Cratejoy has helped my business by providing a backend that I never have to worry about.

Comprehensive sales platform with a lot of options.

Pros

Easy to use with a great interface. The growing features help streamline my business so I don't have to worry about my customers.

Cons

Customizing can be difficult if your business is not the same as others. Reports are pretty generic.

An Overall Satisfying Experience

Pros

CrateJoy by far was my first choice for the subscription box e-commerce world, particularly due to its ability to allow for intense customization. I could design my store exactly how I intended to, complete with various color schemes, pictures, and text inserts with fancy fonts. My products were always displayed in their best light and the Marketplace added extra exposure to help build my customer base. Additionally, allowing exposure to each individual shop's social media platforms created an unlimited potential for exposure to customers as well.

Cons

New features can always be added, such as a more efficient way to handle shipments. There are times when the software can be a bit buggy and the shipping labels won't calculate or else are priced expensively in comparison to actually going to the nearest USPS and mailing from there. Also, the display of which shipment labels to print for which shipments (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.) could be a bit confusing. I also was not a fan of buying shipping in set increments. More information must be acquired from the customer to prevent fraud, as I lost money in this regard. Additionally, I believe cancelled subscribers should be removed from the database to prevent the customer list from being too bulky. It is also a pain to not be able to edit live product information and instead have to create a new product listing.

Meh.

Meh. It was easy enough to operate, but you're constantly submitting things for approval. They are providing a subscription service themselves and yet you don't get the customer experience you expect for paying such high monthly fees. Glad I only paid a month and a half of my membership as I didn't find it worth it. Marketing is free if you have social media and play your cards right. So really? Why pay for a marketplace that you beat yourself up over trying to get approval for. We all know investing in professional photos is important but some people do what they can with what they have to start because there is no pre-sale feature on Cratejoy. You can't penalize someone for that especially when you consider the expenses at the beginning of a business(that sounds like I had crumby pictures... after my first email back from them I took even more pictures and I edited them and made them look decent enough - at least until I can afford professional ones).

Pros

I had fun making my products in my store playing with layout and fonts and colours etc, and I liked seeing how my store was turning out.

Cons

In no particular order: - Customer service (with the exception of one staff member and a supervisor who helped me with a tax set-up thing). - Marketplace ad feature - Out of date articles and instructions on website (make references to features that are no longer there or aren't being used at the moment) - Emails for correcting things to get yoru shop up and running have links that go no where and are long paragraphs that you have to read through slowly to decipher the information (simple bullet points would suffice) - Marketplace fees... seriously those are outrageous and on top of that we pay monthly to post in it to hopefully sell our product... if you even get approval. Not a practical way for a start-up to be doing business with all of our expenses highest when we first start out.

Best for newbies - bad for large shops

Pros

CrateJoy is tremendously easy to use and offers a great all in one solution for starting a subscription box company quickly and easily. You don't need to know much about websites to set things up properly. Reports are useful and you have a lot of options and abilities in managing subscriptions and shipments.

Cons

Fees are quite high if you list your company on their marketplace. You're charged 11.25% of EVERY purchase made on a subscription started through their marketplace, not just one time. If you use the built in WYSIWYG builder, the sites all pretty much look the same - not a lot of templates available.

Cratejoy has been a true game changer for my subscription box business!

Cratejoy is truly invested in your success. Their Customer Success and Marketing teams are top notch and go above and beyond to help you succeed. In addition, their marketplace is a phenomenal asset. If you're thinking about starting a subscription box, I highly recommend you sign up with Cratejoy!

Pros

As a back end payment processor, Cratejoy is very straightforward and easy to use. Their marketplace is a true asset and worth every penny as well. In addition, their Marketing Team and Customer Success Team truly want to see you succeed. From helping me get started to having my box featured on CNN, they've helped nurture my box's success every step of the way.

Cons

Personally, I dislike Cratejoy's website builder. It lacks features, looks very cookie cutter, and is difficult to customize. I built and run my website with a different platform and have opted to use Cratejoy only for checkout. I also was disappointed with their referral program as it felt pretty bare bones and lacked most features and options. Even with these issues, overall I have found Cratejoy to be an amazing platform to work with. Their teams are wonderful and they're truly invested in your success. While some aspects of the software are far from perfect, overall I believe the pros far outweigh the cons.

Misleading fee structure, no accountability

Cratejoy has been a huge mistake for my company. In the end, after using it for a year I guess we are about break-even on our sales but we are missing 10% of our revenue because I was misled when I signed up for Cratejoy. They offer different fee plans and different subscriptions. At the time, I was led to believe that if we signed up for a subscription, we could avoid paying the absurd 11% fees per transaction through them. I went forward and launched everything and as far as I could tell, I was paying the lower rate because that is what was showing in my Cratejoy admin account. However, I eventually discovered that we had been paying the much higher rate all along. I had to see this in my Stripe account to realize it because absolutely everything else I saw from Cratejoy showed the lower rate. In the end Cratejoy has accepted no accountability for the lost revenue and I intend to stop using them as soon as I can without ruining subscriber relationships. BUYER BEWARE!

Pros

Cratejoy is pretty easy to roll out and offers a solid subscription e-commerce service.

Cons

It does not offer robust reporting or integrate with other apps and platforms very well, unless you are a full fledged developer.

Cratejoy makes running my subscription business a breeze!

Pros

Cratejoy's ability to manage dozens to thousands of subscribers plans easily and effectively each month makes running my subscription business a snap. It's super easy to use without any major training and they are constantly adding new features or upgrading existing features to make the software even better. Their customer service department is pretty responsive and available should you have any issues or questions. I can't imagine running a subscription-based business without Cratejoy.

Cons

Cratejoy could be expanded upon to feature more reporting and accounting features. It does currently need to run concurrently with an accounting software which is an additional cost.

Love Cratejoy!

Pros

Love that it's easy to use and it's so easy to jumpstart a subscription box! The templates are great and love that subscribers have access to their own portal!

Cons

I wish there was an app! Except that, we love it. Also wish there were easier ways to change a subscriber's Email... Oh! And shipping! Had to switch to Pirate shipping - wish it could be just as cheap but still on Cratejoy

All-in-one platform for subscription boxes

Pros

One stop shop for everthing you need for a subscription box business including recurring payments, integration with Pirateship for commercial USPS pricing, website templates, etc

Cons

Lacking some website add-on functionality that platforms like Shopify have. They charge transaction fees on top of the payment processor fees.

generally good

Easily run my subscription business.

Pros

The program is very easy to use and tracks subscriptions very well. It makes shipping a breeze especially when you have multiple subscription products.

Cons

I wish they had more one time shop features and options. There is no way for my customers to log in and rate my products without purchasing something even if they used a product in real life.

I love it.

Pros

Cratejoy is very simple, straight forward and easy to use. I enjoy how I can easily see how my sales are doing as well as change products in a moments notice. I love this software because it is affordable and gives me everything I need to operate my online business well and professionally. Also, everything looks very nice online and the checkout process is very user friendly for my customers.

Cons

The only thing I would like to see improvements on is the text and display style of the content information for each product. It is a bit challenging to change around my content. Also, I would love an easy way to add a blog to my site so that I can share more information with customers.

It's super user friendly and gets the job done efficiently.

Pros

I love how non technical people can figure out the backend with coding. I also think the options for managing subscriptions is nice.

Cons

I wish there more ways to export information that you collect. I also think it would be nice to have built in ways to communicate with the customers almost like a mailchimp feature. I had more complaints when I first started using Cratejoy but it seems like you really strive to improve on the site and have done so already.

I've had pretty good experiences with Cratejoy. It's a great service.

Pros

Cratejoy is always updated to make the software better for us merchants. My favorite update so far has to be the Add-Ons.

Cons

I feel like they are letting ANYONE create a subscription box and it's really hurting the serious box owners. I've had many customers say they are nervous to try my box because they've been scammed with out her box owners on the Cratejoy marketplace. Cratejoy needs to weed out these bad boxes.

Cratejoy is the only platform I would run a subscription box company with.

Pros

Easy to setup, use and manage. It's the only platform that allows me to ship a progressive sequence of boxes. The marketplace also brings a lot of leads to the site.

Cons

The platform is definitely missing a few features. For example, there are no multiple shipping options for the customer, blog integration, and there are some limitations with web development/integration.

I want to love it but I spend more time battling with the backend and with customer support...

Great to have recurring income !

Pros

For the customer side, it works great. It's easy for them to use. Payment system works great. The designs they provide look great. At the begging when I first started two years ago, the tech support was super helpful.

Cons

Customer service was great two years ago, now it has gotten worse and slower. I was told I need to hire a developer to install an email capturing popup on the main page. A site shouldn't be that difficult to use. The backend could be a lot easier to use. I tried to upgrade to one of their new designs so I could take advantage of their new upsell functionality and my website broke and I had to revert back to the old design in order to get it working again.

I've used Cratejoy for my online subscription business for almost 4 years.

Customer management, shipping support, coupon management, sales analysis

Pros

They are very responsive to your questions and are constantly reaching out with surveys on which features to improve or add.

Cons

The new website designer can be a little clunky at times and access to your sites code is somewhat limited.