Perfect for creators with a need to stand out online, Big Cartel is a cloud-hosted platform for ecommerce sales. If you’re looking to build a store as an independent creative, artist, or service provider, then this is the product for you.
Originally launched in 2005, Big Cartel has been around for quite a while, delivering excellent experiences to people around the world. The solution was originally made by Matt Wigham, who wanted an easy way to sell his band merchandise on the web. Since then, the service has expanded to serve millions of artists.
Big Cartel is a hosted platform, which means you can build and operate a site without having to worry about coding and hosting your own solution. The Big Cartel environment comes with zero transaction fees to worry about, and the experience is easy to use. You shouldn’t have a problem adding products, creating discounts, managing inventory and more.
So, how much do you need to pay for an experience like this?
Today, we’re going to be taking a closer look at Big Cartel Pricing, and whether this solution is suitable for your needs.
What is Big Cartel?
As mentioned above, Big Cartel is a fully hosted, web-based software solution for building your own website. The solution is very easy to use, with lots of components to help you add products, manage inventory, and keep track of your orders. You’ll also have access to a range of free themes to get your store up and running, and there’s an API solution for development options.
Although Big Cartel is a little limited in some areas, due to its ease of use, it can be an excellent product for companies just getting started online. If you’re an artist or creator in need of a simple way to start selling online, then Big Cartel is a top choice.
Since Big Cartel is made for artists, by artists, it’s also pretty affordable. When you’re building your store with this service, you’ll be able to choose from a range of plans, including a free option for beginners. The plan you pick is likely to depend on how many items you’re looking to sell, and which features you want to access.
The store you make with Big Cartel will be a standalone site for you to brand and grow however you choose. There’s no system in place to take a cut of your sales, making it a great solution if you’re a smaller enterprise or an individual looking to save some money.
Big Cartel Pricing: The Options
Big Cartel pricing is a little different compared to some of the ecommerce store building solutions on the market today. You’ll pay for the number of products you wish to sell, and you’ll be able to access more features the more you spend. All of the paid plans come with a range of features, but they differ in the range of products you can offer.
Let’s look at some of the plans.
Big Cartel Gold: The Free Package
This is the free package for Big Cartel users, starting with the option to sell up to 5 products. You can add one image per product and access a range of free and professional customizable themes. There’s the option to sell both in-person and online, with a custom domain, real-time statistics, and more. Features include:
- Five product limit
- Free customizable themes
- One image per product
- Selling in-person and online
- Real-time stats
- Custom domain access
- Product option groups
- Shipment tracking
- Discounts and promotions
The Free package also recently added it’s “sales tax autopilot” service. This means you can automatically calculate sales tax when selling – a rare feature to get on a free plan.
Big Cartel Platinum: $9.99 per month
The Platinum plan is the first paid premium plan from Big Cartel, available for about $9.99 per month. This solution comes with access to up to 50 product listings, with no listing fees. Unlike the Gold package, you can also get up to five images per product.
Other features of Platinum include:
- Free customizable themes
- In-person and online selling
- Up to 50 product listings
- Five images per product
- Real-time reports and stats
- Theme code editing
- Inventory tracking
- Google Analytics
- Promotions and discounts
- Bulk editing
- Product option groups
- Shipment tracking
The Sales tax autopilot feature is once again included in this product, so it’s much easier to keep track of your tax requirements.
Big Cartel Diamond: $19.99 per month
Slightly more expensive than the original paid plan, the Big Cartel Diamond package is intended for growing companies, with support for up to 250 products. The features outside of the extra products are essentially the same as those you get on the Platinum package, including:
- Product option groups
- Sales tax autopilot
- Shipment tracking
- Bulk editing
- Promos and discounts
- Inventory tracking
- Google analytics reports
- Theme code edits
- Custom domain access
- Real-time stats
- In-person and online selling
- Free customizable themes
- Five images per product
Big Cartel Titanium: $29.99 per month
Currently the most expensive package available from Big Cartel, the Titanium package will allow you to sell up to 500 products. Although this should be enough for some smaller businesses, you might find that the maximum plan is still too small if you’re growing a bigger business. The Titanium package comes with all the features of Diamond/Platinum, including:
- Five images per product
- Free custom themes
- Online and in-person selling
- Real-time stats
- Custom domain access
- Google analytics
- Theme code editing
- Inventory tracking
- Bulk editing
- Shipment tracking
- Discounts and promos
- Product option groups
- Sales tax autopilot
Free vs Premium Features
Big Cartel might seem like a marketplace service at first glance, but this ecommerce platform will give you a standalone site, with aspects of customization, and your own dedicated checkout. If you’re looking for a convenient way to design and launch an online store, Big Cartel gives you a lot of great features for free, including:
- Customer support: The Big Cartel team will offer some manner of customer support between 9am and 6pm ET. This customer support can help small businesses with things like HTML, and Big Cartel offers to a certain degree. However, if you can’t get custom help, you can always try the Help Centre.
- Order Management: The Big Cartel dashboard allows users to send confirmation emails to clients after a purchase, so that everyone can track orders, print shipping labels, export order histories and so much more.
- Search Engine Optimization: All the pages on your Big Cartel store won’t just be suitable for things like Stripe, PayPal, and credit card payments, they’ll also be ready for search engine optimization too. Big Cartel also provides tips on keeping your site ranking well.
- Mobile app: If you need to manage your store on the move, you can access a mobile app. This is something you won’t always get from tools like Shopify and other CSS website building services.
- Security: Big Cartel offers various forms of security alongside its free functionality, so you can rest assured that your store is protected with things like SSL encryption.
From SEO to shopping cart support, Big Cartel does off quite a lot within its free packages. However, there are features you will need to pay for too, such as:
- Custom domain names: If you want to make your brand stand out online and through social media, then you’re going to need a custom domain name. It does pay to have a domain name of your own for things like SEO and building your brand’s professional image, but you do need to pay for the privilege.
- Analytics: Reporting and analytics are essential when you need to track which strategies are helping your business to grow. Through the online dashboard, users can track visitor and order stats as well as conversion rates. If you have a paid plan, you can link Google Analytics in for more insights.
- Inventory management: Inventory management means your store will keep track of how many products you sell, so you know when you’re running out of stock. You’ll also be able to set up low stock alerts.
- HTML/CSS editing: If you’re keen to spruce up the templates available with your Big Cartel website builder, you can add your own source code. However, this is only available if you have a paid plan.
- Discount codes and coupons: With your paid store, you can attract more customers in a range of environments with discount codes for your ecommerce website. These can be applied directly to your payment gateways.
- Product images: Paid plans also allow you to add multiple images of your product, which can help to attract more customers and conversions.
Additional Costs
Using Big Cartel as your store builder comes with various benefits, from an easy-to-use website builder to great customer support. However, there are limitations too. For instance, you’ll need to spend extra if you want to add your own domain name to your ecommerce website. Being able to access your own domain name through bigcartel.com may entice more customers to your site and make it easier to build a brand.
Similar to building stores with WordPress, you’ll need to pay extra for your domain name, and the amount you pay will depend on the ecommerce solution you choose. Some domain name providers are more expensive than others.
A domain name is only one of the added extras you’ll need to think about too. For instance, although Big Cartel offers a variety of themes and templates to get you started online, you may want to look into custom made themes to make your digital products stand out.
If you want a store that looks great on iOS and Android and makes it easy for you to connect with your target audience, then you can hire a professional to make a theme for you, or you can upgrade to a paid plan, so you have more control over things like CSS and HTML. The more advanced you want your themes to be, the more you can expect to pay.
Don’t forget that purchasing fees can add to your costs of running a store too. While Big Cartel itself doesn’t charge transaction fees, you will have a charge to consider from the payment gateway. For instance, you’ll have a payment to think about whenever someone makes a payment through Square, PayPal, or Stripe.
The more payment options you have to offer, the more you’ll need to factor payment processing fees into your online business costs. Don’t forget to consider the PCI compliance levels of each of your payment processors too.
What About the Big Cartel App Store?
If you want to avoid messing around with Zapier for every app and add-on, then you can use the Big Cartel app store to implement integrations that make the most sense to you. Applications are handy for a range of things. For instance, you can use Live Chat to improve your customer service, or access tools that help with abandoned cart recovery and SEO.
One of the main reasons to invest in add-ons for Big Cartel is to access things like email marketing and social media connection tools. This means that you can sell and interact with customers on multiple channels. Start-ups can also invest in things like new shopping cart software, POS connections and more.
While some features will be available for free, others will have a fee associated with them. Big Cartel gives you a lot of value for your money compared to other market leaders like SquareSpace, and it comes with things like the titanium plan, with unlimited products for companies who want to scale. The fact that Big Cartel doesn’t issue transaction fees is a huge bonus.
Is Big Cartel Worth It?
Whether you consider Big Cartel pricing to be worth the features you get will depend on you. There are tons of great features available from Big Cartel for a reasonably low cost if you have a small business which can get by with things like email support. It’s good for just starting out, although you might find that this service loses some of its scalability as your business begins to grow.
There are also some features that appear to be missing from some pricing plans, such as abandoned cart recovery, and access to coding on the lower levels of the pricing options. Although this website builder will technically allow you to design a wide range of stores, the system is designed more for specialists in the creative niche.
From an objective perspective, Big Cartel claims to be the best store for creators and artists, with a generous free plan and an excellent range of paid plans too. Ultimately, this is a good choice for a lot of companies getting started online, but it’s worth remembering that your company will only be able to go so far with the free plan alone. Eventually, you may need to upgrade your functionality with a wider range of features from a more expensive plan.
It’s also worth remembering that you will pay more if you have extra features to consider, such as add-ons from the Big Cartel store, and paid theme options. Additional costs, whether they’re for add-ons or the payment gateway fees you’ll typically pay, can add up. Although Big Cartel is quite affordable, and requires no transaction fees, it’s worth making sure you’ve considered all the additional expenses associated with any plan.
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