Big Cartel
Is This Your Business?Author: Kalicia Bateman
Big Cartel was founded in Salt Lake City by Matt Wigham, a member of a band who wanted an easy way to sell his band's products online. It has since expanded and now hosts online stores for more than 250,000 people.
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The Good
- Free basic plan
- Security
- Additional features
Free Basic Plan
Big Cartel's basic package is free. It allows you to list five products with one image per product, and allows for simple customization. Up to ten product orders can be placed using the Big Cartel Checkout iPhone app as part of the basic package. Big Cartel also has three other plans to choose from if the basic package doesn't suit your e-commerce needs. These packages range from $9.99-$29.99 per month.Security
Big Cartel uses industry standard SSL encryption in all of its stores. However, there is no mention online of Big Cartel being PCI compliant, which is why their security score is lower than other e-commerce website developers. Most Big Cartel payments appear to be routed through Paypal, although Big Cartel's site does give you the option of paying with a debit or credit card.Additional Features
Things that we liked about Big Cartel include:- Free version available.
- 5 images per product with all plans except Gold.
- Uniqueness and trendiness of their website.
The Bad
- Pricing
- Payment gateways
- Small-business minded
- Templates
- Additional concerns
We like the artistic take that Big Cartel brings to the table in the e-commerce platform industry but there are some things that are concerning to us when we looked at Big Cartel.
Pricing
Their pricing is one of the cheapest in the industry. There is a Gold plan which offers a freemium version of their e-commerce platform but it only allows 5 products to be sold on it and it has limited features. When you upgrade to a Platinum plan, you are granted all of the features that Big Cartel offers and the pricing is very doable compared to other e-commerce platforms. However, even with Big Cartel's most expensive plan, you are limited to only having 300 products on your website. This shows that Big Cartel really is for small businesses only.
Payment Gateways
Big Cartel seems to only offer two different payment gateways at this time, Stripe and PayPal Express. While these are two very popular payment gateways, it doesn't offer online store owners the variety they need if they already own a store and are wanting to switch to Big Cartel or if they are starting out brand new. Our top recommended companies for e-commerce platforms offer many different options for payment gateways.
Small-business Minded
Big Cartel isn't the best option for everyone since it caters mostly to small online store owners. If you want to have a large presence as an online store and you plan to advertise hundreds of products, you'll need to use a larger online marketplace.
Templates
Big Cartel also doesn't offer the large amount of free templates that some other e-commerce platforms have, and customization is very basic unless you upgrade to one of the paid plans. Once you have a paid plan you're given the option of using HTML or CSS to modify your storefront.
Additional concerns
Some other things we didn't like about Big Cartel is:
- 7/10 from our features list.
- Hardly any templates or themes available to use.
- No live chat available from Big Cartel to help you.
The Bottom Line
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