Candle Business Software Compared (November 2026)

I cannot tell you which candle software is best, because it depends on what you make, what you sell, and how much you want to spend. What I can do is list what each product's own pricing page showed on November 3, 2026, so you can compare like with like. Full disclosure: the maker behind Ark & Dove built BatchLab, one of the products below. Prices change, so open the links before you buy. I plan to recheck this page every three months.

What did each site show?

All prices are US dollars per month on monthly billing unless noted. "Not shown" means the page I read did not say.

Product	Plans I saw	Free plan or trial	Notes from its own page
Candle Math	Maker $4.95, Premier $11.95, Business $39	14-day trial, card required	Maker caps at 25 recipes, 10 burn tests, 50 inventory items. Business lists wholesale customers, price tiers, line sheets (public link and PDF) and CSV import. Yearly amounts not shown.
candle.supply	Free $0, Small $19, Medium $29, Large $49	Free plan, no card. Paid trial length not stated	Free caps at 20 materials, recipes and burn tests, and 3 labels. Label designer on all plans. Wholesale not mentioned. Yearly billing saves about 20 percent.
Makers Manager	Maker $9, Studio $19, Business $39, Growth $89	None listed	Burn testing from Studio (one "Lab"), all Labs on Business. Wholesale on Business and up. AI invoice import from Studio. Yearly $90, $190, $390, $890.
Stocksmith (was Craftybase)	Pro from $20, Studio $49, Indie $99, Business $199, Growth $349	14-day trial, no card	Page says "Same team, same software, just a new name." Recipe management listed from Studio, batch and lot tracking from Indie. Sales channel integrations. About 17 percent off yearly.
Inventora	Starter $23, Business $48, Growth $120	7-day trial, no free plan	Limits by materials, product variants, integrations and team members. Yearly billing saves 18 percent.
BatchLab	Starter $12, Maker $24	14-day trial, no card	Yearly $120 and $240. Recipes, batches, labels and burn testing (up to 10 running at a time) in Starter. Wholesale line sheet, purchase orders, profit and loss, invoice reading and sales import in Maker.

BatchLab's row comes from its own public file, getbatchlab.com/llms.txt.

Worked example: the same needs, priced

Say you need recipes, a burn test log, and a wholesale line sheet or wholesale tools. From the pages above, the plans that list all of that are:

Product and plan	Monthly	12 months, monthly billing	12 months, yearly billing
Candle Math Business	$39	39 x 12 = $468	Not shown
Makers Manager Business	$39	39 x 12 = $468	$390
BatchLab Maker	$24	24 x 12 = $288	$240

I did not see wholesale on candle.supply's page, recipes, burn testing or wholesale on Inventora's pricing page, or burn testing and wholesale on Stocksmith's, so they are not in this table. That does not mean they do not have it. It means the page I read did not list it. If you need only recipes, costs and a burn log, the cheaper plans in the first table may be enough, and Candle Math's Maker plan at $4.95 is the lowest price I saw.

On BatchLab's own yearly billing: 288 - 240 = $48 saved, which is 48 / 288, about 17 percent.

When does another tool fit better?

You want a free plan. candle.supply lists a Free plan, with caps. BatchLab has a 14-day trial only.
You want the lowest monthly price. Candle Math's Maker plan was the lowest at $4.95.
You need your Shopify, Etsy or Amazon orders to flow into stock. Stocksmith and Inventora list sales channel integrations. BatchLab's public feature list mentions a sales import, not live syncing.
You need team seats. Inventora lists team members on every plan, and Stocksmith lists unlimited users from Indie. BatchLab's public feature list does not mention seats.
You want batch and lot traceability. Stocksmith lists it from Indie, and Inventora lists "full batch traceability."

How do I choose?

Write down what you do each week: pour, test, buy supplies, sell, wholesale.
Mark the one or two jobs that cost you the most time or money today.
Pick two tools that cover those jobs and run each trial with your real recipe.
Count what a missing feature costs you in hours.

Common mistakes

Choosing on the cheapest monthly price without checking the caps. A 25-recipe limit can run out fast.
Skipping the trial and entering real data on day one.
Not asking how to export your data before you commit.
Buying a tool for features you will not use this year.
Comparing a monthly price to a yearly one.

Questions

Is a spreadsheet enough?

Sometimes. See our spreadsheet versus app guide.

Why does this page include BatchLab?

Because I think makers should see all the options in one place, including ours. I have said where others fit better and used only each page's own numbers. I am not claiming BatchLab is better.

Can I trust these prices?

They were what each page showed on November 3, 2026. Some pages needed careful reading, and a few showed no yearly price. Check the link before you buy.

How BatchLab helps

The maker behind Ark & Dove built BatchLab for his own candle business. It keeps materials, recipes, batches, burn tests, products, customers, orders and stock in one browser app, and each batch shows its cost per candle worked out from what the materials cost. The trial is 14 days and needs no card. Your data can be exported as a JSON backup or as a CSV of any list.