Big Cartel Reviews

The majority of people leaving 1-star reviews seem to have gravely misunderstood what Big Cartel actually is.

Big Cartel is a platform that allows people, mainly artists, to build their own independent stores. It is not a marketplace like Etsy or eBay, where you can browse multiple shops and expect the platform itself to step in if something goes wrong. Big Cartel is essentially a very, very simplified version of Squarespace, Wix, or Shopify. I think what confuses people is the fact that every shop uses a .bigcartel.me domain, which makes many assume it’s a centralized marketplace or social media-style platform. It isn’t. It’s much closer to creating a Ko-fi shop page.
If you’re having an issue with a store like creator.bigcartel.me not shipping your order, that is 100% the responsibility of the creator, not Big Cartel. In that case, you should contact PayPal, Stripe, or your bank to request a refund. Leaving a 1-star review for Big Cartel over this is equivalent to giving Google a bad review because someone didn’t reply to an email you sent via Gmail.

As a store builder, however, Big Cartel is actually very good. The learning curve is extremely small, and in under an hour I had a fully functional store set up with all the integrations and extensions I wanted.
The pricing is also pretty okay.
My main recommendation is to make the purchasing of domains for Big Cartel easier. When I opened the page to look into getting one for myself, I noted that the domain store was in French for some reason and...well, that was confusing for me.

I’ve been using Big Cartel for years and it’s perfect.
Initially I used the free plan, but soon moved on to a paid plan with inventory.
There are no hidden charges and 0% taken on sales, just the monthly or annual charge.
I am an artist and I love the way that the theme I chose is visual. Customers can see the artwork instantly and also 4 more images if required.
Any queries I have had when using the site, which have been few, have been answered quickly by a friendly customer service team and resolved.
I don’t understand the negative reviews, in my experience it’s been a great shop window and website/shop for me.

Intuitive, Easy to use and simple. Im an artist and sell art prints and original art. I set up my store on the couch at my mother in laws house in 2019/2020 and have used it for the past 5 years. There are limitations - but if you are just starting out- it’s a perfect choice.

Date of experience: February 01, 2024

I would highly recommend using Big Cartel, it's very easy to use , lots of different themes to use as your website, affordable and the customer service is excellent.

Had a beautiful meal, the meat and salad freshly cooked, beautifully presented, tasty, I would definitely eat from here again. Excellent

From reading the reviews on Trust Pilot regarding Big Cartel it's obvious some poor reviews are about private sellers on a website with "...bigcartel.com" at the end of their url, not about Big Cartel itself. I love using Big Cartel. I've been with them for years. I pay $9.99 a month and did buy my own domain name for my online store which is a must if you're going to be an online retailer and want people to take you seriously. So I don't have the "[store name].bigcartel.com" on my url. It's just [storename].com for my url. I do have the "powered by bigcartel" text at the bottom. I don't see any problem with that. Customer service for Big Cartel is very responsive.

They do collect and remit sales tax on all orders in the United States. Some states may have issues with that but California is a state that works with them. I live in California. I had an issue with California because I had a seller's permit and also Big Cartel was remitting sales tax to California for all orders in my store. California contacted me and said I had failed to file my sales tax paper work and pay sales tax. I went back and forth with California and told them several times even though I have a valid seller's permit Big Cartel is remitting the sales tax from my store to California. Eventually a representative from the state of California got on the phone with me and explained to me they did find the info Big Cartel was submitting about my store to California but the problem was that is separate from my own personal seller's permit I have with California. California told me if I'm going to only use Big Cartel's services then I should cancel my personal seller's permit because I don't need one if I'm just using Big Cartel and relying on their services to remit sales tax for me. After that I canceled my personal seller's permit in California as I'm not selling in a physical location in California; I'm only using Big Cartel. If I was also selling my products outside of a website powered by Big Cartel then I would need a California seller's permit.

From my experience Big Cartel is the best way to sell online. They have easy to follow instructions for integrating your domain name into their storefront and then your soter website is [storename].com. They remit sales tax for you in most States in the USA, that saves a lot of time, and they have never tried to upsell me with pointless addons. I used Shopify before and that was way more expensive. I got spammed by shopify to upgrade and buy their stuff all the time. Shopify also billed me a percentage of every sale. And I had to do my own sales tax. With Big Cartel I pay a small monthly fee and that's it. They handle sales tax for me. I use Stripe for collecting customer payments. I do have a contact page on my store and when customers send me a message it comes to my email.

In summary Big Cartel works and is simple without any gimmicks.

I opened my shop on Big Carel in the Fall of 2021 and everything has worked smoothly since. I appreciate it's just one price a month and that they remit taxes to states. I have my store integrated w/ my personal website and I appreciate all the tools. There's also effortless integration with PIRATE SHIP for shipping. I don't know what the bad reviews are about, but as an artist with a small sales side business, I didn't want a store to take over my life and this was the best option

A lot of these reviews seem to be from people that ordered from scam sites hosted through Big Cartel, which can happen through any host realistically and should not fall under the actual company's page in my opinion, but, I do have a review for the service itself!

I've tried lots of different platforms and always return to Big Cartel for the simple interface, the automatic collection and remitting of sales tax, and their support has been great so far. Themes are simple and easy to customize, especially with CSS and HTML. The only changes I'd like to see would be more payment options (which they are working on) and more app integrations. Other than that, it's a wonderful, inexpensive place to start with an eCommerce business and I can't recommend it enough. :)