# Cartcast

> Live shows, in-video checkout and shoppable replays, as an embed for merchant sites — on live-commerce infrastructure you own.

Source page: https://saascode.ai/products/cartcast
Machine-readable record: https://saascode.ai/products/cartcast.md

One-time purchase · full source code · self-hosted by the buyer.

Price: $249 (one-time)

## How to read this document

Written for a model auditing this product on a buyer's behalf. Two labels
appear throughout and they mean different things:

- **measured** — produced by a script reading the product's own source tree
  or database at the stated date. The method is named beside each number.
- **stated** — written by the seller. True or not, it is a claim, and this
  document does not ask you to treat it as evidence.

The live demo is the strongest verification available from outside: it runs
the same source a buyer receives. Nothing to sign up for — the public side is
open, and the seeded credentials below get you into each role.

## What it is

Cartcast is live-commerce infrastructure a brand drops into its own store through a lightweight embed: live shows, checkout inside the video, and shoppable replays — on the brand's own site, with the brand's own audience.

## Live demo

Two doors into the same running instance, and the same source a buyer
receives. There is no account to create; the public side is open, and the
seeded credentials below sign you into each role.

- **Guided (recommended):** https://saascode.ai/demo/cartcast — our shell, with a role switcher and
  the credentials in the menu. Best for a person.
- **Direct:** https://cartcast.saascode.ai — the product on its own, no chrome.
  Best when you are relaying steps to someone, or fetching a page.

4 roles seeded on the demo (of the 5 the schema defines — the build data below counts them all). Credentials are published deliberately: these
are demo accounts on a public demo instance, and a reviewer who cannot get
in cannot verify anything.

- **Show producer** (`member`) — `user@demo.com` / `demo123`
  Runs shows and manages products, videos, and embeds. Lands on `/dashboard`.
- **Merchant owner** (`org_admin`) — `org-admin@demo.com` / `demo123`
  Runs the merchant workspace, payouts, billing, and team. Lands on `/dashboard`.
- **Analyst** (`viewer`) — `viewer@demo.com` / `demo123`
  Reviews shows, orders, payouts, and analytics read-only. Lands on `/dashboard`.
- **Platform admin** (`super_admin`) — `admin@demo.com` / `demo123`
  Runs the backend: merchants, plans, features, and health. Lands on `/admin`.

Or open a role directly: https://saascode.ai/demo/cartcast?role={role}

## Measured build

*measured — each number names the method that produced it.*

- **roles: 5** — distinct roles accepted by the role CHECK constraint: admin, member, org_admin, super_admin, viewer
- **tables: 62** — distinct CREATE TABLE statements across every applied migration
- **migrations: 58** — .sql files in supabase/migrations
- **page modules: 85** — files named page.tsx under src/app, excluding node_modules and .next
- **source lines: 115,901** — lines of code (comments and blank lines excluded) across 881 TypeScript files (106,129) and 72 SQL files (9,772); node_modules and .next excluded
- **api route files: 207** — files named route.ts under src/app/api
- **http operations: 266** — exported HTTP method handlers across those files, de-duplicated per file, OPTIONS excluded as CORS preflight
- **schema graph: 62 tables, 110 relationships** — parsed from the applied migrations

A large number here is scope, not quality. It says the product models a
real domain rather than a CRUD skeleton; it says nothing about code
quality, duplication, test coverage or maintainability, and should not be
read as if it did.

Release: v1.0.0 · built 2026-07-07

## Complete capability inventory

17 capabilities. Each summary is *stated* — selected from the
product's own buyer documentation, or written by the seller where marked.

### Live selling

- **Live shopping broadcasts** — A merchant schedules a show, goes live, and the broadcast plays inside their own site through the embed. Products are pinned during the stream, so what is on screen is what is buyable at that moment.
- **Shoppable VOD** — A show does not end when the stream stops. The recording stays shoppable — the product pins remain attached to their moments, so a replay watched three days later still buys.
- **Embed widget** — A lightweight script the merchant places on their own site. Nothing is hosted on a Cartcast domain and no visitor is redirected anywhere.
- **In-stream checkout** — The whole reason the product exists: a viewer buys without leaving the video.
- **Real-time engagement (chat/reactions/pins)** — Chat, reactions and product pins during the show. Live commerce without a live audience reaction is a video, and the chat is what tells the host which product to bring forward next.
- **Multi-host shows (LiveKit)** — A merchant schedules a show, goes live, and the broadcast plays inside their own site through the embed. Products are pinned during the stream, so what is on screen is what is buyable at that moment.
- **White-label embed** *(seller-authored)* — Present the live-shopping experience under each merchant's own identity by removing Cartcast branding from the embed. The control ships in the source and is configured on the Scale tier, giving the buyer a clear branding upgrade to reserve for their own paying customers.

### Commerce operations

- **Product catalog & variants** — Products and their variants live in the merchant's tenant, with sizes, colours and stock states carried through to what a viewer sees pinned during a show.
- **Cart, orders & fulfillment handoff** — Orders placed during a show or a replay become records in the merchant's tenant and hand off to their existing fulfilment process. Cartcast sells the moment; it does not attempt to run the warehouse.
- **Commission billing** — The commission is real and it is stated here rather than in a footnote. Cartcast charges a percentage of sales the live layer drove — not of the merchant's total store revenue, and not of orders that would have happened anyway. The higher tiers trade a larger monthly fee for a smaller take rate, so a merchant selling more per month pays a lower percentage on it.
- **Merchant payouts (Stripe Connect)** — Money from a show reaches the merchant's own connected account.
- **CSV/Shopify import** *(seller-authored)* — Bring merchant catalogs into Cartcast without rebuilding every product and variant by hand. CSV and existing-store import ship as higher-tier capabilities, giving the buyer an onboarding accelerator to reserve for their own paying customers while every imported catalog remains inside the correct merchant tenant.
- **Instant payouts** — Money from a show reaches the merchant's own connected account.

### Performance intelligence

- **Basic analytics** — Every tier reports the basics — what sold, when, and how the show performed.
- **AI insights (Claude Sonnet 5)** — On the higher tiers, an analysis layer over show performance — what worked, which products held attention, where a show lost its audience.
- **Advanced analytics (heatmap/cohort)** — Every tier reports the basics — what sold, when, and how the show performed.

### Platform integration

- **Programmatic + agent API (Connect + MCP)** *(seller-authored)* — Connect Cartcast to external systems and agent workflows through the shipped programmatic and MCP interfaces. The capability is configured on the Scale tier, allowing the buyer to reserve controlled automation and integration access for their own highest-value customers.

## What each system gives the operator

*stated.*

- **Live selling** — Merchants sell inside their own storefront while every live moment stays shoppable.
- **Commerce operations** — Catalogs, orders, commissions, and payouts move through one merchant-owned commercial loop.
- **Performance intelligence** — Every show turns audience behavior and attributed revenue into decisions merchants can act on.
- **Platform integration** — External systems and agents can operate Cartcast through controlled, plan-gated interfaces.

## The problems it was built to solve

*stated — the seller's argument, given in full so you can judge it.*

### The buying moment stays inside the experience the merchant already owns.

Live commerce loses its advantage when the audience has to leave the show to complete a purchase. Interest is immediate, but the handoff to another tab turns a shared moment into a conventional checkout journey and gives hesitation time to return. The same break appears after the broadcast: attention earned during the event fades if the recording becomes passive content. For a merchant, the cost is not only a missed order. It is a channel that demands hosts, promotion, and production while sending the highest-intent viewers through the least coherent path.

### Every live-driven sale becomes explainable revenue for the right merchant.

A platform serving multiple merchants can look healthy in aggregate while quietly creating a finance problem for each one. Products drift out of sync, orders need manual interpretation, fulfilment teams wait for context, and commission calculations become arguments after the show. The operator pays twice: first in support time, then in merchant trust when payouts or attribution cannot be explained quickly. Growth makes the weakness more expensive because every new tenant adds another catalogue, another settlement rhythm, and another set of people asking which number is authoritative.

### Each show leaves evidence the next campaign can use.

A live show produces plenty of activity and very little clarity unless the operator can separate noise from commercial signal. Hosts remember the busiest minute, merchants remember the product they expected to win, and teams often plan the next event from anecdotes rather than evidence. That creates a cycle of repeated timing mistakes, weak product sequencing, and spend that cannot be tied back to revenue. The business cost is compounded uncertainty: nobody knows which format deserves another campaign, which audience is returning, or where attention consistently disappears before the sale.

### Automated operations scale without turning every integration into manual work.

When the core platform cannot participate in a wider operating stack, every cross-system workflow ends with a person copying data. That manual seam is easy to tolerate for one merchant and expensive across dozens: launches slow down, records diverge, and routine updates compete with customer work for the same attention. Agencies and technical operators then carry an integration tax on every new account, even when the surrounding systems are already automated. The business consequence is a ceiling on scale set by handoffs, not by demand or product capacity.

## What it takes to run it

*stated — external services the buyer supplies and pays for directly.*

- **Node host** (required) — Any Node 18+ host — Vercel, a VPS or Docker. No platform lock-in.
- **Supabase** (required) — Postgres with row-level security, applied by the shipped migration scripts.
- **OvenMediaEngine + LiveKit (streaming)** (required) — A self-hosted OvenMediaEngine VPS carries the live broadcast and LiveKit powers multi-host shows; replays are delivered through Bunny CDN. Keys are wired at /admin/integrations.
- **Stripe, with Connect Express accounts** (required) — Each merchant connects their own Stripe account; sale proceeds land there. The platform charges its commission and never becomes the holder of merchant funds.
- **Email: Resend, SendGrid, Mailgun or Brevo** (required) — Four adapters ship — bring an API key for any one. Order confirmations, show notifications, account email.
- **Supabase Storage + Bunny (object storage)** (required) — Product media lives in Supabase Storage; stream recordings and replay delivery ride Bunny.
- **The merchant's own site** (required) — The embed goes on it. Cartcast does not host a storefront.

## FAQ

**What exactly do I receive after purchase?**

The complete source repository behind the live demo — 115,901 lines across the application and its database, 62 tables defined by 58 migrations that the shipped scripts apply for you, plus the seed data, the demo accounts and the setup documentation. Not a subset and not a scaffold: the same code that runs the demo you just used.

**Is the live demo the same product whose source I receive?**

Yes. The Cartcast demo runs the delivered release (v1.0.0), and the build figures on this page are measured from that same source — not from a showcase build kept separately.

**Can I test every account role before buying?**

Yes — all 4 of them: Show producer, Merchant owner, Analyst, Platform admin. Each one is seeded in the live demo and reachable from the role board above, so you can inspect the product from the customer's side, the agent's side and the administrator's side before you decide.

**Is this a complete product or a starter template?**

Complete. 85 page modules and 266 HTTP operations, with authentication, roles, billing, an administration panel, background jobs and seeded demo data all wired and running. A template gives you the shape of an application; this is one you can deploy and start operating.

**Can I rebrand and modify it?**

Yes, without asking. The name, identity, copy, styling and code are yours to change. Rebranding and operating it as your own service is exactly what the licence is for.

**What does the licence allow?**

A perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to the product you bought and to every update released for it. The Standard licence covers one business — yours. If you deploy for clients, the Client licence covers up to five. You can modify it, rebrand it, deploy it and charge your own customers.

**Can I resell the source code?**

No. Reselling, redistributing, sublicensing or giving away the source itself is not permitted under either licence. You build and deliver products with it — the code stays with you.

**What services and ongoing costs are required?**

You bring your own accounts, so we never mark anything up and there is no ongoing cost to us beyond the purchase. Required: Node host, Supabase, OvenMediaEngine + LiveKit (streaming), Stripe, with Connect Express accounts, Email: Resend, SendGrid, Mailgun or Brevo, Supabase Storage + Bunny (object storage), The merchant's own site. Optional: none. The table above says exactly what stops working without each one; most have usable free tiers at low volume.

**How difficult is deployment?**

Two ways, and most buyers use the first. The installer in your saascode dashboard walks it: you create free accounts at Vercel and Supabase, connect them, and it provisions the database, applies 58 migrations, seeds the data, deploys and verifies the result — you watch the steps go green. Or take the source and do it yourself with the shipped scripts and docs, which is the same sequence run by hand.

**What updates and support are included?**

Updates to that product for as long as we maintain it — no renewal fee and no expiry date on your access. Support covers download problems, defects in the code as shipped, questions about what the product does and how it is structured, and licence questions. It does not cover debugging your own modifications, building features for you, or setting up your hosting and third-party accounts.

**Why does a complete codebase cost $249?**

Because it was built once and is distributed many times. SaaSCode builds each product and ships the same finished release through the catalog, so the price reflects repeatable distribution — not a reduced codebase, an unfinished template, or what the same work would cost commissioned.

**Do I need to be a developer?**

No, for the normal path. You create free accounts at Vercel and Supabase, connect them to the installer in your saascode dashboard, and it does the deployment for you — provision, migrate, seed, deploy, verify. What it asks of you is creating two accounts and copying a token, not writing code. If you would rather deploy it yourself, or host it somewhere else, the full source and the scripts are yours to do that with. Running the product day to day needs no technical skill at all: that happens through its own interface, which is what the demo shows.

## Licence

The buyer receives the complete source and may deploy, modify and operate it
as their own SaaS, charging their own customers. The source itself is not
resold or redistributed: you build and deliver **with** it, you do not sell **it**.

## What this document cannot tell you

Stated plainly because a review that misses it is not a review:

- code quality, duplication, or architectural consistency
- test coverage
- query performance under load
- security posture beyond what the stack implies
- how maintainable it will be in a year

Scope is measurable from outside; implementation quality is not. Anyone
evaluating this should say so rather than infer quality from size.

## Written about it

- [Cartcast vs Channelize.io vs Bambuser — Own the Platform or Subscribe to One](https://saascode.ai/inside/cartcast-vs-channelize-io-vs-bambuser-own-the-platform-or-subscribe-to-one.md)
- [Live commerce software: a buyer's guide organised by who owns the audience](https://saascode.ai/inside/live-commerce-software-a-buyers-guide-organised-by-who-owns-the-audience.md)
- [Road to Cartcast](https://saascode.ai/inside/road-to-cartcast.md)

## Links

- Catalog page: https://saascode.ai/products/cartcast
- Product record: https://saascode.ai/inside/products/cartcast
- Live demo: https://cartcast.saascode.ai
- Every product: https://saascode.ai/llms.txt