Big Cartel vs Ecwid - Ecommerce Comparison

what's up guys paul here from ecommerce gold i hope you're all having an awesome day now in this video we're going to be comparing two kind of alternative options for building e-commerce websites we're going to be looking at big cartel and ecwid and to compare these platforms we're going to be looking at six different things going to be looking at the pricing the features the theme selection and customization the support options the hosting and performance before finally looking at a quick overview of how easy these platforms are to use so make sure you stick around in this video because there's going to be lots of different things that i cover so with the introduction of the way let's jump into this comparison so as i said the first thing we're going to be looking at in this video is the pricing of the two platforms now for this video i'm just going to be looking at the paid options but both platforms do a free package and if you want me to do a side-by-side comparison of the free package let me know in the comments below and i will make that video for you now as i say we're just going to be looking at the paid packages now with big cartel paid packages start from 9.99 and they've got 19.99 and a in 29.99 ecwid have a much larger range in terms of pricing they've got a 15 package a 35 package and a 99 package but you do get savings of these if you buy annually now what's the difference between the two packages well as you can see on screen they're pretty even in terms of what you get but the main thing with big cartel is they don't give all the information of what's included with their package and this is a recurring theme with the big cartel platform because they're just not that upfront and forward with their information so for this i couldn't find out what the bandwidth restrictions are if there are any and also what the data storage is this isn't an issue with ecwid because i know you get unlimited data storage and unlimited bandwidth on all of their packages but when it comes to the differences between the paid packages on both platforms with big cartel the only real difference i could find was the amount of products you're able to list it does seem as if you get the same features on their 9.99 package and their top 29.99 package this seems to offer the same features but the only real difference is the amount of products you can list because on the basic package which is 9.99 you can list 50 products and on their top package you can list 500 products but with ecwid there is distinct differences between the packages one they do have product limits so with the venture package you do get 100 products with the business package you get two and a half thousand and unlimited you get unlimited pretty self-explanatory but with every package as you move up you also get access to more features on the platform which means as your business starts to grow you get more features to help your business grow which kind of makes sense to me and it's an incentive to move up through the packages but say with big cartel it just seems to be the amount of products you can list rather than the amount of features so that is the main differences between the pricing of the two platforms now for this comparison video i'm going to be looking at the entry level paid packages on both platforms because they do line up pretty well and also it's going to be where most people start when they're getting started with either platform so i thought it made a good baseline for this comparison so the second thing we're going to be looking at is the features that both of these platforms offer now as i mentioned in the pricing with big cartel they're not that upfront with the kind of features you get with the platform which is a little bit disappointing especially when you're planning on building the e-commerce business but what i managed to find after reading through the big cartel website numerous times and actually trying the platform out was you get the following features yeah google analytics real-time statistics inventory tracking discount codes shipment tracking and bulk editing that is pretty much it there's no kind of real say real breakdown of what the features are but one thing you do get with bigquertel is you get basically access to their marketplace and this provides integration with many different third-party kind of platforms so things like printful for print on demand and there's also options in there to add like digital products and things like that but most of these actual apps are paid options so this is going to be on top of your monthly big cartel fee and if you're not careful it can make big cartel become quite expensive quite quickly just to have some features that are included on other platforms as standard so this is one thing you do want to be aware of now when it comes to features ecwid is very upfront and honest they have a great page where they list all their features so with the echo adventure package you get a lot of features so you get one type checkout with if you've got apple pay enabled you can shed your order pickups you can sell digital products from the actual core ecwid platform you can have discount coupons gift cards and you have a secure pci compliant checkout now one of the great features of the echo platform is multi-channel selling and what you can do is you can actually have ecwid as kind of your central point to sell on multiple channels so you can sell through your website which you can build on ecwid you can also sell through social media platforms so you can sell through instagram and you can also sell through facebook so if you have a large audience on any of those platforms you can start monetizing them using the ecwid platform it's really good and it's a really versatile platform in this sense and another big difference between ecwid and big cartel is the amount of payment gateways you get big cart out is very limited in terms of options you basically got paypal and a credit card processor which is going to be enough for most platforms but it doesn't give you much choice this isn't the case with ecwid ecwid integrates with many different payment processors from around the world because it is a truly global platform you can have things like paypal stripe worldpay square apple pay authorize.net to checkout all these different types of payment gateways that you might be using for your business there's a chance that it's going to be integrated with ecwid so the selection of payment gateways is really good for a platform that's got such a low entry price it really is a good selection of payment gateways and as with big cartel you also get access to ecwid's app marketplace which has a much larger selection than there is available in big cartel and within this app marketplace there's a selection of free apps and there's also a selection of paid apps some of these add functionality to the ecwid site others integrate with third-party platforms so there is a really good selection out there now say some of these are paid options so you do need to be aware that this is going to be on top of your ecwid monthly charge if you do want to use some of these apps so section number three is theme selection and customization and this is a really important part of building an ecommerce website because you want the look and feel of your website to match your business and brand so what do both of these platforms offer now the theme selection with big cartel is actually pretty good even though it's quite small there's 18 themes to choose from as you can see they're very well designed and they've all got different looks and feels to them there's lots of different design options and there should be something that kind of fits your brand but what about when it comes to customizing it can you take basically a standard theme and really make it fit your business and brand well in my opinion being customization on big cartel isn't great yes there are quite a few options out there so you can change your logo you can change background it means you can add a promo image and you can change lots of colors on the site and then you get some options for some layer options and you get some kind of text options within the big cartel platform but there's not really that much control you have over the look and feel of your site there's not a kind of page builder element going onto it so you can't add separate sections to your home page so if you wanted to add a content section you can't really do that on big cartel which is a little bit disappointing because it's just a simple thing that could be added that would make the big cartel theme customizer so much better what's this like on ecwid well ecwid isn't particularly great in this sense either now when it comes to themes they say there's a large theme selection and these are some of the themes you get but they're not truly themes in my opinion because basically they're just headers so i've got this soulmate one selected at the moment and if you look at what my homepage looks like this is what it looks like how i've set it up if we change this theme so if we change it to playroom let's use this theme we'll change it and as you see scroll down the rest of the page looks exactly the same when it comes to like the theme selection basically they're just headers they're not complete themes in the way you get with other platforms especially like with big cartel where it changes the complete look and feel of the whole website instead it just changes the header and changes the font options that's why it's not bad it's not great either but you do get more control over the look and feel of your site because you can arrange the sections and what you can do is you can actually hide sections from your like home page and you can also rearrange these so you can drag and drop them so they fit where you want them to on the page this gives you much more control over the look of your website it'd just be nice to have an additional set of sections that you could add into your ecwid site so that you could really customize the look and feel of your website just a few more options a few more content options maybe some e-commerce related ones it will just give a little bit more control over the look and feel of your site now there are other things you can do within ecwid so if you actually come out of the theme customizer and go back into your ecwid dashboard you can actually go down to the design options and this gives you control over the look of your kind of product pages so you can change image sizes you can change aspect ratios you can change layout options there are many more options when it comes to theme customization within ecwid than that is with big cartel so it's even though it's still not the best on the market it does give you more control over the look and feel of your site than it does with big cartel so section number four is the support options available for you as the user now this is one of the reasons why people go with a fully hosted e-commerce platform because they want to know there's somebody they can contact should things start to go wrong with their website now with big cart out you are quite limited when it comes to support options because you can basically submit an email ticket that is the only support options that they offer and this doesn't matter whether you run the free plan or you're on their top titanium plan it's the same support options there's no options for live chat or over the phone any other support options other than email tickets this is a bit of a letdown for me because if you've got a problem that you want to get resolved immediately sometimes you want to know that you can contact someone directly and you're not going to be waiting for an email response so for me it's just a little bit too slim on the support options now with ecwid's venture package you do also get quite limited support options but you get access to their live chat which means if there's somebody available on the other end of the chat you're going to get your issue resolved pretty quickly now as you move up through the packages you do get access to more support options and this includes email support tickets and over the phone and on that unlimited package you do get access to priority support as well so say when you move up through the packages you do get more options this is something that doesn't happen with big cartel unfortunately so section number five is hosting and performance and once again big cartel weren't particularly open about these in fact all i could find out was that they include a free sl certificate with every single package i couldn't find anything about data storage bandwidth or even pci compliance of their servers whereas ecwid are the complete opposite of this they're very upfront and honest about that hosting so all of their websites are hosting amazon web services all of them are pci level one compliant all content is delivered via cloudfront cdn which means doesn't matter where in the world you are your content is going to be delivered quickly you also get secure checkout with an ssl certificate and you get unlimited bandwidth and data storage on every single package this sounds awesome on paper what does this actually mean in the real world well what i like to do is i like to put these platforms to the test but it was a little bit difficult to do this with ecwid because usually i take three customer example sites but i could only find one that was actually running on ecwid's website builder all the others were integrations with things like wordpress wix and squarespace so for this it's actually three big cartel websites up against two ecwid websites which are the one customer example site and also my demo website as well but it still enabled me to do some testing so what i did was i ran through kingdom speed test tool using their washington dc and san francisco server and also run them through pingdom's speed test tool once a day for three days because this gives me a nice spread of data so what were the results well big cartel's hosting environment is really good even though there's not much information about it it's really good it averaged a low time in dc of 0.99 seconds which is very fast averaged in 1.29 second low time in san francisco and scored really well on google mobile which was 59 out of 100 and exceptionally well on desktop which was 94 out of 100. now ecwid performed very respectably it scored a one-second low time in dc and 1.63 seconds in san francisco which puts it just slightly slower than big cartel but big cartel was the clear winner when it come to google especially because the mobile was 59 compared to 25 with ecwid and ecwid only got 42 out of 100 on desktop there is definitely room for improvement with ecwid when it comes to their google scores but both platforms perform well especially in terms of low type so section number six is how easy are these platforms to use and i've broke this down into three subsections the first is how easy is it to get started and navigate your way around the dashboard second how easy is it to manage your inventory and third how easy is it to manage your orders because that's basically what you're going to be doing when you're running your ecommerce website so the first thing is getting started and getting started with big cut out is very very easy all you need is an email address and a creator password and you can sign up for their free account it's very simple to get started now once you come through the signup process you'll be taken into your dashboard but on your first signing it won't look like this instead you're greeted by a setup guide which obviously i've already been through and completed in order to test the platform out but you need to complete this setup guide in order to be able to see your stats and things like these in your main dashboard so you have to go through and set up your big cartel store properly before you can actually start using it as an e-commerce website which does kind of make sense but once you're in the dashboard it's very simple to navigate around because there's not much going on in the dashboard you've got your main admin dashboard which kind of gives you an overview of your website you've got your orders your products your discount settings and then your account settings that's it it's very simple and it really doesn't take long to get started and start navigating your way around the cartel dashboard it's very easy and very simple to use but what's this like to do with ecwid well ecwid is just as simple to get started with all you need is an email address and create a password and you'll be able to sign up to their free account now once you've gone through the signup process you'll be taken into your dashboard that looks pretty much like this and what you'll see is you've got a setup guide which takes you through all of the settings you need to do to get your store set up basically um there are more advanced settings within the platform obviously but this is a basic setup guide so getting your like social media set up getting creating a product service getting your checkout set up and things like that very good setup process even if it is quite short it's very concise now the ecwid dashboard is very simple to use it's a bit more in-depth than you get with big cart out because there's more options so you've got a complete sidebar navigation menu with lots of settings you can also manage your sales channels from within here as well so you can manage your facebook you can manage your instagram things like that so it's a very easy to use dashboard it really doesn't take long to get up and running with it there is more to learn than you get with big cartel because there's just more options but it's very easy to use so what about what it's like to manage your inventory well what we'll do is go back into big cartel we'll go into products and we'll look at the add new product page and as with everything within the big cartel dashboard it's very simple and it's very easy to use you've just got your name description assign the product to a category set the status of it set the price you can set some options if you want to shipping and it's good to go obviously add an image as well it's a very simple add new product page and it really doesn't take long to add a new product to your big cartel store now when it comes to organizing your inventory so creating some product hierarchy it's a little bit strange to do this within big cartel so we'll go back into products and we'll create a new category so we click on the three dots here click manage categories and we'll add one and all you do is type the name that is all you do type the name click save and you're good to go there's no kind of seo there's no descriptions you can add images you can add it's just the name of the category but one thing you can't do within big cartel when it comes to setting up a hierarchy is you can't create parent and child categories you can just create parent categories so if you want to have a bit more of a complex kind of hierarchy for your products you're going to struggle to do this in big cartel because it just doesn't have the functionality to do that what's it like to actually manage your inventory so you've got all your products listed how do you manage them well i'm only on the free account here so i don't have the bulk editor available to me but within the paid packages you do get access to the bulk editor so this means you can update your start quantity quickly and easily from the product overview menu this saves you having to go in and edit each product one by one this is a very useful tool to have what's it like to do all of this within ecwid well within ecwid we'll go and add a new product so we go to catalog and then we'll click add new products now as you can see there's many more options available within the new product page within ecwid this because they've gone for a tab structure and basically everything that was available within the single page on big cartel is on this first tab so you set your name your description your price stock availability things like that and then you can go through and add images obviously then you can go through and create attributes you can create options files accept your taxes and shipping you can set your seo related products and then you can create a buy now button if you want to use it on a third-party platform now when it comes to organizing your inventory ecwid does this a lot better than big cartel so if we go into categories leave this page what you can do is you can set up parent and child category so you can add a root category as you can see i've created these ones here and then within these categories you can add subcategories this makes it really easy to create a good product hierarchy now one thing that ecwid doesn't do as well as big cartel is inventory management so if we go back into the product overview menu if we click select all products and we go on to the bulk update you can only enable disable or export them you can't update the inventory you can't update the stock prices in bulk you have to go and do this on a product by product basis which is a bit frustrating if you've got a large product inventory but there are apps available that enable you to do this but these are paid for apps so you're going to have to pay for this on top of the ecwid monthly charge this is a bit of a letdown for me i would have liked to have seen this functionality in ecwid because to me it's pretty basic functionality to be able to edit your products from the main by product overview page so a little bit of a letdown on that one for me so what about when you have orders now unfortunately i can't show you how to do this in big cartel because i don't have any orders and i can't manually create an order within big cartel it just won't let me i am trying to find a way to do this and once i figure this out i will obviously update all these videos but for the time being i can't show you how to do this unfortunately but i can show you how to do this in ecwid so we'll go back into ecwid go into my sales and we'll go into the order management page which in my opinion ecwid has won the best order management systems of all the hosted e-commerce platforms out there this is because there's so much you can do from the main order overview menu so if we select the products this will be the same if there's multiple orders here and we can click the mass update drop down menu and we can print selected we can export them we can change the payment status and we can change the fulfillment status we can do all this from the main order overview menu we don't have to go in and manage orders individually so this is just going to save you so much time when you're managing your orders because obviously you're going to have lots of orders with your ecommerce website i'm sure you are but in my opinion it is just one of the best ones out there it does compete with many other platforms it's just really good being able to do everything in bulk rather than have to do on an individual basis so that is the six stages of my comparison now before i give you my conclusion on these two platforms i do just want to make a quick request from you if you've enjoyed this video and if you found it helpful i'd really appreciate if you could smash that like button because it really does help the channel out also if you want to see more ecommerce related content consider hitting that subscribe button as well because i post videos on a weekly basis so my conclusion of these two platforms which one is the better option for me ecwid does edge this one it just feels like a more complete platform there's more features and it feels like it's more scalable than you get with big cartel this is because it has lots of ecommerce features especially when you're moving up through the packages and if you outgrow basically the ecwid website builder you can integrate it with other platforms so you could move it so it's integrated with something like wix or wordpress so you could actually scale it to me to be much bigger than what you could do with just the basic ecwid website builder now big cartel isn't a bad platform i'm not saying that at all but for me it just doesn't feel like it's finished yet it doesn't feel like a polished product it feels like there's just a few things missing from me it's a bit limited on features and functionality it feels like it has a lot of potential it's just not quite there yet so it'd be interesting to see if they do update the platform and they do add new features in the future but as of the making of this video ecwid is the better out the two for me so thank you so much for watching guys i really do appreciate it as i said if you do enjoy this video please smash the like button stay awesome and i'll see you all next video

Channel: The MoneySmith

Views: 1,429

Keywords: Big cartel vs Ecwid, Ecwid vs Big cartel, Big cartel review, Ecwid review, big cartel

Id: zJJRBxUkZ1o

Length: 22min 46sec (1366 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 08 2020