Big CartelReviews of bigcartel.com

Look everyone To make a website/online store big cartel is simply at its finest and yes it’s small but it’s great to start out. the REVIEWS are based on the SELLERS themselves not the website!

Never had a problem with Big Cartel themselves. They process my payment info quickly, and make it easy to communicate with sellers.

Never had a problem, also don't understand the scam thing as payments are through PayPal or stripe with there buyer protection.

I started a small business December 2020. I shopped around before settling on the big cartel because they offered 5 products for free. I has no previous website building experience but I didn’t need any to build a website with the big cartel. I customized my website to my liking and everyone loved it. Customer services has been A1. Anytime I have emailed them with a concern or needed assistance they have been on it. Recently the rep help me for over an hour with my domain issue because google changed things on their end. I recently upgraded to a paid plan for 50 products and I love it. My favorite part of the big cartel is the mobile app. I can create order with a couple clicks of my phone, add products, post to Facebook, take cash payments, look at shipments, and more from my mobile device. And they recently upgraded it. And the price is so low.

I think all of these 1 star reviews are reviewing actual websites rather than the Big Cartel company itself. I’ve been using Big Cartel for the past 8 months, as I just started my small business. It’s great for small businesses like me that can’t quite afford the £30 for Shopify. It’s a lot more simplistic and minimal, but that’s kinda good for newbies and smaller businesses as you can get really caught up in over customising your website. I currently use the platinum plan for £9.99, and I can list up to 50 products, with no listing fees. The credit card processor Stripe and Big Cartel both take a percentage but it’s much smaller than fees you’d find on Etsy etc. I can’t complain, just wish there were more apps to customise your website however as time has gone they’ve developed more!

I think the bad reviews on here are for perhaps not so honest website creators who sell under-par goods. However, if you are thinking about trying your own shop, this company have been great so far. Don't bother with Shopify etc who charge a lot. Now I don't know how scalable Big Cartel are but if you are wanting to try something out, try them. I'll be sticking with them for as long as my business can grow with them and they stay competitive.

Having read through this review page in advance to setting up my site on big cartel, I expected it to be a tragic waste of time. I was pleasantly surprised and horrified at these reviews once I started using it. The issue is, the people writing the reviews on here do not understand the difference between reviewing a store using big cartel as their platform, and the platform big cartel itself. Since I have owned multiple successful etsy stores before, I moved to bigcartel because I was fed up of ridiculous fees taking loads of my profits. Using big cartel for my business, I no longer lose around 20% to etsy fees. I think it would be a lot easier just to write a list at this point. Pros of big cartel: -Only 2.9% transaction fee if you use stripe as your payment method (basically its a safe checkout option). No fees paid to bigcartel unless you pay monthly for better features -which is a hell of a lot cheaper than shopify packages. -cheaper website packages. The first package is free, which is great go start on. And then the next one up, I believe its around £7 a month compared to shopify which starts at around £20 for its basic package. Its more affordable and you don't need to make as many sales to make it worth using! -You can use either bank payments or paypal or both to get paid/pay for items -easy to use, no coding involved unless you choose to -looks good - nice presets. Takes the stress out of having to come up with something on your own. -stripe has a feature that assesses scam payments and reports back. I haven't had to use it ever or report any scam payments but its good that there's regular assessment Cons of bigbcartel: -I would say you have to drive your own customers there, but thats literally why you have your own website anywhere. Really if you're not at a stage where you can attract your own customers you shouldn't have your own site, stick to etsy to create your own traffic if your just starting out :) -I personally am very picky when it comes to how my site looks, and I feel like it would be nice to have a bit more control of its appearance. The presets are very nice though. -they don't have an automatic review area, you have to collect that yourself and put it up -uneducated reviews make it harder to sell on. If people are complaining about its validity just due to one bad seller exploiting them, it ruins the platform for all the trustworthy sites. I feel like it would be a good idea to create trust with customers and have a good relationship with customers in advance to creating your site anywhere but especially on big cartel. Because reviews on here, create doubt. You need that trust in advance so they feel like you won't rip them off essentially. I personally have never had an issue either when buying off big cartel sites. I think you just need to be aware, and not buy from untrustworthy sites. A good tip is just to pay through PayPal if you ever feel unsafe - you can always open a claim with paypal if worst comes to the worst and they are always in favour of the customer if there's an issue. You will just get your money back. There's always a very small amount of bad sites on any platform -think of how many scams there are ok amazon which is a generally trusted platform. I don't think that makes the entire platform a scam.

Jeez, I've been reading the reviews here on Trustpilot about Big Cartel and none of them are actually about the actual platform, these complaints are about companies that use Big cartel as a web host. I've been with Big cartel for 6 years and I think they are great for a small startup business and someone who isn't very tech-savvy but still wants to create a website. They make it very easy for anyone even if you don't have any experience to create a website and I always loved the fact that the pricing tiers are upfront, with no hidden fees or add-ons. You get exactly what you pay for. I did see one legit complaint about the platform itself and not a business using it, and the person stated that Big cartel didn't bring any traffic to their website. Just like all new websites, you'll have to do some self-marketing yourself, and eventually, people and Google will start to recognize you and your brand. I've loved Big cartel for exactly what they are. It's not perfect, but it works. My one real critique of it is that, for as long as it's been up and running, they should have added a way for customers to leave reviews without the business having to use third-party add-ons. That's about the worst thing I can say about the actual website itself. It really is great for a small start-up company, and if you don't mind using thrid-part add-ons, then I say go for it. Also, I do not work for the company, this is just my honest opinion about the website since I see that no one was actually leaving a real review of the web host itself.