Comparison
A Castiron alternative for home bakers whose shop went offline
If you are looking for a Castiron alternative, the short answer is this: Castiron was an online storefront for food makers, and its shop no longer runs after an acquisition announced in November 2024, so you need two things to replace it, a place where customers order and pay, and a place where you run the business behind those orders. Farinu is the second one, and half of the first: customers order from its online shop, but they do not pay online. It costs every recipe down to the box and the oven time, suggests prices, and keeps customers, custom orders, deposits and balances together, so moving off Castiron does not mean losing track of who owes you what.
| Feature | Castiron | Farinu |
|---|---|---|
| Status | No longer operating: an acquisition was announced in November 2024, and castiron.me showed unrelated content on 11 October 2026 | Live |
| Main job | Online storefront for food makers | Costing, pricing, orders and the numbers behind a home bakery |
| Online shop and card checkout | Yes | An online shop for order requests; no card checkout |
| Recipe costing with labour, packaging and overhead | Not offered | Yes |
| Suggested prices and margin alerts | Not offered | Yes |
| Custom orders with deposits and balances | Order handling through the shop | Yes, with deposit and balance payments per order (free up to 50 orders a month) |
| Profit and loss, production plan, stock | Inventory tools; no profit and loss | Yes (Team plan) |
| Last published pricing | 10% of each sale plus 2.9% + 30 cents card processing (TechCrunch, January 2022); later pricing unconfirmed | Free costing for up to 10 recipes and 50 orders a month; unlimited orders, sales, stock and helpers on Team |
Last verified October 11, 2026
What happened to Castiron
Castiron launched as an e-commerce platform for independent food makers. TechCrunch described it in January 2022 as offering customizable storefronts with inventory management and order fulfillment tools, plus newsletter and marketing tools, with the company taking 10% of each sale on top of card processing.
In November 2024, T.D. Jakes Enterprises announced that it had acquired Castiron and would use its technology to launch a new e-commerce platform, Nourysh. The old shop did not carry on. When we checked on 11 October 2026, castiron.me no longer ran the shop and showed unrelated content, and Castiron's help center no longer loaded. We found no public notice giving the day the shop closed, so treat that date as unconfirmed.
Castiron vs Farinu: what each one is for
Castiron and Farinu solve different halves of a home bakery. Castiron faced outward: a page where customers browsed, ordered and paid by card. Farinu faces inward: it tells you what each bake costs, what to charge, which orders are due, what has been paid and what the month actually earned.
That matters when you choose what to move to. If the thing you miss is the shop link in your Instagram bio, the Farinu online shop gives you one, without online payment. If the thing you miss is knowing which custom cakes are due Saturday and which customers still owe a balance, Farinu covers that too, and it adds the costing that Castiron never did.
- Recipe costing with ingredients, packaging, sub-recipes like frosting or fillings, labour, machine time and overhead
- Suggested prices from a target markup, and price lists for retail and wholesale
- Margin alerts when an ingredient price rise pushes a product below its target
- Customers with their WhatsApp number, and custom orders with a delivery date, deposit and balance payments
- A sales log, a monthly profit and loss, a production plan and log, purchases and stock
- On the Team plan, an assistant that imports recipes from a photo or a spreadsheet, and an MCP server so you can ask Claude or ChatGPT about your bakery
What Farinu does not do
To be fair about it: Farinu is not a full online store. Its online shop collects order requests, but it does not take card payments from your customers or ship orders. If online checkout was the whole reason you used Castiron, you still need a payment link or a store with checkout for that part.
Many home bakers already take most orders through WhatsApp, Instagram messages or a simple order form, and get paid by bank transfer, a payment app or cash at pickup. In that setup the shop was never the hard part. Pricing correctly and keeping orders and payments straight is, and that is where Farinu helps.
Read next: A Bakesy alternative that knows what each order costs you, Best bakery software for home bakers
A worked example: one custom cake, before and after
Example only, with made-up but realistic numbers. A baker sells a two-tier vanilla cake with buttercream for 85 dollars. On Castiron the order and payment were handled online, but the price came from a guess.
In Farinu she enters the recipe. Ingredients come to 18.40 dollars, the buttercream sub-recipe 6.10, the cake board and box 4.50, three and a half hours of her time at 15 dollars an hour is 52.50, oven time 2.20 and a share of overhead 3.00. The full cost is 86.70 dollars, so at 85 dollars she loses 1.70 on every cake once her time is counted.
With a target markup of 25 percent, Farinu suggests about 108.40 dollars. She sets 110 in her retail price list. When a customer messages on WhatsApp, she creates the order for Saturday, records a 50 dollar deposit, and the balance of 60 dollars shows on the order until it is paid at pickup. If butter goes up next month and the cake falls below its target, a margin alert tells her and suggests a new price.
Moving your Castiron customers and orders
If you still have an export or old order emails from Castiron, you can rebuild your customer list in Farinu by hand: a name is enough, and a WhatsApp number is optional. Open orders go in with their delivery date, their lines from your price list and any deposit already paid, so the balance is right from day one. The free plan includes customers and up to 50 orders a month; Team removes the limit.
Your recipes are the bigger job. Costing for up to 10 recipes is free, so you can enter your best sellers first and see their real margins before deciding anything else. On the Team plan, the assistant can draft recipes from a photo of a handwritten card or the spreadsheet you price from, for you to check before anything is saved.
Selling legally after Castiron
Castiron's help center used to explain what you were allowed to sell, which depended on your state's cottage food law. That still applies whatever tool you use: sales caps, which foods are allowed, whether you can sell online or ship, and what goes on the label vary from state to state. Our state guides to cottage food laws summarize the rules and link to each state agency.
Sources
- TechCrunch: Castiron raises a seed round for its e-commerce platform for food artisans (January 2022)
- The Dallas Morning News: T.D. Jakes' investment arm buys tech company to aid entrepreneurs (November 2024)
- AfroTech: T.D. Jakes Enterprises acquires Castiron to launch Nourysh (December 2024)
Questions
- Is Castiron still available?
- No. An acquisition by T.D. Jakes Enterprises was announced in November 2024, and on 11 October 2026 castiron.me no longer ran the shop and showed unrelated content. If you still have customers or open orders from Castiron, move them somewhere you control.
- Is Farinu a direct replacement for Castiron?
- For the business side, yes and more: costing, prices, customers, custom orders with deposits, sales and monthly profit (sales, profit and unlimited orders are on the Team plan). For the shop side, partly: Farinu has an online shop but takes no card payments, so pair it with a payment link if you need online checkout.
- Can my helper take orders without seeing my costs?
- Yes, on the Team plan. Add them as a helper: they can create orders and record payments, and they see prices and balances but never costs or margins.
- What does Farinu cost?
- Costing for up to 10 recipes and up to 50 orders a month are free, with no time limit. The Team plan removes both limits and adds sales, stock, helpers and the assistant; see the pricing page for the current price.
Related pages
Move your bakery's numbers somewhere that lasts
Create a free account, enter your best sellers and see what each one really earns before your next order comes in.