The Homegrown Vendor Blog

Pre-orders is five capabilities wearing one word, and the answer changes the price by an order of magnitude. Number what you actually need before you shop.

A split system is worse than either system alone: two stock counts, two pick lists, and the reconciliation you bought software to stop doing. The fix is one feature most comparisons never mention.

Two structures exist: you own the processor account, or the platform runs payments and decides when you get paid. Only one of them can delay you, and paying for speed costs roughly 2% of revenue.

Every platform lets you type in more than one pickup point. The question that separates them is whether each one can have its own day, its own cutoff, and its own products.

Every question a customer sends before ordering is a defect in your product page. Answering it individually costs minutes each time; the page could have answered it once for everyone.

Zones decide who can order. Routes decide what order you drive in. Only a handful of platforms do the second, and under about twelve stops a free map beats all of them.

No ordering platform fully solves this. The platform choice matters for exactly one thing: whether the pickup address shows publicly or only after payment. And many state cottage food laws require you

Taking the order, collecting the money, and remembering who gets what on Saturday are three separate jobs. A form replaces one. A payment link replaces one. Only a storefront replaces all three.

Calculating the right rate at checkout is common. Filing a return with each state is rare. Remitting the money is rarer still. Before you believe any feature name, ask which of the three it actually d