Tillkit / Features
Everything in Tillkit Core
Tillkit Core is the full source code of an online store: the shop your customers use, Stripe checkout, sales tax, inventory from supplier invoices and profit reports, all in one admin. You host it on your own Railway account and pay $79 once.
Updated October 2026
Below is every part of the kit, with screenshots from the live demo store. The demo admin is open and read-only, so you can click through any of it.
Storefront and checkout
Customers get a homepage, a shop with category filters, product pages with a photo gallery and options such as size or color, a cart and guest checkout. Customer accounts keep order history and handle password changes and resets. Every page is designed for phones first.
Payments
- Stripe Checkout on your own Stripe account. Cards, plus Apple Pay and Google Pay when you turn them on in Stripe. Stripe charges 2.9% + 30¢ per US card sale, with no monthly fee.
- Pay by invoice, with stock held for 72 hours and reminder emails.
- Partial payments and refunds from the admin.
- A template for connecting another card processor, if Stripe isn't the right fit for your store.
Prices, totals and stock are always checked again on the server, and an order is only marked paid after the payment provider confirms it.
Sales tax
Use Stripe Tax for exact rates at checkout, or your own rate table at no cost. When it's time to file, the by-state report shows what you collected in each state.
Tillkit charges and reports tax. It doesn't decide where you owe it, so check that with your state or an accountant.
Inventory from supplier invoices
Upload a supplier invoice as a PDF, Excel file or CSV. Each line is matched to your products by SKU, or marked as a new product, and you check the quantity and cost of each line before anything is added. Stock goes up and each item gets its landed cost, so your margins reflect what the goods really cost you.
Reordering and purchase orders
The reorder planner shows what to order next, and you can make purchase orders in the same admin as your orders and stock.
Profit and margin reports
See profit and margin by product, export any report as CSV, and get a monthly summary by email.
Admin and emails
- Products with photo upload, options, sale prices, stock and cost.
- Orders with payments, refunds, tracking numbers and postage.
- Settings and customer roles.
- Emails through Resend, free up to 3,000 a month: order confirmation, payment reminders, receipts, shipped notice, low-stock and new-order alerts, a monthly summary and password reset.
Look, search and launch
- Built-in themes, with your own colors, fonts and logo.
- Search basics in every store: page titles and descriptions, link previews, product data for Google's rich results, a sitemap and robots.txt.
- Coming-soon mode while you set up, policy page templates (shipping, returns, terms, privacy) and demo products to start from.
Optional restricted mode
For age-restricted products, one setting turns on an age gate, checkout confirmations recorded with each order, and blocked shipping regions. Your payment processor still decides what you can sell, so check Stripe's restricted businesses list first.
Security
- Prices calculated on the server, never taken from the browser
- Hashed passwords and HttpOnly sessions
- Protection against forged form posts (CSRF)
- Sign-in rate limits
- Signed payment webhooks
The code
Tillkit is plain Node.js with one dependency, pg. It keeps data in JSON files on your own computer and in Postgres on Railway. A CLAUDE.md file explains the code and its payment rules to AI coding assistants, and the automated tests run against a fake Stripe server, so no keys are needed. How to change your store with AI.
What you get
- The full Node.js source code
- The setup guide (PDF), written for people who don't code
- Access to the private GitHub repository for updates
- 30 days of setup help by email
Tillkit Core is $79 once. The Agency License, $249 once, covers unlimited client stores. Running costs are separate: Railway's Hobby plan is $5 a month and Stripe charges per sale. See pricing or compare the cost with Shopify.
Questions
Is Tillkit a Shopify theme?
No. Tillkit is a complete store that runs on its own, on your Railway account, with checkout through your own Stripe account. It doesn't need Shopify or any other platform.
Do I need to know how to code?
Not to get your store running. The setup guide walks you through deploying on Railway and connecting Stripe step by step. For bigger changes you can ask an AI coding assistant, or hire us for custom changes at $100 an hour.
Can I try it before buying?
Yes. The live demo runs the same code, and its admin is open and read-only.
Is it open source?
No. You get the full source code and can change anything, but you may not resell, share or publish the code.
Own your store.
$79 once for the full source code, the setup guide and 30 days of setup help by email. Hosting is yours, from $5 a month on Railway. Building stores for clients? The Agency License is $249.