Big Cartel may look like an easy, affordable way to start selling online, but its simplicity raises an important question: does it provide enough features to support your store beyond the basics?
To help you find the answer, our updated Big Cartel review examines all important aspects. By the end, you will know whether Big Cartel is the right fit for your business.
| Factor | Our verdict | Score |
| Pricing | Affordable with a usable free plan and no platform transaction fees. | 4.5/5 |
| Ease of use | Guided setup and a clean dashboard make the platform easy to manage. | 4.5/5 |
| Themes & customization | Offers flexible styling, while broader template choices and advanced editing require a paid plan. | 3.5/5 |
| eCommerce features | Covers small-store essentials but lacks tools for complex operations. | 3.5/5 |
| Payment methods | Stripe and PayPal cover popular payment options, but gateway choice is limited. | 4/5 |
| Marketing tools | Basic built-in SEO and promotions, with heavy reliance on external apps. | 3/5 |
| Apps & integrations | Around 30 integrations cover essential needs, but the ecosystem is relatively small. | 3.8/5 |
| Security & support | Free SSL protection and 24/7 human support provide reliable coverage. | 4/5 |
| Overall | Best for artists and creators running a small, straightforward online store. | 4.0/5 |
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!
Big Cartel Review: An Overview
Big Cartel is a fully hosted eCommerce platform designed primarily for artists, makers, and independent creators. Currently powering nearly 90,000 live websites worldwide, it offers a straightforward way to create an online store and sell physical or digital products without managing hosting or navigating complex technical tools.
To see how well this creator-focused model performs in practice, we’ve summarized its most notable advantages and limitations below:
| 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 Pricing Plans
Our point of view on Big Cartel review in terms of pricing is that it is quite straightforward and flexible. Instead of offering several paid tiers with overlapping features, it provides just two paid options, Platinum and Diamond, alongside a limited free Gold plan.
The free Gold plan is a low-risk option for testing your idea, but its five-product limit is easy to outgrow. For most small stores, Platinum offers the best balance of cost and functionality, while Diamond suits larger catalogs and more advanced selling needs.
A major advantage is that Big Cartel charges no listing or platform transaction fees, allowing you to keep more revenue from each sale. However, standard payment processing fees from Stripe or PayPal still apply, and some third-party integrations may involve additional costs.
For a closer look at each plan and the additional costs involved, see our complete Big Cartel pricing guide.
Big Cartel Ease of Use
Getting started with Big Cartel takes a little longer than expected, as you need to answer several questions about your business and what you plan to sell. However, these questions help tailor the setup process, so they do not feel unnecessary.
Once you reach the dashboard, Big Cartel makes the next steps much clearer. A built-in checklist guides you through essential tasks to follow.
The dashboard itself is clean and easy to navigate, with core areas such as products, orders, discounts, store design, and settings clearly organized. You can also view key store metrics without digging through multiple menus. Overall, Big Cartel keeps store management refreshingly simple, though this ease of use partly comes from offering fewer advanced features than larger eCommerce platforms.
Themes & Customization
Big Cartel offers 18 built-in templates, all designed to display well across desktop and mobile. However, if you use the free Gold plan, your choice is limited to Cosmos, while Platinum and Diamond unlock the full template collection at no additional cost.
Cosmos is a flexible starting point, with 15 style presets and settings for colors, fonts, layouts, homepage content, product displays, and navigation. The Shop Designer also shows changes in real time, so you can create a polished storefront without coding.
With a paid plan, you can start with a template that already matches your preferred visual style and page structure, reducing the amount of setup required. From there, custom pages let you build a more complete brand experience with store policies, size guides, and lookbooks. If you want to go even further, advanced HTML/CSS editing gives you the freedom to shape a more distinctive storefront around your brand.
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 our Big Cartel reviews regarding the platform’s eCommerce capabilities.
Abandoned cart recovery
Abandoned cart recovery is now available on the Diamond plan. Once enabled, Big Cartel can send up to two automated reminders, approximately two and 24 hours after a shopper leaves checkout.
This is a welcome improvement, but the feature only works after the shopper enters an email address. It is also unavailable on Gold and Platinum, making a $30-per-month subscription necessary to recover abandoned checkouts.
Inventory & order management
All plans let you receive, search, and manage orders, add shipping details, and export order data. However, the Gold plan does not track stock automatically, so you need to monitor availability yourself.
Platinum and Diamond add inventory tracking, bulk editing, and shipment tracking. They also let you sell digital products with built-in file hosting and automatic delivery, which is particularly useful for artists selling music, ebooks, templates, or downloadable artwork.
Reports & analytics
The dashboard gives you a quick view of visits, orders, conversion rates, and revenue, making it easy to monitor basic store performance. However, the native reports remain relatively simple and offer limited options for exploring customer behavior or comparing performance in depth. If you have a paid plan, you can link to Google Analytics for further information.
Automatic sales tax collection
Sales Tax Autopilot is one of Big Cartel’s more practical features. For eligible US orders, it automatically calculates, collects, and remits sales tax, saving you from handling each step manually. But, its coverage is limited, so you remain responsible for taxes on orders or locations outside the supported scope.
Dropshipping
Big Cartel connects with services such as Printful, Printify, Art of Where, and DSers, allowing you to sell products without keeping your own inventory. This makes it a workable option for testing print-on-demand or dropshipping ideas.
Still, the selection of integrations is modest compared with larger platforms, which may limit your choice of suppliers and automation tools as the business grows.
Subscriptions
The subscription feature allows you to collect recurring payments for memberships, donations, or regularly delivered products through Stripe. It is useful for creating predictable revenue without installing a separate subscription app. However, much of the payment and subscription management takes place in Stripe rather than directly within Big Cartel, making the workflow feel less unified.
Payment Methods
In our Big Cartel review, we found that the platform’s payment setup is simple but somewhat limited – only Stripe and PayPal. Thus, connecting both is the most practical approach, as it gives your customers more ways to pay and helps reduce checkout friction.
Buy now, pay later options are also available, although some require a paid plan and their availability varies by country. More importantly, Big Cartel adds no platform transaction fee, so you only pay the processing fees charged by Stripe or PayPal. This keeps payment costs relatively straightforward and is a notable advantage for stores working with tighter margins.
Marketing Tools
Marketing is one of the weaker areas in our Big Cartel review. On the free Gold plan, the platform mainly covers the basics:
- Automatically generated SEO metadata
- Mobile-friendly and SEO-optimized templates
- Sitemap, robots.txt, SSL, and structured page markup
- Social media profile links
- Shareable cart links
Upgrading gives you more tools for turning existing traffic into sales. Platinum adds discount codes, a custom domain, Google Analytics, and advertising support for channels such as Google and Facebook. Diamond goes further with automatic discounts, audience-targeted ads, scheduled product drops, and abandoned cart emails.
However, Big Cartel still lacks built-in email marketing and blogging tools across its plans. You will need integrations such as Mailchimp, Omnisend, or DropInBlog to add these capabilities, potentially increasing your costs. Therefore, its marketing toolkit is most suitable if you already have an audience or mainly promote your products through social media.
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, according to most Big Cartel reviews, they still offer basic functions for you to run an online store.
Among the options, you can consider Zapier – an available plugin that lets your Big Cartel site connect with 7000+ 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.
Security & Support
As a fully hosted platform, Big Cartel handles hosting, software maintenance, and the core security of your storefront. Every bigcartel.com address and connected custom domain receives a free SSL certificate, while checkout is always encrypted. Payments are processed directly by Stripe or PayPal, so Big Cartel does not store or handle your customers’ card details itself.
If you need help while running your store, Big Cartel offers 24/7 support through in-app messaging for existing users and email for those without an account. Its Help Center also provides guides covering store setup, products, payments, orders, shipping, and integrations.
However, there is no phone support, which may be inconvenient when you need to resolve a complex or urgent issue through a real-time conversation.
Big Cartel Review: Alternatives
Although Big Cartel is one of the best platforms for beginners to launch an online store, it still has some limitations. If you’re seeking advanced features to boost sales, there are several excellent Big Cartel alternatives to consider:
| Alternative | Why consider it? | Best for |
| Shopify | All-in-one platform with strong sales, marketing, and multichannel tools. | Businesses wanting an easy-to-scale solution. |
| BigCommerce | Built-in features for large catalogs, multichannel selling, and international growth. | Established stores with complex operations. |
| WooCommerce | Offers extensive customization and full control over your store. | WordPress users comfortable managing hosting and plugins. |
| Magento | Highly scalable and customizable for complex business requirements. | Large businesses with development resources. |
Big Cartel Review: FAQs
Is Big Cartel a good alternative to Etsy?
Yes, particularly if you want your own branded storefront and prefer not to pay listing or platform transaction fees. However, unlike Etsy, Big Cartel is not a marketplace with built-in customer traffic, so you must attract shoppers through your own marketing channels.
See our full Big Cartel vs Etsy comparison to explore their key differences.
Does Big Cartel have hidden fees?
No, Big Cartel does not charge hidden, listing, or platform transaction fees. However, Stripe or PayPal processing fees still apply, while custom domains and third-party apps may add to your actual costs.
Can you cancel Big Cartel at any time?
Yes, you can cancel or downgrade your Big Cartel plan at any time, with the change taking effect at the end of the current billing cycle. Monthly payments are non-refundable, while annual subscriptions are only refundable if canceled within 14 days of purchase.
Do people make money on Big Cartel?
Yes, creators do make money on Big Cartel, and the platform reports more than $2.5 billion in sales generated by its shops. However, earning potential depends on your products, pricing, audience, and marketing, as Big Cartel does not bring marketplace traffic to your store automatically.
Bottom Line
Big Cartel is a strong choice if you want a simple, affordable way to sell a small product catalog. Its easy setup, clean dashboard, and essential selling tools make it particularly suitable for artists and independent creators.
However, its 500-product limit, basic marketing features, and modest app ecosystem leave less room for complex operations. As this Big Cartel review shows, the platform is better suited to staying small than supporting long-term expansion.
If you are planning to migrate to or from Big Cartel, contact LitExtension for expert assistance with transferring your store data. You can also explore our other blog posts for eCommerce insights, selling tips, and marketing tactics.
