As a backer, I’m by far the most familiar with Kickstarter, though I’ve also supported a number of Gamefound campaigns. One platform I’m not familiar with is Crowdfundr, so I was intrigued to learn more when their head of creator outreach, Rachel, recently contacted me.
I asked Rachel to share the top 3 aspects of Crowdfundr that differentiate it from other major crowdfunding platforms, and Rachel replied with 4! The text below is hers, with some commentary added from me in brackets.
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1. Crowdfundr is free. We have 3 pricing models, and under our Simply Free plan, campaign owners owe us zero platform fees – they only cover payment processing. We ask supporters for a tip (opting out is easy); if the supporter tips, Crowdfundr gets paid. If not, we don’t get paid, but it’s still free for the campaigner. Interestingly, our Nearly Free model is even more popular. Here, supporters are asked to cover all of the fees of their transaction (including payment processing fees) – and 90% do – bringing the cost of crowdfunding down to 2% or less of the total campaign goal. That’s significantly less than other platforms. (There’s also our Not Free model, if a campaigner doesn’t want to ask their supporters to cover costs. In that case, we retain a 5% platform fee. This is what other crowdfunding platforms do.)
[JAMEY: I think this approach is interesting, as is the result that most creators choose the option where backers are asked to pay for processing fees. These options seem very creator friendly, as I’ve heard many creators worry about the 5-10% they’ll lose to Kickstarter. As long as it’s sustainable for Crowdfundr, this really seems like they’re putting their money where their mouth is in terms of putting creators–particularly new/small creators–first.]
2. Crowdfundr is flexible.
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- We support Keep-it-All and All-or-Nothing campaigns.
- We support concurrent campaigns.
- Rewards are individualized – not structured into Tiers + Add-ons. Supporters simply select which rewards they want, put them into their cart, and check out.
- Every campaign can roll into a store after it ends. The campaign page link lives on and can just continue generating revenue.
[JAMEY: While I greatly prefer the “let’s build something together” nature of All-or-Nothing campaigns, there are circumstances–like print-on-demand–where it isn’t necessary. Concurrent campaigns worry me a little bit, as this is typically a way to protect backers (i.e., if a company hasn’t fulfilled multiple campaigns and they’re still running more, it’s a red flag), though Crowdfunder can simply make this clear on the project pages. I really like the individualized rewards, though I think it may help to show on the project page how many of each reward has been purchased. And rolling a campaign into a store or pledge manager is great (ala Gamefound).
3. Crowdfundr lets you fully brand your page(s). More advanced users can, among other things, take over the branding, establish roles and permissions for additional team members, and receive a blue-tick “Verified” badge. These “professional” features are especially popular with publishers who work with multiple creators – but don’t cost extra or require special access.
[JAMEY: I think it’s really interesting that Crowdfundr differentiates between Creators and Indie Businesses. In principle, it seems like this is something that some backers want when they talk about crowdfunding getting back to its roots. In practice, I don’t know if it makes all that much difference to backers.]
4. Crowdfundr doesn’t own the customer. We refuse to get in-between creators and their supporters. We don’t hold funds – transactions are processed directly with the campaign owner. We don’t prevent downloading of customers and taking them to a different platform. We do encourage campaigners to connect their analytics accounts to their campaigns so they can see for themselves how their campaigns perform. We are not asking creators to bring us their traffic and build our platform – we offer instead an affordable place for creators to conduct business directly with their communities.
[JAMEY: The spirit of this is good and seems ethical (as long as backers approve the transfer of their information for other purposes). It seems that Crowdfundr is focused on being a tool for creators to use rather than a destination for backers. If that’s the case, I would think that they would offer creators the option to embed entire product pages into their own websites. I do think, however, that a big selling point of Kickstarter and Gamefound is that they actively try to help backers discover your campaign through variety of different methods (newsletters, friends-who-backed notifications, etc).
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Overall, I like a lot of what Crowdfundr has built. The challenge is actually getting people–both creators and backers–to use it, especially when the people are entrenched and familiar with Kickstarter (and Gamefound, for games). If I were a new creator and I was comparing campaigns from other new creators on these platforms, I would have to choose the platform that draws significantly more backers.
What do you think about Crowdfundr? Have you used it? Which of these elements would you like to see offered by other crowdfunding platforms?
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7 Comments on “Crowdfundr: What’s Unique About It?”
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I’m David Barach, president of Crowdfundr. Thanks, Jamey, for posting about us and adding commentary. Apologies in advance for the long comment here, but I’d like to provide some additional context around why Crowdfundr’s approach is very different and creator friendly, while providing crowdfunding opportunities that can result in better long term success for creators.
First off, you’re absolutely right that our challenge is to grow traffic, but out of the gate, many creators see the benefit in having a free crowdfunding platform that enables them to have a direct relationship with their supporters.
Bruce is also right that the vast majority of supporters are following creators, and don’t really care what platform they are on. We’ve seen that creators who run campaigns with us generally have no problem bringing their supporters over. Bruce also mentioned trust. We’ve been doing crowdfunding on our FundRazr.com platform for social good for 12 years. Our platform is mature, comprehensive, secure, and deeply trusted. Those interested can compare our Trustpilot scores for FundRazr and Crowdfundr to the other crowdfunding platforms.
Related to Mike’s comment, we don’t have the same size crowd as Kickstarter and we’ll always be transparent about that. We do have advanced social sharing that encourages supporters to recommend campaigns and we all know the power of a recommendation. Additionally, I have been told by creators using Kickstarter who have connected their own analytics to their campaigns (Kickstarter, like us, allows you to use Google analytics and now also the Facebook/Meta Pixel) that the platform really only adds meaningful support if you are lucky enough to be prominently featured by them. That means the 7-8% in fees that they saved on Crowdfundr makes up for the difference in standard Kickstarter traffic. Plus you get your money faster with Crowdfundr and have a direct relationship with your supporter.
I should probably explain what I mean by a direct relationship with supporters. In Crowdfundr, creators add their own Stripe and PayPal accounts and all funds go directly to them. We never touch the money. That means that supporters are paying the creator directly using us as a platform. This is similar to other direct to consumer e-commerce platforms like Shopify. That means that the supporter is the creator’s customer, not ours. With Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms, the supporter pays the platform, meaning that they are the platform’s customer, not the creator’s, and the creator is a supplier to the platform. That’s more akin to Amazon, where the retailer owns the customer relationship and protects that relationship from the supplier. That locks the supplier/creator in to using that retailer to reach those customers. We don’t do that. We want the creator to build a direct relationship with their customers, so that they aren’t dependent on us as a platform for their future revenue.
Because we don’t touch the money we can also support payments through PayPal, ApplePay GooglePay, Venmo, and others, and support campaigns in over 100 countries. Additionally, backers don’t have to create an account with Crowdfundr to support creators – we want them to become the creator’s longtime supporters, not our retail customers. We want them to subscribe to that creator’s direct email updates, not just ours. That said, we do plan to continue developing our marketing capabilities, but we won’t build our customer base by forcing our creators’ supporters to create an account with us. We also don’t build our customer base on the backs of the hard won marketing efforts of creators who are driving people to their campaigns.
Jamey, regarding your thought about embedding campaigns, we provide widgets that let the entire supporting process happen on the creator’s site in a secure modal window. And if one is using Crowdfundr Professional they can embed widgets that will show all of their campaigns. Also with Professional, they can replace all of our branding with their own for a fairly seamless transition from their website.
Crowdfundr won’t be right for everyone and that’s okay. We’re another option to consider and it’s good to have options. So, dear creator, be curious, check us out and you might like what you see. If we’re a good fit for the way you want to do crowdfunding, then welcome aboard!
David: Thanks so much for sharing your detailed comments here! I particularly appreciate the value of the following points:
–“backers don’t have to create an account with Crowdfundr to support creators”
–“we provide widgets that let the entire supporting process happen on the creator’s site in a secure modal window”
Keep up the great work!
I appreciate new entrants into the field of crowd funding. I haven’t backed any major KS projects since they made their bizarre pledge to use block chain a year ago (although they’ve yet to do so).
For great creators, I’ll back them on this new platform, for sure.
I have backed 38 crowdfunding projects. The majority of my experience was with Kickstarter. But, as a consumer, it really doesn’t matter to me where the project is hosted, as long as I trust the site and the publisher.
So, when Gamefound came along, I raised an eyebrow, but then quickly I saw that respected publishers used their services. Because of that, instantly trust was ported over. Also, Gamefound had an easy and familiar interface, so it was a seamless transition to use their service too.
So, I welcome Crowdfundr. Let’s see what kind of publishers they can attract.
David Barach from Crowdfundr also had a great interview on the ComixLaunch podcast yesterday: https://www.comixlaunch.com/session392/
The closing paragraphs say it all; generally you have to go where the audience it. We’re a first-time publisher coming to Kickstarter in the Spring—and a big part of our decision to launch there was about the existing audience and visibility. That said, I do like that we’ve seen some other competition come to market with some innovative features and other approaches that KS lacks.
I had not heard of Crowdfundr until I read this article. I will have to do some research myself. Thanks for sharing.