Big Cartel vs Shopify: Which Should You Use?

Choose Big Cartel if you're a small, independent seller — an artist, musician, or maker — with a modest catalog and want the cheapest possible entry point. Choose Shopify if you plan to grow past a small catalog or need deeper commerce tools like staff accounts, advanced apps, or multi-channel selling. Big Cartel and Shopify aren't aimed at the same size of business, and their pricing pages reflect that directly. Checked against bigcartel.com and shopify.com, September 2026.

What does Big Cartel actually offer, plan by plan?

Big Cartel currently runs three plans, confirmed on its own site: "Big Cartel offers three plans: the free Gold plan, and the paid Platinum and Diamond plans" (Big Cartel Help Center, "Plan Changes and Refund Policies", checked September 2026).

• Gold (free): Big Cartel's own Gold plan page lists "5 free product listings," online selling, card/PayPal acceptance, sales tax autopilot, real-time stats, one template, and "Multiple size and color variants per product" (Big Cartel, Gold plan, checked September 2026). If you downgrade a paid plan to Gold with more than five products live, Big Cartel's help center warns "your shop will be placed in maintenance mode" until you choose which five to keep (Big Cartel Help Center, "Plan changes and refund policies").
• Platinum: listed on Big Cartel's pricing page at "$15/mo" after "7 days free," adding custom-domain support, digital product sales, shipping label printing and order tracking, and shop design customization (Big Cartel Pricing, checked September 2026).
• Diamond: listed at "$30/mo," adding abandoned-cart recovery, scheduled product drops, password-protected products, and a Zapier connection to "7,000+ apps" (same source).

Both paid plans also carry a 20% discount for annual billing per Big Cartel's help center. Big Cartel's current pricing page does not publish a specific numeric product-count cap for Platinum or Diamond the way it does for Gold's five — check bigcartel.com/pricing directly for the current comparison if a product ceiling matters to your catalog size.

What does Shopify actually offer, plan by plan?

Shopify's pricing page, on its default yearly-billing view, lists Basic at "$29/mo," Grow at "$79/mo," and Advanced at "$299/mo," with a Plus tier "from $2,300/mo" for larger operations (Shopify Pricing, checked September 2026). Every Shopify plan includes unlimited product listings, a full checkout and payments system, and a much larger app ecosystem than Big Cartel's — staff accounts start appearing from Grow up ("Up to 5 staff accounts"), and inventory locations, B2B catalogs, and advanced reporting scale with plan tier. Shopify also advertises "3 days free" then "$1/month for 3 months" as an introductory offer, separate from the standing plan prices above.

How do the platform fees compare?

Big Cartel charges no fee of its own. Its own blog states plainly: "Big Cartel does not charge any listing or transaction fees" (Big Cartel Blog, "How Does Payment Processing Work on Stripe and PayPal?", checked September 2026). You still pay your payment processor directly — Big Cartel's own Stripe setup guide states "U.S. Stripe pricing typically starts at 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction (rates vary by country and payment type)" (Big Cartel Help Center, "Set up Stripe", checked September 2026) — but that's the processor's cut, not Big Cartel's.

Shopify's plan price already assumes a card-processing rate, and it improves at higher tiers: "2.9% + 30¢" on Basic down to "2.5% + 30¢" on Advanced, per Shopify's own pricing page (same source as above), plus an extra fee if you route payments through a provider other than Shopify Payments (2% on Basic, scaling down at higher plans). Shopify doesn't charge a separate flat transaction fee on top of card processing when you use Shopify Payments — the card rate is the fee.

Capability matrix

Who is each one not for?

Big Cartel is not a fit if you're planning meaningful growth — the platform's own marketing is aimed at small, independent sellers, and it doesn't document the deeper commerce tooling (staff roles, advanced reporting, multi-location inventory) that Shopify includes even on its entry plan.

Shopify is not a fit if you have a very small, slow-moving catalog and want to avoid a monthly bill entirely — Big Cartel's free Gold plan and no-transaction-fee model mean a five-product shop can run at zero platform cost, something no Shopify plan offers.

Where does Figment fit in?

Neither directly — Figment publishes a Figma design as a live website through its Figma plugin, with no cart or checkout of its own. It fits a different, adjacent need for the same kind of seller Big Cartel targets: independent artists and makers who want full design control over a portfolio or brand site, with sales handled separately through Big Cartel, Shopify, or another store. If a portfolio is the main job and a store is secondary, see our guide to building a website as an artist, which checks portfolio structure, image quality, and inquiry paths across Squarespace, Shopify, and Figma-plus-Figment. For Shopify's plans in more depth, see our Shopify pricing guide.

Which should I actually pick?

• Pick Big Cartel's free Gold plan if you're testing whether selling online is worth doing at all, with five or fewer products.
• Pick Big Cartel's Platinum or Diamond plan if you're an established small seller who wants a custom domain and Big Cartel's no-transaction-fee model, and your catalog fits comfortably within what those plans support.
• Pick Shopify if you expect to grow past a small catalog, need staff accounts or deeper reporting, or want the largest available app ecosystem for extending the store later.

Bottom line: Big Cartel keeps costs near zero for a small catalog by charging no platform fee at all; Shopify charges a monthly plan from day one but includes unlimited products and a much larger feature set that scales with the business. Match the platform to the size of catalog you actually have, not the one you hope to have.