Big Cartel vs Ecwid (2025) – Which One is the Best?

Big Cartel vs Ecwid: Quick Summary

Big Cartel vs Ecwid, which one is the best ecommerce platform? In our head-to-head comparison, Ecwid came out on top for a number of reasons:

1. It offers a better selection of features
2. It has better marketing tools, including integrations with Facebook, Instagram and Google shopping
3. It has a larger selection of payment gateways
4. It can be used to build an online store or integrated with other website builders

Both Big Cartel and Ecwid are very easy to use, especially for beginners but overall, we think that Ecwid has the better all-round package.

3.3/5

EcommerceGold Score

Try Big Cartel

4.2/5

EcommerceGold Score

Try Ecwid

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Pricing

• Gold: $0/m
• Platinum: $9.99/m
• Diamond: $19.99/m

Try Big Cartel

• Free: $0/m
• Venture: $25/m
• Business: $45/m
• Unlimited: $105/m

Try Ecwid

On the face of it, Ecwid is the more expensive of the two platforms but most of these packages come with restrictions, which have been broken down more in the table below:

So Big Cartel does have more restrictions on its plans than Ecwid and doesn’t offer an unlimited option, which might not be ideal if you potentially will have a large number of products or require multiple product images.

Big Cartel also doesn’t offer the option for paying for your plan annually, Ecwid does and also offers a discount equivalent to two months free when the plans are purchased annually.

Neither Big Cartel nor Ecwid charge any transaction fees (payment gateway fees still apply).

Features

Big Cartel

Features is definitely an area that Big Cartel does not shout about! This isn’t great as you aren’t exactly sure what you are going to be getting on your monthly package and after going through the site numerous times, we could only find the following:

• Google Analytics
• Real-Time Stats
• Inventory Tracking*
• Discount Codes
• Shipment Tracking
• Bulk Editing*

*Not available on the free package

While this may be ok for users who are just getting started and are unsure of what they require but if you know exactly the types of features you need, you will probably be left with more questions than answers from Big Cartel.

One thing that is quite limited on Big Cartel is the payment gateway options as you get the choice of:

• PayPal
• Stripe
• Venmo (requires PayPal Business Account)
• ApplePay (requires Stripe)

And while these will cover most payment methods, it may prove to be restrictive for some businesses.

Also, somewhat surprisingly, Big Cartel doesn’t offer the option of digital products or downloads as standard (which would be very useful for many creative types) and if you want to add this functionality, you will need to install an app that starts from $6/m.

Big Cartel Apps

To add their existing features, Big Cartel does have a small number of apps that can be used to integrate the platform with third-party software or bring that functionality into a Big Cartel site. While this is really good, only a few of the apps are free to use, with most requiring a paid plan to get full access, which can make Big Cartel quite a bit more pricey.

Ecwid

There are no such issues when it comes to Ecwid and the features that they offer as they happily promote them all over their site and platform. Below is a summary of the features available (just be aware that not all of these are available on the free plan):

These are a summary of the features included with the Venture package but you do get more tools such as abandoned cart recovery, product filters, product variations and a multi-lingual storefront on the business and unlimited packages.

Ecwid App Market

While Ecwid does come with a good selection of features, there are still some gaps that need to be filled and that is where the App Market comes into play. All of the apps within the market are made by third-party developers, which means that many of them do require you to pay for them.

Website Builder

Big Cartel

Big Cartel includes a website builder as part of its platform but it is very basic.

They have a small selection of 18 free themes that are well-designed themes and very much fit the target audience of the platform but they are vary limited in terms of customization.

This is because there aren’t really many options to customize your store outside of:

• Changing colors for buttons and text
• Changing the fonts
• Layout options for some elements such as header and sidebar
• Product display options

There aren’t any additional sections that you can add to your store’s homepage and it is generally quite restrictive as to what you can do and this makes it quite difficult to make a site look and feel different to any others that are using the same template, which is very evident when taking a look at the example sites after checking out the theme selection.

You can create custom pages for your store but the customization options are again very limited as you only get a very simple text editor but this does let you add images to your pages.

Currently, there is no option to add a blog to your Big Cartel store and there are no SEO options for any of your pages.

Ecwid

Ecwid overhauled its website builder in 2021 and this included a selection of over 30 templates and a live customizer, which made building and customizing a store on Ecwid a much better experience as the new drag-and-drop builder brings a host of new features, including:

• The ability to add, remove or rearrange the blocks of the page
• A varied selection of blocks that add different design elements
• Settings for the sites header and footer
• General theme settings including fonts styles

Outside of the theme customizer, there are layout options for your product and category pages.

In 2024, Ecwid rolled out a further update for the customizer which allows users to create custom pages on their store, which is something that was previously one of the main negatives of the Ecwid platform, this update allows users to:

• Create and customize using the blocks in the customizer
• Set up the SEO for these pages, including being able to noindex pages

The only thing that is now missing from Ecwid’s website builder is a blog, which isn’t ideal from an SEO perspective but the new updates are a big improvement.

Support

Running an ecommerce website can be challenging at times and you require some help, so what support do you get from these platforms?

Big Cartel – support options are quite limited with the Big Cartel platform as the only options are to contact them via email and that goes for all of the packages. There are no extra support options on the larger packages, which is a little surprising.

Ecwid – offers a selection of support options but it does depend on the package that you are on as to the support options that are available:

• Venture: Email and Live Chat
• Business: Email, Live Chat and Phone
• Unlimited: Email, Live Chat and Phone but it is priority support

Email support is available 24/7, live chat is available 24 hours a day Monday to Friday and phone support is available 2 pm – 10 pm PDT, Monday to Friday.

Hosting & Performance

Both platforms take a very different approach when it comes to advertising their hosting.

Big Cartel give almost no information away on their website about their hosting, the only thing they say is that all packages include a free SSL certificate but as you can see from our performance testing, Big Cartel performs very well but some information about the hosting would be nice.

Ecwid on the flip side is very upfront, making it very easy to find what their hosting set up is like and you get the following:

• Hosted on Amazon Web Services
• PCI Level 1 PCI DSS
• Cloudfront CDN
• Secure Checkout
• Unlimited Bandwidth

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to test Ecwid’s performance as they don’t have any customer example stores showcased on their website.

Ease of Use

Facts and figures are one thing but what are these platforms like to use and how do they compare to each other? Well, that is what we are going to be looking at in this section.

Getting Started

Big Cartel

Getting started with the Big Cartel platform is really simple to do, all you need to do is go to the Big Cartel website and click the signup icon in the top right-hand corner, this takes you to the pricing page so that you can choose the package that you want.

Once selected, you are taken through to the signup page and all you need is an email address, create a password, create a shop name and a shop URL and you are good to go. If you have selected a paid plan, then you will need to set up your billing information as well.

Once you have signed up, you are taken through to the Big Cartel dashboard and are greeted by a setup guide and unlike other platforms, you do need to work through the steps in this guide in order to access the dashboard section of the admin area.

Fortunately, the setup guide is pretty good and takes you through most of what you need to do to get your website up and running.

The Big Cartel admin dashboard is very simplistic as there are only 5 sections, so it doesn’t take long to know where things are and even within the sections, there aren’t many options. While this is good in one way, it does show how light on features the Big Cartel platform is.

But some things do take a bit of digging to find and the most notable one was the ability to create pages on your website for say Terms and Conditions or Privacy Policy. This is done through the theme customization section and there are very limited formatting options, which makes creating aesthetically pleasing about or promotional pages a bit of a challenge.

Ecwid

Getting started with Ecwid is also very simple but the difference is that you sign up for the free plan and then if you want to, you can upgrade to a paid plan at a later date. To sign up, all you need is your name, email address and create a password.

After this, you will be taken through a quick setup process with your store’s name etc. Once you have done all this, you will be taken into your admin dashboard and greeted by the Ecwid setup guide, which takes you through most of the steps you need to do in order to get your store up and running.

Unlike Big Cartel though, you have full access to the full dashboard from the start and can hide the setup guide if you want to.

As you can see in the image above, the Ecwid dashboard has many more options and that is down to the increased amount of features that you get and is much more in keeping with many of the other ecommerce platforms that are out there.

Navigating around the Ecwid dashboard is pretty easy but does take a bit longer to get fully accustomed with due to the aforementioned features. The only thing missing from the Ecwid dashboard is the ability to create custom pages, there 5 legal pages that are already there for you to fill out but can’t create more outside of these, which is a shame as the editor for these pages is pretty good.

Adding and Managing Stock

Being able to manage your stock efficiently and effectively is a hugely important part of running an online store and there are three main areas to this, which are:

• Adding products
• Organizing your Products
• Managing your inventory

Big Cartel

Big Cartel has one of the simplest product creation pages out there, which makes it very easy to add a new product but you are limited to purely physical products. This is surprising as it is aimed at creative types who may have digital versions of their creations.

Something that is missing from the product creation page is any kind of SEO settings and you can only change the URL of a product by creating it and then going back in and editing it. While having a light and easy-to-use product creation page is good, it does feel like there are some things missing.

Organizing your products is a little strange as categories are created either within the product creation page or by clicking the three dots on the inventory overview page and they are created by just giving them a title. There are no description or SEO tools associated with them.

It also doesn’t allow you to create sub-categories or choose how you display the categories on the front end of your site. Categories are simply added to the main navigation menu product drop-down list when a product is added to the category.

Bulk inventory management is only available on the paid plans but having it as an option is still good. On the free plan, all editing has to be done on a product-by-product basis.

Ecwid

The add new product section on Ecwid is very nicely laid out and easy to use. They have gone for a tabbed layout and it gives you lots of options when it comes to adding a new product. The layout has a really good workflow and the clear display means that you are less likely to miss adding important information to your product listing.

One issue with Ecwid is that you cannot edit the URL and while the auto-generated URLs are pretty good, for all the products, they do include a random number sequence at the end, which means they aren’t the cleanest from an SEO standpoint.

To help you organize your products, Ecwid has gone for the tried and tested category model, which allows you to create both parent and sub-categories.

When it comes to managing your inventory, Ecwid has a bulk editor which includes many different options including being able to:

• Update the product title
• Change the SKU code
• Update prices & quantities

The editor also has a filter system, meaning that you can pick and choose the fields that you want to edit on your products, which makes managing your inventory much easier.

Managing Orders

Big Cartel – Unfortunately, we cannot say how good or bad the Big Cartel order management is as there is no option to manually create orders.

Ecwid – The order management system on Ecwid is one of the best ones we have used as it allows you to do pretty much everything directly from the order overview page. You can update order statuses, print invoices, update payment status and export your order via CSV or to a Google Sheet. This makes the complete process of managing your order very easy and efficient to do.

Summary

Conclusion

Big Cartel vs Ecwid – Which is the Best Ecommerce Platform?

Overall, Ecwid is the better option as it offers a more complete all-around offering as it is easy to use, has a good selection of features and the new New-Gen Instant Site makes it a more viable ecommerce platform for standalone ecommerce stores.

And if you combine Ecwid with a more content-driven platform such as WordPress, you have a very capable combination that is a very good option for small to medium businesses.

Big Cartel definitely has potential and the performance of the hosting is incredible but the platform almost feels like it is still in development due to the lack of features and general lack of information about pretty much anything!

So that is our conclusion of these two ecommerce platforms. If you want to try one or both of these out for yourself, then you can by clicking on the buttons below.

3.3/5

EcommerceGold Score

Try Big Cartel

4.2/5

EcommerceGold Score

Try Ecwid

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Paul Haywood

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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!

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