Tillkit started as the store I built for my own shop, then became a template you host yourself. Until this week it was $79. Now the core store is free.

Why: I don't think the basics of selling online should sit behind a paywall. If you can run a $5-a-month server, you should be able to run a real store and own every line of it.

Tillkit Lite (free): storefront, cart and guest checkout, Stripe payments (cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay) and pay by invoice, sales tax at checkout, customer accounts, order emails, and an admin for products and orders. Two themes, eight color presets.

• GitHub: https://github.com/storefront-ki...

• One-click deploy on Railway (store plus database, about $5 a month): https://railway.com/deploy/tillk...

It's nearly midnight in California, and in a few hours Tillkit goes live here on Product Hunt.

Picture a small shop at closing time. The register drawer slides shut, the receipts are squared away, and there's no platform bill waiting at the end of the month. That's the feeling we built Tillkit around.

Hi Product Hunt! Tillkit launches here on Friday, and before then I'd like to hear from people who run or build small online stores.

Tillkit is the source code for a store you host yourself: Stripe checkout, sales tax, inventory from supplier invoices and profit reports, for $79 once plus about $5 a month on Railway. The trade-off is that you own the hosting instead of renting a platform.

Two honest questions:

1. What would make self-hosting worth it for you?