Patreon Review

Pros

• Continuous crowdfunding for creators
• The platform facilitates reward giving
• Fewer content restrictions than some other crowdfunders
• Multiple subscription plans available

Cons

• No built-in promotional tools
• Some creators report issues when attempting to collect funds
• A high volume of public complaints

What Is Patreon?

Patreon is a crowdfunding site aimed at a particular audience: artists and online personalities in the business of continuous content creation. As crowdfunding platforms go, Patreon has enjoyed a meteoric rise in its public profile over the last several years.

Patreon’s ongoing approach to rewards-based crowdfunding sets it apart from platforms like Kickstarter. With the latter, backers support creators with one-time pledges in exchange for rewards. Patreon’s model is that backers — patrons, as Patreon refers to them — subscribe to a creator’s content, making recurring payments on an ongoing basis in exchange for access to paywalled content.

This funding model makes Patreon particularly well-suited to creators of viral videos, online journalists, writers, and musicians.

Services Offered By Patreon

Patreon enables entrepreneurs and creative teams engaged in any ongoing endeavor to get paid directly by the people who want to consume their content and support their goals. Additionally, the platform has become more open to businesses such as restaurants and local venues. Nonprofits can now use Patreon as well.

Entrepreneurs and firms raising money for specific projects (tech startup projects often fall into this category) will likely find Kickstarter or Indiegogo to be a better crowdfunding fit. If you’re raising money for personal needs, such as a medical emergency or college tuition, go with GoFundMe instead.

Patreon Project Qualifications

A major factor in Patreon’s initial appeal to creators had been that Patreon’s content restriction policies were more relaxed than those of other crowdfunding platforms.

However, disputes arose over the banning of certain campaigns for contravening the company’s hazy guidelines regarding adult content and hate speech. In response, Patreon released a more definitive list of community guidelines on their website that spell out what is forbidden on the platform:

• Hate speech, harassment, doxing, and threats are banned
• You can’t use Patreon “as a prank or to fund non-activity”
• Adult nudity is allowed if it is marked “Patron Only,” while pornography and sexual services are banned (yes, the line here is hazy)
• You can’t promote self-harm or illegal activity
• You can’t use Patreon “to fund your run for office or to fund the political campaigns of others”
• No spam

Patreon won’t work for every business, but if you plan to continuously provide content and it meets the community guidelines, getting on the platform is pretty simple. For this category, we give Patreon a score of 4.4/5.

Patreon Terms & Fees

These are the current terms and fees for Patreon’s crowdfunding campaigns:

On top of the platform fee, payment processing fees are as follows:

• 2.9% + $0.30 for donations over $3
• 5% + $0.10 for donations of $3 or less

There are also payout fees to consider. These fees are payable when you move funds from your creator balance to your bank or PayPal account. These fees are as follows:

• Direct Deposit: $0.25 fee/deposit for US creators receiving payment
• PayPal: $0.25 or 1% of the amount transferred capped at $20 per deposit for US and international creators receiving payment

Once your page goes live, you can add posts to it, which can either be viewable by everybody or restricted to your patrons (at a reward level of your choosing). As for funding, you can choose to either get monthly payments from your patrons or “per creation” payments.

You can also set up “goals” that will be reached when your funding level hits a certain amount. These goals are non-binding and can be changed at any time.

Now, let’s address the varying platform fees.

Patreon has two pricing plans: Pro and Premium. Here’s what to expect with each:

Patreon Pro

• Patron Platform Fee: 8% + payment processing fees
• Monthly & annual subscriptions
• Free trials & special offers
• Membership tiers
• Priority support
• Engagement tools
• Analytics

Patreon Premium

• Patreon Platform Fee: 12% + payment processing fees
• All the features in Lite, plus:
• Dedicated partner manager
• Team accounts
• Merch for membership

One critique is that competing platforms allow you to offer different support tiers to backers while still charging a 5% platform fee. Unfortunately, you have to let Patreon take at least 8% of what you earn to have access to this common crowdfunding feature.

Based on the information we’ve gathered, we rate Patreon 4.3/5 for its terms and fees.

Patreon’s Application Process

Patreon’s application process is a breeze. Just start setting up your account, enter some basic personal information, attach your social media accounts, set up a payment method, and you can start earning money for your creations. There’s no lengthy prescreening process required.

After you’re on the platform and begin gaining subscribers, you can set your payments for automatic withdrawals on the fifth of every month. You can also initiate manual payments and receive funds in your account within one to five days of initiating the withdrawal.

Overall, we find the entire process to be quite simple, earning Patreon a rating of 4.6/5.

Sales & Advertising Transparency

Patreon is transparent regarding its services. Its website is professional, offers plenty of information, and isn’t gimmicky.

While Patreon does maintain social media accounts, updates are infrequent and don’t offer a ton of valuable information about the company.

We kept all of this top-of-mind when giving Patreon a rating of 4.8/5 for sales and advertising transparency.

Patreon Customer Service & Technical Support

For direct support, you can submit a question via the website or Twitter, and Patreon will respond via email from Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 6 PM PST.

Patreon has FAQs for creator issues: one for patron issues and one for general issues. Subscribers of the Premium plan have access to a dedicated partner manager. Patreon has profiles on Facebook, X/Twitter, and LinkedIn. Based on user reviews, the quality of support is good, although there are some complaints.

One thing Patreon doesn’t offer is phone support. Hopefully, at some point, Patreon will give creators this support option.

For customer service, we give Patreon a score of 3.6/5, as there are some areas where we would like to see improvement.

User Reviews

Patreon’s user reviews are mixed, with some users having no issues with the platform and others having multiple complaints. Like other crowdfunding sites, some of the complaints are logged by backers who have issues with their subscriptions or rewards.

Patreon receives 4.1/5 (based on 60+ reviews) on G2, 4.5/5 (based on 20+ reviews) from Software Advice, and 1.3/5 (based on 635+ reviews) from Trustpilot. We gave our own rating of 3.2/5 for Patreon’s user reviews.

Negative Patreon Reviews & Complaints

Some of the common complaints about Patreon from creators include:

• Accounts suspended for no reason
• Adult creators have faced increasing restriction
• Inadequate customer support
• Billing issues

Positive Patreon Reviews & Testimonials

While there are complaints, there are plenty of positive reviews. Here’s what users most like about Patreon:

• Easy to get started, with no prescreening
• Easy to set up & use
• Messaging options to keep in touch with patrons
• Customizable tier systems

Is Patreon Right For You?

Overall, we give Patreon a rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars. Patreon is a solid, reputable crowdfunder platform, but it isn’t for everybody. If you’re looking to raise funds to launch one particular project, such as the creation of a cool tech gizmo, look into Kickstarter. If you’re trying to raise money for a personal cause, GoFundMe is the way to go.

If, on the other hand, you’re an indie video game developer, a cartoonist, an author, a podcast host, a musician, or you’ve garnered a huge YouTube following, Patreon is well-tailored for you. As it can be difficult to get people to make even a small recurring financial commitment to you, it’s enormously helpful if you’ve already built up a large YouTube following and/or a heavy Twitter presence.

Nonetheless, if you (or your business) produce creative goods that inspire people, Patreon’s platform is precision-engineered to help you monetize doing what you already love. It’s a boon to creatives everywhere, it’s easy to set up and maintain, and it’s a reason for renewed optimism about the power of the internet to create opportunities for those who lack an institutional platform.

Although Patreon has made a number of missteps over the years that have called into question its commitment to creators, Patreon has shown an ability to learn from its mistakes.

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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