Table of Contents
Where do you buy your products online?
Do you look for the best price or the most knowledgeable retailer?
NOTE: If you have a local bike shop please try to support them first with your business. However, some riders don’t have local bike shops, their bike shops don’t offer the product they’re after, or they can’t order it in time. In these cases looking online is your best answer to get what you need.
Making Choices:
If you’re looking to buy a mountain bike or mountain bike parts online you are faced with a lot of choices. There are a lot of online stores out there and some are definitely better than others. Often you need to decide whether or not you’re looking for the cheapest price for a particular product or if you want the best service.
Retailer Categories:
In this article I’ve created two categories that I feel the top online shops fall into. There are the “Inexpensive and Impersonal” shops and there are the “Rider focused and Knowledgeable” shops. Depending on your situation you can determine which shop to choose. If you know what you’re looking for, often times the cheapest route is what you’re after. If you’re in a rush for a part, knowing the shop location to judge how long the ship time will be can also factor in to your decision.
Questions And Help:
A lot of times riders don’t know what they want and really need some knowledgeable help to guide them. This is also important in choosing a shop to buy products from. Are you looking for a complete bike or just a frame? Do you have fitment questions? How easy is it to return something? All are important questions that a lot of riders ask.
Choose What Is Best For You:
Hopefully with this article I can steer you towards some really great American online mountain bike shops. In my experience I feel these shops offer the cream of the crop online and can be trusted. If you have any shops that you like to use that I haven’t mentioned, let us know down in the comments.
Commission Disclaimer
Any links to retailers from this article provide a compensation commission back to OldGloryMTB.com for referring customers to their site that buy products. This helps keep us out on the trails checking out new gear to write about here on the site.
Our Favorites!
#1
BEST FOR…
selection and price
#2
BEST FOR…
Customer service and knowledge
Rider Focused Shops
And Knowledgeable
Competitive Cyclist – Utah
What makes Competitive Cyclist special:
- Detailed information on each product
- Vast selection of high end components
- They include real weights on many products
- Great bike builder
- Create their own product video reviews
- Offer unconditional lifetime returns
Mountain bike frame brands available:
- Ibis
- Niner
- Orbea
- Pivot
- Santa Cruz
- Yeti
Art’s Cyclery – California
What Makes Art’s Cyclery Special:
- Huge product selection with great prices
- Extra info like service manuals and manufacturer videos on product pages.
- Real weights on all products (where weight is important)
- Top quality youtube channel (currently 60k subscribers) with new videos released weekly.
- Free shipping on orders over $50, same day processing/shipment if ordered before 3pm
- Call in and talk directly to a knowledge sales person.
Mountain Bike Frame Brands
- Pivot
- Cannondale
- Juliana
- Marin
- Orbea
- Santa Cruz
- Specialized
Fanatik Bike – Washington
What makes Fanatik Bike special:
- Small shop with big selection
- Primarily focused on gravity and trail riding
- Knowledgeable staff that ride as much or more than you
- One of the only places in the USA to purchase Morewood Bikes
- Have put together a great photo gallery of custom builds
Mountain bike frame brands available:
- Banshee
- Devinci
- Evil
- Ibis
- Intense
- Morewood
- Niner
- Nukeproof
- Turner
Go Ride – Utah
What makes Go Ride special:
- One of the oldest online mountain bike shops with lots of experience
- Full Fox suspension service with 1-2 day turnaround
- Nice custom bike gallery full of hot bikes
Mountain bike frame brands available:
- Giant
- Intense
- Pivot
- Surly
- Turner
- Ventana
- Yeti
Wrench Science – California
What makes Wrench Science special:
- Highly detailed custom bike builder with built in logic to show parts that are guaranteed to fit the frame and parts you pick
- Real weights on most products
- Focused on high end products
- Large gallery of complete built bikes
Mountain bike frame brands available:
- BMC
- Colnago
- Ellsworth
- Ibis
- Intense
- Knolly
- Litespeed
- Moots
- Niner
- Pinarello
- Turner Yeti
TIP: Find The Lowest Price
Inexpensive Online Stores
“but impersonal”
Amazon – Ship from all across United States
What makes Amazon special:
- Amazon Prime: If you’re a subscriber, it’s a no-brainer to check them out for misc tools and such
- Product selection from Amazon directly and partner stores, means more total products available
- Easy to find cheapest price on products
- User reviews are sometimes helpful
Mountain bike frame brands available:
- Diamondback
- Kona
- Mongoose
Jenson USA – California
What makes Jenson USA special:
- Most respected of the online mega shops
- Large selection of parts and accessories
- Easy navigation with detailed filters to find the right product
Mountain bike frame brands available:
- Chromag
- Deity
- Ibis Bicycles
- Intense Cycles
- Kona
- Niner
- Spot Brand
- Yeti Cycles
Mountain Bikes (ready to ride) available:
- Banshee
- Breezer
- Chromag
- Diamondback
- Evil
- Giant Bicycles
- GT Bicycles
- Ibis Bicycles
- Jamis Bikes
- Knolly
- Kona
- Niner
- Orbea
- Wilier Tristina
- Yeti Cycles
Universal Cycles – Oregon
What makes Universal Cycles special:
- They have flex shipping that gets your order to you quicker by shipping from multiple warehouses in Oregon, Utah, New Mexico, and Minnesota.
- Massive selection of over 30,000 products
- 30 second online price matches
- Custom handbuilt wheelsets can be created online
Mountain bike frame brands available:
- Black Market
- DMR
- Identiti
- Mutant
- NS Bikes
- Salsa
- Soma
- Spank
- Surly
- Voodoo
Closed Bike Stores
A Personal Note: running a small business is one of the dreams and hopes of many Americans. It’s also one of the hardest things to do where big money and big budgets dominate our conscious on TV, on Facebook, and all the other social media channels we frequent.
While it’s tempting to always buy from the big box retailers for the convenience and low prices, I urge every person reading this article to look at the closed stores below.
This site has been running since 2013 and I’ve made it a point to keep a running list of the businesses that have ever been recommended on this page. A point to note, I only have at most 10 stores on this page. And now they’re closed, out of business, gone forever.
While you owe me nothing, I challenge you to give our small business owners a chance at your business. Take the trail less traveled and visit their store online.
Go online and check out these small bike stores
Competition is good. Without it, the big box stores someday may get expensive with the lack of competition
While we frequent the big retailers for our everyday things, give back to the MTB community. Do all you can to buy from small bike stores.
- Drop N Zone – closed
- Speedgoat – closed
- Pricepoint – closed
- QBike – closed
Missed One?
If you like an online bike store that carries a bunch of American made bikes or parts, but it’s not on this list, drop a comment below!
It is super helpful for us to spread the word.
Amazon?? Really???
Lots of retailers and lots of parts. Prime shipping is ultra quick too. I’m not the first to suggest this for sure.
I like how you split them into “Inexpensive and Impersonal” and “Rider focused and Knowledgeable” groups. I have to admit, I’m a cheapskate and lean towards the inexpensive and impersonal stores.
The commenter before me disagrees, but I have to second your choice of Amazon.com. For buying things like tubes, small tools, and helmets Amazon is usually great. The prices generally beat the competition and the free shipping with Prime or on orders over $35 is really nice.
I wonder if Performance/Nashbar should be included in this list. I know some people aren’t big fans, but they have good prices on a lot of entry level stuff.
I came here searching for devoted biking fans, and i think that you’re one
i stumbled here searching for some biking fans, and i assume that i found one
Pricepoint is closed.
Thanks. I need to go back and update this article with some new vendors that I’ve really had some good success with lately.
Hello Caldwell, I am a fan of your blog, and I love how you tackled this article! Thanks for your devotion bro
any1 have a Whipp ( from Sette)
..was looking for the seat model and or seatpost diameter
got my seat stolen!
cheerz
Got excited for a moment that pricepoint was back. Also, you forgot Nashbar.
Thanks for the info, we removed Pricepoint from the list.
Any thoughts or anyone know much about CentreCityCycles? Comments seemed 50/50. I’m looking to order a new Kona and he has a really good variety. Thanks Josh
WOW! THANKS FOR THE LIST!
Wow this is one of the best article for all readers especially for those American’s who love to visit these online stores for their own interest and I hope all the readers will love this. Thanks for sharing this article with all of us