If you’ve been using Castiron to run your cottage food business and you’re suddenly looking for somewhere to land — or if you were about to sign up and just found out the news — you’re in good company. A lot of vendors are in exactly the same spot right now.

Here’s what happened, what your options are, and what to look for so you don’t end up in this situation again.

What Happened to Castiron?

Castiron was a platform built specifically for cottage food vendors — it offered storefronts, custom order management, and a relatively clean interface for managing a small food business online. It developed a loyal following among home bakers and cottage food makers, particularly those who appreciated that it understood the specific compliance and labeling requirements of cottage food.

Castiron has shut down. Vendors who relied on it for their online storefront, order management, and customer communication now need a new home — and they need it quickly if they’re in the middle of a busy season.

What You Need in a Castiron Alternative

Before jumping to a new platform, it’s worth being intentional about what you actually need. Castiron served a few different vendor types, and not every alternative serves them all equally well:

• Vendors who need a new storefront fast — you want somewhere to send customers while you figure out a longer-term plan
• Vendors who depended on custom order management — intake forms, quoting, order tracking for bespoke products like custom cakes
• Vendors who want marketplace discovery — you want new buyers to find you, not just existing customers to re-order
• Vendors rebuilding from scratch — this is your chance to pick the right platform for where you want to take your business, not just the fastest replacement

Most platforms do one or two of these things well. Very few do all of them. That distinction matters when you’re choosing where to rebuild.

The Best Castiron Alternatives in 2026

Butter & Sage Market — Best for Marketplace Discovery + Full Platform

Cost: Free (8% commission) or Pro flat plan

If Castiron's shutdown taught you anything, it's that relying on a single-purpose tool creates risk. Butter & Sage Market is built differently: it's a full platform that now covers every job you were doing across Castiron and whatever other tools you had in your stack.

Marketplace discovery. Unlike Castiron, BAS is a two-sided marketplace — shoppers in your area search and discover your shop without needing a direct link from you. Every shop gets a pin on the local vendor map and a listing in the marketplace directory, sorted by zip code, product type, and dietary tag.

Professional storefront with real design. Every vendor gets a custom subdomain (yourshop.butterandsage.shop) built on a full design system — three template directions, dozens of accent color palettes, full preview before you publish. Vendors look like a high-end food brand, not a free website.

Custom orders, rebuilt from the ground up. BAS has a drag-to-build custom order form system or a Bea AI-powered chat that collects order details conversationally. You message the customer in your dashboard, send a quote, and they pay from an email link. If custom orders were central to your Castiron workflow, BAS handles it — alongside everything else.

Pickup, delivery, and drops. Customers can place standard orders, schedule local pickup, or sign up for product drops. Order caps prevent overselling. Calendar availability keeps your schedule under control.

Built-in marketing. A pop-up on your shop captures customer emails and phone numbers. Every subscriber lands in your dashboard ready for your next drop announcement or email blast. No third-party tool required for the basics.

Cottage-compliant label maker. Pick a saved recipe, and the label fills itself — ingredients by descending weight, allergens highlighted, cottage-food disclaimer included, QR code back to your shop. Most platforms don't touch compliance tooling. BAS does.

Pricing: Free plan charges 8% commission on sales — no upfront cost, pay as you earn. Pro flat plan removes the commission entirely for a fixed monthly fee, which becomes increasingly cost-effective as your volume grows.

Best for: Vendors who want to replace Castiron with one platform that does more — not a patchwork of separate tools for orders, marketing, compliance, and customer capture.

Setup time: Under 10 minutes to launch.

Homegrown — Best Simple Storefront for Local Pickup

Cost: $10/month, no transaction fees

Homegrown is a clean, well-built storefront for local food vendors. Setup is fast, the interface is simple, and the flat $10/month with no percentage fees is genuinely attractive. Customers can browse your products, place pre-orders, pay online, and schedule local pickup.

The important limitation: Homegrown is a storefront, not a marketplace. There’s no browsable directory where new buyers discover you. Your growth depends on driving your own traffic from social media or word of mouth, and Homegrown handles the transaction once they arrive. That’s useful if you have an established following — less so if you’re rebuilding.

Best for: Vendors with existing customers who want a clean, low-cost online ordering experience for local pickup.

Not ideal for: Vendors who need help reaching new buyers.

My Custom Bakes — Best for Custom Order Management

Cost: $10/month, no transaction fees

If custom orders were the core of your Castiron workflow — personalized cakes, bespoke cookie boxes, build-to-order products — My Custom Bakes handles this better than any other platform on this list. The intake forms, quoting workflow, and order tracking are purpose-built for customization-heavy businesses. Founder Lisa He has built real credibility and trust in the cottage food community.

Like most tools, MCB is a seller tool rather than a marketplace — customer discovery is on you. But if your business lives and dies on custom orders and you already have a customer base, this is worth looking at seriously as a Castiron replacement.

Best for: Custom order specialists who need strong intake and order management tools.

Not ideal for: Vendors selling standard product lines who need a discovery layer.

HotPlate — Best Zero-Fee Pre-Order Platform

Cost: No monthly fee; ~5% + $0.55 per order + payment processing

HotPlate is YC-backed and has grown quickly in the cottage food and pop-up market. The zero-monthly-fee model is compelling if you’re in a slow season or rebuilding: you only pay when you sell something. Pre-order management, inventory controls, and a prep list calculator that auto-calculates what you need to make are genuinely useful features.

Like Homegrown, HotPlate gives you a private storefront — not a marketplace. And at higher sales volumes, the per-order fees can add up to more than a flat monthly subscription. Worth running the math for your volume before committing.

Best for: Vendors with existing followings who want zero upfront cost while they get re-established.

Not ideal for: High-volume sellers or vendors who need marketplace discovery.

Cottage CMS — Best Free Website Option

Cost: Free forever plan available

If you want the lowest-cost option and primarily need a professional-looking presence rather than a transactional platform, Cottage CMS offers a free forever plan with cottage-food-specific features. It understands labeling requirements and cottage food law in a way generic website builders don’t.

The tradeoff is real: it’s a website, not a marketplace or a storefront with built-in payment processing on the free plan. It’s a good business card — not a sales engine.

Best for: Vendors on a tight budget who need a web presence while evaluating longer-term options.

Not ideal for: Vendors who need to immediately replace Castiron’s payment and order management functions.

How to Choose

The right Castiron alternative depends on what your business looks like right now and where you want it to go:

• You have loyal customers and need to get them ordering again quickly: Homegrown or HotPlate. Both are fast to set up and handle the transaction side cleanly.
• Your business runs on custom orders: My Custom Bakes. It’s the best-in-class tool for this workflow.
• You want to use this as an opportunity to actually grow your reach: Butter & Sage Market. The marketplace model means new buyers can find you — not just the ones already in your contact list.
• You’re not sure yet and want the lowest-cost option: Cottage CMS free plan while you evaluate, or BAS which is also free to start.

One thing worth considering: the platforms that have lasted longest in this space tend to be the ones with the clearest revenue model. A platform that doesn’t make money eventually stops operating — as vendors who relied on Castiron just experienced firsthand. Look at how each platform makes money and whether that model seems sustainable before committing.

Butter & Sage Market earns through vendor subscriptions — not venture capital runway. We’re building for the long term.

If you want to explore opening a shop on Butter & Sage Market, it takes less time than setting up a new social media profile — and unlike social media, the customers you build here belong to you.

Fresh. Local. Sustainable.