Indiegogo is a crowdfunding platform for all types of projects, but is it a good fit to raise money for your small business?
WRITTEN & RESEARCHED BY
Editor & Senior Staff Writer
Last updated onUpdated
REVIEWED BY
Expert Contributor
| Total Rating | 4.3 |
|---|---|
| Terms & Fees3.7 | |
| Project Qualifications5.0 | |
| Application Process4.3 | |
| Sales & Advertising Transparency4.6 | |
| Customer Service4.4 | |
| User Reviews2.7 | |
Table of Contents
Indiegogo is a crowdfunding platform for creative, tech, and community projects. Often mentioned alongside Kickstarter, Indiegogo distinguishes itself from its larger competitor with the flexibility it allows campaigners in terms of how they raise money and how they run their campaigns.
Indiegogo has a lot going for it. You won’t have to go through a prescreening process, platform fees are competitive, and you have the option to keep your funds even if your goal isn’t met. On the other hand, there have been some user complaints about Indiegogo — although most come from backers who don’t receive promised perks.
Keep reading to learn more about the benefits and drawbacks of Indiegogo and whether this platform is the right option for your crowdfunding needs.
Indiegogo is a crowdfunding platform where users can raise funds from individual backers for business and community projects. When launching a fundraising campaign, you can choose from the following categories:
Additionally, Indiegogo offers InDemand, a service you can enroll in after completing your initial rewards crowdfunding campaign, whether your campaign was on Indiegogo or another website.
With InDemand, you continue raising money for an indefinite period — and without fixed fundraising goals. If your initial campaign was an Indiegogo campaign, your original fundraising page is left up and used as a validating factor for your project.
| Project Qualifications5.0 |
|---|
| Availability 5.0 |
| Transparency 5.0 |
To launch an Indiegogo campaign, you have to be 18+ or between the ages of 13 and 17 with an 18+ guardian responsible for following the terms of use.
Beyond that, you can’t raise money for a project that is illegal, harmful to others, or a scam. You also can’t offer prohibited perks, such as alcohol/drug paraphernalia, weapons, or any form of financial investment.
Here are the kind of crowdfunding campaigns Indiegogo supports:
If you’re looking to raise money for a personal cause, such as a medical emergency or a memorial, you should look into GoFundMe or another cause-oriented crowdfunder instead.
Overall, it’s pretty easy to meet the qualifications of Indiegogo, earning it a perfect 5-star score in this category.
| Terms & Fees3.7 |
|---|
| Affordability 4.0 |
| Campaign Terms 3.0 |
These are the terms and fees for Indiegogo’s crowdfunding campaigns:
| Funding Duration | 60 days (extensions may be offered) |
| Fee For Business/Creative Projects | 5% |
| Fee For InDemand Campaigns | 5% |
| Payment Processing Fee | 2.9% + $0.30 per pledge |
Indiegogo uses Stripe as its credit card processor. Apple Pay and Google Pay are also accepted.
When you launch an Indiegogo campaign, you can choose between a flexible campaign and a fixed campaign. With a flexible campaign, you can keep whatever you raise from backers, even if you don’t reach your funding goal.
By contrast, if you’ve launched a fixed crowdfunding campaign, you must reach your funding goal to collect what you’ve raised. If your fixed campaign doesn’t meet its fundraising goals, all contributions are refunded (and therefore, no fees are taken).
With Indiegogo, you have the option of offering perks to your contributors, but you’re not required to do so. Indiegogo recommends that you do offer perks, though, noting that campaigns offering perks raise 143% more money than those that don’t.
This flexibility stands in contrast to Kickstarter, which requires campaigners to run “fixed” funding campaigns and requires that perks be offered.
Keep in mind that while your Indiegogo campaign can run for up to 60 days, Indiegogo advises that a funding period of 30-40 days is optimal for success, according to the company’s data.
Some additional notes regarding fees:
The average account fees and funding duration earned Indiegogo a 3.7/5.
| Application Process4.3 |
|---|
| Prescreening & Application 5.0 |
| Campaign Funding 2.6 |
Indiegogo places a greater emphasis on flexibility than other platforms — such as Kickstarter — do.
When you fill out the application and apply to start your campaign, approval is automatic — you won’t have to wait to be approved.
In fact, there are cases of crowdfunding projects that were suspended from Kickstarter and subsequently moved over to Indiegogo, where their campaign was allowed to run to completion.
Overall, the application process is extremely easy and straightforward.
Once your application is approved and your campaign has run, Indiegogo states that it makes all attempts to disburse funding to your account within 15 days after your campaign ends. It may take additional time for funds to actually hit your account once they’ve been sent. This is a slight drawback, as some platforms offer instant cash-outs or funds within a couple of days.
We took all of these factors into consideration when giving Indiegogo a score of 4.3/5 in this category.
| Sales & Advertising Transparency4.6 |
|---|
| Sales Practices 4.4 |
| Web Presence 5.0 |
Crowdfunding platforms typically aren’t heavy on deception sales-y gimmicks, and Indiegogo is no exception. Everything is spelled out quite thoroughly, and there are no nasty surprises for project creators. For backers, it’s a different story, but that’s part of having a flexible crowdfunding platform.
For its transparency, we rate Indiegogo 4.6 out of 5 stars.
| Customer Service4.4 |
|---|
| Personal Support 4.2 |
| Self-Service 5.0 |
Indiegogo’s customer service is well-regarded by crowdfunding standards. There’s an extensive help section, and if your question isn’t answered in the information given, there’s a contact form you can use to get in touch with Indiegogo.
Sadly, there is no phone support or live chat. Nonetheless, judging by the opinion landscape, Indiegogo’s responsiveness to user concerns seems to be above average for the industry.
All of these factors contributed to our score of 4.4/5 for Indiegogo’s customer service.
| User Reviews2.7 |
|---|
| User Feedback 3.0 |
| Review Site Aggregate 2.3 |
Indiegogo doesn’t have the best user reviews, but don’t let that deter you from launching a crowdfunding campaign. The majority of the negative reviews come from angry backers over projects that did not come to fruition, did not distribute promised perks, or distributed defective perks. Users also fault the limited communication Indiegogo facilitates between campaigners and backers.
Indiegogo receives a 3.1/5 (based on 35 reviews) on G2, a 1.5/5 (based on 1,600+ reviews) on Trustpilot, and 2.3/5 (based on 250+ reviews) on Consumer Affairs. With the quality and quantity of reviews in mind, we give Indiegogo a rating of 2.7/5.
We’ll emphasize again that the majority of complaints come from backers who did not receive promised perks (or received defective items). In terms of launching a campaign, here’s what unsatisfied reviewers have to say:
If you’re backing a project on Indiegogo, you have to go into it with a certain mindset. You’re not necessarily making a purchase or an investment but rather contributing to a project or cause you’d like to help succeed, with no guarantee that you’ll see anything in return. A more controlled crowdfunding platform might provide better value to the backer, but it could also cut against Indiegogo’s ethos of providing a platform to the broadest range of campaigners.
There are plenty of positive reviews about fundraising on Indiegogo, including:
Our overall rating of Indiegogo lands at 4,3 out of 5.
Indiegogo doesn’t have the following that Kickstarter has, which can be an issue when it comes to attracting backers. However, the platform makes a strong play for being the crowdfunder for the rest of us.
Certain kinds of expertly conceived projects may be better off going with another crowdfunding platform, but for projects and causes that might have a hard time qualifying for funding on Kickstarter, Indiegogo is a solid choice. Indiegogo provides the opportunity to solicit funding from the widest possible range of folks from all over the globe.
Backers may be taking a risk by sinking their hard-earned cash into an Indiegogo campaign, but risks are inherent in Indiegogo’s open-armed approach. Despite its flaws, from the perspective of those seeking to raise money for a business/creative project, Indiegogo stays true to the original spirit of crowdfunding.
We spend hours researching and evaluating each crowdfunding platform that we review at Merchant Maverick, placing emphasis on key characteristics to generate our product ratings.
When rating crowdfunding platforms, we use a rubric that looks at terms and fees, project qualifications, application process, sales and advertising transparency, customer service, and user reviews. We weigh each section differently to calculate the total star rating.
Each section is further broken down into granular, weighted subsections, in which we look at specific attributes, such as campaign durations, supported project types, time to funding, application processing times, and platform fees. Learn more about how we rate crowdfunding platforms.
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