Setup Guide

Four steps from a fresh clone to a live store. The free tiers are enough to build and test on. Before you sell: Vercel's Hobby plan is limited to non-commercial use, so a live store belongs on Pro, and Supabase pauses free projects after a week of low activity and keeps no downloadable backups.

Before You Start

You'll need:

Node.js 20 or newer — check with node -v
Git, and access to your ShipCommerce repository
A terminal — you'll run about six commands in total

You do need a local clone. The setup, database, and admin-account commands run from your machine, even when the store itself is hosted on Vercel. See Local Development if you haven't cloned it yet.

Accounts You'll Need

Service	What it does	Sign up
SupabaseRequired	Database, authentication, and file storage	supabase.com
VercelRequired	Hosting — puts your store online with HTTPS	vercel.com
StripeOptional	Card payments. Skip it to launch with cash on delivery and bank transfer	stripe.com
ResendOptional	Order confirmations and marketing email	resend.com

Steps

Set Up Your Database

Create a Supabase project, run the setup wizard, and get the store running locally · 10–15 min

Deploy Your Store

Push to Vercel, set your environment variables, and connect a domain · 15–25 min

Set Up Payments

Connect Stripe and register the webhook against your live URL · 5–10 min

Add Products & Go Live

Add products, place a test order, and launch · 30–60 min

The Short Version

If you're comfortable in a terminal, this is Step 1 in full — a working store on your machine in about five minutes:

npm install
npm run setup       # wizard — writes .env.local
npm run db:setup    # creates tables, policies, storage
npm run seed        # admin account: admin@demo.com / Demo1234!
npm run dev

Then follow Steps 2–4 to deploy it, add payments, and launch.

Total time: about 1–2 hours from start to a live store, most of it spent adding your own products in Step 4.

Something not working? The Troubleshooting page covers the errors that come up most often, with the fix for each.

Let's Start →