Caitie SithIf any of small creators have personal experience with Woocommerce VS Bigcartel VS Shopify, I'd love to hear it! ATM I can't afford Shopify at my sales level, so I'm trying Woocommerce, but wondering if BigCartel might be a nice middle-ground between ease of maintenance and cost.
Sean M Puckett@caitiesith Big Cartel is good. n.b. Square lets you have a free web shop for using their payment system. it's a little clunky but doesn't have limits on item count
@photopuck Thank you very much! I've been tempted by Square but I'm already paying for private web hosting so it's a tougher sell.
@caitiesith Big Cartel is particularly nice because they're a small company and have been running profitably for over a decade. they do one thing and do it well!
@photopuck Honestly this is my biggest pull towards Bigcartel - I just love their vibe and history, they feel so familiar and cosy from years of seeing them support artists.
Chris Combs (he/him)@photopuck @caitiesith that's really good to know! thanks!
@photopuck Thank you so much!
Andrew (Television Executive)@caitiesith We use woocommerce everywhere, because it's the cheapest simplest option.
I don't love wordpress, but it's fine. It's fast enough, performant enough, secure enough. It takes a while to set up and make look nice, and there's no one you can yell at if it breaks, but I pay like $15/month for the host I use, and I have five store fronts up there, and nothing has ever really been a problem.
We're not super high volume. A couple hundred bucks a month per store, but it works.
@ajroach42 Thank you Andrew, great to know! Do you mind if I ask which host your use? I'm on Dreamhost Shared, so similar price range for the shared server, but the performance has been wobbly and I'm not confident it can handle WooCommerce well (already seeing 2hr+ e-mail lags to customer).
@caitiesith I've been pretty happy with Big Cartel's free level!
Shopify, well... I set up an account for my former employer, put in their TIN and correct tax stuff, and Shopify made me enter my ssn for "id verification." Then they reported all the company's income to the IRS as personal income for me. Two years in a row. It's been impossible to reach a human who can fix this. They also run a lot of webstores for alt-righters. So I would avoid like the plague. #axetogrind #grainofsalt #etc
@combs Thank you Chris, this is all *so* important - that income situation is absolutely horrific, and that is a HUGE point about Shopify being chummy with the alt-right.