Big Cartel Website Builders Review: Is This the Perfect Platform for Your Online Store? (July 2025)
Big Cartel Website Builders Review: Today, many creatives have impressive artwork to showcase on the Internet, but lack the means to make a profit from it. What if there was an easy way to sell art products on a tight budget?
Big Cartel is a fully hosted e-commerce platform for creatives who want to showcase their work online and profit from their art. The platform has over 78,000 active websites and nearly 43,000 domains that redirect to these websites.
In this Big Cartel review, you’ll see if it’s the right e-commerce platform for you.
Table of Contents
Big Cartel Website Builders Review: Is This the Perfect Platform for Your Online Store?
Big Cartel advantages
Big Cartel Disadvantages
Reasons to use Big Cartel
Overview: What’s Big Cartel?
Big Cartel is an online store creation tool that allows you to add items and services, accept payments and run promotions. It offers a free plan that provides access to the essential tools needed to run an online store, with the option to list up to five different products. The platform is ideal for start-ups, especially those whose product range does not exceed 500 products.
Big Cartel is positioned as an easy-to-use option for creatives who want to market their artwork in the simplest way possible. It is an all-in-one tool that you can use to create, manage and operate your online store from one place.
One thing we like about Big Cartel is that it has no complicated features and interfaces. Its simple design and ease of use means that those who are not familiar with e-commerce platforms can use it without any problems.
Big Cartel is designed with creatives in mind. The platform is ideal for photographers, crafters, painters, bakers, designers, authors and other types of creatives. Anyone who has created a unique product and wants to market it online can take advantage of Big Cartel’s tools and features.
The platform takes your business to the next level by providing a solution to create your online store with various pre-designed themes. It allows you to create and add a meaningful visual presence to your online store on your own, even if you lack the necessary website creation skills.
Remember that Big Cartel is only suitable for small stores, ideally those selling no more than 20 individual products. It may not be the best choice if you’re thinking of running large e-commerce operations. In short, Big Cartel is only perfect if you are just starting out and need simplicity.
Features in Big Cartel
There is no extensive list of features in Big Cartel. The platform only focuses on providing the essentials, the must-haves for creating and managing an online store. While this might be a disadvantage relative to what other website creation platforms offer, it makes things simple for beginners who just want a basic e-commerce store.
Basic features within Big Cartel include:
What Are the Pros & Cons of Big Cartels?
Big Cartel Pricing
Big Cartel offers different pricing plans to fit all budgets. Prices are based on the number of products you have to list. All these plans come with free themes to design your store with and also allow you to:
Here’s a look at the pricing plans:
Gold
This freemium plan is ideal to test the platform and see if you can get some sales of your products before investing everything.
Platinum
This is the best plan for new online stores. It allows you to have a considerably wider range of products and does not limit functionality.
Diamond
If you already have a good sales pipeline and are expanding your creative output, this may be the plan for you.
How to Put an Online Store Together on Big Cartel
Visit the Big Cartel website to create a free account and follow the instructions below to create a store.
1. Enter Your Account Info and Your Shop’s Name
To register you need to provide an e-mail address, the name of your store, the URL of your store and a password for your account.
2. Confirm Email and Other Details
The next step after creating an account is to confirm your email address. This will take you to your control panel, which will instantly show you a checklist of everything you need to do to get your online store up and running. Some items on the list are mandatory, while others are optional.
Here is a brief look at the checklist items.
Adding Products
To add a product to your online store, follow the checklist in your control panel. You can also click on “Products” in the top center menu and click on the “+” sign to open the add product screen.
These are the things you need to include when adding a product.
Adding Product Variants
You can add product options (variants) while editing your product by clicking on the “add grouped options” button. This way, customers can choose products with different sizes or colors.
Creating Product Categories
You can create product categories when adding or editing products, allowing you to better organize your catalog and address more interesting discounts.
Adding Images
An essential part of your product page is the product images.
Unlike Shopify and BigCommerce, you can’t edit your images in Big Cartel, you have to upload them when they are already edited.
And on top of that, you can only upload one image per product page in the free plan. So think very well if your products would fit with this limitation before investing in it.
Importing Products from a .CSV
If you don’t want to add products one by one, you can:
Here you will be prompted to upload a .CSV file. Remember that you can still export your products from Etsy or Shopify and import the duplicate files.
The next step after adding products is to create the design of your Big Cartel store. You can start by choosing your favorite template from the 18 free themes available. This will allow you to customize your e-commerce site even further after choosing a theme you like.
Each Big Cartel theme is fully mobile responsive, which means that each theme will resize to fit mobile and tablet screens, so you don’t have to worry about your mobile visitors being left out.
Big Cartel’s Website Editor
The account page has a section where you can manage your store and open the website builder.
You have access to 18 free themes. You can also change your theme within this website builder. Big Cartel allows an easy change of these themes anytime you want.
The products will automatically be re-formatted to match the new theme design, except for the extra content. This will not be re-formatted to match the new theme, which means you will have to re-create them manually.
Website Editor Settings
The Big Cartel website editor is very simple, it will allow you to edit for the most part:
Don’t expect to have total control over the look and feel of your website, the functions are very rudimentary and only allow you to edit the basics.
Creating New Pages
When creating a new page on your e-commerce site, you can only write the header and body copy. Big Cartel does not offer you the option to add products or create pages for different product categories.
Custom CSS Code
If you are not satisfied with the limitations of the website editor, Big Cartel allows you to further customize your site with CSS code.
This can be useful if you know how to program or if you have the budget to hire a web developer who can build a well-designed site.
Adding a Custom Domain
Without a custom domain, your website would look like “yourname.bigcartel.com”. That’s why you have the option to connect your domain whenever you want. To change your domain, go to your account settings and click on the “add a custom domain” button.
If you don’t already have a custom domain, you can purchase one through Google Domains and Big Cartel.
Create Discounts
Discounts help you attract new customers to buy from your store. Although it is not a necessary step when setting up your online store, it is an excellent starting point if you are new to the market.
A discount can take the form of free shipping, percentages or a flat rate. You can apply them to a product, categories or a customer’s entire order. Similarly, you can trigger discounts when the customer spends a specific amount of money or adds a certain number of items to their cart.
Here is a simple process to create a discount in your store:
Shipping Options
By default, you have to handle all logistics yourself and set shipping rates manually, even to offer free shipping or discounts.
However, Big Cartel integrates with shipping applications like ShipStation or ShipRush to automate much of this and make your life easier:
Adding Payment Options
Big Cartel allows online and in-person payments. If you plan to accept online credit card payments, you must use Stripe or PayPal as your payment processor.
This means, you have to create a separate Stripe or PayPal account since there are no built-in payment processors or third-party payment gateways like on Shopify or BigCommerce.
(Also, there are no transaction fees on Big Cartel).
Launching Your Store
After designing your store and making sure that everything on the checklist meets the requirements, you can launch your online store. Of course, there is a review option if you have doubts about aspects such as the design of your site.
To launch, just remove the “maintenance mode” in your account settings and click the “launch” button.
Big Cartel Customer Support
You can access Big Cartel customer support through the help center. The help center includes all the basics about products, control panel, discounts, configuration, security, applications, integrations, etc. It also has video tutorials where you can learn how to use the platform.
Another way to get in touch with a customer support agent is to send them a message mainly by email, Monday through Friday from 8 AM to 6 PM EST. Big Cartel also maintains a blog called Workshop and has active social accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest.
You can use these platforms to contact the company if you have general questions.
Big Cartel Apps and Integrations
Your online store is the heart of your business, but adding third-party integrations expands its capabilities to compete effectively in the marketplace. Big Cartel allows you to add applications, extensions, plugins, and integration to help you get the most out of your online store.
There are over 20 applications available for integration into Big Cartel. Some include marketing applications such as Mailchimp for email marketing, Poptin for pop-ups/banners, LiveChat, and Zapier for automation.
You can also add apps for
Big Cartel recommends the use of other non-provided applications and third-party logins for its e-commerce functions, such as:
These will help expand your online store and create a better customer experience. Consider subscribing to Big Cartel’s free plan when using these apps and other third-party logins to save additional costs.
Managing Orders on Big Carte
The Big Cartels order section has all the information about everything you have sold. Details include customer name, shipping address, product and payment method.
You will find tools to manage your order flow on each order page. The tools allow you to:
Big Cartel’s payment plans provide inventory tracking tools so you don’t sell any out-of-stock items by accident. There is also the option to list items as “coming soon” or “out of stock”.
Big Cartel Analytics
Big Cartel regularly generates performance metrics by product and category. This allows you to know:
The dashboard has direct access to these metrics. It shows all the fundamental data you need to make informed decisions about your store. You need a subscription package if you want to dive deeper into the metrics provided by Google Analytics.
The dashboard has direct access to these metrics. It shows all the fundamental data you need to make informed decisions about your store. You need a subscription package if you want to dive deeper into the metrics provided by Google Analytics.
Blogs are crucial for e-commerce, considering the amount of traffic they generate. Your online store needs to provide high quality blog content if you want to attract more customers and increase sales volume.
The blog functionality built into Big Cartel, unlike other ecommerce platforms like BigCommerce or Shopify, is poor and leaves a lot to be desired.
So if you want to start promoting your store through blogging, you’ll have to use a third-party tool like DropInBlog to integrate the code (here’s a guide on how to do it).
Cart abandonment occurs when a customer adds products to their shopping cart but does not complete the purchase. Abandoned cart recovery allows you to send emails to these customers and remind them to complete the purchase process.
This is a crucial method for driving store sales. However, it’s a shame that Big Cartel doesn’t include this feature by default.
To use it, you’ll need to integrate Big Cartel with an email marketing service like Mailchimp and use its marketing automation features to set up abandoned cart recovery emails.
Search engine optimization is vital to the success of your e-commerce. It helps generate organic traffic, which leads to long-term profitability.
Big Cartel is not as good when it comes to SEO. However, it does give you access to the features that Google and other search engines offer. One such feature is a fully responsive design that adheres to Google’s preferred standards for web design. It also provides you with:
Despite these features, Big Cartel still has room for improvement in the SEO department.
From an e-commerce perspective, Big Cartel is an intuitive platform that you can leverage to get your store up and running in a matter of minutes. The platform may have limited features, but it is still the right fit for your store for the following reasons.
On the other hand, people who want to go all in with an e-commerce business will fall short on Big Cartel, as it will not provide the necessary tools for managing and growing an active business.
Big Cartel Alternatives
If Big Cartel is too basic for your needs, some alternatives might be:
Conclusion
Big Cartel is a perfect choice for all types of creatives interested in adding an e-commerce element to their art.
From our review, you can see that the platform is only suitable for those who have no plans to scale faster and want to remain relatively small. As such, it allows you to focus more on creating your art, free from unnecessary expenses associated with most platforms.
If this is the case for you, investing in Big Cartel is worth every penny if you want an easy-to-use platform that allows you to host a website for your creations without having to touch any code.
FAQ’s
Can You Grow a Business on Big Cartel?
No se recomienda utilizar Big Cartel para vender productos que no estén hechos a mano o dibujados con tus manos. Es demasiado simple para escalar un negocio.
Is Big Cartel Free?
Yes, it is the only e-commerce builder where you can create an online store and accept payments for free.
Does Big Cartel Charge Any Take a Cut of Sales?
No, apart from Paypal and Stripe commissions, every dollar you receive is yours.
What’s the best Big Cartel alternative?
Shopify is the best alternative to Big Cartel. The platform offers a comprehensive set of features that easily allows you to build and expand your online store.
Is Big Cartel good for SEO?
Big Cartel doesn’t offer much when it comes to SEO. But it still has some features, such as a fully responsive design suitable for your search engine optimization.
Is it Possible to dropship with Big Cartel?
Yes, Big Cartel has two dropshipping options-Printful and The Art of Where. It allows you to upload artwork. The artwork is later printed on products to sell to your customers.
Henry Sprung is an e-commerce tech blogger with several years of experience in online retail. Alex’s blog focuses on topics such as online marketplaces, payment processing, and digital marketing for e-commerce businesses. Henry’s expertise in e-commerce provides valuable insights into the latest trends in online retail and how businesses can use these platforms to grow their sales. He is a valuable resource for online retailers and entrepreneurs looking to start their own e-commerce businesses.
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