Overview of Big Cartel
Perhaps you’ve heard of Big Cartel and want to know if it’s the right ecommerce builder for you. You already know it’s the only free ecommerce builder. Maybe you’re wondering if it’s too good to be true? What’s it really like to build your online store with?Big Cartel is perfect for small businesses who are just starting out rather than looking for growth.
Big Cartel’s free plan is a big appeal, especially for those on a budget. It has a user-friendly onboarding process which guides and prompts you through setting up your store. But to get the most of out Big Cartel, you’ll need to know how to code.
While it can’t compete with market leaders such as Shopify and BigCommerce, Big Cartel is a good choice for starting out small.
Here at Website Builder Expert, we want you to have the best experience of building your website. Whether that’s choosing the right website builder for your portfolio, picking the best ecommerce builder for your online store, or finding the perfect hosting provider, we’ve got you covered.
We carry out research to give you the best reviews and comparisons possible. We’ve used Big Cartel ourselves, and that’s not all. We got a wide selection of people to use it too, and rate their experience. We also spent hours scoring, ranking, and analyzing all Big Cartel’s features. We didn’t leave a nook or cranny untested.
Features
Overall, compared to larger ecommerce platforms Big Cartel is quite basic. It’s not ideal for enterprise-level businesses, and therefore the list of features is short.
However, the features they offer are exactly what beginners and small businesses need to get started. The main advantage is that merchants don’t get overwhelmed with an abundance of options. Instead, they can build and run their business with minimal skills, knowing that everything they need they already have. So what do you get with Big Cartel?
Sell Digital Products
The integration with Pulley lets merchants put their digital products on sale. The integration helps sellers outsource their skills, as well as their products. Whether you’re looking to make an extra buck writing content, or turn poems into wall art, Big Cartel can help you achieve that.
Sell on Facebook and Instagram
Today merchants need to be present, ready to assist shoppers across all channels. Luckily, Big Cartel offers integrations with Facebook and allows tagging products on Instagram. Regardless of your price plan, as long as Facebook approves your products, you can expand your business and reach customers scrolling on Facebook. To integrate social platforms to your online store, you will need to do some coding.
Order management
You can set up automatic emails to notify customers once their order is confirmed, fulfill orders, print shipping labels and export order history in CSV files.
Inventory tracking
Easily keep an eye on stock levels to prevent sales of items that are out of stock, and list items as “sold out” or “coming soon”.
Easily Editable Product Information
In Big Cartel you can easily edit such product information like name, description, inventory status, price, edit product URL for SEO reasons and much more. By the way, one useful feature that needs to be mentioned is that you can group products into the categories straight from the product edit page.
Marketing and SEO
The platform offers great SEO features, like sitemap generation to drive relevant traffic to your store. Users can also apply discounts and run special promotions with ease.
Intuitive Product Management
It has quite an intuitive product management system. Everything here is user-friendly and there are no unnecessary complications.
Track progress
The platform integrates with Google Analytics, which provides sellers with insights into how and what products are performing well. It also helps to identify what channels drive the most traffic to your store, making it easier to plan marketing efforts.
| Big Cartel Pros | |
|---|---|
| #1 | The only ecommerce builder where you can set up and sell online for free |
| #2 | Online store set up has clean navigation and user friendly prompts |
| #3 | Perfect for artists selling individual pieces |
| Big Cartel Cons | |
|---|---|
| #1 | Basic theme designs and extremely low level of customization |
| #2 | Coding is essential to push beyond the limits of the builder |
| #3 | Features lack depth and quality |
Pricing
Big Cartel’s pricing structure is based on the number of products you list. If you have five or fewer products, you can use the free plan. While the free plan is definitely an option for hobbyists, to really sell, you’re going to have to spring for a paid plan. That way, you can provide more than one image for each product (which is crucial for online selling) and list more than five products. Fortunately, the paid plans aren’t all that expensive.
Here’s a breakdown of all of Big Cartel’s pricing plans.
Gold
Big Cartel’s Gold plan costs $0/month and includes:
- Five products
- One image per product
- Use your own domain
- Google Analytics
- Full code customization
- Inventory tracking
- Discount codes
- Automatic tax calculations (coming soon)
- Advanced tax settings (coming soon)
- Product option groups
Platinum
Big Cartel’s Platinum plan costs $9.99/month and includes everything in the Gold plan, plus:
- 25 Products
- Five images per product
- Free customizable themes
- Sell online and in-person
- Real-time stats
- Use a custom domain
- Theme code editing
- Google Analytics
- Inventory tracking
- Offer discounts and run promos
- Bulk editing
- Shipment tracking
- Automatic tax calculations
Diamond
Big Cartel’s Diamond plan costs $19.99/month and includes everything in the Platinum plan, plus:
- 100 Products
- Product option groups
- Advanced tax settings
Titanium
Big Cartel’s Titanium plan costs $29.99/month and includes everything in the Diamond plan, plus:
- 300 Products
