Shopify vs Big Cartel (2024 Comparison)

At first glance, Shopify excels in crafting larger, expandable online stores, and it’s particularly well-suited for dropshipping businesses. Meanwhile, Big Cartel suits beginners in web design and small-scale online stores. Both capable of handling eCommerce projects, these platforms serve distinct purposes, detailed in our Shopify vs Big Cartel comparison.

Looking to sell goods and services through your own website?

Consider Shopify vs Big Cartel, two eCommerce platforms with distinct strengths. Shopify is best for building scalable online stores or venturing into dropshipping businesses. On the other hand, Big Cartel is perfect for web design beginners and small online stores. This is why, in this comparison, we’ll help you decide which platform fits your needs, budget, and business goals.

We’ll explore key eCommerce, marketing and customization features, pros & cons, security, and pricing for both platforms, making your decision easier.

 

If you’re feeling pressed for time, check out the highlights below for a quick comparison:

Before we dive in, it’s important to note that as Shopify Partners, we have extensive experience with Shopify and consider it our top recommendation for eCommerce ventures. However, we’re committed to providing an unbiased review, acknowledging that Big Cartel may be a better fit in certain cases.

Shopify is a user-friendly platform that helps people create and manage online stores easily. It comes with lots of useful tools like a sales dashboard, inventory manager, and a huge app store with over 8000 apps to choose from. With Shopify, you can sell your products not only on your website but also on social media and in person using their point-of-sale system.

Here are some of the good things and not-so-good things about Shopify:

👍 Pros:

👎 Cons:

 

Big Cartel started back in 2005 to help artists and small businesses sell their stuff online. It’s user-friendly and focuses on creative folks like artists, photographers, and jewelry makers. With over 66,000 active websites and $2.5 billion in sales, it’s made a big impact. The platform offers free design templates and essential features to set up online shops easily.

Here’s what’s good and not-so-good about Big Cartel:

👍 Pros:

👎 Cons:

 

Shopify, being extremely feature-rich, may seem a bit more complicated, but it’s structured to provide services simply and systematically. You can set up and manage your store within a few easy steps in 3 minutes.

On the other hand, building a new store on Big Cartel is straightforward. Just upload your product images, set the prices, and select a suitable store theme, and you’re ready to start selling!

Don’t worry if you lack technical knowledge. A setup wizard will guide you through all the steps thoroughly, and additional information is available in the Help Center.

Key Takeaways:

When it comes to design, Shopify shines with a variety of themes to choose from. There are 17 free options and 80 paid ones, ranging from $200 to $350. All themes are mobile-friendly, ensuring your store looks good on any device. You have control over both mobile and desktop versions, maintaining consistency across platforms. These themes are modern, professional, and highly customizable.

In contrast, Big Cartel offers simpler designs. With 18 free themes available, all mobile-friendly, but without mobile editing capabilities. While it’s user-friendly, it lacks essential features like product image zoom and customer logins, which enhance the shopping experience.

Personalizing a Big Cartel theme is more challenging, often requiring coding skills. This limits customization if you’re not comfortable with coding.

Key Takeaways:

When you’re ready to focus on your online business, sales features become the most important factor. After all, your store needs to make money, and that starts with accepting online payments.

Shopify excels in this area, as it accepts online payments but also offers over 100 payment gateways to choose from. With an extensive app store, you can customize your eCommerce site as needed.

In contrast, Big Cartel’s eCommerce capabilities cater to small businesses selling individual products.

Payment Options

Shopify offers over 100 payment gateways, including popular choices like PayPal, Stripe, Amazon, and Apple Pay.

A notable feature of Shopify is its own payment gateway, Shopify Payments. Unlike other gateways, Shopify Payments doesn’t add extra transaction fees on top of the usual credit card fees, providing a seamless payment experience for users.

Big Cartel, on the other hand, offers a more limited selection of payment gateways, with only PayPal, Stripe, Google Pay, and Apple Pay available. While these are popular choices, they offer fewer options compared to Shopify.

However, a huge advantage of Big Cartel’s payment gateways is the absence of additional transaction fees. Users are only charged the usual credit card processing fee by the payment gateway itself, making it a cost-effective option for small businesses.

Key Takeaways:

Product Management

Shopify offers impressive inventory management capabilities suitable for businesses of all sizes. You can add products individually or in bulk without any limits.

On the other hand, Big Cartel is better suited for small businesses focusing on individual items. While the free plan allows up to five products and the most expensive plan accommodates up to 500 products for $29.99, there’s no bulk uploading option.

Both platforms allow the categorization of products, though features may vary slightly. For example, Shopify’s “product types” feature lets you categorize products into groups like “jackets,” “tops,” and “pants,” simplifying navigation for customers. Additionally, Shopify offers product tags and a “product vendor” feature to track manufacturers or wholesalers.

Similarly, Big Cartel offers a “product category” feature for organizing products. Product tags are also available.

Key Takeaways:

Abandoned Cart Recovery

Abandoned Cart Recovery is a tool for eCommerce businesses that works by sending automatic emails to customers who leave products in their shopping carts without completing the purchase.

Shopify includes this feature built-in, allowing you to easily contact customers and recover lost sales. You can also analyze abandoned checkouts to understand why customers are leaving products behind or not completing the checkout process.

However, Big Cartel lacks abandoned cart recovery, which is a significant limitation.

Key Takeaways:

Shipping Options

Shopify offers the Shopify Shipping suite, making it easy for users to manage shipping rates and print labels in bulk. Users also benefit from discounted rates when shipping through USPS, UPS, or DHL Express.

Moreover, Shopify’s Advanced plan includes automatic carrier-calculated shipping rates, enhancing the shipping experience even further.

While Big Cartel doesn’t directly handle shipping, it offers app integrations that allow users to incorporate third-party shipping services, such as ShipStation. However, these integrations may not match the comprehensive shipping support and capabilities offered by Shopify.

Key Takeaways:

Dropshipping

Big Cartel offers two dropshipping options: Printful and The Art of Where. These services let you upload artwork, which they then print onto products for sale. Manufacturing and delivery are managed by these companies.

However, Shopify outshines Big Cartel in dropshipping. It provides over 400 dropshipping integrations in its app store. Unlike Big Cartel, these integrations aren’t limited to specific products but cover a wide range.

Key Takeaways:

 

Shopify and Big Cartel both offer POS features for processing transactions in person. With Shopify, you can use a dedicated POS app for payment processing, inventory tracking, and receipt issuance. Additionally, Shopify offers various POS hardware items. Big Cartel’s POS is limited to using a Stripe card reader.

Key Takeaways:

 

Both Shopify and Big Cartel offer tools to assist you in tax calculations.

Big Cartel provides automatic tax calculation tools, but it’s more limited than Shopify. While it works well for US tax rates, merchants outside the US must manually set up tax rates.

In terms of global coverage, Shopify’s automatic tax calculation features extend to several countries, including Australia, Canada, the European Union, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Big Cartel’s coverage is less extensive.

A critical consideration is VAT MOSS, which applies specific VAT rates to digital goods sold to EU consumers. Shopify’s ‘Digital Downloads’ app automatically calculates VAT for EU transactions, whereas Big Cartel lacks this functionality.

Key Takeaways:

 

Shopify has over 6,000 apps available in its app store, covering categories like Marketing, Store Design, and Finances. While some apps are free, others come with a monthly fee ranging from $2.99 to $299. It’s essential to consider app ratings, displayed on a five-star scale, before making a selection.

Big Cartel offers integration with 4,000+ apps through third-party vendors like Zapier. However, it directly provides fewer than 50 apps and integrations, mainly in categories like Marketing & Promotion and Store Management.

Key Takeaways:

Let’s start with SEO practices, as both Shopify and Big Cartel offer clean URLs, headers, alt text, and other essential elements. However, Shopify provides helpful hints during product uploads to ensure you cover all necessary SEO aspects.

In terms of analytics and reporting, Shopify surpasses Big Cartel with built-in features such as finance reports, sales reports, customer reports, and more. For example, Big Cartel offers basic reporting, detailed analytics require connecting to Google Analytics, available only on paid plans.

For social media integration, Shopify offers a wide range of app integrations for platforms like Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp. Big Cartel’s integrations are more limited but cover essential needs like Facebook Store and Instagram shopping posts.

Email marketing differs between the two platforms, with Shopify offering a built-in solution called ‘Shopify Email,’ allowing up to 10,000 free emails per month. In contrast, Big Cartel users rely on third-party services like GetResponse or Mailchimp for email marketing.

Regarding blogging tools, Shopify provides a built-in blogging tool, while Big Cartel requires third-party apps like DropInBlog. Shopify’s blogging tool is user-friendly and integrates with popular SEO tools like Yoast SEO.

Key Takeaways:

Shopify offers five pricing plans, each with different features:

You can try Shopify with a one-month trial for $1. The Shopify ‘Plus’ plan is for large businesses, with advanced features and fees starting at $2,300 per month. Shopify’s point-of-sale function is included in all plans, with extra features available for a fee.

Big Cartel has three plans:

The free plan allows selling up to five products. Paid plans offer more products, inventory tracking, and Google Analytics access.

Key Takeaways:

Transaction Fees

Shopify offers three transaction rates corresponding to its pricing plans. For the Basic Shopify plan, each transaction incurs a fee of 2.9%, plus an additional $0.30. The Shopify plan charges 2.6% and $0.30 per transaction, while the Advanced Shopify plan has a rate of 2.4% plus $0.30 per transaction. However, you can avoid transaction fees entirely by using Shopify’s payment gateway, Shopify Payments.

Big Cartel doesn’t handle transactions itself. Instead, you’ll need to use a third-party service like Stripe or PayPal for online orders.

Both Stripe and PayPal charge a transaction fee of 2.9% of the total transaction amount, along with an additional $0.30. These rates align with Shopify’s highest transaction rates, resulting in similar costs for smaller stores.

Key Takeaways:

Domain Names and Web Hosting

Both Big Cartel and Shopify handle web hosting. However, to have a custom domain name without “bigcartel.com” or “myshopify.com” in your URL, you’ll need to make an additional purchase or integration.

Big Cartel allows you to buy a domain name from third-party platforms like GoDaddy and connect it to your Big Cartel account. Similarly, Shopify enables you to purchase a domain through its platform or connect to one from another provider.

Key Takeaways:

 

Hosted platforms like Shopify and Big Cartel offer the advantage of having the platform providers take responsibility for platform security, unlike self-hosted solutions like WordPress where users must manage updates to avoid security vulnerabilities.

Additionally, Shopify is fully PCI compliant, ensuring the security of credit card transactions. Big Cartel, while payments go through third-party gateways like Stripe and PayPal, lacks PCI compliance. While payment processors ensure PCI compliance, merchants remain liable for any security breaches.

Key Takeaways:

 

When it comes to support, Shopify offers various options to assist you, making it one of the top choices for eCommerce builders. You can access 24/7 phone and live chat support, Advanced specialist support, Social media support, the Shopify forum, reach via email; or watch video tutorials.

This diverse range allows you to choose the support method that best fits your needs. Moreover, Shopify’s Plus plan provides a dedicated support agent for personalized assistance.

On the other hand, Big Cartel’s Help Center offers straightforward navigation and quick access to relevant help articles.

Key Takeaways:

 

Alrighty, folks, that’s a wrap!

To sum up, both Big Cartel and Shopify provide easy-to-use platforms for creating online stores without needing to know how to code. However, the best choice depends on your business goals.

If you plan to grow your business substantially, Shopify’s extensive features and scalability make it the better option.

Conversely, if you prioritize simplicity and cost-effectiveness, particularly for smaller inventories, Big Cartel is the way to go.

Consider your specific needs and ambitions to select the platform that suits you best.

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