Established in 2005, Big Cartel has enabled artists and creatives worldwide to sell more than $2.5 billion worth of work. For more detail, this Big Cartel review will explain all the pros and cons to answer why Big Cartel is a top priority for creative individuals who want to add an eCommerce element to their art.
To do so, LitExtension – #1 eCommerce Migration Service will cover the following key points:
- A summary of the Big Cartel platform
- Detailed analysis of Big Cartel on all aspects
- Potential alternatives for Big Cartel
Is Big Cartel a risk-free way to start your business with easy-to-use features and a free plan? Let's find out now!
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Big Cartel Review – An Overview
Big Cartel is a fully hosted eCommerce platform for creative and artistic sellers looking to showcase their work and dip their toes into the world of eCommerce. It presently hosts over 65,000 live websites and ranks 11th among the most popular on the Entire Internet in the Hosted Solution category (Source: BuiltWith).
Big Cartel pros & cons
From our research for the Big Cartel review, this platform is ideal for small business owners who need an easy way to build an online store on a tight budget. It may not offer all the bells and whistles like some other eCommerce platforms, but it is a simple and cost-effective method of starting to sell online.
Grasp Big Cartel's pros and cons below to know exactly what you're looking for:
Pros | Cons |
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Our quick verdict
You might be wondering: Is Big Cartel legit? To put it simply, this is a viable option for those seeking simplicity with straightforward online store creation. However, it falls short in comparison to other eCommerce platforms in several aspects.
Based on our Big Cartel review, its strengths lie in user-friendliness and consistent performance, particularly its suitability for beginners. Nevertheless, Big Cartel's limitations become apparent, particularly its inability to effectively accommodate growing businesses.
Big Cartel Review – All Things Breakdown
By researching and having hands-on experience with the platform, our team of experts has conducted a detailed breakdown of Big Cartel review on all aspects. This way, you will be able to quickly grasp the platform before making your decision.
Factors | Our Verdict | Score |
Pricing | Big Cartel might not offer optimal value for expanding your online store, but it's a great choice if you intend to maintain a smaller scale. | |
Ease of use | A user-friendly dashboard and straightforward setup make creating an online store incredibly effortless. | |
Themes & customization | Big Cartel provides a basic website builder with all its plans, offering 19 diverse themes for design customization. | |
Integration | Though Big Cartel offers only 27 apps, it's crucial to highlight its integration with Zapier, enabling connection to approximately 5,000 additional apps. | |
eCommerce features | Compared to other eCommerce platforms, the features provided are quite limited. | |
Payment options | Big Cartel doesn't have its own payment gateway; instead, it offers connections to external providers, limited to Stripe and Paypal. | |
Marketing features | Big Cartel offers fundamental marketing tools like discounts and promo codes, accessible even with its free plan. | |
Security | Big Cartel secures its sites with SSL certificates, including checkout pages, but lacks information on hosting security such as PCI compliance. | |
Customer support | Customer assistance is solely provided through email in English, limited to EST business hours. | |
Best for: Individuals or small businesses looking to start and maintain a modest online store without complex features | ||
Big Cartel Pricing
Our point of view on Big Cartel review in terms of pricing is that it is quite straightforward and flexible. There are different tiers of plans to suit users’ wallet size, ranging from $0 per month for the Gold plan to $19.99 per month for the Diamond plan. Depending on the plan you choose, you can sell 5 to 500 products through your store.
If you are a beginner with less than 5 products, the Gold plan is good to go. This plan includes fundamental features such as real-time stats, discount offers, shipment tracking, etc. However, if you want to increase your sales and upload more products, you can opt for other plans. Big Cartel offers users low-price plans with Zero Listing Fees.
The platform has included a sales tax autopilot option for all plans, which is a plus for all users. This function will compute and remit sales tax on purchases made in your store automatically, which helps you save time reporting sales/tax made in all states.
Big Cartel Ease of Use
Our definite thought on Big Cartel is that it is effortless to use. It provides users with simple features to build, manage and run a basic eCommerce store. So, without coding and technical knowledge, you can totally set up your store, customize the visuals, and manage the sales. You can start selling seamlessly with Big Cartel's step-by-step guide.
The Big Cartel dashboard looks so vivid and eye-catching. Through this, you can see visitors, orders, conversions, and up-to-date sales revenue of your store over the last 7 days, 30 days, the past year, or store lifetime. Hence, you can easily see how your business runs and forecast upcoming selling trends.
About Big Cartel review with store setup, its onboarding process is very user-friendly and suitable for novices. It offers clean navigation, useful prompts, and suggestions to guide you through the setup, and once you’re in the editor, everything is simple and straightforward.
Nevertheless, if you want to do anything more complicated with your Big Cartel websites, you'll need some coding experience. Still, ease of use is Big Cartel's biggest strength compared with other eCommerce platforms.
Big Cartel Themes & Customization
Big Cartel has 17 store themes available, all of which are mobile-responsive and free to use, which is a huge plus.
Generally, Big Cartel is quite perfect for creatives or small enterprises despite not offering the extensive range of features as other well-established eCommerce platforms (Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, etc.). But if you are seeking extraordinary themes with advanced features, you can pay for some apps and integrations.
The plus side is that you can switch themes anytime you want. In Big Cartel, changing your existing theme is a breeze. When switching, you have to reformat the images according to the new theme and edit the content simultaneously.
However, the downside is that Big Cartel doesn’t allow for much customization. If you desire a major change on your storefront, you may have to harness some lines of code. In all of the Big Cartel paid plans, an HTML/CSS editor is provided on the theme page.
Compared to other eCommerce platforms, Big Cartel doesn’t have an image editor and stock images. However, you can totally edit images while building your store by using code. Adding images in various themes is just a piece of cake with a few clicks.
Big Cartel Apps & Integration
Big Cartel integrates directly with about 30 add-ons, all of which are well-chosen and stick to the essentials. Though the number of available integrations is insufficient, they still offer basic functions for you to run an online store.
On the other hand, Zapier – an available plugin that lets your Big Cartel site connect with over 500 third-party apps without any coding skills to save your time for what matters most. You will have to pay for both the Zapier plugin and your third-party apps, but you don’t need to hire a web developer to build those connections for you.
Although this might not suit all small business owners, the platform has clearly defined its target market and has attracted a loyal customer base within the arts and crafts community. Many artisans have transitioned from Etsy to establish their independent stores on Big Cartel.
Big Cartel eCommerce features
Up to this point, we've examined Big Cartel in terms of its visual presentation and content. However, the most crucial aspect is its functionality for selling products. Therefore, let's delve deeper into the platform's eCommerce capabilities.
Abandoned cart recovery
Abandoned cart recovery allows you to send emails to store visitors who added items to their cart but did not complete the checkout process. This is a great method to boost sales.
Unfortunately, unlike most top eCommerce platforms, Big Cartel does not have this feature out of the box, even in the most expensive plan. So, you’ll need to connect an email marketing solution like Mailchimp or GetResponse to Big Cartel and utilize its marketing automation features if you want to take advantage of it.
Order management
Order management is convenient and easy in Big Cartel. Users can use the Big Cartel dashboard to send purchase confirmation emails to consumers, track purchases, print shipping labels, and export order history in bulk via a CSV file.
Also, you can view the whole history of orders and customers in the orders area. Every “order” page has basic management features for completing the order.
Inventory management
Big Cartel’s inventory and tracking system alerts sellers when a product goes out of stock. The inventory management feature automatically subtracts sold products from the available stock, allowing you to monitor your inventory and keep track of the number of products available. However, this is only available for paid plans.
Even with the highest tier, the number of products you can have is limited, and you'll need a paid integration to sell digital downloads. Generating SKUs isn't an option, and you're restricted to 150 product options with three variants per option. Also, it's important to keep in mind that once Big Cartel generates a URL for your product, you can't modify it afterward.
Reports & analytics
Reporting and analytics play a vital role when it comes to determining which initiatives are helping your company expand. Users can track visitors and order statistics, as well as conversion rates, through the web dashboard.
It enables you to observe charts and performance metrics categorized by year, month, 30 days, seven days, and overall statistics spanning all time. If you have a paid plan, you can link to Google Analytics for further information.
Automatic sales tax collection
When conducting online product sales, it's essential to gather and remit applicable sales taxes. Big Cartel collaborates with TaxJar, which automatically computes and sends sales tax payments for purchases made in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, assuming transactions are conducted in U.S. dollars. Moreover, you can establish manual tax rates for orders falling outside of Big Cartel's taxation jurisdictions.
Dropshipping
Dropshipping is facilitated on Big Cartel through partnerships with Printful and The Art of Where. These platforms allow you to upload your designs, which are then printed on their available products for sale in your Big Cartel store. You're relieved of the responsibilities of production and shipping, as these tasks are managed by the dropshipping providers, leaving you to focus solely on generating sales.
Subscriptions
Big Cartel recently introduced a “subscriptions” tool, enabling you to receive monthly payments and deliver items to your subscribers regularly. Activating this feature automatically adds a subscription page to your store's navigation, allowing visitors to sign up for your recurring service. However, it's important to note that the subscriptions feature is exclusively compatible with Stripe.
Big Cartel Payment Options
Big Cartel does not have a built-in payment gateway. It only works with third-party payment options such as Stripe, Paypal, Square, and Venmo.
To use POS with Big Cartel, you’ll need an integration from the aforementioned payment gateways. The specific POS hardware and functionality you get will be determined by the payment gateway you opt for, so remember to research carefully before making a decision.
Not to mention the fact that Big Cartel isn't PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant. This implies that you’re in charge of following PCI requirements when processing and receiving credit card payment information. You can consider Stripe or Paypal as both are PCI-compliant, assuring your customers' personal data and credit card details.
The good news is that when you take payments through your store, you don't need to pay any Big Cartel transaction fees. Meanwhile, Shopify – its key competitor, takes a cut of users’ sales (0.5% to 2%) if they use a third-party payment gateway.
Big Cartel Marketing Features
I'm of the opinion that it doesn't make sense to create an online store if no one is aware of its existence. In order for your business to thrive, your storefront requires visitors and high traffic – you'll need to reach a substantial amount of people. That's when marketing comes into play!
Our Big Cartel review on marketing features will help you have a better overview of the platform.
Email Marketing
Big Cartel doesn’t provide users with built-in email marketing tools that let you host mailing lists and send e-newsletters. So you’ll need to use a dedicated email marketing tool like Mailchimp or AWeber.
However, on the bright side, all of these email platforms can be configured to function with Big Cartel in a variety of ways. You can deploy an official integration for Mailchimp or connect to other apps through Zapier connector.
SEO
All Big Cartel pages are SEO-friendly. This shopping cart also gives advice on how to improve your website's search engine ranking by offering its consumers the following basic SEO options:
- Unique titles and meta descriptions based on your products and pages
- Valid HTML markup
- Clean, search-engine-friendly URLs
- Simple, clear navigation
- Proper headers and anchors
- Appropriately labeled alt tags on images
- A robots.txt that points to an automatically generated sitemap
- A canonical URL, which really helps with custom domains.
Blogging
Big Cartel does not have a built-in blogging feature. This is unfortunate as the ‘creative' consumers are likely to appreciate blog content from the numerous artistic merchants that sell their wares on the marketplace.
Thus, you have to install a third-party app called the DropInBlog tool. This is a fantastic choice, but you need to know the HTML code to use it.
Big Cartel Security
The key benefit of adopting hosted platforms like Big Cartel is that the software companies are responsible for the platforms' security. This is in contrast to having a self-hosted WordPress site, where you must constantly keep up with software, themes, and plugin upgrades to guarantee there are no security issues.
Big Cartel ensures the security of both its branded domains and custom domains utilized within the platform through SSL encryption. If the SSL padlock logo is not visible on your Big Cartel site, it could be due to the addition of code or images through an unsecured http:// link. For assistance or concerns regarding SSL encryption, please reach out to the support team.
Big Cartel Support
Instead of a chatbot, Big Cartel has a team of 12 compassionate, talented, and genuinely dedicated individuals ready to assist you. During the workdays, they are available 24 hours/day. For Saturday and Sunday, you can contact them from 8 AM to 6 PM EST if you need help. You can mail them via [email protected], and within 2 hours, your issues may be untangled.
Also, Big Cartel's help center, video tutorials, and blogs are helpful resources. They assist you in learning the fundamentals of order administration, inventory management, and shipping. If you’re a novice, you can start by watching their videos and reading their articles to learn how to set up and manage your store.
You can also reach out to Big Cartel's team via social media in addition to email. They are incredibly active on all social media platforms.
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Big Cartel Review – Alternatives
Despite the fact that Big Cartel is tough to beat when it comes to choosing a suitable eCommerce platform for a newbie to set up an online store, it still has some limitations. If you’re seeking advanced features to boost sales, there exist several excellent Big Cartel alternatives to consider:
Alternatives | Overall Review | Best For |
| Entrepreneurs, small businesses, and larger enterprises seeking a all-in-one solution. | |
| Established businesses with complicated database. | |
| WordPress users wanting to add eCommerce features without coding. | |
| Those aiming to build a professional eCommerce platform for the long term. |
Big Cartel Review – FAQs
Does Big Cartel actually work?
Yes, Big Cartel is a functional platform for creating online stores. It provides the necessary tools and features to set up and manage an eCommerce business effectively.
Does Big Cartel have hidden fees?
No, Big Cartel does not have hidden fees. It offers transparent pricing plans, and users can choose the plan that best fits their needs without worrying about unexpected charges.
Can you cancel Big Cartel at any time?
Yes, you can cancel your Big Cartel subscription at any time. There are no long-term commitments or contracts, allowing users the flexibility to cancel whenever they need to without penalties.
Do people make money on Big Cartel?
Yes, people do make money on Big Cartel. Many individuals and businesses use Big Cartel to sell their products successfully. However, the level of success depends on various factors, such as the quality of products, marketing efforts, and customer engagement strategies.
Bottom Line
Overall, Big Cartel may be your companion if you are looking for an easy way to start selling online and need simplicity. It comes with simple ease of use, splendid themes, and fundamental functions.
However, due to the lack of features like multi-currency selling, abandoned cart recovery, and weight-based shipping rules,… Big Cartel will not be the right fit for those who are trying to build an advanced eCommerce store and boost sales.
We hope this Big Cartel review clarifies your doubts about Big Cartel. If you are attempting to migrate from or to Big Cartel, don’t hesitate to contact us!
You can also visit our LitExtension blog or join our Facebook Community for more eCommerce news, selling tips/tricks, and marketing tactics.
