The 8 Best Alternatives to Kickstarter

Kickstarter is one of the first and most well-known crowdfunding platforms based in the United States. Essentially, the company's purpose is to help bring creative projects to life via a Web service that aggregates funding from individuals through pledges.

Kickstarter has reported receiving over $1.5 billion in total pledges from 7.8 million individuals since its inception, helping to fund over 200,000 projects. These projects include films, music, stage shows, comics, journalism projects, and company products and services.

While Kickstarter has found a lot of success in the crowdfunding space, many competitors have entered the marketplace, providing good alternatives. If a person is thinking about pledging money to a project or listing a project on a crowdfunding site, it is important to know every alternative. The following are eight crowdfunding alternatives to Kickstarter.

Indiegogo is an international crowdfunding site where people can raise money for film, music, art, charities, small businesses, gaming, theater and more. The company started as an indie website that helped creative people fund projects such as film or music, but it has since expanded to include almost any project imaginable.

On Indiegogo, it is free to sign up, create a campaign and even contribute to a campaign. Once a project raises funds, Indiegogo charges a 9% fee on the funds raised. However, if the goal fund level is met, the company only takes 4%, incentivizing a person to reach his funding.

RocketHub is a crowdfunding platform that helps fund science, business and art projects. RocketHub has a strong partnership with A&E through A&E's Project Startup, which allows RocketHub, a smaller company, to offer lower fees to people looking to list their projects.

If a person reaches his goal on RocketHub, the company takes a 4% commission fee and an additional 4% fee on credit card transactions. If the goal is not met, the company takes 8% of the funding raised plus the 4% credit card handling fee.

Unlike the previous two crowdfunding sites, FundRazr is a Canadian-based company that also includes a working Facebook app. The app was released in 2009 and encompasses FundRazr's core business. The app allows users to set up crowdfunding pages on Facebook or even embed existing fundraising apps on a user's Facebook page.

With the embedded fundraising apps, a project can raise money for positive existing causes such as medical care, memorials, and animal rescue, in addition to raising money for its own campaign. An additional benefit to users of FundRazr is the company only charges a 5% fee, even if the goal is not met. This is lower than many other crowdfunding websites. However, the company charges an additional 2.9% on all transactions made during the life of the campaign.

If a project expects to have a lot of fundraising transactions at low levels of investment, this might not be the best option. If it expects to have a smaller number of funders but at larger amounts, this is a good website to consider.

Pozible is an Australian crowdfunding platform for creative projects and ideas; it also doubles as a community-building tool for those looking to raise money and build communities around their projects.

The company's differentiating factor is it focuses on helping people and projects realize their ultimate aspirations and receive funding to make positive changes in the world. Pozible charges a 5% standard fee on all funds raised and an additional 2.4% on transactions made in Australia and 3.4% on international transactions. The company also accepts Stripe, Bitcoin and PayPal as additional options, adding to its ease of use.

Ulule is a crowdfunding platform based in Europe that helps people discover original products and services. Like Pozible, Ulule aims to give unique and original projects a chance to be recognized in a busy crowdfunding environment.

It can be seen as a benefit or a drawback, but Ulule only funds a project if the funding objective is met. This might be a benefit because if a funding goal is not hit, it could be a sign the project is not needed and does not have a market. Ulule only charges a 5% fee if the funding is met and does not charge anything if the funding level is not met. Transaction fees are 3%, so total costs end up being 8% when value-added tax (VAT) and all transaction fees are taken into account.

Fundable, like Kickstarter, is a rewards-based crowdfunding platform and an equity crowdfunding platform. What makes this company unique from other crowdfunding platforms is Fundable charges $179 per month to run a campaign and raise funds.

Fundable does not charge a commission fee if the campaign goals are not met. However, it does charge a 3.5% fee on a successful campaign. Overall, if the campaign does not drag on for multiple months, it results in lower overall fees than many other platforms.

FundAnything is very unique in that, while other crowdsource platforms boast to fund anything, FundAnything actually does fund anything, regardless of whether the project is a business idea, money for tuition, a medical emergency, a volunteer project, a celebration or anything in between. If it matters to the person running the campaign, it is eligible to be funded on FundAnything.

The company charges a 9% fee on anything collected and gives back 5% of the fee if a funding level is met. In addition, payment processing companies charge a fee of approximately 3%. If a project does not work on another crowdfunding site, FundAnything is a good option.

Quirky is a crowdfunding site that specializes in funding projects that are in the idea and planning stages of the implementation process. By using this company, a user can submit product ideas to Quirky's community for feedback. If the community enjoys the idea and selects it, Quirky executes the product idea, and the person who thought of the product receives a percentage of the sales Quirky makes. Of course, this is only a good option if a person does not want to have any control over his idea and just looks to make passive income.