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MyPorch is a storefront platform built for cottage food bakers — people selling home-baked goods under their state's cottage food law. You get a public order page (myporch.app/your-bakery), batch-based pickup scheduling, compliant printable labels, and payments that go straight to your own Stripe account.

If you bake from home and take orders for pickup, MyPorch is built for you.

When you create an account, a short 4-step wizard collects your first name, your bakery's name, the state you bake in, and your most popular item. The state and product steps are optional — you can skip them and fill things in later. Your bakery name becomes your storefront address (like myporch.app/sunflower-bakes), and the product you name is saved as a draft listing so your menu has a head start.

Your dashboard shows a launch checklist that takes you from zero to selling: set up your bakery profile, add products, connect Stripe, schedule your first pickup batch, then publish your storefront. Do them in that order — publishing requires Stripe to be connected first. The optional last step, your first paid order, happens once you share your storefront link.

Hiding the checklist is per-browser: it stays hidden on the device where you dismissed it, but every step is still reachable from the sidebar (Settings, Products, Batches, Storefront). If you open your dashboard in a different browser or device, the checklist appears again until your remaining steps are complete.

Cottage food laws — what you can sell, where you can sell it, and what your labels must say — are set state by state. Knowing your state lets MyPorch apply the right label rules to your printable labels, surface compliance notices that apply to you, and point you to your state's cottage food law guide.

Check Settings for your bakery's timezone — everything downstream reads from it. Your storefront's order-window countdowns, pickup times, and any email that mentions a time all display in whatever timezone you've set there, not the visitor's local time or the server's. If you've moved, or the wrong timezone got picked up during setup, update it in Settings and every batch will show correctly from then on.

Stripe is how your customers pay you. When you connect Stripe, payments for your orders are processed directly on your own Stripe account — the money goes to you, not through MyPorch. Stripe also handles the banking side: identity verification, card processing, and payouts to your bank account. You can't publish your storefront until Stripe is connected.

No. MyPorch charges no per-order platform fee — order payments go straight to your Stripe account. MyPorch makes money from optional subscription plans (Baker and Bakehouse), not from your sales. The only per-transaction cost is Stripe's own card processing fee.

Stripe's signup asks for the standard details any payment processor needs: your legal name, date of birth, address, the last four of your SSN (for identity verification in the US), and the bank account where payouts should go. Selling as an individual or sole proprietor is fine — you don't need an LLC or EIN to get started, though you can use one if you have it.

This usually means the Stripe window was closed before finishing, or Stripe returned an error during authorization. Go to Settings → Payment Processing and click Connect with Stripe to try again — reconnecting is always safe and won't create duplicate charges. Complete every Stripe screen until you're redirected back to MyPorch. If it fails repeatedly, email us at hello@myporch.app and we'll dig in.

Stripe sometimes accepts the connection but still needs more from you — usually identity verification or bank details — before it enables charges on your account. Log in at dashboard.stripe.com and look for a "complete your profile" or "information needed" banner. Once Stripe finishes verifying, online payments switch on automatically.

Payouts come from Stripe, not MyPorch. By default Stripe pays out on a rolling schedule (typically 2 business days after each payment in the US; your first payout can take 7–14 days while Stripe verifies your account). You can view and change your payout schedule in your Stripe dashboard under Settings → Payouts.

Stripe's standard US processing fee is 2.9% + 30¢ per successful card charge (Stripe's current published rate — see stripe.com/pricing). That fee is deducted before the payout reaches your bank. MyPorch adds nothing on top.

Yes. In Settings → Payment Processing, click Disconnect account and type DISCONNECT to confirm. This removes MyPorch's access to that Stripe account and unpublishes your storefront until you connect another one — your existing orders stay in your dashboard. Once disconnected, click Connect with Stripe to link a different account.

It depends on whether the order was paid. A pending order (the customer started checkout but never finished, or it got stuck) can be cancelled from the order's page — this expires the Stripe checkout session and no money moves. A paid order can be refunded — MyPorch issues a full refund through Stripe back to the customer's original payment method and marks the order cancelled. You'll need to type REFUND to confirm, since it can't be undone. Refunds are full amount only, and the money typically lands back on the customer's card in 5–10 business days, per Stripe's timing.

A few things stop orders from going through, and they're quick to check in order: is the batch actually open right now (not scheduled, not closed, and past its "orders open at" time)? Is Stripe still fully connected with charges enabled (Settings → Payment Processing)? And if you're on the Free plan, have you already hit 10 paid orders this calendar month — the storefront just tells customers "Orders are closed for this round" without mentioning the limit. If all three check out, the checkout session may have simply expired because the customer stepped away too long; ask them to reload your storefront and try again. A declined card is between the customer and their bank — MyPorch and Stripe don't see why a card was declined, so a different card or another attempt is the usual fix.

The onboarding wizard only asks for your product's name, so it saves the listing as an inactive draft. Open Products, click the draft, set a price (and a photo if you have one), then activate it. Draft products never appear on your storefront — your dashboard shows a reminder banner until it's activated.

A batch is one round of baking with its own order window and pickup time. Scheduled means it's created but not accepting orders yet; Open means customers can order; Closed means ordering has ended and you're baking; Completed means pickup is done. Customers can only place orders against an open batch.

Each batch has two time ranges: when ordering opens (orders open at) and when customers come pick up (the window between pickup start and pickup end). Both are enforced automatically — before orders open, customers see an opening-soon notice with a countdown instead of a checkout button, and once "orders close at" passes, ordering stops on its own (you can also close a batch manually any time to stop orders immediately). Customers see the pickup window on your storefront and in their confirmation email, and pickup reminder emails go out automatically before the window starts. All of these times display in your bakery's timezone, which you set in Settings.

A batch that has received orders can't be deleted — the order history (and your customers' receipts) depend on it. Mark it Completed instead and it moves out of your active view. Batches with no orders can be deleted safely.

The bake list on your dashboard totals up every item from paid orders in your active batch — "12 sourdough loaves, 8 cinnamon roll packs" — so you know exactly what to bake without tallying orders by hand. It updates automatically as new paid orders come in.

Yes. When you're building a batch, each product has an optional Qty field — set it to however many you can make, or leave it blank for unlimited. Your storefront shows "Only N left" once an item drops to 5 or fewer, and "Sold out" once it hits zero; checkout enforces the same limits automatically, so you don't need to watch it manually. You can still close the whole batch (switch it from Open to Closed) any time you need ordering to stop immediately across every item.

Yes. MyPorch automatically emails customers with paid orders a reminder before their batch's pickup window opens, including your pickup address and any pickup instructions from your bakery profile. You don't need to do anything to trigger these.

On the Baker and Bakehouse plans, you can send an announcement email when you open a new batch — it goes to every customer who's opted in, plus anyone who joined your waitlist through the "Notify me" form. It's meant to go out once per batch, so if you need to re-send it (a typo, a schedule change), MyPorch asks for an extra confirmation first to keep you from accidentally emailing your whole list twice. This feature isn't available on the Free plan.

Publishing requires a connected Stripe account with charges enabled — otherwise customers could reach a checkout that can't take payment. If the Publish button is disabled, go to Settings → Payment Processing and finish connecting Stripe (including any verification Stripe still needs). Once charges are enabled, the Publish button unlocks.

Your storefront lives at myporch.app/your-slug — the slug is generated from your bakery name during onboarding. You can edit it in Settings → Basic Information. Keep in mind that changing it breaks any links or QR codes you've already shared, so settle on it before printing anything.

The Storefront page generates a QR code that points at your storefront URL. Download it and put it on packaging, market-stand signage, or business cards — customers scan it and land straight on your menu. If you change your storefront slug, regenerate and reprint the QR code.

Your logo, hero image, tagline, and about text live in Settings; the overall look is controlled by the template picker on the Storefront page. Changes save instantly and show on your public page on the next load — you can preview your storefront any time, even in draft mode (only you can see it while unpublished).

No — orders are always placed against an open batch, so when nothing is open your storefront still shows your bakery and menu but ordering is paused. In that gap, customers see a "Notify me" email form instead of a checkout button — anyone who signs up is added to your opted-in email list and gets an email as soon as you announce your next batch. Scheduling your next batch (and sharing when orders open) is the rhythm most bakers settle into.

Three spots: your logo and a hero image, both in Settings → Storefront, and a photo for each product on its product form. The logo and hero shape the top of your storefront page; product photos show up on your menu and in batches. If you skip a product photo, MyPorch fills in a template placeholder so your menu still looks finished — you can always come back and add real photos later.

The Labels page builds print-ready product labels for every paid order in a batch, using your state's cottage food label rules. A label shows as not ready when required information is missing — most often a product ingredient list, your pickup address, or a registration number your state requires. The issues list on each order tells you exactly what to fix; after fixing, refresh the label snapshot.

MyPorch keeps a per-state registry of cottage food label requirements — required disclaimers (including exact statutory wording where the law fixes it), name/address rules, and formatting. Your labels use the rules for the state on your bakery profile. For the full picture of your state's law, read your state guide.

In Settings, under your bakery's compliance details. If your state issues a registration, permit, or license number for cottage food operations, enter it there and MyPorch includes it on your printed labels where your state requires it.

Every bakery starts on the Free plan, which includes your storefront, batches, orders, and labels. The paid plans — Baker and Bakehouse — add growth features like batch email announcements to your customer list. Current pricing and the full feature comparison live on the pricing page; per-order payments are never charged a MyPorch fee on any plan.

Go to Dashboard → Billing. Upgrading opens a Stripe checkout; managing an existing subscription (switching plans, updating your card, or canceling) opens Stripe's billing portal, where changes take effect per Stripe's proration rules. Canceling a paid plan drops you back to Free — your storefront and data stay intact.

On the login page, use the password reset link and we'll email you a secure link to set a new password. If you're already logged in, you can change your password from the update-password page. If the reset email doesn't arrive, check spam, then email hello@myporch.app.

Every marketing email MyPorch sends on your behalf (like batch announcements) includes a one-click unsubscribe link unique to that customer. Unsubscribed customers stop receiving announcements but still get transactional emails about orders they place — receipts and pickup reminders always go through.

Yes — the Free plan allows 10 paid orders per calendar month. Your dashboard shows a usage banner that turns amber once you hit 8, so you can see it coming. If you reach 10, customers see "Orders are closed for this round. Please check back soon." on your storefront — it doesn't mention the limit or your plan. The count resets at the start of the next month, and the Baker ($12/mo) and Bakehouse ($24/mo) plans remove the cap entirely.

Yes. From Dashboard → Customers, the "Export CSV" button downloads your customer list — built from paid orders — as a spreadsheet with names, contact info, order counts, and total spend. It's a plain download you can open in Excel, Sheets, or import elsewhere; there's nothing to configure first.