Steep your stack.
Honest head-to-head against the three starters most people pit against steep: ShipFast, Bridge, and MakerKit. Pricing and feature rows are the public stated state at time of writing.
If Shopify is working, stay there. steep is the upgrade path once monthly fees + lock-in start to hurt.
Buyer doing $5,000/mo revenue, ~200 orders, $25 average order value.
| Cost | Shopify Basic | steep |
|---|---|---|
| Platform monthly ($29 × 12) | $348 | $0 |
| Transaction fee (2% on non-Shopify-Payments) | $1,200 | $0 |
| One-time kit purchase | — | $149 |
| Infra (Vercel + Supabase free tier covers this volume) | — | $0 |
| 12-month total | $1,548 | $149 |
At $20k/mo revenue: Shopify costs ~$5,000/yr vs steep at ~$149 + maybe $20/mo Vercel Pro = ~$389/yr. The bigger you grow, the more the difference compounds — because steep is a one-time cost and Shopify is a tax.
| Feature | steep | ShipFast | Bridge | MakerKit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stack: Next.js + Supabase + Stripe + Resend | Drizzle/Resend | |||
| Live verifiable demo | ||||
| Digital products focus (admin product CRUD) | ||||
| GitHub auto-collaborator invite (private repo fulfillment) | yes (unique) | |||
| Supabase Storage signed-URL downloads | yes (unique) | |||
| Auto-link guest orders to new accounts | ||||
| Stripe one-time payments | ||||
| Stripe Subscriptions | roadmap | |||
| Stripe Tax (US sales tax) | yes (opt-in) | |||
| Multi-tenant | roadmap | |||
| MFA enrollment UI in account settings | ||||
| Strict CSP with nonces | ||||
| Rate limiting (per-IP) | ||||
| Audit log for admin actions | ||||
| GDPR delete-my-account flow | ||||
| CAPTCHA support (Cloudflare Turnstile) | yes (opt-in) | |||
| Unit tests included | 117+ | |||
| Playwright E2E tests | ||||
| CI/CD GitHub Actions workflow | ||||
| Setup time docs (humanized) | yes (~2 hrs to live) | marketing copy | marketing copy | thorough |
| Troubleshooting + glossary for non-devs | ||||
| WebAuthn passkey enrollment (step-up auth) | ||||
| Buyer-initiated cancel + refund flow | ||||
| Refund-request queue (post-delivery) | ||||
| Saved address book (auto-prefills Stripe Checkout) | ||||
| Lifetime updates (early-bird) | first 100, then 1 yr | varies tier | ||
| Refund window | 14 days | 7 days | varies | 14 days |
| Price (USD) | $149 launch → $199 | $299 | $199 | $299–$799 |
Comparison is point-in-time and based on each product's public documentation. We'll keep this page updated as competitors change. If you spot something inaccurate, email shashankthattai@gmail.com and we'll fix it.