Big Cartel Review 2024

If you’re low on funds but have plenty of creative product ideas, consider Big Cartel. This platform differs from other e-commerce platforms by offering a free plan, allowing you to start selling online without an initial investment. However, is the “free” option genuinely free, or are there additional expenses to be aware of? In this Big Cartel review, we’ll explore its features, pricing structure, and user experience to help you determine if it meets the needs of your online business.

An Overview of Big Cartel

Big Cartel is a cloud-based e-commerce platform that allows you to manage your online store from any internet-connected device. You can choose from free themes to enhance your store’s appearance or customize one using the platform’s API. Currently, it supports over 65,000 active websites and ranks 11th among the most popular hosted solutions on the internet.

Designed by artists for artists, Big Cartel is tailored to sell handmade and custom products such as clothing and jewelry. When setting up your store on Big Cartel, you have various plan options, from free to paid, depending on how many items you plan to sell and the required features.

Big Cartel is often seen as a straightforward e-commerce solution. According to its website, it provides essential tools, including order management, real-time statistics, and marketing tools with SEO capabilities, making it easier to manage a small online store.

Big Cartel Review: Pros and Cons

How Does Big Cartel Work?

Big Cartel operates as a hosted solution, meaning it is self-contained on its servers, eliminating the need to install software or purchase web hosting. You can create and manage a Big Cartel store from any location with a computer, a web browser, and an internet connection.

Here are the steps involved to start your store with Big Cartel:

• Store Design: Big Cartel offers 18 free themes to customize your online storefront. The built-in editor allows you to add images, adjust fonts and colors, and modify the layout without needing coding skills. HTML customization is also available for those who choose premium plans.
• Product Listing: Each Big Cartel plan limits the number of products and images you can include in a listing. You can specify names, prices, descriptions, categories, variations, and shipping costs when adding products.
• Payment Setup: Big Cartel supports both online and in-person payments. You must integrate with Stripe or PayPal for online credit card transactions. Customers using Apple Pay can check out directly from the product page with Stripe, while PayPal users can opt for PayPal Credit or Venmo. Cash and credit card payments via the Big Cartel mobile app are also supported.
• Launching Your Store: You can go live and start selling once your store is set up. The dashboard provides tools for managing orders, printing packing slips, updating shipping details, and marking orders as shipped. You can also send notifications and tracking information to customers.
• Growth and Engagement: As your store gains traction, you can use advanced tools to engage with customers. Paid accounts have access to integrations with platforms like Instagram and LiveChat, and you can also offer discounts, run promotions, add a newsletter, or use Mailchimp.

Monitoring Performance Big Cartel lets you monitor sales and traffic in real time. Detailed analytics provide insights into popular products, revenue by item, sales frequency, and more, helping you make informed decisions to boost your store’s performance.

Key Features of Big Cartel

• Streamlined Inventory Management:

Big Cartel’s platform excels in user-friendliness, which extends to its inventory management system. Adding a new product is straightforward and user-friendly, requiring only minimal input.

This simplicity is especially beneficial for e-commerce newcomers who find inventory management’s intricacies daunting.

• Enhanced Bulk Editing Capabilities:

The bulk editing feature dramatically improves the efficiency of managing extensive product lines in your online store. This advanced capability allows you to simultaneously modify multiple products, orders, and discounts, optimizing operational workflows and minimizing human errors.

This tool proves indispensable for businesses managing frequent updates or large inventories. However, access to this feature is exclusive to paid plan subscribers.

• Dynamic Limited-Time Promotions:

Big Cartel equips you with easy-to-use tools to implement sales strategies through coupon codes and discounts, ideal for stimulating purchases during holiday seasons, special events, or when you need to clear inventory swiftly.

These promotional tools are designed to enhance your marketing efforts directly through your storefront.

• Social Commerce Integration:

In the modern retail landscape, limiting sales to a single channel can hinder your market reach. Big Cartel enables integration with major social platforms like Facebook and Instagram, allowing you to expand your digital footprint and customer engagement.

While available even on free plans, product tagging on Instagram requires approval from both Facebook and Instagram and might necessitate some coding for full integration.

• Abandoned Cart Recovery:

One significant limitation of Big Cartel is the absence of an abandoned cart recovery feature, which is crucial for recapturing potential sales.

With this feature, you can remember the opportunity to remind customers of unfinished purchases through reminder emails, which can also provide insights into why products are frequently abandoned. This gap is an important consideration for businesses aiming to maximize conversion rates.

Big Cartel: Ease of Use

Big Cartel is easy to use. It offers straightforward features that allow users to build, manage, and operate a basic eCommerce store. Without coding skills or technical knowledge, you can set up your store, customize its appearance, and handle sales. Big Cartel provides a step-by-step guide to help you start selling.

The Big Cartel dashboard is visually appealing and informative. It displays data on visitors, orders, conversions, and up-to-date sales revenue for your store across various time frames, such as the last seven days, thirty days, the past year, or the entire store’s lifetime. This allows you to monitor your business performance and predict sales trends.

Regarding the setup process, Big Cartel’s onboarding is very accessible, especially for beginners. It features clear navigation, helpful prompts, and suggestions that smooth the setup process. Once you’re using the editor, it is straightforward to manage.

However, you might need some coding skills for more complex tasks on your Big Cartel website. Despite this, its simplicity remains one of Big Cartel’s main advantages over other eCommerce platforms.

Design and Templates of Big Cartel

Big Cartel makes customizing the visual aspect of your store straightforward. Unlike some other e-commerce platforms, it offers all its themes for free. There are 18 themes to choose from, forming the basic design framework of your store. These themes are categorized based on the type of store you’re setting up, helping streamline the selection process.

The themes provided by Big Cartel are modern and visually appealing. They are designed to be fully responsive, ensuring they work well on various devices, whether it be a mobile, tablet, or desktop. However, the selection is more limited than other platforms, with Big Cartel offering 18 themes in contrast to the hundreds available from providers like Wix, Shopify, BigCommerce, and Squarespace.

Big Cartel focuses on serving the creative market, so its themes are designed to be visually striking. Simpler designs, like the “Ranger” and “Neat” themes, are also available, which cater to more general purposes. While these templates offer some flexibility, they may only sometimes meet the needs of businesses seeking a more traditional corporate look.

Blogging Features of Big Cartel

When setting up an online store, the role of blogging should be considered. It is a key strategy for driving organic traffic and generating leads. It’s crucial to publish distinctive, high-quality content to draw in potential visitors, which can lead to more leads.

However, Big Cartel does not offer any built-in blogging tools, which is surprising given its audience of creative users who benefit from diverse content to enhance brand visibility.

Therefore, if you’re using Big Cartel and wish to include blog posts, add a third-party blogging platform. This integration might involve modifying the HTML code, which could be challenging for beginners.

Big Cartel Pricing Overview

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Big Cartel may not offer the best return on investment for expanding your online store. However, it’s a solid choice for maintaining a small-scale operation. The platform’s free plan allows you to begin selling online immediately.

• Gold Plan: The Gold Plan offers a no-cost option that permits the listing of up to five products without any transaction fees. This plan also includes a free SSL certificate, integration with Google Analytics, and the capacity to upload one image per product.
• Platinum Plan: This plan costs $15 monthly (or $12 monthly for the annual plan) and increases the product limit to 50. Like the Gold Plan, it does not charge transaction fees. This plan also includes a free SSL certificate and Google Analytics integration, allowing up to five images per product.
• Diamond Plan: Lastly, the Diamond Plan, which costs $30 per month (or $24 monthly for the annual plan), allows for a substantial increase in the product limit, accommodating up to 500 products. This plan also features no transaction fees, a free SSL certificate, Google Analytics integration, and permits up to five images per product.

Big Cartel targets small, boutique-style shops, reflected in its competitively low pricing. Our analysis indicates that the product limit is the main difference between the paid plans. There are no additional features exclusive to the higher-tier plans. Big Cartel doesn’t provide a free trial; instead, it offers a permanently free plan that supports up to 5 products. This free option is an effective way to explore the platform’s features.

Payment options through Big Cartel include PayPal, Apple Pay, and Stripe. Integrating with Stripe also automatically enables Google Pay and allows you to offer BNPL services and in-person sales. There are no extra fees beyond what these payment providers charge.

Big Cartel Add-Ons and Integrations

Big Cartel offers a selection of add-ons, but the process of incorporating them into your site varies significantly. The platform directly supports approximately 30 add-ons, focusing on essential features. While the range of integrations is limited, they provide the fundamental capabilities to operate an online store.

Most of Big Cartel’s “add-ons” are also facilitated through Zapier, an automation tool. Zapier enables users to add emails to a Mailchimp list, send order confirmation emails, or update Facebook with new listings. It connects with over 500 third-party applications and does not require coding knowledge, saving users time. Costs are associated with both Zapier and third-party applications, but this setup eliminates the need for a web developer to create these connections.

While this approach may not appeal to all small business owners, Big Cartel has effectively targeted and catered to the arts and crafts community, drawing a dedicated customer base. Previously, many creators of Etsy moved to Big Cartel to set up their independent stores.

Point of Sale (POS) System and Product Management

Big Cartel provides a straightforward point-of-sale (POS) system suitable for both online and in-person sales. This system is accessible on all Big Cartel plans, including the free option, though its features are basic. Integration with Stripe is necessary to operate the POS, as it acts as the payment gateway. This setup enables Stripe-compatible card readers for face-to-face transactions, offering a practical option for small businesses that occasionally handle sales outside the internet.

While the POS system in Big Cartel is sufficient for basic operations, it does not support advanced peripherals such as cash drawers, receipt printers, or barcode scanners. Businesses needing these functionalities might find platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce more appropriate, as these services provide broader hardware support.

Regarding product offerings, Big Cartel primarily focuses on physical items and supports selling digital products through external services like Pulley. This service, which starts at $6 per month, facilitates the automatic delivery of digital goods. However, this arrangement can introduce more complexity and expense than platforms with native digital sales capabilities, such as Shopify.

Product management on Big Cartel is uncomplicated but limited. The platform allows a maximum of 500 product listings under its highest tier, with each item capable of having different attributes such as size or color. Yet, it lacks features for automatic product tagging or sophisticated categorization, requiring manual effort in organizing items. This may be fine for smaller vendors but restrictive for larger operations.

Additionally, while Big Cartel supports basic e-commerce necessities like inventory management and rudimentary reporting, it lacks integrated advanced features such as abandoned cart recovery, which depend on third-party plugins. This necessity might complicate matters for users seeking a more comprehensive, built-in solution.

Marketing and SEO Tools of Big Cartel

When using an eCommerce platform like Big Cartel, it is essential to assess the available marketing tools, as they are critical in driving traffic and sales to your online store.

Big Cartel lacks built-in email marketing tools, which is a significant difference from platforms like Squarespace, Shopify, and Wix, which include email marketing solutions. However, you can still utilize marketing features by integrating third-party tools such as GetResponse, MailChimp, or AWeber. Big Cartel provides an official MailChimp integration, and you can employ Zapier to establish more customized connections. This setup allows you to implement an email marketing strategy effectively without native tools.

In terms of SEO, Big Cartel offers some basic features. The platform optimizes sites for search engines by default and enables the addition of unique titles, meta descriptions, headers, alt tags for images, and canonical URLs. These features are vital for enhancing your store’s search engine visibility. Nevertheless, modifying URLs and managing meta descriptions can be challenging, which might be problematic if frequent updates or optimizations are necessary.

Security Features of Big Cartel

Big Cartel prioritizes security, offering a more managed experience compared to self-hosted solutions like WordPress, where users must handle their own security measures. As a hosted service, Big Cartel is responsible for safeguarding user stores, which helps store owners concentrate on running their businesses rather than managing security protocols.

A key security feature Big Cartel provides is SSL encryption, which is essential for protecting both the platform’s domains and any user-added custom domains. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encrypts the connection between a user’s browser and the website, securing data transmitted during transactions, such as customer payment information.

Big Cartel includes SSL certificates at no additional charge for all stores, covering both standard and custom domains. This ensures that every part of a store, including the checkout process, is secure. If a store appears without the SSL padlock icon, it may be due to content like images or scripts being linked via insecure HTTP connections. Users can fix this by securing such content and can seek help from Big Cartel support if necessary.

It’s important to recognize that while Big Cartel ensures SSL security, the platform itself does not comply with PCI (Payment Card Industry) standards. Therefore, while SSL helps protect data transmissions, store owners must still comply with PCI standards when processing credit card information. This necessitates using PCI-compliant third-party payment services such as Stripe or PayPal, which can be integrated with Big Cartel.

Customer Support Options of Big Cartel

Big Cartel stands out for its personalized support system, opting for a small team of 10 to 12 real people over automated chatbots. This team assists 24/7 on weekdays and from 8 AM to 6 PM EST on weekends. Users can contact them via email at [email protected], with responses typically sent within two hours during working hours.

Beyond email, Big Cartel hosts a detailed Help Center that includes articles, tutorials, and FAQs. This center proves invaluable for new users learning to manage their store’s operations, such as order handling, inventory, and shipping. It also features video tutorials to visually guide users through setting up and managing their online store.

Additionally, Big Cartel maintains an active presence on several social media platforms, including X (previously known as Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest, providing another avenue for support and inquiries. While this support network may not be as vast as larger companies, it offers a tailored and effective service valued by users who prefer direct interaction and straightforward advice.

Conclusion

Big Cartel offers a straightforward, cost-effective solution for small-scale entrepreneurs, particularly those in creative industries. The platform’s ease of use, free plan, and basic e-commerce features appeal to those new to online selling. However, it comes with limitations, including restricted customization, limited product listings, and the absence of advanced features like abandoned cart recovery.

While Big Cartel excels in simplicity and affordability, it may not be the best choice for businesses looking to scale or needing extensive customization. Before committing to this platform, assessing your specific needs and growth plans is crucial.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Big Cartel offer abandoned cart recovery features?

No, Big Cartel does not have built-in abandoned cart recovery features. You’ll need to use third-party email marketing tools like Mailchimp or GetResponse to follow up with customers who leave items in their carts.

What are the limitations of Big Cartel’s inventory management system?

Big Cartel’s inventory management is basic, especially on the free plan, which limits you to five products. Even on paid plans, you can only manage up to 500 products, and the platform doesn’t generate SKUs. Changing a product URL isn’t possible after it’s created.

How does Big Cartel handle product exports and data migration?

Big Cartel does not offer a direct product export option, which complicates migrating to another platform. You can export order data to a CSV file, but unlike with other eCommerce platforms, product catalogs cannot be exported.