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, premium integrations, AI credits, and support — 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: scaffold Cartwright, run the import scripts to bring products and customers across, verify checkout, then move DNS. Stripe customer IDs are the useful link key when preserving customer/payment relationships. Works with Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and Squarespace exports.

Q3 2026 (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 a live preview today; the agent ships with the Plus tier — 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 which premium integrations are wired.

• 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, launching Q3 2026). Everything in Self-hosted, plus ten premium MCP integrations (Klaviyo, Mailchimp, QuickBooks, Notion, Airtable, HubSpot, Slack, Zapier, ShipStation, Algolia), Shopify migration toolkit, priority email support (24h SLA), and the cartwright upgrade tooling.
• Cloud ($199/mo, launching Q4 2026). 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.

Plus-tier only (10 premium MCP integrations): Klaviyo, Mailchimp, QuickBooks, Notion, Airtable, HubSpot, Slack, Zapier, ShipStation, Algolia. These ship 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.