Big Cartel Review: Is It Right for Your Store?
This article is part of a larger series on Retail Management.
Big Cartel is an easy-to-use ecommerce solution for creatives who want to sell their products from an online store without a big investment. The all-in-one platform lets you build your site using templates designed to make your products stand out, connect a payment gateway like Stripe or PayPal, and sell products without extra listing or transaction fees. Big Cartel has a free plan and offers paid tiers starting at $9.99 a month.
What We Like
- Easy to use
- Low monthly cost
- Stylish themes with no ads or branding
What's Missing
- Not scalable, only has basic features
- No inventory tracking without upgrade
- Limited integrations and payment providers
- Weak search engine optimization (SEO) features
Deciding Factors
- Software Fees: Free; paid plans start at $9.99
- Transaction Fees: None
- Credit Card Payment Processing Fees: Stripe: 2.9% + 30 cents, PayPal: 3.49% + 49 cents
- Payment Gateway Options: Stripe, PayPal, and Apple Pay
Standout Features
- Free plan lets you sell up to five products
- Connect a custom domain, even on free plan
- Robust mobile apps (can add/edit products, save changes, process orders, and more)
What We Recommend Big Cartel For
Big Cartel earned a spot in our list of the best free ecommerce platforms. It’s the only free self-hosted ecommerce platform we reviewed that allows you to connect to a custom domain. Its simple platform with aesthetically pleasing templates contributed to its high marks. However, product limitations (the free plan only allows for five products) and lack of advanced inventory tracking (no SKU management) hindered it from getting a higher score.
We recommend Big Cartel for:
- Artists and creatives looking to sell their custom, handmade, or limited edition products: Big Cartel was made with artists in mind. Its stylish templates are developed for showcasing aesthetically pleasing product photos.
- Businesses that have no immediate plans to scale: If you do not have any plans of scaling your business soon and intend to sell only a handful of products each month, Big Cartel’s free plan is for you. You can sell up to five products with the free plan.
When Big Cartel Would Not Be a Good Fit
- If you want a full-blown ecommerce website that can grow with your business, Shopify is what you need. It is a platform that is ideal for new businesses but has room for growth and scalability. It also allows you to build a full website on its platform.
- If you run a brick-and-mortar store and would like to add an online component for pickup or local delivery sales, then Square Online is your best option. It lets you build a full website or a simple one-page site for free and offers a complete POS for your brick-and-mortar store.
- If you have a high-revenue business or an extensive product catalog, BigCommerce is a better fit. You can choose your payment processor with no added fees, and it can host an unlimited number of products—physical, digital, or services.
Looking for something different? Read our guide to the best ecommerce platforms for small businesses to find a service or software that’s right for you.
Big Cartel Store Examples
Big Cartel is best for artists or creatives looking to sell limited editions of their work and wanting to do it on a standalone site, compared to signing up with a creative marketplace such as Etsy. The brands we showcase below are perfect examples of those that have utilized Big Cartel’s standout features for their businesses.
Big Cartel Pricing
Big Cartel offers a free plan and two paid options that start at $9.99/month. All Big Cartel plans allow you to build your online store with customizable themes, sell online and in person, use a custom domain, perform shipment tracking, and offer discounts or promos. The main differences between the tiers are product limits, inventory tracking, bulk editing, product option groups, and the ability to install Google Analytics.
Big Cartel Plans | Gold | Platinum | Diamond |
---|---|---|---|
Monthly fees | $0 | $9.99 | $19.99 |
Number of products | 5 | 50 | 500 |
Images per product | 1 | 5 | 5 |
Use custom domain name | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Inventory and shipment tracking | N/A | ✓ | ✓ |
Big Cartel’s Gold plan is free and allows you to sell up to five products with one photo per item. It also lets you connect a custom domain, such as www.yourstore.com. If you don’t own a custom domain, you can use a Big Cartel subdomain, like yourstore.BigCartel.com, for free.
You integrate a small but mighty set of apps, including Mailchimp, ShipStation, and live chat. You’d want to upgrade to the paid versions if you need to sell more products and include digital items, like e-books and videos.
Big Cartel’s paid subscriptions, Platinum and Diamond, essentially have the same functionalities except for the number of products you can sell. Apart from what’s listed above, you can edit theme codes, offer discount codes, use inventory tracking, and do product option groups.
While Big Cartel’s pricing may appear affordable, the features included in each plan remain basic, limited, and aren’t very scalable. When you upgrade, you get an increase only on the number of products you can sell—you don’t get more advanced features to support your business.
Shopify’s $29 per month plan gives you unlimited products, whereas Big Cartel’s $19.99 per month option has a 500-product limit. You also get more marketing options, better SEO features, and payment channels with the former. Big Cartel won’t give you the best value for money if you’re looking to grow your online store.
However, this is an excellent option if you plan to keep it small and stay that way. You can use its free plan and start selling online right away.
Big Cartel Features
Big Cartel boasts an easy-to-use platform that is an all-in-one solution for creatives. Once you sign up, you can easily set up your products, process payments, and ship orders from a single dashboard. It’s worth noting that Big Cartel doesn’t have advanced ecommerce features you might need, such as SEO tools, email marketing, and advanced inventory tracking.
Since our last update:
Big Cartel has made many changes to its platform, including:
- iOS and Android apps now have better navigation features, and Product Drafts are now included. You can save your product posts to put them in drafts and make them go live when you are ready to hit publish.
- Major improvements to the Design Area of your shop, such as the ability to preview your website from multiple devices, autosave changes (and the ability to discard changes after), have more text formatting and table options, and add images straight into custom pages such as Contact Us, About, and FAQ.
- Improved shipping settings and subscription options are currently in Beta mode, with more updates coming soon.
Big Cartel Ease of Use
- Intuitive dashboard
- Straightforward onboarding process with design wizard
- Friendly onboarding process
- Help Center/FAQ
- Training videos
- Email customer support (Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern time)
Big Cartel has a very user-friendly onboarding process. When you’re setting up your online store, it gives you helpful prompts, reminders, and suggestions. Being guided through the setup tasks makes it beginner-friendly and easy to use.
Setting up a store with Big Cartel is straightforward, even simpler than the setup process of Shopify (which topped our list of the best ecommerce platforms when it comes to ease of use). Of course, the simplicity of Big Cartel’s setup process is due to the platform’s feature limits.
You get a checklist when you see your Big Cartel dashboard after sign-up.
When it comes to support, Big Cartel doesn’t provide phone or live chat options. However, email response time is fast, and its support team is pretty active in the provider’s social media accounts, especially Twitter.
Top Big Cartel Alternatives
Best for: Small storefronts wanting to add an online store | Best for: Small businesses with ecommerce as their backbone | Best for: Artists and creators wanting top-rated templates |
Monthly fee from: $0 | Monthly fee from: $5 | Monthly fee from: $18 (for ecommerce functionality) |
If you’re not sure Big Cartel is right for you, see how it compares with our top free ecommerce website platforms.
What Users Think About Big Cartel
There are not many Big Cartel reviews available online. The reviews we have read were mostly positive though, with most users commenting on how the free plan allows them to have a basic store. They also said that its pricing plans are affordable. Common negative feedback, meanwhile, is that it lacks features for scaling—such as advanced inventory capabilities and customization.
At the time of publication, Big Cartel reviews earned the following scores from other critics and user review sites:
- G2: 4.3 out of 5 based on more than 20 reviews
- Website Builder Expert gave it a 3.0 out of 5 rating in its review.
- App Store (iOS): 4.8 out of 5 stars based on nearly 7,000 reviews.
When reading through Big Cartel reviews, I noticed these trends:
PROS | CONS |
---|---|
Seamless website and mobile app integration | Lacks advanced features |
Affordable paid tiers | No flexibility for customization |
Easy to learn, quick setup | Very few integrations available |
Bottom Line
For growing businesses and experienced web developers, Big Cartel’s simplicity may be a cause for frustration. Since Big Cartel is designed for creatives and isn’t built with scaling ecommerce businesses in mind, it is everything you can imagine when it comes to ease of use. So, if you need to sell only a few products at a time, Big Cartel is a logical choice. However, if you need a platform that can accommodate your growth in the long run, you might want to look at Shopify or BigCommerce.