What do you dislike about Big Cartel?
The main drawbacks for me are inventory management, statistics, and customization. There is no proper SKU system for individual product variants, which makes managing a larger catalog and connecting it to external inventory or order-management systems more difficult.
I also find the way listings, variants, and statistics are connected quite limiting. Renaming a product or deleting an option can affect historical sales data and overall statistics, which makes it difficult to maintain accurate long-term analytics.
Customization is also more limited than on some other platforms. Big Cartel gives you access to theme code, but some internal pages and functionality have fairly limited customization options. Creating a more complex or highly customized storefront often requires considerably more manual coding rather than being achievable through built-in settings.
I understand that some of this is probably the trade-off for keeping the platform simple and accessible, but these are the areas where I would most like to see more flexibility. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Recommendations to others considering Big Cartel:
To enhance the platform, I would recommend implementing a more robust SKU system for better inventory management and integration with external systems. Improving the connection between listings, variants, and statistics would also be beneficial to maintain accurate analytics.
Additionally, expanding customization options would allow users to create more personalized storefronts without extensive manual coding. This could include more built-in settings for internal pages and functionalities.
Overall, these improvements would provide greater flexibility while maintaining the platform's simplicity and accessibility. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
What problems is Big Cartel solving and how is that benefiting you?
Big Cartel handles the essential parts of e-commerce: storefront, checkout, payments, tax collection, and order management, while keeping the costs predictable and the day-to-day administration relatively simple.
For a small creative business, that means I can spend much more of my time actually designing products and working with customers instead of managing the technical and administrative side of running an online store. It also gives me an independent home for my brand rather than having to rely entirely on large marketplaces. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
