Big Cartel vs Shopify: When Free Stops Being Enough

What Big Cartel's Three Plans Include

Big Cartel describes three plans built for sellers at different stages, and its pricing page lists them as Gold, Platinum and Diamond. Gold is free, with no credit card required; Platinum and Diamond are the paid tiers, and both take 20% off when you pay for a year up front. If you are an artist weighing Big Cartel against Etsy and the curated art marketplaces as well, our four-platform comparison for artists covers that wider choice.

The limit that bites first is the product count, and it counts more than your live listings. Big Cartel's own instructions for adding a product warn that products set to Hidden still count toward your plan's product limit, so a sold-out line you hid instead of deleting still takes a slot.

Photos are the one limit Big Cartel states two ways. The same help article on importing products gives one image per product on Gold, five on Platinum and all twenty-five on Diamond, and in its list of import errors says the plan limit is "five images for paid plans, and one for our free plan". Both read on October 25, 2026.

Plan on five photos per product unless you are on Diamond, and treat the upload limit your shop admin enforces as the deciding figure.

What the Same Money Buys on Shopify

As of October 2026, Shopify Basic costs $39 a month billed monthly, or $29 a month billed yearly. There is no cheaper Shopify plan to set against Platinum: Shopify's help center says the Starter plan isn't available to new stores. What softens the start is the offer: a 3-day free trial with no credit card, then $1 a month for the first 3 months on most plans, before the standard price applies.

For that price the catalog limits move out of the way. Shopify does not cap the number of products, and each product can hold up to 250 media items and up to 2,048 variants in up to three options. One caution from the same page: some third-party themes might not support more than 100 variants, and neither might some apps and sales channels, so a large variant matrix needs a theme that handles it.

Does Big Cartel Take a Cut of Your Sales?

Every sale on either platform carries two possible charges: what the platform keeps, and what the card processor keeps. Big Cartel's answer on the first is unambiguous, and it holds on every plan, the free one included:

The second charge goes to the processor. Big Cartel supports two, Stripe and PayPal, and does not process payments directly. Its help article on processing fees adds that each processor sets its own fees, which may vary by country and payment method, and that Big Cartel neither holds your funds nor deducts those fees itself.

Shopify's side has a condition Big Cartel's does not. Shopify Payments is available to stores in the United States, and if you take payments through another provider instead, Shopify adds a third-party transaction fee of 2% on Basic, on top of that provider's own fee. PayPal is exempt when Shopify Payments is your primary provider. Shopify also charges the fee on the amount paid with store credit or gift cards, on Shopify stores created on or after May 12, 2025.

That fee is a real weakness for a seller whose country Shopify Payments does not cover, and it is where Big Cartel's no-cut model wins outright. How the fee works across plans, and when it locks you in, is covered in our look at whether Shopify locks you into its payment system.

What a Month Costs at 10, 50 and 200 Orders

The example below holds three things fixed: a $40 average order, standard US cards (Stripe on Big Cartel, Shopify Payments on Basic), and monthly billing. Which Big Cartel column applies to you depends on your catalog, not your orders: Gold only fits five products or fewer, Platinum up to 50 and Diamond up to 500.

Take the highlighted month. Fifty orders of $40 bring in $2,000, and at $1.46 an order the card fees come to $73.00 on either platform. Add the plan, and Diamond costs $103.00 for the month against $112.00 on Shopify Basic. Platinum, if your catalog fits in 50 products, comes to $88.00.

The gap does not move with volume, because the per-order fee is identical on both sides. Every extra order adds the same $1.46 to both columns, so whatever separates the platforms at 10 orders still separates them at 200. That makes the decision a question of what the plan fee buys, not of how much you sell.

Paying for a year changes the size of the gap, not its shape. Platinum then works out to $12 a month, Diamond to $24 and Shopify Basic to $29, so the difference between Diamond and Basic falls to $5 a month and the one between Platinum and Basic to $17.

The case where the arithmetic says plainly "stay" is the smallest shop. With five products or fewer and no need for a domain, Gold costs nothing beyond the card fees, while Shopify Basic adds $39 every month, sales or not.

Where Big Cartel Runs Out

The table lines up each need against both platforms' limits; the three subsections after it explain the ones that force a decision.

Products, Photos and Variants

Big Cartel's catalog grows in fixed steps: 5, 50, then 500 products, and nothing beyond Diamond. Within a product it supports 150 unique variants, arranged in up to three dropdown menus. Shopify's help center states its side of the product count in one line:

Both platforms stop at three option groups per product, so a product sold by size, color and material fits either one, and a fourth axis fits neither natively. Where they part is depth: 150 variants against 2,048, and up to 25 photos (one Big Cartel help line says 5 on paid plans) against 250 media items. A seller of made-to-order goods with many combinations hits Big Cartel's ceiling long before Shopify's, subject to the 100-variant theme caution above.

Abandoned-Cart Emails and Automatic Discounts

Big Cartel keeps two common sales tools for its top plan. Its help center calls abandoned cart emails an exclusive Diamond feature, and gives automatic discounts and multi-category targeting to Diamond sellers, adding that only one discount can be applied per transaction.

On Shopify, discount codes with the option to combine discounts, and abandoned checkout recovery, come with every plan. Shopify can email customers automatically after they abandon checkout; in its legacy abandoned checkout emails, a checkout counts as abandoned when it stays incomplete for more than ten minutes after the customer entered an email. Which plans carry it, and the setup behind it, is in our guide to the Shopify plans that include abandoned cart recovery.

Selling Abroad and in Person

Big Cartel's currency setting is a single choice: its help center says your shop can only display prices in one of its supported currencies, with conversions from other currencies handled automatically at checkout. Shopify lets every plan set prices and percentage adjustments by country or region, and shows prices in local currencies when the store uses Shopify Payments.

For markets and pop-ups, Big Cartel's in-person selling comes with Platinum and Diamond, and a one-week Platinum trial lets you test it. Shopify's in-person selling features are available on all paid plans at no extra cost, and POS Pro, at $89 a month per location, is the add-on for counters that need more retail tooling.

Where Big Cartel Is the Better Choice

Big Cartel started as a place for indie bands to sell merch, and it still describes its mission as affordable e-commerce tools for the independent seller. Three of its advantages are concrete rather than a matter of taste:

Who Calculates and Remits US Sales Tax?

This is the clearest place where Big Cartel does more of the work, within limits: in-person sales through its app are not covered, and home-rule localities can leave local tax with you. Its help center puts the online rule this way:

The condition is the currency. Big Cartel turns automatic taxes off for a shop that does not sell in USD, and for orders shipping outside the US and Puerto Rico its non-US tax help leaves you with manual rates and the job of remitting whatever you collect.

On Shopify, Shopify Tax automatically calculates and collects sales tax, and it is free until a store reaches $100,000 in lifetime sales, a rule for stores created on or after May 13, 2026 (older stores count each calendar year); past that, a fee listed on the same page applies. Filing is the weaker half: Shopify's tax overview says plainly that tax is your responsibility, and as of October 2026 automated filing with Shopify Tax is ending, after returns for sales made through December 31, 2026.

For a US seller moving over, that means registering and filing becomes your own task, or a filing partner's. What Shopify Tax covers, on which plans, is set out in our guide to what Shopify Tax gives you.

Which Platform Fits Your Shop?

The verdict at the top answers by catalog size. The quiz below crosses five signals at once: catalog, features, where your buyers are, selling in person and your plans for the year. It names the Big Cartel plan or the Shopify route that fits that combination.

Moving From Big Cartel to Shopify

The data leaves Big Cartel unevenly. You can download your orders from each Orders tab or all at once as a CSV file. The Big Cartel help pages we read describe no export of products, and none an export of customers separate from the orders file; we did not check which columns that file carries.

Shopify's side is general rather than Big Cartel-specific. Its migration overview lists copying content, CSV files, a migration app, a Shopify Partner or the API, and links guides for ten other platforms. The Store Migration app also accepts a CSV upload, but neither names Big Cartel as a source. One more App Store listing, Store Importer, says the app is not currently available on the Shopify App Store. A separate third-party listing with a similar name, Store Importer & Cloner, names Big Cartel among the stores it imports products from.

In practice the catalog moves through Shopify's own product CSV import, built from your Big Cartel listings, or through a third-party App Store app. If Shopify's CSV import rejects a row, our guide to product CSV import errors maps each message to its fix.

What else moves, and what has to be rebuilt by hand, is set out in what data can and can't be migrated to Shopify; Shopify also lets you set up redirects for your important pages to help preserve your search rankings.

Order matters at the very end, because a Big Cartel downgrade is not neutral:

The checklist below keeps the order safe for a small catalog. Steps 1 to 4 apply to every move; step 5 matters only if your Big Cartel shop used its own domain, which comes with Platinum and Diamond; step 6 always comes last.

The Bottom Line

Stripe on Big Cartel and Shopify Payments on Basic charge the same for a standard US card payment, so the choice comes down to what each plan fee holds. Big Cartel's plans are small, fixed and cheap; Shopify's entry plan costs more and removes the ceilings.

Frequently Asked Questions