The Katana alternative for make-to-order work
Katana is polished manufacturing inventory software built for e-commerce product makers managing stock across channels. A fabrication shop quoting one-off jobs from drawings is a different business - and on Katana, the features that business needs are add-ons.
What Katana gets right
Katana has some of the best-designed screens in this category, a genuine free tier for tiny product businesses, and first-class Shopify and e-commerce integrations. If you make a product line and sell it across channels, it deserves a look.
Where it breaks for a fabrication shop
The headline price is not the fab-shop price
Core starts at US$299 a month. Manufacturing is a US$199 a month add-on. Traceability is another US$249 a month. Onboarding is US$2,000. A working fab-shop setup lands near US$750 a month before usage, roughly what MirrorWorks Operate costs for ten users, with nothing bolted on.
Make-to-stock logic, make-to-order work
Katana's model is inventory-first: make product, hold stock, sell across channels. Job-shop routing, one-off quoting, production scheduling around a bottleneck press brake, and drawing-driven work are not what it is for.
The 30-SKU free plan
Genuinely free, and genuinely unusable for a job shop: every job is a new part number, so a fab shop creates more SKUs in a month than the free plan allows in total.
| Comparison point | MirrorWorks | Katana |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Metal fabrication job shops | E-commerce makers and inventory |
| Subscription (published) | A$25–A$101/user/mo | From US$299/mo + add-ons |
| The cost not on the pricing page | None. No setup fee. | Manufacturing +US$199/mo; Traceability +US$249/mo; US$2,000 onboarding |
| Consultant needed to go live | No | No |
| Time to live | Days (Bridge import) | Weeks |
| Shop-floor interface | Gloved-hands kiosk, tablet-first (Make) | Inventory-first screens |
| Quoting | AI quote from drawing and history (Sell) | Not job-shop quoting |
| Production scheduling | AI capacity scheduling, drag-drop (Plan) | Make-to-stock oriented |
| Job costing | Live actuals vs quote (Book) | Inventory-centric costing |
| Accounting | Xero and MYOB native | Xero/QuickBooks connectors |
| Contract | Month-to-month | Annual for Advantage |
| Australian pricing | AUD list | USD |
Katana figures from katanamrp.com/pricing. Verified 18 August 2026. If anything here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
What is Katana actually costing you?
Katana prices per plan, not per seat, so the starting figure is the working fab-shop stack this page just costed: Core, Manufacturing, and Traceability together. Moving the seats slider changes the MirrorWorks side only, which is the whole difference. Edit anything to match your bills; nothing leaves your browser.
Typical published pricing for Other ERP. Edit everything to match your bills.
How this works: your current costs run until your renewal and rise 5% a year. MirrorWorks runs from the month after, at its published month-to-month price. Switching skips your next upgrade project, because you are leaving. Bridge imports your data free. See the switching roadmap.
Switching from Katana?
Bridge imports your customers, part numbers, jobs, and stock from Katana, spreadsheets, Xero, or MYOB. Free, in days, before you pay anything. Run both in parallel until your numbers match.
Founding Shop Programme: the first 20 Australian shops get free Bridge migration, direct access to the founders, and their pricing locked for two years.
Join the Founding Shop Programme
Sources
All figures verified 18 August 2026.