Big Cartel is an ecommerce platform specifically designed for small, boutique style ecommerce websites such as fashion designers and artists, with a promise of being able to easily build an online shop without any hidden fees or charges. Basically, keeping things simple!
But is the platform any good? Well that is what we are going to be looking at in this review and delving into aspects such as the features on offer and how easy the platform is to use.
Total out of 5
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Big Cartel Review: Quick Summary
Is Big Cartel any good? It’s ok and if you are looking to build a very simple and basic online store, then it might be an option worth considering but there are a few areas where Big Cartel is lacking when compared to other ecommerce platforms, this includes:
- Features – Big Cartel only offers a small selection of features
- Website Builder – it is very basic and customization options are limited
- Payment Gateways – they currently only offer two payment gateways (PayPal and Stripe)
- SEO & Marketing – there are no real SEO tools and very limited marketing ones
There are two areas where Big Cartel is pretty good, the first is that the platform is very easy to use, which makes it very appealing for beginners and it always does well in our performance testing.
But overall, we just feel that Big Cartel is limited in quite a few areas and it isn’t a platform that can scale with growing businesses.
EcommerceGold Score
Big Cartel Pricing
Gold
Up to 5 Products
No Turnover Limit
No Transaction Fees
Free SSL Certificate
Google Analytics
1 Image per Product
Platinum
Up to 50 Products
No Turnover Limit
No Transaction Fees
Free SSL Certificate
Google Analytics
5 Images per Product
Diamond
Up to 500 Products
No Turnover Limit
No Transaction Fees
Free SSL Certificate
Google Analytics
5 Images per Product
As Big Cartel is aimed at smaller, more boutique-style businesses, it is not surprising that their pricing is towards the lower end of the market.
From our research, it seems that the only difference between the paid packages is the number of products that you can add. There don’t seem to be any additional features available on the larger packages.
Free Trial
Big Cartel doesn’t offer a free trial but rather a free package, which as mentioned above, is limited to 5 products but it is a great way to test the platform out.
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Big Cartel Reviews
Before we get into the review, we looked at what some of their existing customers thought of the platform by checking Trustpilot, G2 and Capterra.
2.8 out of 5
4.3 out of 5
4.2 out of 5
Big Cartel Features
Finding out all of the features that Big Cartel has to offer is quite difficult as their website doesn’t really offer much information. In fact, their website has a total of four main pages, which are Home, Examples, Pricing and About.
And while there is a breakdown of some features in the pricing section, there isn’t an in-depth breakdown and not advertising what your platform offers isn’t a great way to get to customers.
So, unlike our other reviews, we can’t break the features down into sections but we have listed the main features that we could find below:
- Google Analytics
- Real-Time Stats
- Inventory Tracking
- Discount Codes
- Shipment Tracking
- Bulk Editing
They do have a small number of apps that add some features but the majority are to integrate third-party software such as MailChimp or Printful.
Website Builder
Big Cartel includes a basic website builder with all of its plans, which includes a small selection of 18 themes but they are very varied in terms of design, so there is a good chance you will find one that fits your business.
When it comes to theme customization, Big Cartel only has a limited number of options in the theme customizer, with much of this focused on colors and alignment options for the page.
There is no option to add or remove sections from your homepage and while you can add custom pages, these are limited to a basic text editor, which means that design options are limited.
This means that choosing the right theme is very important as there is little customization that can be done beyond this and making your store stand out from other Big Cartel stores is quite difficult.
There is also no option to add a blog to your store and there are no real SEO options for pages or products, which isn’t ideal if organic traffic is part of your marketing strategy.
Payment Gateways
Big Cartel is quite limited when it comes to payment gateways, which is a common theme with smaller ecommerce platforms. However, the main players are there, including:
- PayPal
- Stripe
- Apple Pay
- Square
The last two are apps that need to be installed separately.
Do Big Cartel charge transaction fees?
No, Big Cartel does not charge any transaction fees, no matter what plan you are on.
Big Cartel Support
The support options for Big Cartel are quite sparse as their main source of contact is via Email but their support team is available 8 am – 6 pm EST, 7 days a week.
This means that you shouldn’t have too many issues getting a response to your inquiries.
They also actively promote on social media such as Facebook and Twitter, so that may be another avenue for getting support from them.
Hosting & Performance
Big Cartel provides basically no information regarding its hosting environment and this isn’t great for an ecommerce platform and the only information we found was that they include a free SSL certificate with every store.
This doesn’t stop us from testing the Big Cartel out and to do this we took 5 customer example sites and ran them through Uptrends Speed Tool to test load time and Google PageSpeed scores.
We used their New York server and tested on both mobile and desktop devices, running each site through the tool once a day for three days and you can see the results below:
Mobile Load Time: 2.00 Seconds
Desktop Load Time: 2.07 Seconds
Mobile PageSpeed Score: 58/100
Desktop PageSpeed Score: 89/100
The performance of the Big Cartel servers is really impressive and it outperforms pretty much every single ecommerce platform out there!
Not only were the results impressive but they were also consistent, except for the mobile scores as these did fluctuate a bit. But the rests of the tests were really good and this is something that you want from your ecommerce website.
To see how Big Cartel performed against its rivals in terms of speed and performance, check out our Fastest Ecommerce Platforms post.
How Easy is Big Cartel to Use?
Big Cartel is marketed as a platform for creatives and independent businesses, which reading between the lines means that it should be easy to use. To test this out, we looked at 3 main areas for this section of the review:
- Getting Started
- Inventory Management
- Order Management
Getting Started
Getting started with Big Cartel is very simple, simply go to the Big Cartel site and either click on the Open Your Store button from the homepage or select the package you want from the pricing page. Then all you need is your email address, create a password and store name and you are ready to go (if you are selecting a paid plan, then you will need to enter your payment details).
Once you have completed the signup process, you will be taken through to the Big Cartel dashboard and be greeted by the setup process, which is very well suited to the platform and it takes you through the basic essential steps such as creating a product, choosing and customizing a theme and setting up the checkout process.
While the steps are good and logical in terms of process, there aren’t any follow-up guides when you go through the relevant sections. A few pointers would be helpful, even though the sections are pretty easy to use.
The Big Cartel dashboard is very simply laid out and as you can see in the image above, there are only 5 headings and it is easy to move from one section to another.
To access the dashboard completely, you have to finish the setup guide, so make sure that you go through the setup guide before checking out the rest of the platform.
If there is something that you can’t find, it is probably in the account section and this is the case for all of the design and customization elements.
Inventory Management
When it comes to products on Big Cartel, you are limited to physical products but they have made it very easy to create a new product.
In fact, the Big Cartel add new product page is the simplest we have used and has a very small number of sections that need to be filled in and this makes it very easy for anyone who is new to ecommerce websites to add their inventory.
While it is easy to use, there is one quirk in that to create a custom URL, you need to create and save the product and then go back in and edit it. Not sure why this can’t be done when creating the product in the first place? There is also no option to set a custom meta description.
Organizing your inventory is a little strange as there isn’t a dedicated category section. Instead, you can create categories by clicking the three circles in the product section and then selecting manage categories. Here you can create a new category but the only control you get is the name of the category.
You can also create categories on the product creation page by clicking the + icon next to categories. While this does make it very simple to do, there is no option to as sub-categories. Categories that contain products are also automatically added to the product section of your site’s navigation bar.
When it comes to managing your inventory, on all of the paid packages, there is a bulk editor but on the free package, it all has to be done on a product-by-product basis.
Managing Orders
Unfortunately, we were unable to test the order management system because there is no option to create an order manually.
Big Cartel FAQ
Big Cartel secures all of its sites with an SSL certificate, including the checkout pages but there is no information regarding the security of their hosting such as PCI compliance.
Big Cartel is very beginners friendly due to the very simple admin dashboard, which makes it easy to learn for people who have never built an online store before.
Conclusion
Big Cartel
Is Big Cartel a Good Ecommerce Platform?
For creatives looking for a very simple platform to build an online store, Big Cartel will get the job but growing with the platform is going to be a challenge due to the limited features not only in terms of ecommerce but also as a website builder.
If you are looking for a platform to build a fully-fledged ecommerce website, there are better options out there and while they may be more expensive, you do get a lot more for your money.
Big Cartel does have potential but it is lacking in a number of features and doesn’t the tools and scalability that the best ecommerce platforms on the market offer.
Big Cartel Pros:
Big Cartel Cons:
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Hi, I'm Paul, the Owner and Founder of EcommerceGold.
I ran my own Ecommerce Business for over 7 years and now help others start their own online retail empires!