Is there free bakery software?
Yes, in pieces. A spreadsheet, a free online form, a free calendar and the free tier of a payments or invoicing tool can run a bakery taking a few orders a week, and plenty of good bakers start exactly that way. What free tools rarely do is connect: the order form does not know your recipe costs, the deposit is not tied to the order, and the allergens live in your head. ibakepro is paid software that joins those up, from US$17 (A$26, £13, C$23, NZ$29) a month, with a 14-day free trial.
What the free setup looks like
Most bakers who run on free tools use some version of this:
| Job | Free tool category | What it leaves out |
|---|---|---|
| Taking orders | Online form builder or social DMs | The price, the deposit and your availability |
| Costing | Spreadsheet | Updating when an ingredient price changes |
| Dates | Free calendar app | Which orders are paid and which are not |
| Payments | Free tier of a payment or invoicing app | Linking a deposit and a balance to one order |
| Allergens | Notes or memory | A record from each ingredient to the finished product |
| Customer list | Phone contacts or a spreadsheet | Order history and who to follow up |
None of that is wrong. The cost is time: every order gets typed into three places, and every month something slips between them. The usual signs you have outgrown it are a balance nobody chased, an order on the wrong date, or a moment when you could not say whether the sourdough, the cookies or the cakes actually made money.
A fair way to decide
Add up the hours. If you spend an hour a week copying orders between a form, a calendar and a spreadsheet, and you value your time at even A$30, US$20 or £15 an hour, that is four or five times the monthly price of ibakepro's Essentials plan. If you take two orders a month, a spreadsheet is the better tool, and nobody should talk you out of it.
The other thing free tools rarely give you is costing from real ingredient prices. A spreadsheet can do it, but only as well as you keep it updated, and the moment butter goes up it is out of date for every recipe that uses it.
Where ibakepro fits
ibakepro joins those five tools into one for bakeries of any size, from home cake makers and cookie businesses to sourdough micro-bakeries and wholesale bakeries, from US$17 (A$26, £13) a month.
The plans, by month:
| Currency | Essentials | Growth | Business |
|---|---|---|---|
| USD | $17 | $22 | $59 |
| AUD | A$26 | A$33 | A$89 |
| GBP | £13 | £17 | £47 |
| EUR | €15 | €20 | €54 |
| CAD | C$23 | C$30 | C$81 |
| NZD | NZ$29 | NZ$37 | NZ$100 |
- The trial. 14 days on any plan, with that plan's full feature set and 25 Choux AI credits included.
- Essentials is one user and 100 orders over the life of the account, with quotes, deposits, costing, The Pantry, allergens and a website, which is the ground a free setup usually covers in five tools.
- Card payments go through your own Stripe account on every plan.
If you are weighing it up from a spreadsheet, the getting off spreadsheets guide covers what to move first, and what does bakery software cost covers the full price picture.