Indiegogo
Two years before the launch of Kickstarter, the founders of crowdfunding platform Indiegogo germinated a similar concept. In 2008, they launched their San Francisco website for the independent film industry, broadening it the following year to encompass music and other media.
The company claims to be less restrictive than Kickstarter because Indiegogo doesn’t have a review process requiring that a project fit into a clearly defined category––music or photography, for example––and meet other standards.
“Our philosophy is that there shouldn’t be a gatekeeper and that funding should be open to anyone,” says Indiegogo’s Head of Music, Karen Bair. “Who are we to say that anyone’s idea is a bad idea?”
Perhaps the greatest distinction between Indiegogo and Kickstarter is that while the latter platform strictly offers all-or-nothing funding for projects, the former website has a “flexible funding” option allowing campaigners to keep the money they raise, even if they don’t reach their total funding goal.
“A common misperception about crowdfunding is that it’s an ‘all or nothing’ attempt, but it is quite the contrary,” Bair says. “Many campaigners just need to raise funds to get them to the next level, which is why even if a campaign doesn’t ultimately reach its target, it can still be a success.”
Indiegogo––which, unlike Kickstarter, doesn’t release data related to success rates or other metrics––charges a four percent fee on money raised by projects that meet their fundraising goal and a nine percent fee on projects that don’t. Additional third party payment processing fees run about three percent, and international wire fees also apply.
Also, while Kickstarter (since it uses Amazon payment methods) is only available to project creators who are based in the US or the UK, Indiegogo––which uses Paypal instead––says it has campaigners living in 193 countries.
Bair notes that Indiegogo’s biggest success story, a $341,000 campaign by mathcore act Protest the Hero, could not have happened on Kickstarter, because the band members are Canadian.
