10 Unique Features from Kickstarter and Indiegogo

With a significant number of all types of crowdinvesting platforms, it is important to stand out to attract project owners and investors. Such leading platforms as Kickstarter and Indiegogo offer unique features that are not available on other crowdfunding platforms. These features allow to get some useful insights on the best sectors, facilitate the crowdfunding campaign management, and help to handle invested funds better. In the article, we will explore top crowdfunding platform features and check what unique advantages they offer.

Indiegogo 

Since its launch in 2008, Indiegogo has helped to raise more than $1B for over 65K innovative projects. The platform is present in over 220 countries and relies on over 9 mln backers. The platform owes this success not only to its flexible and innovative approach but also a good number of features that are offered here.

Crowdfunding collections

Crowdfunding collections on Indiegogo showcase all projects that are classified into categories, helping investors search campaigns grouped by interests. Users can find projects in such categories as: 

• Sleep Products & Devices 
• Indiegogo Team Favorites
• Arts & Film
• Pet Innovation
• Productivity Boosters
• Fund & Games
• Top Phone Accessories and more

IndieShop

IndieShop offers purchasing readily available products that originated from crowdfunding campaigns. The products can be purchased right away and will be delivered to the purchaser’s door. It’s a really fun way of further engaging with fundraisers and creating a marketplace for buyers to access the best products.

Experts Directory

Experts Directory is a carefully selected list of experts by Indiegogo. The directory helps business owners to advance their business and find professional assistance in one or several areas:

• Creative services: This section is for those wishing to create an engaging customer experience with video agencies and design houses specializing in crowdfunding.
• Legal and financial services: Business owners can receive expert support in such areas as small business loans, contracting, and others.
• Marketing services: This section is for business owners looking for digital agencies to expand their business reach.
• Packaging & fulfillment: Here, business owners can get assistance in building and managing their supply chains and delivering their goods to backers.
• Prototyping & manufacturing: In this section, business owners can find the best resources for prototyping, procurement, 3D printing, and more to facilitate product development and reduce the associated cost.
• Retail & market growth: This section is for those who want to get assistance from the leading agencies to develop their retail strategy and bring their products from the warehouse to shop shelves.

Those who can contribute to the development of these services and help promising businesses to develop can apply to become an Indiegogo expert.

Top funded campaigns

In the Top funded campaigns section, investors can find campaigns that have received the biggest funding on the platform. Here, all types of campaigns are included, independently of whether the campaign was already closed or is still live.

Crowdfunding for enterprises

Crowdfunding for enterprises helps companies request the services of Indiegogo specialists to validate market research with real customers, real-time iterative investing, and real transactions.

Such established companies as Canon, BOSE, P&G, and some others used Indiegogo to get feedback from their backers, establish new markets, find new customers, determine the perfect prices, or make new partnerships.

Kickstarter

Since its launch in 2009, Kickstarter has helped more than 260K projects to get funding. Over $8 bln was raised towards creative projects. 

Kickstarter offers project owners and investors the following unique features and resources.

Most funded campaigns

The Most funded campaigns section allows one to browse the already closed campaigns that received the highest funding. One can select to view a specific category of all categories and filter campaigns based on their location (city, state, country).

Forward funds

Forward funds is a program for project creators who want to access big-ticket backing from major institutions. Everybody who launches a project on Kickstarter is eligible to apply for funding by filling in a special form, even though it doesn’t guarantee funding.

Businesses can join the initiative and get an opportunity to finance selected projects that contribute to a vibrant and healthy society. To become one of such companies, it is sufficient to submit an application by filling in a form.

Researcher program

Researcher program allows project creators, backers and enthusiasts to participate in user research studies.

To participate in the research program, one has to apply for it by opening the Notification page and selecting the email symbol under “Research”. If the symbol is blue, it means that the applicant is accepted. 

After that, one can participate in the research and be rewarded with a gift card and gratitude from the Kickstarter team for helping to improve the platform.

The Creative Independent

The Creative Independent is a support blog for all types of creators, including those who are going to raise funds on Kickstarter or have already launched their campaigns. There, one can find guides and tips on:

• How to find free time for creative work
• How to make a living
• How to deal with creative anxiety
• How to build a community around one’s project.

Along with useful guidance, one can enjoy citations by famous people, and even listen to some music. In other words, creators can get any support they need.

Extensive filters

Even though this is not a separate section or resource, extensive filters that are offered by Kickstarted cannot be ignored. Considering the vast number of projects raising funds on the platform, filtering them based on multiple parameters is really helpful.

Kickstarter allows you to filter the projects based on the category, city, state, and country, or sort them based on such criteria as funding, popularity, and others. It is possible to save preferred projects in a list of favorites, follow the preferred projects, or filter the projects that have been already backed by you.

Bottom Line

Indiegogo and Kickstarter are two major competitors in the crowdfunding field. These crowdfunding platforms regularly invest a lot of money into process optimization, marketing and services. 

Whether you are looking to start an equity crowdfunding platform, P2P lending website or a donation-based crowdfunding marketplace, LenderKit could come in handy. 

LenderKit provides white-label crowdfunding software with important integrations, functionality and full flexibility, ensuring a smooth transition from a pilot project to a fully-fledged crowdfunding platform. 

If you’d like to learn more about our crowdfunding software and how it works, don’t hesitate to fill the contact form on our website.