BigCommerce vs Shopify: Comparing The Leading Ecommerce Platforms

Choosing the right eCommerce platform for your business can be a daunting task. Shopify and BigCommerce are two of the leading eCommerce platforms that offer powerful features to help you create a high-performance store or website. However, each platform has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. To help you make an informed decision, we’ve put together a comparison of BigCommerce vs Shopify. We’ll compare the features, pricing, and more, so you can easily choose the best platform for your business. In this article, we perform BigCommerce vs Shopify comparison and help you choose the best one for your business:

What are BigCommerce and Shopify?

Both Shopify and BigCommerce are the most powerful eCommerce platforms that let you create, market, and grow your business through an online website. While both of them are excellent options to build your store, learn the differences between them to determine which is the best choice for you. 

In this blog post, we shall compare the key features of both platforms in terms of design, flexibility, ease of use, pricing, customer support, payment methods, and others that are essential in launching a good eCommerce store.    

BigCommerce vs Shopify Comparison 

1. Pricing

One of the first questions a user gets while choosing an eCommerce platform is “How much does it cost?” Both Shopify and BigCommerce offer a 14-day free trial to let you try out their features. Read on to learn the comparison of Shopify vs BigCommerce pricing:   

BigCommerce Pricing Plans: 

Standard: $ 29.95 per month 

Plus: $ 79.95 per month

Pro: $ 299.95 per month 

Enterprise: Obtained on Request 

Shopify Pricing Plans:

Basic: $29 per month

Shopify: $79 per month

Advanced:  $299 per month

Shopify Plus: $2,000 per month

One of the advantages of BigCommerce over Shopify is the transaction fees and the unlimited staff accounts it provides in the Standard Plan as opposed to Shopify where you have only 15 staff accounts and additional transactional fees even with the Advanced Plan. However, Shopify has the abandoned cart recovery feature in the basic plan whereas this feature can only be accessed in the Plus Plan in BigCommerce.   

2. Design 

Let’s accept it. No matter how functional your store is behind the curtains, you want to make it attractive so that your visitors are longing to stay longer and buy from your store. Let’s do a quick Shopify vs Bigcommerce comparison in terms of design. 

BigCommerce Themes

BigCommerce platform comes with a wide range of themes, sorted by industry, layout, and price. You can choose the type of industry and pick the right theme for your business. 

However, the BigCommerce free themes may look a little outdated and can trouble you if you are looking to grow your business over the long term. You might want to rebrand and move to a paid theme over time. The pricing range starts from $150 to $ 300.   

Shopify Themes 

The Shopify platform houses more than 100 designs/themes both free and paid so you can present your store online in a gorgeous way. You can group themes into specific categories so that it is easier to search for a specific theme with ease when you want any of them.

All the Shopify themes are modern and professional and allow the highest level of customization. The themes are mobile responsive and look great on all devices. The preview options display how the selected theme appears in the demo. The pricing of themes starts from $100 to $180. 

3. Marketing Features

As an eCommerce owner, you should realize the importance of Marketing to keep your online business running.  You should let the world know about what you can offer and how can you make their lives better through your solutions. How can you take your products to the audience in need? Marketing is the method to inform the world about your products/services. 

An eCommerce platform with good marketing features is required so you don’t have to spend extra money in incorporating those features from third-party apps. To be frank, BigCommerce has more in-built marketing features than Shopify whereas Shopify incorporates additional features by downloading apps from the Shopify app store. Scroll down to learn about the marketing features each platform offers.

BigCommerce Marketing Features

The BigCommerce advanced plan offers segmentation tools that help you categorize your audience and send promotional emails to turn them into those customers. You can also send abandoned cart recovery emails to the people who have abandoned their carts during the checkout process. Other marketing features include professional reporting tools, one-click Google Shopping integration, creating discount codes for shoppers, and other SEO practices.

Shopify Marketing Features

You get access to great insights into product performance that tells you how specific products are selling over time and other basic analytics. If you want to unlock all the other advanced analytics and sales reports, you can upgrade anytime to an advanced Shopify plan to avail the benefits.  Other marketing features on Shopify include automatic sitemaps and customizable URLs, analytics for product performance and financial reports, creating discount codes and gift cards, etc. 

4. Payment Gateways  

One of the key factors that decide customer experience is the ease of payments. When you have customers across the globe, your store should be compatible to accept payments from multiple currencies and across all corners of the world.  The platforms, Shopify or BigCommerce can integrate well with all major payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe or Square, etc. Shopify has its own payment processor whereas the retailers on BigCommerce should integrate with third-party apps to process the transactions.  

BigCommerce Payments

Unlike Shopify, BigCommerce doesn’t come with an in-built payment processor. The store owners should integrate with third-party payment gateways to receive payments from the buyers. The platform has 65 pre-integrated payment gateways such as Amazon Pay, PayPal, Stripe, etc.     

Shopify Payments

Shopify comes with an in-built payment provider that allows retailers to receive money directly through Shopify Payments. It also performs fraud analysis to detect any suspicious activity and ensure a fast, and secure transaction between buyers and sellers on Shopify. 

Additionally, Shopify offers instant setup and approval of payment gateways, full integration, and no extra fees or hidden fees involved. If you don’t like Shopify Payments or your country doesn’t support Shopify Payments, you can choose from the hundreds of third-party payment gateways based on your store location.  

5. Customer Support

If you want to create an unmatchable eCommerce experience for your customers, you should think beyond the basic features and functionalities. No matter how much money you have spent on building your eCommerce website, the real challenge comes when your website starts operating. Your store may face security issues, hang up abruptly, or fail to provide fast-loading pages to your users.

If the issues aren’t resolved immediately, your business can be at a higher risk. Ecommerce Customer Support is the process through which online businesses can provide technical assistance to their customers in resolving issues while creating a smooth user experience. Whether Shopify or BigCommerce, you will avail of the following support options in common:

• 24/7 Phone Support
• 24/7 live chat
• Help Center 
• Video tutorial 
• Email
• Support Forum 

BigCommerce Support 

Once you sign up for a free trial, you can schedule a 10-minute call from the BigCommerce support staff. Explain your business to them so that they can give better advice for improving your business. BigCommerce comes with an enterprise plan which provides top-priority support services to the subscribers. Once you purchase an enterprise plan, you can get in touch with highly skilled BigCommerce consultants for business suggestions. The BigCommerce experts help you customize your platform and connect with the existing systems.     

Shopify Support

Shopify Help Center is more clear than the BigCommerce Platform. If you need any help in operating Shopify, fill out the request form within the Shopify editor, and you are directed to the Shopify knowledge center where you can find all the resources related to Shopify. Unlike BigCommerce, you can avail of the Shopify Support services through social media.     

BigCommerce vs Shopify: When to prefer Shopify?

For many instances, Shopify emerges as an eCommerce market leader with tons of sales capabilities to improve your business profits in no time. If you want the abandoned cart recovery functionality at a cheaper price, you can opt for Shopify. 

If you are selling offline, Shopify offers a wide range of POS tools that can be accessed directly from the brand without having to depend upon external companies. 

The platform offers better opportunities to make your site look exceptional, with better templates and a variety of typefaces. The paid templates on Shopify are mostly better than the BigCommerce platform’s paid templates.    

BigCommerce vs Shopify: When to prefer BigCommerce?

You should prefer BigCommerce when you want built-in features without installing or paying for each of them. It is a top choice for companies who want to get rid of hefty transaction fees.

In terms of customer service, this platform provides phone access to different countries across the globe and you get unlimited staff accounts with the most basic plan.

BigCommerce is an excellent choice for large companies that need analytics to track their progress. With this platform, you get essential analytics and reports on all plans.

Final Verdict: BigCommerce vs Shopify-Which is better?

We have experience working with both eCommerce platforms and thus we are well aware of what the users are likely to resonate with. 

For the startups or entrepreneurs just starting out,  you need a platform that can be used right away without much technical expertise, with a minimum learning curve and a straightforward structure, the Shopify platform is powerful enough to provide the essential features you ever need. 

You get the liberty to perform experimentation with your eCommerce platform without worrying about anything. Since both platforms offer free trials, if you don’t love Shopify, you can switch over to BigCommerce anytime. 

What platform are you using? How is your experience? Share your thoughts in the comments down below. Thanks for reading!