Built with metal shops. For metal shops.
We’ve spent years working alongside small and mid-sized metal fabrication shops — and the same challenges kept coming up. We decided to do something about it.
Technology should connect the office and the floor — without getting in either one’s way.
Why MetalShopHQ exists.
Job folders taped to walls. Time sheets that arrive on Friday. Drawings printed three different ways from three different revisions. Inventory in a spreadsheet one person updates when they remember. ERPs built for assembly lines, not custom fabrication. We heard the same story from shop after shop, and the off-the-shelf tools weren’t solving it.
So we built MetalShopHQ — software designed around how a metal shop actually works, not how a software vendor wishes it worked.
From the founder
Software experience, grounded in the shop.
I’ve worked with software companies since the early 2000s and led them since 2012. In 2023, I began running KelRay Fire Pits and experienced metal manufacturing from the operator’s side.
I saw how much time and cost shops absorb preparing quotes for work they may never win, and how often software built for other industries creates more work instead of less. That experience led to tools for making quoting less painful, and then to MetalShopHQ for everything that happens after the customer says yes.
Fabricators should not have to become software specialists. They are experts at building remarkable things in metal; my job is to bring useful technology into the shop in a way that respects that craft and stays out of the way.
Founder, MetalShopHQ
Built with active shops, not for them in a vacuum.
Every feature in MetalShopHQ is shaped by working metal shops — shops that test the rough edges, push back on the parts that don’t fit how they run, and tell us what’s missing. That feedback loop is the difference between software that looks good in a demo and software that survives a Tuesday afternoon on the shop floor.
Why a sister product to MetalCutHQ?
MetalCutHQ handles the front-of-house: instant quoting, customer-facing shop pages, drawings in and prices out. MetalShopHQ handles the back-of-house: what happens after the customer says yes. Same login, same shop record, two focused products instead of one all-things-to-everyone monolith.
What we believe about software for shops.
- It should be fast enough to use on the shop floor.
- It should respect role boundaries — staff shouldn’t see costs they don’t need to.
- It should accept the way you already work — not force a new vocabulary.
- Your data is yours. We don’t train AI on it, sell it, or fence it in.