Shopify vs Big Cartel: Navigating The Best Choice For Your Online Store
By Sam Nguyen
Drive 20-40% of your revenue with Avada
In this post, we’ll delve into the pivotal decision of Shopify vs Big Cartel, providing insights to help you choose the perfect platform for your online store.
Key Takeaways
- Shopify is better than Big Cartel because it offers a more extensive feature set, scalability, and versatility. It caters to many businesses, from startups to enterprises, and provides robust SEO, marketing, and point-of-sale integration tools.
- Big Cartel is better than Shopify for artists, makers, and creatives who want a simple, user-friendly platform to sell a limited range of products. Its free plan with no time limit makes it accessible for starting. Big Cartel’s focus on simplicity and ease of use is ideal for hobbyists and individuals looking to showcase their creative work.
- Shopify is best for businesses of all sizes and industries, especially those with growth aspirations and needing advanced ecommerce functionalities. It provides scalability, a wide range of features, and comprehensive support.
- Big Cartel is best for artists, makers, and smaller-scale businesses looking for a straightforward platform to showcase and sell their creative products.
Shopify vs Big Cartel: Quick Comparison
The key difference between Shopify and Big Cartel lies in their target audience.
Shopify is a versatile, all-in-one ecommerce platform designed to cater to a wide range of businesses, from small startups to large enterprises. It offers an extensive feature set, unlimited product listings, and robust customization options, making it a strong choice for businesses looking to scale and grow over time. Shopify excels in SEO, marketing tools, point-of-sale integration, and customer support. However, this comes at a higher price point, making it more suitable for businesses with larger budgets.
On the other hand, Big Cartel is a niche platform primarily tailored for artists, makers, and creatives looking to set up an online store quickly and easily to sell a limited range of products. It offers a free plan, making it an accessible option for starting. However, its feature set is limited compared to Shopify, and it may not be suitable for businesses with ambitions for significant growth or those needing advanced ecommerce functionalities.
Shopify vs Big Cartel: Table Of Comparison
| Criteria | Shopify | Big Cartel | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ease of use | Easy to use and more responsive. | Easy to use. | Shopify |
| Pricing | 5 subscription plans to sell an unlimited number of products | A free and 2 paid plans with a maximum of 500 products to sell | Shopify |
| Web design |
|
|
Shopify |
| Ecommerce features |
|
|
Shopify |
| Marketing Features |
|
|
Shopify |
| Security |
|
Shopify | |
| Apps and add-on integration | Over 8,000 apps integration. | Less than 100 additional apps | Shopify |
| Help and support |
|
|
Shopify |
Big Cartel vs Shopify: Pros and Cons
| Big Cartel | Shopify | |
|---|---|---|
| Pros |
|
|
| Cons |
|
|
Big Cartel vs Shopify: Detailed Comparison
In this detailed comparison, we’ll explore the key differences between Big Cartel and Shopify to help you make an informed decision for your online store.
Pricing
Shopify
Shopify offers 5 pricing plans, 4 of which allow merchants to create a full-function ecommerce store. The price starts at $39 to $2,000/ month, and the other package is Shopify Starter with $5 per month suitable for social network sellers. The prices can be reduced if you opt for annual billing, which offers a 25% discount.
The platform also offers a 3-day free trial to explore if it fits your needs before making any commitment.
Big Cartel
Big Cartel provides three subscription plans. The Gold plan comes with no monthly cost, while the Platinum and Diamond plans are priced at $9.99 and $19.99/ month, respectively.
The Verdict
If you need a more extensive online presence and scalability, Shopify is the winner. However, Big Cartel’s free plan may be the better option if you start with a limited budget and product range.
Big Cartel’s free plan is a standout strength. However, it comes with significant limitations, including a cap on the number of products you can sell, which is 500 max.
Shopify caters to businesses of all sizes with various costs based on the features of the plan. You can sell an unlimited number of products and choose to upgrade your plan as your business grows and requires more advanced features.
User-Friendliness
Shopify
Shopify has built its reputation as one of the most user-friendly ecommerce platforms in the market. Designed to cater to both beginners and professionals, its intuitive drag-and-drop interface ensures that setting up a store is relatively straightforward. It involves four steps: adding your products, customizing your theme, creating a domain, and specifying tax and shipping details.
The dashboard is cleanly designed with clearly marked sections for inventory management, sales analysis, customer information, and more. Plus, with its extensive library of themes, users can easily pick a design that suits their business without any design expertise.
Big Cartel
Big Cartel is tailored specifically for artists and makers, and this niche focus is evident in its simplistic and minimalist approach. For those who are just looking to set up a basic online store without delving deep into complex ecommerce functionalities, Big Cartel offers a straightforward experience.
The dashboard is clean, making tasks like adding products, setting up prices, and managing orders pretty straightforward. While it doesn’t offer a vast range of features like Shopify, this stripped-down approach can appeal to its target audience.
The Verdict
Shopify’s user interface is slightly superior to Big Cartel. For those who want more expansive features with a gentle learning curve, Shopify is the go-to.
Web Design
Shopify
Shopify provides a broader range of web design options. Users can choose from over themes, with 1 available for free and others premium themes requiring purchases ranging from $140 to nearly $200. These paid themes offer extensive customization capabilities, allowing businesses to create unique online stores.
All Shopify’s themes are optimized for mobile, ensuring that online stores look great and function seamlessly on all device types. They are also structured for conversions, with built-in design elements that cater to best ecommerce practices.
For those who have a deeper understanding of web design, Shopify uses its own templating language called Liquid, which allows for advanced customizations.
Big Cartel
On the other hand, Big Cartel offers a selection of 16 mobile-optimized themes for designing websites, all of which are free.
The available themes are clean and minimalistic, focusing on showcasing products in an aesthetic light. While it may not boast the extensive library that Shopify has, Big Cartel allows for custom HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
The Verdict
Shopify takes the lead in web design. While Big Cartel offers simplicity and more free themes, Shopify outshines it with a broader selection of themes and greater customization freedom. Its themes are designed for a broad spectrum of industries and can accommodate businesses of all sizes. Big Cartel’s focus is only on simplicity and its niche appeal to artists and small brands.
Ecommerce Features
Payment gateways
Shopify
Shopify offers merchants multiple payment options to offer their customers. It includes a built-in payment gateway called ‘Shopify Payments,’ which is convenient for users as it requires less setup and doesn’t impose transaction fees on your sales. However, it’s important to note that Shopify Payments is only available in 23 countries. In addition to Shopify Payments, Shopify allows integration with over 105 external payment gateways. However, these third-party gateways may charge you some fees for using their service.
Big Cartel
Big Cartel doesn’t have its own payment gateway, it exclusively relies on integrations with external payment providers with two official payment methods: Stripe and PayPal. One notable advantage of Big Cartel is that it doesn’t charge transaction fees when accepting payments through your store. However, you will still incur credit card fees imposed by your chosen payment gateway. For example, in the US, Stripe typically charges around 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction (fees may vary by location).
The verdict
Shopify outperforms Big Cartel regarding payment options and flexibility. Shopify undeniably has the upper hand with its vast array of choices, catering to a more extensive and diverse global market.
Product numbers and product options
Shopify
Shopify allows you to sell an unlimited number of products on all of its plans. You can add tags, categorize items into categories, and create multiple product options and variants. While Shopify starts with up to 100 product variants, it truly shines with the help of third-party apps. Apps like Infinite Options by ShopPad enable Shopify merchants to significantly expand product options and variants, making it a robust choice for businesses with diverse catalogs.
Big Cartel
Big Cartel has specific limitations regarding the number of products you can list, even on its highest plan. It restricts you to a maximum of 500 products, which may not suffice for businesses with extensive inventories. While Big Cartel offers some flexibility in product customization, allowing up to 150 options per product listing, it struggles to compete with Shopify regarding scalability.
The Verdict
Regarding inventory size, Shopify stands out as the clear winner, making it a more suitable platform for merchants with more extensive product inventories. Big Cartel does offer useful features like ‘product variant groups’ that allow for creative combinations of product variables.
Abandoned cart features
Shopify
Shopify excels in abandoned cart recovery which allows you to send automated emails to users who have added items to their cart but did not complete the checkout process. With Shopify’s abandoned cart feature, you can create these recovery emails using an intuitive email editor. Additionally, you have significant control over the conditions under which these emails are sent to your customers.
Shopify provides “editable workflows” that enable you to establish if/then rules for sending these reminders. This level of customization ensures that you can tailor your abandoned cart recovery emails to your specific needs, making it a powerful tool for recapturing potentially lost sales.
Big Cartel
Big Cartel does not offer abandoned cart recovery functionality as a built-in feature. To implement abandoned cart recovery in a Big Cartel store, you must connect an email marketing app such as AWeber or Mailchimp. However, this approach involves additional configuration steps and may not provide the same level of seamless integration and customization as Shopify’s native feature.
Point of Sale
Shopify
Shopify offers comprehensive Point of Sale (POS) capabilities, making it a versatile choice for online store owners who also need to process transactions in person at events, festivals, markets, or brick-and-mortar retail outlets. Shopify provides a dedicated POS app for payment processing, inventory tracking, and issuing receipts to customers. This app is tightly integrated with your online store’s backend, ensuring seamless data synchronization.
With Shopify, you can access a wide range of first-party POS hardware. Shopify includes standard “Shopify POS Lite” features in all its plans. For more advanced POS capabilities, Shopify offers a “Shopify POS Pro” add-on priced at $89 per month per location for more advanced features.
Big Cartel
Big Cartel’s POS primarily relies on using a Stripe card reader for in-person transactions. While this may suffice for some basic POS needs, it lacks the comprehensive features and hardware integration that Shopify provides.
The Verdict
About Point of Sale (POS), Shopify is the clear winner. It offers a more extensive and tightly integrated solution for online store owners requiring POS capabilities and a wide range of POS hardware options. While Big Cartel offers some basic POS functionality through a Stripe card reader, it falls short of the robust and versatile POS system provided by Shopify.
Shipping
Shopify
Shopify enables you to set your shipping rates and calculate shipping prices based on multiple factors. Shopify also offers built-in real-time shipping rates, allowing you to display live shipping prices from various postal companies to your customers. For users in specific countries (USA, Canada, France, Australia, Italy, Spain, and the UK), Shopify Shipping offers discounted rates from local postal services, offering savings as high as 88%, depending on the plan.
As for dropshipping, Shopify seamlessly integrates with a myriad of apps like Printful, Dsers, etc. which allows merchants to easily import products from suppliers directly into their store and ship them straight to customers – no inventory or storage needed.
Big Cartel
Big Cartel does offer various shipping options and can integrate with third-party apps like Shipstation to enhance shipping capabilities. However, it needs some of the advanced features provided by Shopify, such as calculating shipping prices based on weight and offering built-in real-time shipping quotes.
One area where Big Cartel does shine is in dropshipping. It offers dropshipping options via services like Printful and The Art of Where. These services allow you to upload artwork that can be printed onto products, with manufacturing and delivery handled by the companies involved. This feature caters well to its user base of artists and visual creatives.
The Verdict
However, Shopify’s shipping features are more comprehensive than Big Cartel’s. Its built-in features, integrations, and partner apps are designed to simplify and optimize both processes, making it a preferred choice for businesses that prioritize efficient shipping and dropshipping operations.
Marketing Features
SEO
Shopify is the clear winner of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) capabilities. It offers a comprehensive suite of SEO tools and features that empower users to optimize their online stores effectively. With Shopify, you have complete control over critical SEO elements, including URL structure editing, redirects, and meta descriptions.
This flexibility allows you to fine-tune your SEO strategy and enhance your website’s visibility in search results. Additionally, Shopify simplifies the process of meeting Google’s Core Web Vitals standards, ensuring your site’s speed and responsiveness align with search engine requirements.
Big Cartel, while offering some SEO-friendly features like responsive design and valid HTML markup, falls short in key areas that are crucial for effective SEO. Notably, it needs robust URL structure editing capabilities and effective redirect management, which are essential for Google’s understanding of website content and indexing. Furthermore, the inability to edit meta descriptions presents a significant SEO disadvantage, as these descriptions can impact click-through rates and search rankings.
Email marketing
About email marketing, Shopify takes the lead over Big Cartel. Shopify offers a built-in email marketing solution called ‘Shopify Email,’ allowing users to host mailing lists and send e-newsletters without leaving the platform.
Notably, Shopify Email allows users to send up to 10,000 emails per month for free, with a minimal cost of $1 USD per 1,000 additional emails sent (or $0.001 USD per additional email). While Shopify Email may be more basic than dedicated email marketing tools like AWeber and Mailchimp, it is user-friendly and cost-effective.
In contrast, Big Cartel does not provide a built-in email marketing solution, requiring users to rely on third-party services like GetResponse or Mailchimp to handle their email marketing needs. This difference places Shopify ahead in terms of convenience and cost-effectiveness for users seeking integrated email marketing capabilities within their ecommerce platform.
The Verdict
Regarding marketing features, Shopify shines as the preferred platform, offering a comprehensive set of tools to elevate online stores’ visibility and engagement. In stark contrast, Big Cartel falls behind in critical marketing aspects. It lacks advanced SEO tools and does not provide a built-in email marketing solution, necessitating reliance on third-party services.
Security
Shopify
Shopify prioritizes security with robust measures, including the option for users to enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) for enhanced account protection. Additionally, Shopify is fully PCI compliant, guaranteeing secure credit card transactions.
Big Cartel
On the other hand, Big Cartel emphasizes platform security but lacks support for Two-Factor Authentication (2FA). While payments are processed through third-party gateways, Big Cartel falls short in PCI compliance, with users retaining potential liability.
The Verdict
About security, Shopify emerges as the superior choice. It offers Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) for added account protection and maintains full PCI compliance, ensuring secure credit card transactions. While Big Cartel prioritizes security, Shopify’s comprehensive security measures make it the winner, providing users with a safer ecommerce environment.
Apps and Add-ons Integration
Shopify
Shopify’s app store is a robust marketplace with an impressive selection of over 8,000 apps, offering solutions for virtually every aspect of running an online store. These apps cover various functionalities, including accounting, customer relationship management (CRM), email marketing, and social media integration. Shopify’s app store is well-organized, making it user-friendly and allowing store owners to easily find and select the right apps to enhance their e-commerce operations.
Big Cartel
Big Cartel, while more limited in its native app offerings with just 27 available, compensates by integrating with Zapier. This connection opens the door to approximately 5,000 additional apps, extending functionality options for users. However, it’s important to note that utilizing Zapier often incurs additional costs, and not all integrations are free or unlimited.
The Verdict
About apps and add-ons integration, Shopify secures a clear victory due to its extensive app store and user-friendly interface. With over 8,000 readily available apps catering to various needs, Shopify provides users a comprehensive ecosystem for enhancing their online stores. While Big Cartel offers integration with Zapier, Shopify’s vast selection and convenience make it the superior choice for expanding your store’s feature set and capabilities.
Help and Support
Shopify
Shopify offers a comprehensive set of support options. They provide chat, email, and phone support, accessible 24/7. The support materials are available in over 20 languages, making it more inclusive for international users.
However, it’s important to note that Shopify encourages users to search for answers in their help site before providing direct contact details for support. This additional step can be a bit cumbersome for users seeking immediate assistance.
The quality of Shopify’s support may also vary depending on whether you’re inquiring about Shopify-built apps or templates versus third-party ones. In-house support for Shopify’s products tends to be more comprehensive, while support for third-party products relies on the developers of those products.
Big Cartel
Big Cartel provides a decent support center with various helpful articles covering various aspects of running an online store on their platform. These articles are well-written and informative.
However, the availability of direct customer support from real people is limited. Big Cartel only has 12 support staff, and they are available Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. EST. The primary support channel is via email, with no live chat or phone support.
Additionally, Big Cartel’s customer support is offered exclusively in English, which may be a limitation for non-English-speaking users.
The Verdict
About help and support, Shopify offers a more extensive and accessible support system compared to Big Cartel. Shopify provides round-the-clock assistance, multiple contact options, and support in various languages, making it a more user-friendly choice for those who value customer support.
Bottom Line
Shopify is the winner in the battle of Shopify vs Big Cartel, offering a robust and versatile ecommerce platform suitable for businesses of all sizes. Its extensive feature set, scalability, and superior customization options make it a top choice for those looking to build a successful online store. While Big Cartel’s simplicity and budget-friendly options cater to smaller ventures and artists, Shopify’s comprehensive offering and exceptional support make it the winner for ecommerce entrepreneurs.
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