Kickstarter Reviews 1,256

Kickarter is a total scam. Somewhere in the background are organised people giving money to their friends. I signed up and got 0 investers, at the same time, a scam master advertised his game, literally 8 years ago now and has still not delievered, but he got $16,000 from hundreds of pledges. Its a scam, its like the system is giving to people regardless and staving people like me. It upset me because you might have thought if it was real that I might have had a pledge or two, maybe a dollar or two, but nothing. 8 years later, my game has had hundreds of players and thousands of games made and played, and his has yet to see the light of day. THe irony was that his whle selling point was AI, and here we are 2026, and he still cant deliver. Its like a lot of things in life, the usual suspects get it all, even if they cant deliver and idiots like me burnn and die in hell because they dont fir into the police state that we all exist in.

Kickstarter Has Become a Safe Haven for Scams
Kickstarter markets itself as a platform for innovation. In reality, it has become a low-risk playground for scammers with almost zero accountability.
I backed the Grinista coffee grinder—a project that looked professional, well-marketed, and convincingly engineered. It turned out to be a complete scam. No product. No meaningful updates. No transparency. Just endless delays, excuses, and eventually silence.
What’s worse than the scam itself is Kickstarter’s total abdication of responsibility. Despite clear evidence that this project was never going to deliver, Kickstarter hides behind its tired disclaimer of “you’re backing a project, not buying a product.” That line might cover them legally, but it doesn’t excuse facilitating fraud while continuing to collect fees.
Kickstarter:
Takes creators’ money upfront
Takes backers’ money upfront
Then washes its hands when creators disappear
There is no effective due diligence, no enforcement, and no meaningful protection for backers. Reporting the project achieves nothing. Refunds are impossible. Accountability is nonexistent.
At this point, Kickstarter isn’t a crowdfunding platform—it’s a marketing site for unverified promises, where scammers face little downside and backers carry all the risk.
If you’re considering backing anything on Kickstarter, assume your money is gone the moment you click “pledge.” Unless you’re comfortable donating to a stranger with no consequences, stay away.

A Cautionary Tale for Conscious Creators – Read Before You Launch

I wish I had seen these reviews before investing my time, energy, and vision into Kickstarter. What began as a hopeful journey to fund conscious innovation ended in disappointment, deception, and deep frustration.

Kickstarter offers zero real customer support — no phone number, no live agent, no accountability. You’re handed off to automated replies and outdated help pages, while scammers run rampant and creators are left with no recourse. This is not a platform for integrity-based fundraising — it’s a broken system in disguise.

The experience felt like a spiritual and emotional siphon. Instead of empowerment, I was met with invisibility. If you’re building a mission rooted in service, healing, or sacred tech (like I was with SOBER SYNQ), this is not the soil to plant your seed. There are better ecosystems that honor transparency, ethics, and real human support.

With a Trustpilot rating of 1.1 out of 5 stars from over 1,000 users, this isn’t just a fluke — it’s a systemic failure. And unfortunately, I became part of that statistic.

To fellow visionaries: Protect your time. Protect your dream. Choose platforms that treat your work with the respect it deserves.

Wow! This Kickstarter thing is so rubbish I thought there will be some kind of minimum protection for the money we pay. I backed up the project for Elara robot and its been years but didn’t receive anything. I was thinking of raising a complaint and get the money back but what Kickstarter offers is really horrible. If the creator doesn’t fulfill his promise your money is just gone and on top of that the Kickstarter says they will monitor and ban and bla bla but not give your money back. Unfortunately i closed that bank account and neither i got that old card so not sure what to do.

Not paying again for anything on Kickstarter

#kickstarterscam

#avoidkickstarter

4 years since our substantial startup payment to Phantom Chess & still nothing delivered... They lead you along the garden path releasing updates occasionally saying they're improving this & that, then request an extra payment for delivery... then 6 months later, still nothing... Went onto their website to find you could purchase the boards & have them delivered within 2 weeks - oh, for a considerable mark-up ofcourse! Asked why ours hadn't been delivered & there's no reply... Clearly just out to make as much profit as possible & ignore the start-up people. Pathetic!! Kickstarter is enabling FRAUD!

I am currently considering deleting my second/third ever attempt at this platform today because this is the worst yet. I have had several men try to push for e-mailing them off Kickstarter. I don't dare try again to ask Kickstarter to shut this down because their third world country exploited salary staffers are instructed not to take anything seriously. Don't bother.

Kickstarter is an unsafe platform for groups like women, queer people, or anyone vulnerable to users confusing this platform with dismissive attitudes and control issues. The men donating to things on here are the incel crowd, and Kickstarter does not to prevent this.

Today, after I received an odd note from a male user who was already professionally thanked earlier and explained the rules, I've had enough.

I have had men quiz me about the prizes and claim not to understand like this is OnlyFans or Fansly with dumb excuses to get me in conversations.

It seems one of the weirdos marked me as spam or some complaint because after I would not respond to one who wanted communication off the website, my Kickstarter project quit being shown to people and stopped receiving donations, donations of which, mind you, are dropped anyway.

There's a serious problem at work here on Kickstarter. It probably is efficient for old nuns or tech men fundraising for startup design projects. I do not recommend it for anyone outside of those groups.

My project is clear that I am not doing this alone, my profile image is not female or human, but I'm getting strange people who have Googled my company and hit on me in speech directed towards women. Same derogatory issues I had from social media. I know the pattern.

I'm sure some will accuse me of exaggerating, so them I say, have a female pal under 75 start a Kickstarter with a female led project empowering women as a goal, and get back to me. This platform is unsafe for female users.

My prior attempts had oddballs. This one has the most aggressive men possible. The language is very coded at control and wanting chitchat. Sorry, if you can't say what it is and write epic paragraphs why our communication has to be off Kickstarter with several means of contact for you, pressuring me? You aren't worth my time.

I have attempted at least 4 different products on this legalized thievery platform. Only once did I actually receive a finished product. This is over several years of participation. Just hundreds of dollars absconded with. Never again will I send one dime to support anything. So many great design potentials but funding is never enough due to bad management, yet, no consequences... I have been in product development for many years so I should have known better. I guess one out of 4 isn't terrible but I am not a philanthropist and will never fund anything AGAIN!!

Sadly, I can't give lower than 1* otherwise I would. Purchased a police patrolman watch. However, i'm sure i'm not the only one caught out by the companies clever advertising. These watches are cheap, nasty and probably not worth more than £10. This was 5yrs ago, but only allowed to review within 12 month period. P.S:- If the battery needs changing, good luck trying to adjust to cotrect time/date.....Garbage.

Kickstarter has turned into a place of legalized piracy. Over the last year, I’ve lost money and received zero rewards from three different companies, including some “big name” ones. It’s absurd that despite the countless reports piling up every single day, Kickstarter — the platform that hosts them — does absolutely nothing to protect backers.

Avoid like the plague.

I have tried setting up my campaign with this company, and it has been a complete disaster. I definitely will go somewhere else. They rejected my campaign and claimed I didn’t follow their policy, but as I look at other campaigns that are similar to mine, I don’t see any differences. I realized that they don’t owe a response, so I will just make a complaint.

not good experience, the products never come

kickstarter has one mission and one mission only: to discourage and frustrate you as much as possible:

it took me 10h to create a project there, after replying to a billion standard messages they send everyone, it took me 2 weeks to convince them to launch, after a lot of angry messages told them:

either launch the project
or delete all my data
what did kickstarter staff do?
launch the project
then deleted the account
usually never use such strong language but: stay as far away from frustrating ... smoking ... as possible, please someone delete that platform or better: Mr Taylor give it to someone who is competent (in case of lack of competence and imagination: take a look at gofundme for inspiration).

I bought in @ $99 to purchase first run for a sun shade to keep my home's air conditioner cooler. I never received the shade, never received updates after the first one, and Kickstarter won't help - their excuse is they can't find any information on the company. Kickstarter got 99$$ from my VISA so they aren't they helping scammers take advantage of consumers.

Supported a project to develop a game. I personally sent about $500 through PayPal to purchase the software then helped the project by buying the largest support package of about $400. Ive given countless other donations to this sake rotten individual who always drummed up some fake controversy about how his money was getting stolen from him to draw sympathy from his supporters and gain more money. Claimed he was getting hit with charge-backs, claimed his house that he was moving into was damaged, claimed his landlord was shady, claimed he was getting pulled over by cops looking for some other person always made tons of claims. Every few months I report this to Kickstarter waiting for them to investigate fraud as they policy states a project can fail and thats the risk but a creater asking for support on a project they never intend to finish is not allowed. They must make a good faith effort. The person did the most minimal effort required to produce the game and then radio silence and no further communication. He has now gone 1 year without an update which father's my theory that it was a ponzi scheme and Kickstarter is now liable for the crime via proxy for facilitating it and failing to enforce their rules. I encourage everyone to start up and join in a class-action against this fraud of a company for failing to act where legally required to do so. I'm not going to blast the creators name here (even though id be legally correct to do so as nothing I've claimed is false) but Kickstarter you have my monthly report for the past 1 year so you know who to investigate and remember WE DO NOT FORGIVE. WE DO NOT FORGET!

Edit: actual date of incident is 21 April 2024 system won't let me go back any further.

Kickstarter has become a risky platform where fraudulent campaigns often go unchecked, leaving backers with lost money and no meaningful protection or accountability.

If I could rate it a zero I would. I supported the Sheggell bird feeder for $264. Like most others, the creators ghosted me. I received nothing. No more Kickstarter campaigns!

No accountability from Kickstarter for creators breaking their own rules.
Got caught out by an obvious scam project. $100's lost. No delivery no, nothing.
My advice AVOID

Backed a board game called Fluffy Dragons, which went completely silent - even though the organiser has been actively backing other projects, they've just run off with our money.

I understand that kickstarter is not a store, but my problem comes when they don't even respond to you reporting projects. The comments on this project show that others have reported it too but received zero communication from Kickstarter. It really feels like the platform doesn't care about backers at all.

Do not order anything from them there is no guarantee that anything would get delivered

Absolutely no due diligence on projects, no support for backers and they continue to support projects where the creators failed to fulfil previous campaigns.

I backed a campaign seven years ago which is still to deliver. Kickstarter endorse their new campaigns even though they are still to complete old ones. They don’t care for anything but their platform fees.