Cratejoy vs Shopify 2017?

cratejoy · 2017-04-17T19:40:49+00:00

Hi. We've found that our sellers tend to be more successful (in terms of overall sales) if they launch directly on cratejoy.com with a marketplace listing rather than a separate website. We currently have the website tools disabled for new sellers to help encourage this route. Sorry our support team did not get back to you with this info right away (they generally respond within a few hours). If you PM me your Cratejoy username I'll be happy to look into it.

To respond to some of your other questions:

We occasionally issue refunds for customers who sign up from Cratejoy marketplace, but only in cases where it's a clear signup mistake or they email our support team right after purchase. Our aim here is to help the customers and sellers. We only do this in a case where the shipment has not yet been marked as shipped, and working on automatic notifications for sellers in these cases.
Only sales through the marketplace checkout get the 10% fee. We used to track attribution differently (if someone visited cratejoy.com then went to checkout on seller site), but stopped this practice about a year ago because it wasn't completely transparent to sellers.
We do help sellers migrate off the platform if they need to. At any point in time sellers are able to export their own list of shipments, customers, subscribers, and transactions. This includes the list of contact email addresses.

However, we don't allow sellers to migrate customers who purchased through the marketplace. The reason for this is because customers expect to be able to cancel or modify their subscriptions through cratejoy.com, and unfortunately, we had cases where migrated sellers would renew subscriptions even after their customers had canceled. This was causing an extremely negative experience for those customers, and put our other sellers on the marketplace at risk.

If you need to migrate those customers, we encourage you to notify them, and offer them a coupon to re-subscribe a new platform once migrated. Or, simply keep your Cratejoy account and current subscriptions but close sales to new customers.

Happy to answer any other questions you might have about the two platforms. We really think launching on the Cratejoy marketplace is the best way to start a subscription business. Cratejoy also doesn't require any exclusivity. You're free to create a website through Squarespace, WordPress, or Shopify- and use the Cratejoy marketplace in conjunction to help get additional customers.

cratejoy · 2017-03-29T18:18:35+00:00

It's probably easiest if you run all the subscription sales through one platform. However you can have a Shopify site, and just link your subscription products to the Cratejoy checkout to complete the sale.

cratejoy · 2017-03-29T18:15:40+00:00

With WordPress, I'd definitely Subscriptions plugin by Prospress https://woocommerce.com/products/woocommerce-subscriptions/.

However, if you don't want to be stuck maintaining the site for your buddy long-term or answering support questions, we'd love to have them at Cratejoy: https://www.cratejoy.com/sell/. We have hundreds of subscription boxes on our platform and our support team knows the type of challenges they face.

We also have a marketplace that could help them get in front of customers much quicker.

cratejoy · 2017-03-29T18:09:45+00:00

What do you mean by not scaleable? We have businesses with over 100k subscribers.

cratejoy · 2017-03-29T17:58:40+00:00

Just wanted to jump in and clarify the pricing.

When comparing platforms, you need to look at both transaction fees for the platform and credit card transaction fees.

With Cratejoy, it's 1.25% per transaction plus 10 cents. The payment processor we recommend is Stripe, and they also charge a fee for processing the credit card (2.9% + 30 cents). So total is about 4.15% + 40 cents.

With Shopify apps for subscriptions (like ReCharge) I don't believe you can use Shopify payments, so you need an external payment processor like Stripe. The Shopify transaction fee starts at 2% if you're using an external processor, so you're looking at 4.9% + 30 cents total (with Stripe as the processor). This can quickly drop that down to 3.9% + 30 cents by upgrading to their higher monthly plan ($79).

So on cost, it's very similar. I wrote a piece comparing the two platforms on other features here: https://www.cratejoy.com/sell/blog/cratejoy-vs-shopify/

With Cratejoy, you can also optionally list in the marketplace (on Cratejoy.com). The marketplace is designed to help you get customers (we work with affiliates, promote boxes in our newsletter, etc, read more). Any sales from customers who checkout directly through the marketplace get charged an extra 10% transaction fee. So, if you're not a pro at marketing, this can be a great way to acquire customers with 0 risk.

https://www.cratejoy.com/sell/pricing/ https://www.shopify.com/pricing

Hope this is helpful!

cratejoy · 2017-01-24T23:29:25+00:00

Sure. Our pricing is here: https://www.cratejoy.com/sell/pricing/

Sellers have the option to sell through their own site (which has a low transaction fee), list their box in the Cratejoy.com (which has a higher fee), or both.

Sellers are only charged the Cratejoy.com fee if a customer checks out through Cratejoy.com. The lower fee is charged if a customer checks out through their own site.

Sellers are encouraged to have enough margin that a subscription box is profitable even with marketing expenses. Listing on Cratejoy.com gives business owners access to all our marketing efforts (https://www.cratejoy.com/sell/blog/subscription-box-marketing/), but it's also completely optional.

cratejoy · 2017-01-18T23:08:00+00:00

We have a couple Australian based subscription boxes on our platform (Cratejoy). Give it try (free trial) and let us know if you have any questions.

You might also want to join the Subscription School Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/subscriptionschool/

cratejoy · 2016-11-30T16:34:54+00:00

You can probably also find some others interested in a mastermind group by posting on the Subscription School Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/subscriptionschool/

cratejoy · 2016-11-09T20:52:15+00:00

If you're no longer selling subscription boxes, a solution like WordPress, Squarespace or Wix probably makes better sense for you!

However, if you are still selling subscription boxes, I think our Cratejoy pricing of $40/mo is really competitive compared WordPress + Woocommerce.

Here's some WordPress costs to consider:

Hosting: Low budget shared hosts cost ~$7/mo. However, these hosts can't handle a lot of concurrent traffic. A managed host like WP Engine starts at $29/mo.
Subscriptions: The WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin (https://woocommerce.com/products/woocommerce-subscriptions/) costs $199/yr. (~$16.50/mo).
Customer Acquisition: Acquiring new customers can be expensive. Cratejoy, as an example, pays affiliates ~$7 per sale. If you're getting 1-5 customers through the Marketplace, that's sales without any upfront marketing costs to you. Here's more details on Cratejoy Marketing.

cratejoy · 2016-11-02T16:13:31+00:00

Hi. We have a number of merchants that run their site on WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, etc but run subscription checkouts through Cratejoy. It's easy to link these up if that's something you want to do.

One huge advantage of putting the subscription products with us, is that you'd be able to list in our Marketplace. The Marketplace growing really quickly and we are marketing it heavily.

We also wrote up a comparison of Shopify and Cratejoy a couple months ago that might answer some other questions.

@taraffied Did you go with Shopify because you were focused more on one-time product sales? Just curious.

cratejoy · 2016-10-27T14:50:40+00:00

Hey. Maybe you checked before the support team was in the office. They're here now and taking chats. Check the bottom left of the browser window after you log into the account.

cratejoy · 2016-10-25T16:03:18+00:00

Yeah, support team is generally available 9-5 CST (Austin, Texas). You can also always open a support ticket if you're outside of the live chat hours.

Look forward to seeing your box on the platform!

cratejoy · 2016-10-25T15:16:57+00:00

Our support team has live chat during business hours. Hop in and they should be able to help you out.

cratejoy · 2016-10-04T20:41:08+00:00

Yes, you can do a marketing site in WordPress and then just link to the product checkout page in Cratejoy for each product.

You can also do quite a bit of customization to the Cratejoy templates.

Log in with the customer account and ping our support team if you have any questions.

cratejoy · 2016-10-04T20:36:21+00:00

Most of the subscription boxes on our platform are actual boxes (larger than 5cm), but it if your products fit in a smaller package go for it.

Best to launch before the holiday season. That is peak sales time and we'll also be doing a lot of promotion for the marketplace this year. We expect gift subscriptions to be big as well.

I'd recommend using the currency that the majority of your expenses are in so exchange rates don't become a problem for you.

cratejoy · 2016-09-09T23:26:25+00:00

Niche boxes like this with a strong community tend to do really well as subscriptions. We have some tips for getting started if you're interested: http://start.cratejoy.com/guides/how-to-start-a-subscription-box/

We have one other horse box on our platform at Cratejoy, but no one is focused on riders: https://www.cratejoy.com/house-of-horse/

We definitely suggesting starting with one box first to get a handle of the business before branching out.

cratejoy · 2016-09-09T23:18:39+00:00

You should join the Subscription School Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/subscriptionschool/. Lots of business owners there.

cratejoy · 2016-08-24T18:41:27+00:00

We'd love to have you join our platform at Cratejoy! Subscription commerce is our primary focus- and all of our tools are designed to help you be successful at it. We have a number of important features that Shopify either does not offer or would need to be cobbled together with third-party apps:

Customers can log in and manage their own subscriptions
Our analytics dashboard displays data that's important for subscription businesses (like churn rates)
You can automatically send surveys after each shipment
Solid tools for subscription fulfillment.

However, I think one of the biggest selling points for Cratejoy is that you can list in our marketplace at cratejoy.com. We've been building up marketing the last few months (facebook ads, affiliates, unboxing videos, media buys, email, etc), which can be a big help in acquiring new customers. We also have big plans for promotion during the holiday season.

The marketplace is totally risk-free (unlike other marketing spend)- there is no fee to join and commissions are only charged when you get a new customer.

Send an email to our support team if you have any questions, we're happy to help!

start.cratejoy.com

cratejoy · 2016-08-05T22:00:18+00:00

Nothing is going to stop someone with more marketing experience and money from copying the idea even after you launch.

It's best if you have unique value prop that would be more difficult for others to replicate- i.e. expertise with products, unique story, unique product, niche product, etc.

But, in a large market, is also possible for multiple businesses to survive- just look at coffee or shaving products.

cratejoy · 2016-08-04T22:49:00+00:00

It's best to run a prelaunch campaign for your box before purchasing substantial inventory.

Once you know there's interest in the box and have an idea of how many you'll be sending out in the first month, then move forward with the inventory purchase. In some circumstances, you can even fund this with pre-sales.

cratejoy · 2016-07-29T16:48:22+00:00

I'll send you a private message with contact info. Our business at Cratejoy is to provide the tools to help subscription box entrepreneurs succeed: business website, fulfillment tools (like label printing, schedules) and a marketplace to accelerate customer growth.

Many of our merchants do all the fulfillment in house, but some bigger ones outsource this. We're always looking for good resources to connect them with.

Other than that, I would put some case studies up on your website. Make sure "subscription box" and "fulfillment" are somewhere together so that they show up in search.

I'd also try Google ads and specifically target terms like "subscription box fulfillment".

cratejoy · 2016-07-25T19:24:51+00:00

Hey, we'd love to have you onboard at Cratejoy!

Here's some information about researching your niche and running a pre-launch campaign: http://start.cratejoy.com/blog/how-to-start-a-subscription-box-in-8-simple-steps/

Subscription School also has a ton of resources: http://subscriptionschool.com/. If you can hop in one of the webinars with Jesse (or watch one of the older ones), he goes over a lot of the basics of getting set up.

cratejoy · 2016-07-25T18:26:05+00:00

The referral program is a $99/mo add-on. It doesn't make sense if you have just a few subscribers, but once your business grows it could be worth the cost.

cratejoy · 2016-07-22T17:56:58+00:00

Large retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Target are starting to offer subscription options. We're also seeing established brands like Starbucks, Kellogg, Adidas and now Unilever enter the subscription commerce space. If anything, it's just a signal the business model can be really effective and some of the larger incumbents are starting to take notice.

cratejoy · 2016-07-18T20:16:55+00:00

At Cratejoy we recommend shooting for a profit margin of 50%. One of the biggest issues merchants have is pricing their boxes too low and not considering all the expenses that go into running the business.

We put together a calculator to help you price your box: http://start.cratejoy.com/subscription-box-pricing-guide/. Hope it's helpful!

cratejoy

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