Big Cartel or Wix, which eCommerce website builder would be a better pick in 2023?
Read this detailed Big Cartel vs Wix comparison to make a smart decision.
You need a perfect eCommerce website builder for making a web store and to grow your online business as a website builder plays a vital role in deciding the fate of your online business.
It’s because a website builder impacts the speed, uptime, functionality, security, and even SEO of your eCommerce website. And this is what appeals to your users.
Today the market is saturated with website builders that are masked as great but in reality, they offer nothing promising. You will see both free and paid website builders in the market and due to the concentration of such devious website builders, it gets baffling for beginners to choose the right one.
You should know that features offered by free website builders are not promising which may prove to be disastrous for your online store. That’s the reason, you must go for the premium version of a notable website builder that could guarantee the success of your online business.
That’s why we made this guide to keep you informed and help you make the right decision for the fate of your web store.
Today, we have two renowned eCommerce platforms — Big Cartel and Wix– that we will compare in a head-to-head comparison in terms of eCommerce features, ease of use, customizability, pricing, customer support, and so much more.
In a hurry? Check out the summary of the Big Cartel vs Wix comparison below.
Comparison At a Glance
Big Cartel is a cloud-based professional website builder which exclusively focuses on eCommerce solutions for the development and enhancement of all types of online stores. It turns out to be ideal for beginners with its affordable and simple plans. But it does not contain the bells and whistles that other notable eCommerce website builders have to offer.
Wix is an all-in-one DIY website builder that can be used to build any kind of website, whether it be small or large scale. It also comes up with dedicated eCommerce solutions, promising feature-set and tools to run online stores.
1. eCommerce Features
Winner: Wix. Wix astonishes its users with its unparalleled feature-set that helps build a perfect web store laden with features. It makes web store’s growth effective, drives traffic, increases functionality and ranking as well. Big Cartel lacks multiple high-end features that are a must to scale your business.
2. Ease of Use/ Customizability:
Winner: Wix. Wix gets a close win over Big Cartel as it offers greater customization features, an array of tools, a high-end editor and ADI technology. It does not even require the slightest coding knowledge, unlike at Big Cartel.
3. Themes
Winner: Wix. Both have attractive themes but Wix with its huge template library, exceptional template designs, tools and features, advanced editing options and flexibility without the need of coding beats Big Cartel.
4. Pricing
Winner: Big Cartel. Both of the website builders come up with affordable pricing plans. Where Wix is feature-laden with its affordable pricing structure, Big cartel takes slight advantage due to its lower pricing and a free plan that is quite useful for beginners.
5. Customer Support
Winner: Wix. Wix has an upper hand in this category as it provides greater support options along with an extensive knowledge base. It even has VIP customer support available. Big Cartel is also good enough and scores well in this category.
Big Cartel Vs Wix: Short Verdict
Wix is the ultimate Winner of the eCommerce comparison between Big Cartel and Wix as it is better than Big Cartel in 4 out of 5 categories we evaluated. Wix wins over Big Cartel in terms of eCommerce functionality, ease of use and customizability, templates library, and customer support.
Big Cartel was only ahead of Wix in the pricing section as it offers a free eCommerce plan while all of its other premium plans are pocket-friendly making it best for beginners. However, Wix due to its remarkable feature-set becomes a better choice for a successful online store.
1. eCommerce Features
Features play an essential role in deciding the functionality and success of your site. Let’s see what our website builders bring to the table.
Big Cartel’s Features
Big Cartel is a cloud-based fully-hosted eCommerce solution. It has a robust integrated eCommerce engine that allows you to easily set up and manage a functional eCommerce store through an array of features it has to offer.
Let’s take a look at some of its niche-related tools and features.
Inventory tracking– It helps manage your store by informing you about the number of products left in stock, how much you have sold, while it automatically even marks “Sold Out” on the out-of-stock products.
Mobile app– Big Cartel has an iOS and Android mobile app which can be used to manage your store easily.
Multiple product images– Subscribers of its premium packages can post up to 5 images for each product. This way you can display different aspects of your product.
Bulk Editing– This feature makes changes effective as it allows you to make changes across multiple products, discounts, and orders.
Social– You can also sell your products on other social media accounts like Facebook and Instagram. But you will have to integrate these social media platforms with your store that will require a bit of coding.
Product listing– You can list 5 products in the free package but up to 500 products with its highest-tier plan.
Security– All of the sites grant a free SSL certificate that encrypts all the information to and fro from your site.
Payment– There are three payment options that you can use for your Big Cartel orders; Stripe, PayPal, and Square. Amazingly, it does not even charge transaction fees whether it be a free or a paid plan.
Apps– To extend its features and functionality, it offers numerous third-party apps and plug-ins. These apps will unlock features like creating promotional pop-ups, availability of drop-shopping for customers, selling digital goods, and accessing sophisticated analytics tools through apps like Google analytics.
Wix’s Features
Wix is known for its high-end feature-set that boosts the performance of your site.
Global eCommerce Business– Wix provides a global approach by allowing you to translate your store into 90+ languages via Wix Multilingual.
Analytics– Wix itself compiles all the data and presents you traffic reports, business reports, business insights that help monitor the store’s performance, review sales and much more. Top products are also identified. It even automatically sends events to Google Analytics about store products so that you can view necessary stats like product clicks.
Product listing– All of its plans allow you to sell as many products as you want to grant your users a much larger collection of products to choose from. On the other hand, Big Cartel offers limited product placement that hinders the growth of larger eCommerce Stores.
Logo creation– One of the highlights of its feature list is the logo creation feature.
Here you can easily create and customize your spectacular logo and then integrate it into your website. Once you tell it about your business it will suggest some logo designs, from which you can choose any and then customize it accordingly.
You can also import any logo and customize it here.
Payment– Wix offers over 50 payment solutions that suit best for your location and business, opposed to only 3 payment solutions offered by Big Cartel.
You can manage the whole business through a single dashboard that includes, all store orders, refunds, payments, and payouts.
Mobile app– Wix has its Wix owner App through which you can keep track of your business remotely. It allows you to make quick changes like updating descriptions, photos, or uploading items. Moreover, you can oversee your inventory easily and update pricing as well.
There are tons of other things that you can do from a mobile app like managing refunds, fulfilling orders, it’s like managing everything from mobile.
Security– It also offers a free 256-bit SSL certificate to protect personal information and payments.
Many might assume that as Big Cartel exclusively offers eCommerce, it must be better. But it’s the opposite. Wix wins this round with flying colors as even its eCommerce feature-set is loaded with impressive and must-have features that ensure next-level web store development.
Winner: Wix
2. Ease of Use / Customizability
Creating an online store should be an easy task with a perfect website builder. Therefore, when looking for a website builder, ease of use is one of the factors that must be given deep importance. It should not be an arduous task to build and manage an online store such that you are found banging your head against the desk in frustration.
That is why we always compare our web hosting companies for ease of use. So let’s see how much Wix and Big Cartel score for the Ease of Use and Customizability.
Big Cartel is an intuitive website builder with a simple onboarding process. This means that it makes setting up an online store very straightforward.
You only need to sign-up and after accessing its admin panel you are good to go with setting up your online store.
The users are guided with prompts, suggestions, reminders, and with a step-by-step setup process. Moreover, it is packed with impressive project management features and offers powerful integrated features as well.
Hence, the guidance it offers throughout the set-up process makes it user-friendly and convenient, especially for beginners.
But the problem arises when you proceed to customization. The themes it offers are basic and allow limited customization. Therefore, if you are looking for creative freedom, it may get out of your hands. As you will need to code to make the most of your website which does not make it an ideal choice for creative non-techies.
However, it comes up with a user-oriented control panel and convenient dashboard where all the tools are perfectly organized and arranged. This helps in making management and building effective and convenient.
Let’s see what Wix offers in comparison.
Wix has not only made its name in the top website builders in the market but also provides an intuitive interface that can be mastered by non-techies as well.
Managing websites, orders, campaigns, and even updating the product catalogs with Wix is quite trouble-free and painless.
The main highlight of Wix is the Wix website editor that has a simple drag-and-drop functionality so that you can easily select an element and then arrange it anywhere on the canvas the way it suits your needs. The editor provides a plethora of customization features through which you can customize your site easily giving it any look you wish without any coding knowledge.
It adopts an intuitive approach to building a store by providing an understandable control panel and WYSIWYG interface whereby granting you customization freedom.
This is what makes Wix a worthy pick for beginners.
One of the Wix users says about Wix’s Ease of Use:
Wix is a great tool for entrepreneurs that don’t have enough technical or design skills to start building a corporate or business site. The tool itself is so great that you need the minimum knowledge in technology to create a nice website.
But when you navigate through the editor, you may find it difficult to understand. Wix, unlike Big Cartel, provides scores of fabulous features and tools geared towards the creation of a professional eCommerce website so it will take a few hours to get familiarized with the setting and location of sections and elements. Hence, initially, there is a bit of a learning curve.
Furthermore, it even offers high-end ADI that does the work for you. In response to some questions, it does all the steps of building an online store tailored to your requirements. Moreover, you can also make edits to the final product.
In conclusion, Wix has a slightly upper edge on Big Cartel when it comes to Ease of Use and Customizability. Wix offers greater customization freedom and is packed with tons of amazing tools and features that ensure the building up of a perfect eCommerce store with an attractive design.
Winner: Wix
3.Themes Library
Every eCommerce site owner would want his site to look attractive and catchy. The process of making a captivating site is made easy through various themes offered by website builders.
The Themes are pre-made layouts that can be customized to fit your taste.
Big Cartel does not have a big theme library as its name. It only encompasses 18 themes which are quite fewer options to choose from compared to Wix.
These templates are without a doubt majestic and eye-catching but basic. They are also all free for all plans and mobile-responsive as well, hence, they automatically reformat to fit into a mobile screen. In addition to that, before selecting your preferred theme you can preview all its details.
Moreover, you can also switch themes anytime which is something impressive and useful. However, any extra content like background images will not be transferred to the new template, you will have to add that again manually.
One of its downsides is the lack of creative freedom. The themes allow limited and simple customization with its editor. So, if you wish to customize it as you want, you will need to do coding.
Another con is the absence of an image editor so you need manual code editing to change photo design.
Now, let’s see what Wix has to offer.
Wix strikes Big Cartel real hard. It comes with over 500 ready-made themes that are all based on HTML 5, which is one of the richest collections in the market. These designs are professional and eye-catching that is going to boost your site traffic.
All of these templates are also mobile-responsive making them a fit for all kinds of mobile and desktop devices. If somehow, out of this enormous template library, you fail to find a theme that appeals to you, then you can also pick a blank temple and work on it from scratch.
All of the templates are well organized into 5 different categories which are then further divided into different tabs. This makes it much easier to navigate through tons of templates. However, Big Cartel templates are not divided into thematic niches.
Wix offers a high level of creative freedom and flexibility that Big Cartel does not even come close to in terms of editing templates. With its impressive feature-set and tools, you can precisely control the look and feel of your store without coding. You can use either its Standard Wix Editor and Wix ADI for editing purposes.
This is not all. Even code-savvy webmasters can edit further through a powerful set of APIs.
But the major stumbling block here is the inability to switch between templates.
In short, Wix is miles ahead of Big Cartel in terms of themes and its editing. Wix offers one of the best themes in the market and its arrangement, features, and tools, along with the high level of creative freedom it has to offer is worth mentioning. On the other hand, although it has attractive and functional themes, editing is quite difficult and restrictive.
Winner: Wix
4. Pricing
All the other factors have their own importance, but at the end of the day, what matters is the price. You would like to go with a plan that offers greater value for money and fulfills your requirements at an affordable price. So let’s jump right into the pricing comparison of Wix vs Big Cartel.
Big Cartel offers affordable 3-tier pricing plans and a reasonable value for money.
The star of the show is its free plan.
Yes, Big Cartel also offers a free plan making it the only eCommerce builder where you can build an online store, sell your products, and accept payments free of cost.
This is something to shout out. A rare thing for an eCommerce builder.
You can use this plan to test out the functionality of the website builder and stick to it as long as you desire. A great choice when starting up an eCommerce business and a place to test your skills.
However, the feature site in this free version is limited but still, it works well for beginners. Amazingly, it even allows a custom domain and allows you to run discounts and promos on your products which was previously unavailable in this plan.
Now let’s take a look at its eCommerce pricing structure:
- Gold Plan is a free plan that allows you to sell up to 5 products with 1 image per product. Here you have an opportunity to sell online and in-person, real-time stats, offer discount and run promos, free customizable themes, and a custom domain.
- Platinum Plan is priced at $9.99 a month. It allows you to sell 50 products with 5 images per product. Theme code editing, bulk editing, shipment tracking, and Google Analytics.
- Diamond Plan costs $19.99 per month. Here you can sell up to 500 products with 5 images per product. It also offers real-time stats, sales tax autopilot, inventory tracking, and Product option groups.
The biggest drop-down of Big cartel pricing is the limited number of products allowed to sell. Even its highest-tier plan allows 500 products to be listed instead of allowing to sell unlimited products.
This may prove to be a hindrance for those who want to grow their store or run it at a higher level.
Another thing that you need to take note of is that the feature-set remains almost the same across plans with the number of products allowed to sell mainly deciding the cost of the plan.
Let’s see how Wix prices its services.
Wix comes with a competitive pricing structure while being one of the most feature-laden website builders in the market. It consists of diverse plans intended to fulfil the requirements of all types of website builders.
To make it convenient to the user’s choice, its plans are divided into two major categories; One is Standard Website plans while the other is Business and eCommerce plans.
Wix starts with a free subscription allowing users to test its integrated functionality. But that’s for the standard website creation.
But when it comes to the eCommerce side, there are only premium packages, unlike Big Cartel that offers a free plan as well.
Here as the article is subjected to the eCommerce aspect of the website builders, therefore, we will only discuss the eCommerce and Business plans of Wix.
The pricing structure of Business and eCommerce plans is:
- Business basic is the basic plan that accepts online payments and also grants custom domain. It only costs $17 a month.
- Business Unlimited is the most recommended plan that contains most of the features that will help grow your online store. It is priced at $25 a month.
- Business VIP is the highest tier plan that gets you a complete Wix suite for a price tag of $35 monthly. It also offers priority customer support.
Unlike Big Cartel, all of the Wix eCommerce plans offer a free domain for 1 year and allows the listing of unlimited products. Moreover, whatever plan you choose to go with, you will get unlimited bandwidth, custom domain, online payments, integrated google analytics, premium customer support, enough storage space, and abandoned cart recovery.
To wrap it up, Big cartel beats Wix in this category as its plans are far more affordable and it even offers a free plan that makes it an ideal choice for beginners.
Winner: Big Cartel
5. Customer Support
While building an online store, you may encounter several problems and issues, therefore, it is necessary to have someone there for you to help you get back on track.
Big Cartel has thought of it beforehand and made arrangements for it accordingly.
It has a vast knowledge base that comprises comprehensive articles dealing with various eCommerce issues in a step-by-step pictorial guide. These articles are laid out properly in different sections like orders, customization, themes, settings, and many more, to make navigation easier. It is also accompanied by a search bar to directly look for your queries.
If you are still unable to solve your queries then you can get in touch with their responsive and knowledgeable team through an email Monday to Friday from 8 am -6 p.m. EST.
There is no denial of the lack of support resources Big cartel has to offer but still, the response time and quality of email support is good enough to rely on.
Now, let’s take a look at the level of support Wix has to offer.
Wix on the other hand is not only limited to knowledge base and email support.
Whenever you are at a dead-end facing trouble, the first thing you do is to turn to Wix’s help Centre. It is humongous!
It consists of tons of articles with a pictorial guide along with dedicated video tutorials that are geared towards tackling all eCommerce-related issues. The issues are comprehensively dealt with, guiding you through the process of website development with ease.
In case you are still not satisfied with the knowledge base, you can approach their expert team directly. It provides Email Support and a 24/7 call back service where their specialist will contact you within 2 minutes,
The Good news is that Wix is also working on making live chat available for its esteemed users while it is now available in certain locations.
Moreover, if you are a premium subscriber you can get access to VIP support that further assists you in building a perfect eCommerce website.
Both of these website builders also help the users in building the site through suggestions, constant pop-up guidelines, and reminders.
In a nutshell, When it comes to the Customer support aspect Wix is the winner. Both of them have vast help centers and staff ready to help you, but Wix provides more and better support options than Big cartel. Moreover, the team is responsive and ready to solve your issues.
Winner: Wix
Final Verdict
Wix prevails over Big Cartel in many ways. This includes being better in customizability, features, customer support, and even in ease of use.
Wix is an all-in-one website builder that is loaded with stunning eCommerce features, a huge template library, versatile design editing options, unmatchable ease of use, reliable customer support, amazing editor, and numerous customization tools.
Wix is best for those business owners who want to grow their business at a large scale, want flexibility and creative freedom, and those who want to build a feature-laden eCommerce website at an affordable price without any technical expertise.
On the other hand, Big Cartel is an eCommerce-focused website builder that stands out from the crowd due to its free plan. It has excellent customer support, wonderful ease of use and customizability, and affordable premium pricing plans.
Big Cartel is best for business owners and creatives who want to start a small, professional, and independent business. With a limited feature-set, and no experience in coding at such low price artists and creatives can showcase their things at a beautiful online storefront.
