Shopify vs Big Cartel for Merch Stores

At a glance

Two builders aimed at different sellers

Big Cartel describes itself as a store builder for artists and small businesses, and lists bands, printmakers, illustrators and designers among the people it serves. It keeps the admin small on purpose. Plans are Gold (free), Platinum and Diamond, and the main thing that changes between them is how many products you can list and how many images each can carry: 5 products with one image on Gold, 50 with five images on Platinum and 500 with 25 on Diamond. Features such as inventory tracking, discount codes, label printing and in-person selling come with the paid plans, and Diamond adds scheduled drops, password-protected products and abandoned cart emails (Big Cartel plans).

Shopify is a general store platform that scales from a first product to large retailers. Its plans (Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus) are not tiered by product count. They differ in staff accounts, card rates, the extra fee charged when you use a third-party payment provider, inventory locations and shipping features (Shopify pricing). The admin is bigger, and much of its flexibility comes from apps.

How the costs compare

Both charge a subscription, but they meter growth differently. Big Cartel's tiers follow your catalog size, and it charges no fee of its own on sales; Stripe or PayPal processing fees still apply (payments). Shopify's costs follow your sales, through card rates that fall on higher plans and through any third-party payment fee.

For a merch seller, the deciding number is often the product count. Every design in every garment counts as a listing on Big Cartel, so a brand that keeps past drops online or sells the same art on tees, hoodies and caps reaches the 50-product Platinum limit sooner than it expects. Work out how many products you would list a year from now, then compare the Big Cartel tier that holds them against the Shopify plan you would need, plus processing on your expected sales.

Variants, inventory and sizes

Both handle size and color sensibly. Big Cartel allows up to three variant groups on a product, combined into one list of options with a price and quantity for each combination (variants). Inventory tracking is on the paid plans only, so on Gold you cannot stop a sold-out size from selling.

Shopify allows three options and up to 2,048 variants per product, and tracks stock per variant at each location: your own shelf, a printer, a warehouse or a print-on-demand app. That location model is the bigger difference for growing brands, because it lets one store hold stock in several places and route each order to the right one. Variants, size charts and inventory in Shopify covers the setup.

Pre-orders and drops

Big Cartel's help center has no dedicated pre-order setting. You can list a pre-order as a normal product with the ship date in its title and description. Diamond's scheduled drops let products go live at a set time, which suits announced releases.

Shopify supports pre-orders as a purchase option through a pre-order app, with full, partial or no payment at checkout, and it can keep a variant selling past zero without an app. Countdown timers are a theme feature, and launch scheduling can come from the theme or an app. If your brand runs on pre-orders, Shopify has the tools; see running pre-orders on Shopify.

Fulfillment and in-person sales

Big Cartel connects to Printful and Printify for print-on-demand, and paid plans can print discounted shipping labels for orders you pack yourself. Shopify adds fulfillment apps from warehouses and printers, email-based custom fulfillment services for smaller partners, and order routing between locations, which makes it the easier platform if a 3PL or your printer ships your orders. Both sell in person: Shopify through its POS app, with inventory synced to the online store, and Big Cartel on its paid plans.

For bands, Shopify has one more link: Spotify for Artists can show merch from a connected Shopify store on your artist profile. Selling band merch online covers that and the other band platforms.

Sales tax

Big Cartel includes sales tax tools on every plan and notes that in certain US states it is required to collect and remit marketplace sales tax itself. Shopify calculates tax at checkout, but registering, filing and paying remain your job unless you use Shopify Tax with automated filing (Shopify taxes). Either way, check with an accountant where you need to register.

Which to choose

• Choose Big Cartel if you have a small, slow-changing catalog, hold your own stock or use Printful or Printify, want no platform fee on sales, and value a simple admin over features.
• Choose Shopify if you plan regular drops with pre-orders, sell many designs in many sizes, will use a warehouse or printer for fulfillment, need staff accounts, or want your merch on Spotify.
• Start on Big Cartel and move later if you are testing demand with a few products. Keep product names, options and SKUs tidy so the move is an export and import rather than a rebuild.

For the wider field, including Squarespace, Wix, WooCommerce and BigCommerce, see choosing an e-commerce platform for merch.

Useful for: bands, creators, clothing brands.