By Evan Knox, Founder of Homegrown · Last updated May 5, 2026
Methodology: Pricing pulled from each platform's public site as of May 2026. Cottage CMS facts confirmed directly with founder Drew Meyer in correspondence on May 5, 2026. Cost math uses each platform's stated transaction-fee structure across $500, $2,000, and $5,000 monthly sales tiers.
Note on bias. I run Homegrown, so this isn't neutral — but it's an honest head-to-head and I named the rounds where Cottage CMS wins clearly: Square's processing rate at high volume, full marketing-grade website out of the box, the 125,000-member Cottage Food Marketplace Facebook community Drew built. Where Homegrown wins, I say so too. The goal is the page I'd want to read if I were deciding between the two.
The detailed cost comparison, setup walkthrough differences, and seven head-to-head rounds are below.
| Dimension | Homegrown | Cottage CMS Free | Cottage CMS Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly subscription | $10 annual or $12.50 monthly | $0 | $20/month or $200/year |
| Platform / transaction fee | $0 | 1.9% + $0.25 per order | $0 |
| Payment processing | 2.9% + $0.30 built into Homegrown (no separate account needed) | Square's standard rate (2.6% + $0.10 to 2.9% + $0.30 depending on card type) | Square's standard rate |
| Free trial | 7 days | n/a (always free tier) | None as of February 2026 |
| Custom domain | Yes | No | Yes |
| Full marketing-grade website | No (storefront only) | No | Yes |
| Cottage food law guidance | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Marketplace discovery | Homegrown marketplace | No native marketplace | No native marketplace |
| Community | Vendor-to-vendor messaging | 125K-member Facebook group | Same Facebook group |
| Founded | 2023 | 2022-2023 | Same |
| Funding | Bootstrapped | Bootstrapped | Bootstrapped |
| Active vendors | Growing | 820+ (per Drew, May 2026) | Same |
Both platforms are bootstrapped, founder-led, and serving the same vendor archetype. The differences are real but narrower than they look at first glance — the right choice depends on which trade-offs matter most for how you sell.
Pricing is the most asked-about dimension, so let's do the actual math. Both platforms have multiple pricing components — subscription, platform fee (if any), and payment processing — and the right comparison sums all three at your real sales volume.
| Platform | Subscription | Platform fee | Payment processing | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Homegrown | $10 | $0 | ~$17 (2.9% + $0.30 × ~10) | ~$27 |
| Cottage CMS Free | $0 | ~$12 (1.9% + $0.25 × ~10) | ~$14 (Square 2.6% + $0.10 × ~10) | ~$26 |
| Cottage CMS Pro | $20 + Square's processing | $0 | ~$14 (Square 2.6% + $0.10 × ~10) | ~$34 |
At low volume the three are within $8/month of each other. Cottage CMS Free is slightly cheaper than Homegrown at this tier.
| Platform | Subscription | Platform fee | Payment processing | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Homegrown | $10 | $0 | ~$68 (2.9% + $0.30 × ~35) | ~$78 |
| Cottage CMS Free | $0 | ~$47 (1.9% + $0.25 × ~35) | ~$55 (Square processing) | ~$102 |
| Cottage CMS Pro | $20 + Square's processing | $0 | ~$55 (Square processing) | ~$75 |
The percentage fee on Free starts to bite. Pro and Homegrown are within $3/month of each other.
| Platform | Subscription | Platform fee | Payment processing | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Homegrown | $10 | $0 | ~$170 | ~$180 |
| Cottage CMS Pro | $20 + Square's processing | $0 | ~$140 (Square 2.6% + $0.10 lower than Homegrown's 2.9% + $0.30) | ~$160 |
| Cottage CMS Free | $0 | ~$120 | ~$140 | ~$260 |
Where Cottage CMS Pro wins. At $5K+/month, Pro's combination of $20/month flat plus Square's processing rate (2.6% + $0.10 on most card types) beats Homegrown's $10/month plus 2.9% + $0.30 by about $20-$30/month. If your monthly volume is reliably above $5K and you want a full marketing-grade website anyway, Pro is the cheaper math.
Round winner depends on your volume:
Homegrown's onboarding is built around getting your first product live in about 15 minutes. The flow: sign up, add your first product (name, photo, price, pickup window), share the resulting URL with a customer, take an order, get paid. There's no website to build, no theme to choose, no menus to configure. The trade-off is that you can't deeply customize the storefront beyond product photos and basic branding.
Cottage CMS gives you more to configure because you're getting more — a full marketing-grade website with home page, about page, menu, ordering, and contact. Setup is closer to 30-60 minutes of guided work depending on how much copy and brand polish you want to add. The trade-off is that you have more knobs and the first-time-online vendor has more decisions to make.
Round winner: Homegrown for speed, Cottage CMS for depth. If you want to be live by the end of lunch, Homegrown. If you want a website you'd be proud to share with a friend, Cottage CMS Pro.
This is the cleanest functional difference between the two platforms.
Homegrown is a storefront. You get an ordering page, optimized for the "browse products → place order → check out" flow. You don't get a separate home page, an about page, a contact page, or a blog. The storefront is the whole product. This is intentional — most cottage food vendors don't need a marketing website to drive sales; they need a clean ordering page they can share via Instagram, text message, or QR code at the booth.
Cottage CMS Pro is a website. You get the storefront plus all the supporting pages — home page, about page, menu, contact form, FAQ, blog if you want one. The whole thing lives at your custom domain (yourbakery.com). For vendors who want to look like a "real business" online, Cottage CMS Pro ($20/month + Square's processing) delivers that.
Round winner: depends on what you need. If your customer acquisition is "share a link in DMs and at markets," you don't need a website — Homegrown is enough. If you want a search-friendly online presence with multiple pages and brand polish, Cottage CMS Pro wins.
Both platforms are built specifically for cottage food vendors and both handle the workflow that matters: pre-orders during the week, pickup or delivery on a specific day, allergen and ingredient labels, production-day order summaries.
Where they differ is community. Cottage CMS sponsors the Cottage Food Marketplace Facebook group — 125,000+ members of vendors and customers actively trading information about cottage food law, recipes, sourcing, and pricing. Drew Meyer (Cottage CMS founder) is active in the group. For vendors plugged into that community, Cottage CMS gets a lot of customer-acquisition value from group exposure.
Homegrown's community model is different — vendor-to-vendor messaging through the platform, plus the Homegrown marketplace surface where customers can discover vendors near them. We don't have a 125K-member Facebook group, but we do have native customer discovery built into the platform.
Round winner: Cottage CMS for community-driven customer acquisition. Homegrown for in-product marketplace discovery.
Cottage CMS uses Square exclusively. If you already have a Square account from running a card reader at farmers markets, this is a feature — your in-person and online sales use the same payment processor and show up in one Square dashboard. Square's online processing rate (2.6% + $0.10 on most card types) is slightly lower than the industry-standard online rate (2.9% + $0.30), which translates to about $20-$30/month in savings at $5,000/month in sales.
Homegrown handles payment processing in-house at 2.9% + $0.30 with broad payment-method support (Apple Pay, Google Pay, all major card types). Vendors don't sign up for a separate processor — checkout just works on your storefront. The trade-off versus Cottage CMS is the slightly higher per-order rate; the upside is no account dependency and broader payment options.
Round winner depends on your existing setup. Already on Square at the booth? Cottage CMS keeps your payments unified and saves you a few dollars at high volume. Don't have Square or want broader payment-method support without setup? Homegrown is the cleaner path.
Cottage CMS has no native marketplace — your storefront is your storefront, and customer acquisition happens through your own marketing (social, word of mouth, the Cottage Food Facebook group, market booth signage). The platform doesn't bring you customers directly.
Homegrown includes a customer-facing marketplace as part of the $10/month subscription. Customers in your area searching for cottage food can find your storefront through the Homegrown directory. That's not a primary customer-acquisition channel for most vendors — your social and direct marketing still does most of the work — but it's incremental discovery you don't get on Cottage CMS.
Round winner: Homegrown for built-in marketplace discovery, with the caveat that the Cottage Food Facebook group community on Cottage CMS's side is its own meaningful acquisition channel.
Both platforms make migrating between them straightforward — neither locks you into a proprietary data format you can't export.
If you're switching FROM Cottage CMS TO Homegrown, the steps are: export your customer email list (Cottage CMS lets you download this), set up your Homegrown storefront (15 minutes), recreate your products (10-15 minutes for a typical 8-15 product menu), update your shareable link in Instagram bio and any printed market signage, and email your customer list with the new ordering page.
If you're switching FROM Homegrown TO Cottage CMS, the steps are similar in reverse. Both platforms are reasonable to leave; neither is reasonable to be locked into.
Round winner: tied. Neither platform creates exit friction.
You should pick Cottage CMS Pro if:
You should pick Cottage CMS Free if:
You should pick Homegrown if:
The two platforms aren't enemies. Some vendors run both — Cottage CMS Pro as the marketing-grade website and Homegrown as the ordering layer optimized for speed. The combined cost (~$30/month) is still less than Square Plus alone ($49/month).
At low volume, Cottage CMS Free is cheaper than Homegrown by a few dollars per month. At medium volume ($1K-$5K/month), Homegrown's flat $10/month is cheaper than both Cottage CMS Free (percentage fee compounds) and Pro (subscription is higher). At high volume ($5K+/month), Cottage CMS Pro narrowly beats Homegrown because Square's processing rate is lower than Homegrown's 2.9% + $0.30. The right answer depends on your volume.
Cottage CMS uses Square exclusively. If you don't already have a Square account, you'll need to create one. If you already have Square (e.g., from a card reader at farmers markets), Cottage CMS integrates cleanly. Homegrown handles payment processing in-house at 2.9% + $0.30 with full payment-method support (Apple Pay, Google Pay, all major cards) — checkout works on your storefront with no separate processor account required.
Not as of February 2026 — Drew confirmed the free trial was removed earlier this year. Cottage CMS Free remains a no-cost starter you can use indefinitely (with the 1.9% + $0.25 platform fee + Square's processing on every order), and you can upgrade to Pro anytime.
Yes. Many Homegrown vendors keep a simple website on Squarespace, Wix, or Carrd for branding and link to their Homegrown storefront from a "Order Now" button. The storefront and the website are separate concerns and you can mix tools.
Both. Both Homegrown and Cottage CMS are built around the regulatory reality of cottage food (state-by-state allowed-foods lists, labeling requirements, sales caps). Neither offers legal advice — your state's cottage food laws are the source of truth. You can check your state's rules at Ohio State University's cottage food food safety database (which covers state-by-state rules nationally).
No. Some vendors run both — Cottage CMS Pro for the brand-forward website, Homegrown for the ordering speed and marketplace discovery. Combined cost is around $30/month, which is still less than most general-purpose website builders charge for less specialized functionality.
Both Homegrown and Cottage CMS have migration guides for ex-Castiron vendors. Homegrown's Castiron alternative migration guide walks through customer recovery and 15-30 minute setup. Cottage CMS has its own migration content for the same use case.
Homegrown and Cottage CMS aren't the only two cottage food platforms — they're just the two most directly comparable for the cottage-food-specific use case. If you're considering other options too (Hotplate for drop-style sales, Bakesy for custom-order bakers, Square Plus for general-purpose, Etsy for non-perishable packaged goods), the full Cottage Food Platform Comparison (2026) covers all 28 active and closed platforms with verified pricing and ownership state.
For deeper takes on each side:
Homegrown and Cottage CMS are the two strongest cottage-food-specific platforms in 2026, both bootstrapped, both founder-led, both serving overlapping vendor archetypes. The difference comes down to four trade-offs:
If you're early or volume-constrained: Homegrown. If you're at $5K+/month with a Square account and want a website: Cottage CMS Pro. If you're tiny and want zero subscription cost: Cottage CMS Free.
Want to try Homegrown? Start a 7-day free trial — about 15 minutes from signup to your first product live.
