At this point, you should have a pretty good sense of whether or not you want to create a Kickstarter campaign. But in case you’re still on the fence, let’s see what Kickstarter users have to say.
Kickstarter has a 1.3 out of 5 on Trustpilot.6 That sounds bad, we know. It’s not great. But frankly, it’s not that bad for a crowdfunding platform (in fact, GoFundMe is the only platform we’ve seen that has good reviews).
Plus, you need to keep in mind that almost all those bad reviews come from Kickstarter backers―not Kickstarter creators.
Those backers are really mad though. Just about all the negative reviews say pretty the same thing: A project backer donated to a campaign, waited a long time for their promised reward, and never got anything. Then when they tried to complain to Kickstarter about it, they got no help (or sometimes no reply at all).
We’d love to tell you that you shouldn’t worry about these reviews, because you’ll be a project creator instead of a backer. But these reviews do show that a lot of Kickstarter backers feel cheated, which makes them less likely to donate to future campaigns. So you may find that you’re dealing with a smaller pool of donors than previous campaigns had.
Now, we did see a couple reviews from project creators worth mentioning. The first was from a business owner who submitted their campaign for approval and got rejected, supposedly with no justification. We admit that’s frustrating, but it doesn’t seem to be a common experience.
The other review was positive, with glowing things to say about how Kickstarter funding helped a startup get off the ground. Obviously not everyone will have that experience (remember that one-third success rate), but it’s good to see that some business owners have found Kickstarter so helpful.