FAQ

Is Cartwright open source?

Yes — all of it. The engine template repo, Teloz1870/cartwright-template, is public and MIT-licensed, and so are the create-cartwright CLI and this docs site.

The CLI scaffolds from the public template repo, so you do not need a GitHub token to scaffold a shop. The code it gives you is yours to fork, modify, and ship.

What does it cost?

Cartwright has no platform fee and no per-order tax. The self-hosted template is MIT and free, forever.

Typical infrastructure costs if you self-host: Vercel hosting, Turso or Postgres, Stripe processing, Resend email, Blob storage, and Anthropic or Gemini if you enable AI.

Optional paid tiers (Plus $49/mo, Cloud $199/mo, Enterprise custom) bundle hosted services, support, AI credits, and Pro tooling — with premium integrations on the roadmap. None of them gate features inside the template itself. See Pricing for the full breakdown.

Owning the code also means owning maintenance time.

Can I migrate from Shopify?

Two paths, depending on how much you want to automate.

Today (self-hosted): scaffold with npx create-cartwright --profile full (the Hoptify import module is pruned from the default light profile), then use the Hoptify import at /admin/hoptify — with a Firecrawl key it genuinely brings your brand palette (via design-import) and products across; without one it falls back to a demo run. Product CSV import/export covers catalog exports from Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and Squarespace. Verify checkout, then move DNS. Stripe customer IDs are the useful link key when preserving customer/payment relationships.

Planned (with Plus): the agentic onboarding flow takes a source URL, runs a five-agent migration (DOM analyzer, brand extractor, product mapper, SEO generator, ACP deployer), and produces a deployed Cartwright shop. The page is an interactive demo today; the agent itself is still in development — join the waitlist to be first.

What's the difference between self-hosted, Plus, and Cloud?

Three tiers that all run the same MIT-licensed template — they differ in what's hosted for you and how much support you get.

• Self-hosted ($0). Full template. You bring your own Vercel, database, Stripe, email, and AI keys. Community support via GitHub Issues. Every feature inside the template is available — nothing is paywalled.
• Plus ($49/mo, waitlist open). Everything in Self-hosted, plus priority email support (24h SLA), release + security upgrade guidance for your fork, Pro agent playbooks (4 industry packs), and SEO/GEO Lab (beta) access. On the Plus roadmap (planned, not shipped): ten premium MCP integrations (Klaviyo, Mailchimp, QuickBooks, Notion, Airtable, HubSpot, Slack, Zapier, ShipStation, Algolia), the agentic Shopify migration, and cartwright upgrade tooling.
• Cloud ($199/mo, waitlist open). Everything in Plus, plus fully managed Vercel + Turso, automated database backups + monitoring, free SSL + custom domain setup, white-glove migration, and a hosted admin at admin.cartwright.app.
• Enterprise (custom). Multi-shop / multi-tenant, 4h support SLA, custom MCP tools, dedicated success manager, security review + DPA on request.

The full comparison lives on Pricing; the integration logos and per-tool pitches live on Integrations.

What integrations come pre-wired vs Plus-only?

Two distinct sets.

Pre-wired in every tier (15 core integrations): Stripe (payments), Vercel (hosting + Blob storage), Resend (email), Turso (database), Sentry (observability), Upstash (rate limiting), i18nexus (i18n), Anthropic (AI), Google Gemini (image AI), Ollama (local AI alternative), MCP (agent surface), Auth.js (auth), Phone.inc (telephony preview), Luma Dream Machine (video gen), and Unsplash (image search). The full integration story with logos and links: In the box for the developer-tone walkthrough, or Integrations for the marketing-tone overview.

Planned for Plus (10 premium MCP integrations — not shipped yet): Klaviyo, Mailchimp, QuickBooks, Notion, Airtable, HubSpot, Slack, Zapier, ShipStation, Algolia. The plan is to ship these as MCP integrations, which means the storefront AI assistant and the admin can act on them directly — no glue code needed. See Integrations → Coming with Plus.

How does it compare to Medusa, Saleor, or next-forge?

Medusa and Saleor are commerce engines. You bring or build the frontend.

Cartwright is a full shop: storefront, admin, database, checkout, API routes, and AI tooling in one Next.js app.

next-forge is a SaaS starter. Cartwright applies that starter-kit discipline to commerce.

Do I need Next.js expertise?

You need to read TypeScript and run a Next.js dev server. That is the real floor.

The setup wizard handles store identity, theme values, first category, and key entry. It reduces environment-file work.

Anything beyond setup is normal app ownership: routes, server actions, Prisma, deployments, and tests.

What does the AI actually do?

The admin includes helpers for product copy, category SEO, theme palette generation, and catalog workflows.

The storefront assistant uses /api/assistant/chat and returns a graceful error when Anthropic is missing.

The MCP endpoint exposes scoped tools so external agents can act on the shop through APIs you control.

Where do I get support?

Use GitHub Issues on cartwright-template for engine bugs and implementation questions.

Use GitHub Issues on cartwright-app for docs and CLI bugs.

Paid setup help is available — write via the contact form or directly at hello@cartwright.app.

When is 1.0?

1.0 means the template contract is stable enough that minor updates should not break forks.

The current public answer is 8-12 weeks after the first dogfood shop ships.

Until then, expect manual upgrade work and careful migration review.