When comparing Big Cartel and Shopify, it is always important to evaluate one’s requirements in order to ensure that right choice is made by a businessman. If freelance artists and creators prone to seeking an affordable and straightforward means to promote their productions, Big Cartel is a solution worth considering. By contrast, Shopify includes more practical e-commerce features designed beneficial for bigger companies offering countless item types and with added capabilities.
Big Cartel is easy to use and convenient for small businesses that offer individualistic products. On the other hand, Shopify comes with a tactical set of tools that are built for growth and compatibility with multiple platforms making Shopify suitable for businesses that are planning to expand.
Thus, the selection between these platforms mainly depends on the size of the business, product range and further development perspectives. The presented options themselves have different benefits aligned with various visions of entrepreneurship processes and strategies.
Key Features
| Feature | Big Cartel | Shopify |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of Use | Beginner-friendly | User-friendly |
| Customization | Limited | Extensive |
| Payment Gateways | Limited | Variety |
| Marketing Tools | Basic | Robust |
| App Store | Limited | Extensive |
Overview of BigCartel
BigCartel is an open source shopping cart software intended for the independent artists and small businesses. It has a simple easy-to-use interface that makes the creation of stores and their management easier without much of the technical touch.
Key features include
- User-Friendly Design: The platform is simple for the purpose of those who only require creating a small shop.
- Flexible Pricing: BigCartel hosts have a number of bands depending on the size of the shop and the services that the band makes available; they have a free band for extremely small shops.
- Customizable Themes: It remains easy for users to select a theme that can best suit them and even program the theme to appear with their brand’s logo.
BigCartel supports essential e-commerce functionalities, such as:
- Product listings
- Inventory tracking
- The payment made to the merchants by customers using different payment channels.
Social media integration is also supported for business marketing of their products is also possible. That is more particularly, appealing for those targeting art, handmade items, and other specialized categories.
This platform is very simple; therefore, it should suit users who do not wish to bother with complex e-commerce systems.As compared to the other bigger platforms, it does miss some of the features of the tall but nonetheless, it is a reliable choice for anyone in need of simple selling instruments.
Overview of Shopify
Shopify is one of the most popular platforms that allow creating internet stores. It embraces enormous caseload ranging from small scale businesses to large scale organizations.
Key features of Shopify include:
- Ease of Use: The platform has a web based interface that makes it easy for its users to design their stores regardless of the extent of their IT knowledge.
- Customizable Templates: Shopify offers numerous templates, which can be fully adapted to match a brand’s image, if necessary.
- Payment Gateways: There are various payment methods that are integrated in Shopify to include credit card and PayPal and Shopify Payments.
Shopify enjoys robust scalability, a factor which has seen it grow greatly in recent years. Companies begin simply and only scale with time with the ability to introduce new products, improved features, and connectivity with other systems.
Security is important as all transactions go through payment card industry data security standard compliance through Shopify. This has that protection of customers’ sensitive information is enhanced.
Some of the marketing tools work within the platform to help the user in effective management of SEO, e-mail marketing, social media and online advertising.
Shopify provides customer support throughout the day and night to ensure their customers are sorted irrespective of their time zone. It keeps the operation running thus enhancing the flow of the online businesses operations. And ensures that help is sought as when it is required.
All in all, Shopify contains all the elements anyone might need to sell products online as well as the necessary tools for additional growth and productiveness.
Ease of Use
Customer interfaces – relative to ease of use – are also different due to offerings from Big Cartel and Shopify catering to various users. Hence, it will be the user interface, flexibility in the template and setup that defines which of the two platforms is more user friendly.
User Interface
Big Cartel has a basic and simple layout for easy usage for artists and small business like me. Basic functions can be reached and accessed without an issue, and users are able to manage their products, orders and customers communication effectively.
Shopify, although somewhat more elaborate, has a comprehensiveness of features interconnected in the form of a single dashboard. Its interface is likely to take some time to learn because of the variety of functions available. But makes it easy to work with large stock. After understanding how it is structured, the users may initially find the interface on Shopify easy to use.
Template Customization
One of the features which set Big Cartel behind Shopify is that it provides restricted template customization. The interface is also basic, but users can pick among ready-made layout themes and adjust the layouts to some extent. This is advantageous to those who do not want complex design but at the same time, they are not tech-savvy.
However, Shopify offers immense flexibility that every webmaker always desires to have for their websites. It has many professionally designed templates for the user, and it allows editing of HTML and CSS for custom looks. This make it easier to design different store fronts, but it will take additional technical skills to do this.
Setup Process
The steps involved in setting up the Big Cartel process are easy and require less effort. It only takes a few steps for users to sign up for an account, input products to the store, and go live. This is complimented by prompt and friendly customers support. Which helps the beginner to easily steer through the initial set up.
Because of the additional features that come with Shopify. Whereby you can be selling products without even creating a site, the setup procedure is a little complicated. However, integrating a store does take a little longe. But there are provided payment settings, shipping options, and tax guides for first time users. The extra time spent, results in almost a proper functional online store with more appropriate customization for targeted users.
Pricing
| Plan | Big Cartel | Shopify |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | $10/month | $39/month |
| Plus | $20/month | $79/month |
| Pro | $30/month | $299/month |
Choosing the Right Platform
What is the best choice of the ecommerce platform depends on many factors that will give preference to respective programs. And services within the given budget. For instance, if you are just starting out and you don’t need quite so many options, Big Cartel could be for you. However, if one wants more elliptical options and more marketing facilities, the better option is Shopify.
FAQs
- Q: Am I allowed to offer tangible and intangible products for sale on both sites?
A: Absolutely, you are allowed to sell tangible goods as well as merchandise that is in a downloadable format on both Big Cartel as well as Shopify.
- Q: Which one is better for dropshipping?
A: As for the type of selling method dropshipping is applicable to both Big Cartel and Shopify. Nevertheless, Shopify provides more functions and connections, with the help of which dropshipping can be facilitated.
- Q: To what extent am I able to manage how my store looks on both sites?
A: Yes, as for me and if I recall correctly, you have the ability to skin the platform on both Facebook and Google shops. However, Shopify has more pro configurations than orders.
Conclusion
Big Cartel and Shopify are both good choices if planning to set up an online store. Depending on your requirements and pocket, there exists a platform that will suit you the best. Do not know which platform to use? You may want to think through the purpose of the business. The amount of money you are willing to spend, and technical ability.
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