In the past, we’ve written about some of the basic differences between Kickstarter and Indiegogo along with guidelines that creators should use to determine the best crowdfunding site for their project. Now we’d like to do a comparison between the two platforms using data and reviews from CrowdsUnite. Be sure to leave a comment on this article if you have any thoughts or questions!
This article is a guest post by Eric Tacher from CrowdsUnite. “Filter, sort and compare crowdfunding sites to find the best one for you.”
Kickstarter and Indiegogo are the two most popular reward based crowdfunding sites in America. As reward based platforms, both websites are very similar and thus the topic of Kickstarter vs. Indiegogo is often debated by would be fundraisers. CrowdsUnite is a crowdfunding resource that holds a great deal of information and reviews of the two websites.
Below is a comparison of the two crowdfunding sites put together using the compare function on CrowdsUnite. Click the image below to view an enlarged version.
The user rating is broken down into three categories shown below.
Kickstarter scores slightly higher than Indiegogo in the categories for customer service and ease of use, but the main difference between them lies in their funding from strangers. If you take a look at the monthly visitors for each site you can easily see that Kickstarter receives about twice as much traffic as Indiegogo.
Reviews from the sites help to make this point even more clear. One reviewer for Kickstarter states:
“Almost half the funds came from kickstarter internally so there is a strong community there.” –review by 2dbean.
Another writes:
“They’re easily worth the 5% they take, since they’ll drive that much more to your project.” –review by jrp.
However, many reviews for Indiegogo criticized their gogofactor, which is the algorithm by which projects receive front page status and publicity on Indiegogo. For example one reviewer explains:
“It is difficult to get visibility, and even more difficult to get featured. Not knowing the factors that go into the “Gogo factor” make it difficult to promote your project within Indiegogo.” –review by ctcox324.
Another major difference is seen in the types of projects featured on Indiegogo and Kickstarter. Indiegogo accepts all projects on its website, but Kickstarter is mostly for creative projects and has more rigorous guidelines. Many reviewers praise Indiegogo for its lack of rigid guidelines and at the speed at which you can set up a campaign. Some of the reviewers wrote in:
“Indiegogo had accepted us after Kickstarter had rejected us for not having a creative focus to our project.” –review by mattdvsd.
“At KickStarter they have to take a look at your project and approve it, that can take a while… On IndieGoGo I launched the project when I wanted” –review by El Gamer Cosplayer.
In addition the two platforms differ in that Indiegogo accepts projects from all over the world, while Kickstarter is limited to only a few countries. Indiegogo also allows projects to be “keep what you raise” campaigns. This means that even if you don’t reach your goal, you still receive whatever funding you managed to collect (although you must pay a higher fee). This is great for projects that can still function without reaching their goal.
One of the last major differences between the two sites is their campaign success rate. Crowdfundfusion puts Indiegogo’s success rate at only 20%. Kickstarter’s success rate is more than three times as great. This is a huge difference, but one could argue that since Indiegogo has less rigorous guidelines, it accepts many projects that would have failed on Kickstarter. They may also attract many projects that are anticipating failure, given that they allow “keep what you raise” campaigns to exist. On the surface, Kickstarter and Indiegogo may seem like similar sites, but in reality they are unique platforms for people with different needs.
