Kickstarter is one of the most popular crowdfunding sites, but could it work for funding your small business?
WRITTEN & RESEARCHED BY
Editor & Senior Staff Writer
Last updated onUpdated
REVIEWED BY
Expert Contributor
| Total Rating | 4.0 |
|---|---|
| Terms & Fees3.7 | |
| Project Qualifications5.0 | |
| Application Process3.4 | |
| Sales & Advertising Transparency5.0 | |
| Customer Service3.5 | |
| User Reviews2.8 | |
Table of Contents
Kickstarter is the world’s best-known crowdfunding platform for tech projects and creative endeavors. With over 8 billion dollars raised, Kickstarter’s track record is unmatched in the field of business-focused crowdfunding.
Note that Kickstarter is not for personal causes — for that, you’ll need to use a platform like GoFundMe.
Another thing that distinguishes Kickstarter from most of its competitors: you must meet your fundraising goals within a set time period before you receive any funding. Furthermore, you must provide rewards (of your own creation) for your backers.
Keep reading our Kickstarter review for more details.
Kickstarter provides a platform for users to raise funds from individual backers for creative projects. All Kickstarter projects must fall under one of the following broad categories:
You can launch a Kickstarter campaign in the following countries:
Backers can support a Kickstarter project from almost anywhere in the world.
| Project Qualifications5.0 |
|---|
| Availability 5.0 |
| Transparency 5.0 |
You must be 18 or older to launch a project on Kickstarter. Minors can participate in the creation of the project if they are supervised by the 18+ creator of the project.
Kickstarter has five rules for projects shared on the platform. All projects:
Prohibited items include items claiming to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent illness; contests and raffles; energy food and drinks; offensive materials; genetically-modified organisms as rewards; alcohol as rewards; offering financial, phone, travel, and business marketing services; political fundraising; pornography; promotion of racism, bigotry, or discrimination; items that already exist or are repackaged; resale items; drugs, tobacco, and nicotine products; weapons, including accessories and replicas.
Campaigns are prescreened and will not go live until approved.
While not every project will be approved, Kickstarter is open to many types of creative projects around the world. For this reason, we’ve rated Kickstarter a perfect 5-star rating for project qualifications.
| Terms & Fees3.7 |
|---|
| Affordability 4.0 |
| Campaign Terms 3.0 |
These are the terms and fees for Kickstarter’s US-based fundraising campaigns (international processing fees vary by local currency):
| Funding Duration Limit | 60 days |
| Kickstarter Platform Fee | 5% |
| Payment Processing Fees | 3% + $0.20 per pledge OR 5% + $0.05 per pledge under $10 |
Note that while you can set a funding period of up to 60 days, Kickstarter recommends a funding period of 30 days or less, citing internal data that shows projects lasting 30 days or fewer have a greater shot at meeting their goals.
If your project’s funding period ends without the funding goal being met, you won’t collect any of the funds (or pay any fees), and all backers will be refunded.
Part of the terms of launching a Kickstarter project and accepting support from backers is that you provide physical (or digital) rewards for your backers upon completion of the project. The rewards you offer can depend on the level of support pledged.
Overall, Kickstarter’s terms and fees are pretty standard when compared to its competitors, earning it a score of 3.7/5 in this category.
| Application Process3.4 |
|---|
| Prescreening & Application 4.6 |
| Campaign Funding 0.6 |
If you’re a permanent resident of any of the countries listed in the Services Offered section, you can apply to launch a Kickstarter project, provided the following qualifications are met:
Starting a project is quite straightforward. You begin the process on the website, where you choose a category and verify your eligibility. You can then enter some basic information about your campaign, set your rewards and shipping costs, add a video along with a detailed project description to establish your story, add some profile information with links to your social accounts, and confirm your identity.
Once you’ve submitted your project for review, you’ll either pass the automated check and be able to launch your campaign immediately, or you’ll have to wait up to three days to launch if your project gets flagged for additional scrutiny.
After your campaign ends, funds are typically released after about 14 days — assuming that you met your fundraising goal.
Overall, Kickstarter’s process for applying and launching a campaign is fairly easy, although you may encounter delays getting your campaign approved and then again when it’s time to cash out. Overall, we rate Kickstarter 3.4/5 in this area.
| Sales & Advertising Transparency5.0 |
|---|
| Sales Practices 5.0 |
| Web Presence 5.0 |
Every step of the crowdfunding process, from the initial application to completion, is detailed on Kickstarter’s website in a very straightforward manner. Nothing feels gimmicky or deceptive.
As Kickstarter only earns fees on completed fundraising campaigns, the company has little incentive to rope people into trying the platform who don’t already have a serious project in mind.
Kickstarter has social media profiles that it keeps updated frequently — something that you don’t see with every crowdfunder.
For doing so well in all of these areas, we gave Kickstarter a perfect rating for sales and advertising transparency.
| Sales & Advertising Transparency5.0 |
|---|
| Sales Practices 5.0 |
| Web Presence 5.0 |
Kickstarter may be the big dog of the crowdfunding industry, but its level of customer support doesn’t reflect that.
| Kickstarter Customer Service | Availability |
|---|---|
| Phone Support | |
| Email Support | |
| Support Tickets | |
| Live Chat | |
| Dedicated Support Representative | |
| Knowledge Base or Help Center | |
| Videos & Tutorials | |
| Company Blog | |
| Social Media |
The only way to get in touch with Kickstarter is to submit a support ticket and wait to be contacted via email. This doesn’t give project creators (or backers, for that matter) access to the quick support they may need in the event of a mishap.
That said, there is a comprehensive knowledgebase available to cover the most common questions. Kickstarter also has a company blog and maintains profiles on Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, and YouTube.
There are some complaints about customer support, although most of these are from backers who feel as though they got scammed.
Overall, we aren’t very impressed with Kickstarter’s customer support, although it does have good self-service options. For these reasons, we give it a rating of 3.5/5.
| User Reviews2.8 |
|---|
| User Feedback 3.0 |
| Review Site Aggregate 2.5 |
Kickstarter is a pretty mixed bag when it comes to user reviews. It receives a rating of 3.8/5 (based on 20 reviews) on G2 and a rating of 1.2/5 (based on 960+ reviews) on Trustpilot. Kickstarter’s BBB page shows that it currently gets a rating of D- due to its failure to respond to complaints filed against the company. A total of 46 complaints have been closed against Kickstarter in the last 12 months.
While these ratings may seem a little shocking, we do want to note that many of the complaints and negative reviews come from backers who did not receive promised rewards or were unsatisfied with the outcome of a project. After a holistic look at the quality and quantity of reviews, we rated Kickstarter 2.8/5 stars in this area.
Issues raised about Kickstarter by campaigners include:
In a field such as crowdfunding, there is always going to be a significant element of risk. Most professional reviewers still give Kickstarter high marks, however, and the service remains extremely popular.
Benefits of using Kickstarter include:
Kickstarter sits atop the crowdfunding world and is an excellent place to launch your creative project, particularly if your project involves art, films, or games. Kickstarter is an avenue worth pursuing if you have a project you think may pique the interest of hobbyists and other creative types looking to involve themselves in the next big thing.
Kickstarter does fall flat in a few areas — specifically, customer support. Fortunately, there are plenty of self-help resources to help you understand the platform and what to expect throughout the funding process. Having to go through a prescreening process, all-or-nothing funding, and having to wait a few weeks to get your funds from a successful campaign are additional factors to keep in mind.
Overall, we rate Kickstarter a solid 4-out-of-5 rating. It’s a great platform for the right kind of project, but if you’re looking to run a different kind of crowdfunding campaign — perhaps one in which you can keep whatever you raise, regardless of your initial goal — check out our favorite Kickstarter alternatives.
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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Merchant Maverick’s ratings are editorial in nature, and are not aggregated from user reviews. Each staff reviewer at Merchant Maverick is a subject matter expert with experience researching, testing, and evaluating small business software and services. The rating of this company or service is based on the author’s expert opinion and analysis of the product, and assessed and seconded by another subject matter expert on staff before publication. Merchant Maverick’s ratings are not influenced by affiliate partnerships.
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