No threats detected
All checks passed. This site appears legitimate — but always stay alert for phishing even on trusted domains.
Is bigcartel.com legit or a scam?
Legitimate 20-year-old e-commerce platform for artists; complaints stem from individual sellers, not the platform itself.
Analysis Summary
MT Intelligence
Big Cartel is a registered US LLC founded in 2004 and operating for over two decades. Our antivirus network and browser blocklists show no malicious flags, and the domain has a clean reputation across all signals. The company is registered in Utah with active business status and has facilitated over $3.5 billion in seller transactions. Web research shows a mixed but realistic picture: the platform itself receives positive reviews from users and independent tech sites praising its simplicity, while independent review aggregator complaints target individual seller shops (like ghostlygrabs.bigcartel.com and Mudkip Bros Inc.) that failed to deliver or refund—a pattern typical of any open marketplace where the platform is not responsible for seller conduct. The BBB rates the company B- and notes it failed to respond to 2 complaints, which is a minor operational issue but not evidence of fraud. No evidence suggests the platform is a scam, clone, or data harvester.
Website Preview
Automated page render — captured in a safe sandbox. What an ordinary visitor would see when loading the site.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for bigcartel.com, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- Big Cartel (bigcartel.com) is a legitimate, long-established (domain age ~20.5 years; company founded 2005) US-based LLC in Salt Lake City, Utah, providing free-to-start online stores targeted at artists and small creative businesses.
- Trustpilot score around 2.7-2.8/5 from ~90 reviews; multiple complaints about individual seller shops on the platform failing to deliver products or issue refunds (e.g., ghostlygrabs.bigcartel.com, Mudkip Bros Inc.).
- BBB profile shows B- rating and is not accredited; company failed to respond to 2 complaints on file.
- Platform itself is repeatedly described as safe and functional in reviews (e.g., Reddit users note issues stem from individual sellers, not Big Cartel); company provides fraud guidance to its merchants.
- Reviews of the platform (Capterra/G2 ~4.2-4.3/5) praise simplicity for small sellers but criticize limited scalability, SEO, support (email only), and lack of full PCI compliance (relies on Stripe/PayPal).
- No evidence of the platform being a scam or clone; some unrelated Bitcoin/crypto scams have misused the Big Cartel name/logos.
- Company has helped sellers move over $3.5 billion in sales and remains independent.
- Trustpilotopen
"Scammed by a shop on big cartel. I pre-ordered some stickers from Mudkip Bros Inc. ... Simply put, don’t buy from this shop, it’s a scam."
- Trustpilotopen
"ghostlygrabs.bigcartel.com is a scam. ghostlygrabs.bigcartel.com never sent the product I paid for, won't refund me, and won't even respond to my inquiries. This site is a scam."
- Trustpilotopen
"Do yourself a favor and stay away from this platform and its sellers it’s filled with thieves and scammers!"
- Reddit (r/zines)open
"It's safe. If you were to have any problems, it would be from the artist you want to support—not from bigcartel. I've run a bigcartel store ..."
- LitExtension reviewopen
"Is Big Cartel legit? To put it simply, this is a viable option for those seeking simplicity with straightforward online store creation. ... Yes, Big Cartel is a functional platform for creating online stores."
- Big Cartel site testimonialsopen
"The thing that I've always valued the most about the Big Cartel experience is the high quality customer service that they provide. I've been working with them for well over a decade..."
Big Cartel, LLC registered in Utah (Salt Lake City), started 9/14/2004 (21 years in business), managers include Rob Hansen, Eric Turner, Matthew Wigham. BBB rating B- due to failure to respond to 2 complaints; not accredited.
Web research found 3 scam complaints on independent review aggregator, all targeting individual seller shops on the Big Cartel platform (e.g., ghostlygrabs.bigcartel.com, Mudkip Bros Inc.) that failed to deliver products or issue refunds. These are seller-conduct issues typical of any open marketplace, not platform fraud. Positive reviews from Reddit, tech-review sites, and Big Cartel's own testimonials confirm the platform is legitimate and safe. Business registration verified: Big Cartel LLC, Salt Lake City, Utah, founded September 2004 (21 years in business), active status. BBB rating B- due to failure to respond to 2 complaints; not accredited. independent review aggregator score ~2.7–2.8/5 reflects mixed seller experiences; Capterra/G2 scores ~4.2–4.3/5 praise platform simplicity.
Antivirus Engines
Security Scans
Checked against the major public blocklists used by browsers and security tools — no hits.
Contact Verification
We fetched the page and looked for real-world contact details. Legitimate businesses almost always publish an email on their own domain, a phone number, and a postal address. Scam shops usually don't.
- No contact email found anywhere on the page.
- No phone number listed on the page.
- No postal address visible on the page.
Domain & Encryption
Redirect Chain
- 1301http://bigcartel.com/
- 2200https://www.bigcartel.com/cross-domain
Server Reputation
Still, stay alert
No major threat indicators — but a clean scan does not guarantee every page is safe, and phishing emails routinely spoof real domains.
- Double-check the exact URL in your address bar
Confirm you are actually on bigcartel.com and not a lookalike like b-igcartel.com.com or an IDN homoglyph.
- Use a password manager
Password managers only auto-fill on the exact domain they were saved for — they refuse to fill lookalike domains, which is the single best phishing defence.
- OpenDiscuss this site on the forum
If you have first-hand experience with this site — good or bad — share it with the MalwareTips community.
Reputation Sources
How this domain rates across independent threat-intelligence and blocklist providers.
Referenced Domains
Outbound domains this page links to or loads resources from. Each links to its own security scan.
Safety FAQ
Common questions about this site, answered from the scan data on this page. These are auto-generated — not hand-written — so they always match the underlying report.
- Our automated security review found no threat indicators on bigcartel.com. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- bigcartel.com passed our automated security checks with a trust score of 75/100. No antivirus engines or major blacklists flagged the site at the time of the last scan.
- Yes. bigcartel.com presents a valid TLSv1.3 certificate issued by Google Trust Services · WE1, expiring in 57 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- bigcartel.com is 20.5 years old, registered on 12/19/2005 through Cloudflare, Inc.. Scam domains are often freshly registered — a site under 6 months old warrants extra caution.
- No. All 91 antivirus engines in our malware network report bigcartel.com as clean.
- No. bigcartel.com is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- bigcartel.com resolves to an IP operated by Cloudflare, Inc. in US (usage type: Content Delivery Network). Hosting location alone doesn't make a site good or bad, but unusual geography for a brand's claimed country is one of many signals we weigh.
- We cache results for 24 hours. Signed-in MalwareTips members can trigger a manual rescan at any time using the "Rescan" button on the report page, which re-runs every check from scratch and refreshes this page.
User reviews & comments(0)
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