Fundable Review

Pros

• Both rewards and equity crowdfunding are available
• Low fees for successful campaigns
• Good customer support
• Prescreening of campaigns benefits backers

Cons

• Flat monthly fee hurts unsuccessful campaigners
• No funds if you don’t reach your funding goal
• Campaigns must be prescreened for approval

What Is Fundable?

Fundable is part of the Startups.com platform. It is a crowdfunding solution that gives businesses the option of launching either a rewards-based crowdfunding campaign (à la Kickstarter) or an equity-based campaign in which backers get a share of stock in the company in exchange for their backing.

Fundable assists in the marketing of these campaigns as well, helping companies set up their fundraising profiles and sharing them with personal and professional networks.

Fundable reviews any company that creates a profile for their suitability before letting them raise money. All in all, Fundable’s crowdfunding platform is less geared toward starry-eyed dreamers with wild ideas and more toward startups and companies with a solid plan of action.

Services Offered By Fundable

Fundable facilitates rewards-based and equity-based crowdfunding (though not both simultaneously) to a wide variety of businesses. Rewards-based campaigns are recommended for business raising less than $50,000, while equity-based campaigns are more suitable for raising higher amounts up to $10 million.

A wide variety of projects can be promoted on the Fundable platform, including businesses in categories from beauty, wellness, and fitness to games, software, and technology.

Fundable Project Qualifications

To use the Fundable.com platform, you have to be at least 18 years old, and your business must not be involved in the following:

Beyond that, you can’t use Fundable to do anything unlawful or unethical, post spam, or harass anyone.

Although Fundable does allow businesses across a number of categories to fundraise on its platform, it is important to remember that this platform is most suitable for startups and businesses with a solid plan and potential for growth.

Overall, we rate Fundable 4.4/5 for its project qualifications.

Fundable Terms & Fees

Here are the terms and fees for Fundable’s crowdfunding campaigns:

It is free to create a company profile. However, you will have to upgrade to a paid subscription in order to being fundraising.

Fundable says the average campaign takes 60-90 days to complete.

Notice that instead of charging a percentage of the money you raise as a fee, Fundable charges a flat monthly fee of $179. Most other crowdfunders will take a chunk (usually 5%) of the money raised in a successful campaign.

This means that with Fundable, you’ll have to pay for the privilege of using the platform whether or not you are successful in your campaign. That makes Fundable a less attractive option for small-time businesses and entrepreneurs who are uncertain of the likelihood of succeeding in their campaigns as well as projects with a modest fundraising goal.

On the other hand, it’s great for projects that raise a significant amount of capital and meet their goals, as they won’t have to pay thousands of dollars in fees.

If you want the highest degree of help possible via the premium package, Fundable will work to connect you with accredited investors. Pricing for the premium package is not given on the website, but I did some digging, and it seems this package is available for a one-time payment of $2,499.

You’ll also notice that Fundable fees for payment processing only apply to contributions to a rewards campaign. With an equity campaign, all payments are made offline directly from the accredited investor to the campaigner after the fundraising goal is met, via wire transfer or check.

One requirement of running a rewards campaign is that you offer at least three levels of rewards to your backers. However, those rewards can come in the form of either a preorder of a product or a promise to provide a service. Fundable gives you more flexibility in terms of the rewards you can offer than does Kickstarter, which requires that your rewards come in the form of physical goods.

Overall, terms and fees are good, although not quite perfect. However, it comes pretty close — earning a score of 4.7/5.

Fundable’s Application Process

When applying to use Fundable, you create a Company Profile in which you list details concerning your company, your project, and your fundraising goals.

You’ll then have to wait for Fundable to approve your profile before you can continue. This process typically takes two to three days. (If you don’t like the idea of waiting for approval, Indiegogo automatically approves all projects submitted and does due diligence later.)

After that’s done, you choose either a rewards campaign or an equity campaign. Fundable has a Profile Creation Wizard that helps you optimize your company profile and fundraiser.

For rewards campaigns, Fundable uses the “all or nothing” model of crowdfunding. If you don’t reach your funding goal during your funding period, you get nothing.

If your campaign is successful, commitments are processed offline for equity crowdfunding. Unfortunately, timelines do not appear to be disclosed for cashing out following a successful rewards-based crowdfunding campaign.

With all that being said, Fundable’s application process is a bit more involved than platforms like Indiegogo, which isn’t usual when it comes to equity crowdfunding. However, we would like to see more information about rewards-based campaigns. Overall, we rate Fundable 2.8/5 in this category.

Sales & Advertising Transparency

Fundable spells out the terms and conditions of its use in a very straightforward, plain-spoken manner. There’s nothing that appears to be too sales-y or gimmicky. Terms of service are clearly displayed, and there’s a good bit of information available about Fundable’s platform, although you may have to click around a bit.

Fundable does have social media profiles under Startups.com which are updated pretty frequently, but not all posts are related to Fundable.

Despite a few shortcomings, Fundable gets it right here, earning it our rating of 4.4/5.

Fundable Customer Service & Technical Support

For direct support, a toll-free phone number, email, and live chat services are available on Fundable’s website. This goes above and beyond the level of support typically offered by crowdfunders, many of which just provide an email contact form for support. Fundable gets some brownie points for this.

Fundable provides a searchable knowledgebase to answer questions about the platform, along with lengthy guides on investing, running a startup, and crowdfunding. There are also a number of infographic materials and startup stories provided, all freely available online. Fundable (under Startups.com) has profiles on X/Twitter and YouTube.

Reviews of the quality of customer support are good overall. This — and the other factors mentioned above — contributed to a customer service score of 4.6/5.

User Reviews

Fundable doesn’t have a lot of reviews, and the ones that it does have are a mixed bag. Fundable has a rating of 2.6/5 (based on four reviews) from Trustpilot and a rating of 4.1/5 (based on 60+reviews) from BestCompany. The company currently gets an A rating on on BBB, with three complaints closed in the past 3 years and one complaint closed within the past 12 months.

Taking all of the user feedback into consideration, we give Fundable our own rating of 3.7/5 for user reviews.

Negative Fundable Reviews & Complaints

There isn’t too much fault to find with Fundable, but there are a few recurring criticisms from both professional reviewers and Fundable users:

• No “Flexible” Funding Option For Rewards Campaigns: Fundable’s fundraising structure for rewards campaigns is all-or-nothing, but some reviewers express a desire for Fundable to allow you to keep whatever you raise.
• High Monthly Fee: The $179 monthly fee might be too expensive for a small business operating on a tight budget.
• Unhelpful Customer Service: Among actual users of the service, some have complained of a lack of support from Fundable in helping to locate investors as well as inadequate customer service.

Positive Fundable Reviews & Testimonials

Professional reviewers and users have mostly sounded positive notes about Fundable:

• Allows Both Rewards & Equity-Based Fundraising: Some reviewers have praised the flexibility of allowing both rewards-based and equity-based crowdfunding campaigns.
• Attractive For Backers: Other reviewers have opined that Fundable is a particularly attractive platform for backers, as Fundable’s monthly fee structure does a good job of weeding out unserious campaigns.
• Supportive Customer Service: Though there are some negative reviews surrounding customer service, there are positive reviews as well. Some users having great customer service experiences and a high level of support in finding investors.

Is Fundable Right For You?

Fundable is not a crowdfunder for the masses. With its monthly fees and restrictive policies regarding who can use the platform, the little guy will have to look elsewhere for a more forgiving means of crowdfunding.

However, for the serious business owner looking to raise a significant amount of capital, Fundable is an excellent option, especially considering you get the choice of running a rewards campaign or an equity campaign and the fact that Fundable doesn’t take a cut of the money you raise.

All else being equal, if you should raise a million dollars, better to pay Fundable’s monthly fee than to pay the 5% fee that most other crowdfunders charge!

Overall, we give Fundable a rating of 4 out of 5 stars, making it a solid option for some businesses. Fundable isn’t a platform for charitable causes, fly-by-night inventors, or conspiracy theorist bloggers, but for a business with a solid plan of action, it may be just the ticket.

Our Methodology

We spend hours researching and evaluating each crowdfunding platform that we review at Merchant Maverick, placing emphasis on key characteristics to generate our product ratings.

When rating crowdfunding platforms, we use a rubric that looks at terms and fees, project qualifications, application process, sales and advertising transparency, customer service, and user reviews. We weigh each section differently to calculate the total star rating.

• Terms & Fees: 25% of the total star rating
• Project Qualifications: 25% of the total star rating
• Application Process: 25% of the total star rating
• Sales & Advertising Transparency: 10% of the total star rating
• Customer Service: 10% of the total star rating
• User Reviews: 5% of the total star rating

Each section is further broken down into granular, weighted subsections, in which we look at specific attributes, such as campaign durations, supported project types, time to funding, application processing times, and platform fees. Learn more about how we rate crowdfunding platforms.

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