once it is configured | A portal account inside the suite | $0, then $8.95/user/mo |
| Ordamothis is us | Orders, deposits and production batches | Both, with dates, on the order itself | A received batch writes what the run cost onto its products | Yes — one link per order, updates itself | $29/mo |
| Trello | Cards you move between lists | Custom fields nothing checks against each other | A number in a comment, if anyone wrote it down | A shared board — with every other order on it | $0, then $5/user/mo |
| Zoho Inventory | Stock: items reserved, packed and shipped | A retainer invoice, applied to an invoice later | Composite items cost from their components | A portal with orders, invoices and a Pay Now button | $0, then $29/mo |
Prices are each vendor's published entry tier, read on the date printed at the foot of that competitor's page. Several meter by seat, by order volume or by both, so the figure on the label is rarely the figure a second person costs — each page says which.
We publish this page, so treat everything above it with the scepticism that deserves and read these four. Each is conceded on that competitor's own page too, not only here.
You keep your own processor and your own rates, and no card details pass through us. Your bank details or payment link sit on the order page, and you mark the balance paid in one tap.
The full comparison with Downpay →Not automating it is the decision: a message about someone's money is worth reading before it goes. The order tells you the day it is worth asking and drafts it against the real figures.
The full comparison with Dubsado →Proof sign-off is the centre of that product, built for print and sign shops. A second approval workflow would put a step in every studio's way that most of them would never use.
The full comparison with Printavo →The one competitor we cannot out-feature, and we do not try: $99 a month for five users, plus somebody to keep it configured. We are $29 for the business, and running the same day.
The full comparison with ERPAG →Nothing is missing from these, because nothing is there until you put it there. They are the honest champions: most studios run on one, and they stop working at the point where a formula and a person's memory are holding the money.
Built for stock: what you hold, what it cost, what is left. Good at it. The gap is not a feature but the model — an order for something that does not exist yet has nowhere to sit.
A production floor: work orders, routings, capacity, materials planned against demand. If you have that floor, this is the right shelf. If you pay a workshop per run, it is a lot of machinery for one invoice.
Contracts, forms, invoices and a client portal, for service businesses. Strong on getting paid on a schedule; they simply never ask what the thing cost to make.
Splitting a payment inside a checkout, which is a job we do not do at all. Worth reading for what happens after the checkout closes.
A document and the money against it. The order is the invoice, so it ends when the invoice does — which is where a piece that takes eight weeks starts.
Quote, proof, schedule, produce, invoice — built trade by trade. If you are in that trade, every screen was drawn for your week.
Stock, purchasing, production, invoicing and accounting in one system. They can genuinely do what we do; the argument is what it costs to get there and who keeps it running.
What is in the set
Twenty-one tools that studios selling made-to-order work actually reach for, from a blank spreadsheet to a full ERP. A tool is here because someone told us they were choosing between it and us, not because it ranks for a keyword.
How the prices were read
Each figure is the vendor's own published entry tier, read on the date printed at the foot of that comparison page rather than taken from a roundup. Several meter by seat, by order volume or by both, so the entry figure is rarely what a second person costs — each page says which.
How the verdicts were written
Every cell here is a shortened version of a line already written and checked on that competitor's own comparison page, which is also where the sources are. Where a tool does something we do not, it says so, in the section above.
What this page does not do
It does not rank, and it carries no affiliate links — we are paid by subscription and by nobody on this list. Ordamo sits in the table in alphabetical order like everyone else, tinted and labelled as ours, because this is our page and pretending otherwise would be the tell.
The question has no answer without yours: most of the tools on this page are good at what they were built for, and they were built for different things. If the thing you sell exists before someone orders it, an inventory tool is the right shelf. If it does not, and you take money before you build, that is the gap Ordamo was made for — and the table above is arranged so you can read across your own row rather than down a ranking.
A spreadsheet, and it is not a joke answer — most studios run on one for years and the comparison page for it is written as a page about a champion, not a loser. It stops working at the point where a formula and someone's memory are holding the money, which usually shows up as three symptoms: weeks promised twice, margin that only appears at the month's close, and a total owed that lives in your head.
Odoo, HoneyBook, Dubsado and Downpay do, each in its own way — an invoice with a down payment, an instalment schedule, or a split payment taken in a checkout. What none of them then do is carry what the piece cost to make against that same order, which is the second half of the question and the reason the two columns sit next to each other in the table.
Not at what Craftybase — sold as Stocksmith since 2026 — is for. It is inventory and cost-of-goods software for makers who hold stock, it costs materials to the gram with lot numbers behind them, and we do none of that. The difference is the model rather than the feature list: there is no order in it to hold a deposit and a balance against, because it was never meant to hold one.
Four places, named on this page and on each of those pages: Downpay collects the deposit inside a Shopify checkout and we take no payment at all, Dubsado runs payment schedules with automatic reminders and we do not chase, Printavo owns artwork approval and our order page only shows status, and ERPAG does actual costing with overhead on work orders so the argument there is price and implementation rather than features.
Each comparison page carries the date its competitor's own pages were read, and every figure on it was taken from the vendor's published pricing on that date rather than from a roundup. Software pricing moves; confirm with the vendor before deciding on the strength of a number, and tell us if you find one that has gone stale.
Built for orders that take weeks to deliver, start in a message and get paid in parts.
Add a customer and their order
Deposit taken, balance still owed, and the date you promised.
Send your customer their order page
One link that updates itself, instead of twenty messages.
Record what the batch cost
What a run really cost, over the pieces it produced. One button puts that on the products it made.
See what you actually made
Revenue, cost and margin per order. Money in, money out, cash on hand.
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