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All BigCommerce Features - Competitor Feature Comparison

Last updated: September 01, 2023
This article has been written and researched by our expert Avada through a precise methodology. Learn more about our methodology

Roger

Author

Daniel

Researcher

BigCommerce is a lot more than just an eCommerce platform. It comes with some excellent store management features that will help you remain on top of your company right out of the box. A comprehensive product list, versatile delivery & real-time quotes, coupon and discounting tools, and more are just a few of the cool native features. BigCommerce has Amazon and eBay integrations and social selling capabilities that allow you to sell on Facebook.

The shipping capabilities of the solution are very impressive. The only cloud solution with deep integration with ShipperHQ, a sophisticated shipping rate calculator and rules engine, is BigCommerce. With this integration, providing real-time quotes and applying customized shipping rates is a breeze.

Features of BigCommerce

Storefront Design

Storefront Design

Page Builder Visual Editor

No coding is required to launch and edit site pages using a drag-and-drop solution.

Theme Customization

Themes with built-in HTML, CSS, and Javascript are entirely customizable.

Checkout Customization

With a server-to-server checkout API and SDK, you can customize any aspect of the checkout process.

Mobile Optimization

With any BigCommerce theme, you can make your site mobile-friendly from the homepage to the checkout.

Preview Before Publishing

Use the Stencil CLI tool to make, test quickly, and deploy changes in a local environment.

Use the Stencil CLI tool to make, test quickly, and deploy changes in a local environment.

Storefront Conversion

Coupons & Discounts

No scripting is needed to create over 70 native discounts and promotions.

Site Speed

With Google Cloud Platform infrastructure, Google AMP, and Akamai Image Manager built-in, your store will be lightning fast.

Merchandising

To configure your merchandising, use drag-and-drop features, personalized product suggestions, and headless commerce APIs.

Digital Wallets

Allow your customers to pay with various digital wallets, including Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, PayPal One Touch, and others.

Allow your customers to pay with various digital wallets, including Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, PayPal One Touch, and others.

SEO

Customizable, SEO-friendly URLs, as well as out-of-the-box Metadata and robots.txt editing, can help you get more traffic.

Faceted Search

Elasticsearch-based faceted search with custom field support for more refined searching. We also work with third-party tools that are best-in-class.

Headless Commerce

BigCommerce for WordPress

With a pre-built plugin for brands with an editorial or content emphasis, you can link your WordPress site to BigCommerce’s powerful commerce engine.

Acquia Digital Experience Integration

With BigCommerce’s Acquia Digital Experience integration, you can combine headless commerce with advanced business content management.

Headless Commerce in React.js/Vue.js (F/E Framework)

Keep complete control of your platform while BigCommerce handles administration and checkout for a seamless native app experience.

Channels Toolkit

Easily find, test, and onboard headless solutions from the BigCommerce control panel, saving time and effort for developers.

Easily find, test, and onboard headless solutions from the BigCommerce control panel, saving time and effort for developers.

Cross-channel Commerce

Marketplaces

Integrate with top marketplaces like eBay, Amazon, and Google Shopping to sell where the customers are shopping.

Social Commerce

With Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram integrations, you can capture more customers on social media.

Brick & Mortar

Native POS programs, such as Teamwork Commerce and others, will automatically update in-store sales.

Multi-Storefront

With a single username, you can easily move between storefronts.

B2B

B2B

Customer Groups

Without needing to manage a second location, segment the customers for pricing, product access, and promotions.

Price Lists

Give B2B customers a B2C-like experience by offering personalized pricing for consumer groups at the SKU level.

Bulk Pricing

Monitor bulk pricing for individual customers or consumer groups by customizing down to the SKU standard.

Purchase Orders

Payment by purchase order is available to authorized customers through BigCommerce solution tech partners.

Punch Out

BigCommerce can be framed and sequenced to suit your ERP punch-out solution. Alternatively, you can use PunchOut2Go, our best-in-class partner.

Quote Management

Quotes can be managed using native CSR quote management and third-party applications like Quote Ninja and BundleB2B.

B2B Payment

With a wide range of flexible payment methods and credit authorization, you can make it easier for your customers to pay.

Advanced Search

Use Elasticsearch to power faceted search in your shop, or integrate with best-of-breed solutions for more complex search criteria.

APIs

APIs Use the fastest APIs in the industry to automatically sync data from 3rd party systems (like ERPs) into BigCommerce.

APIs Use the fastest APIs in the industry to automatically sync data from 3rd party systems (like ERPs) into BigCommerce.

International

Multi-Currency

Accept payments in over 100 currencies and provide local payment methods through the portal of your choice to meet the needs of your international customers.

Multi-Language

Translation is available through applications and APIs for third-party translation providers, allowing you to localize the BigCommerce frontend in any language.

Cross-Border Fulfillment

Integrate natively with ShipperHQ to provide reliable cross-border shipping quotes.

Global CDN

Your site will load easily anywhere in the world thanks to our strong CDN.

Offices Around the World

With offices in the UK, Australia, and the United States, we’re never far away.

Core Commerce Features

Scalable Catalog

Manage the entire product catalog from the BigCommerce control panel, or use the Catalog API to push data from an external device.

Shipping

BigCommerce provides industry-leading prices, and a diverse network of partners can handle any aspect of your shipping and fulfillment requirements.

Tax

Using Avalara Avatax or our custom tax tables to automate your sales taxes.

Staging Environment

Using the Stencil CLI method, you can create, test, and push changes in a local environment without any downtime.

Vaulting

For multiple gateways, BigCommerce offers native credit card vaulting.

Refunds & Returns

Allow customers to request refunds or partial refunds directly from their accounts.

Customer Groups

Custom pricing allows you to create defined customer segments and corresponding site experiences right out of the box.

Reporting & Analytics

The BigCommerce Analytics Dashboard provides real-time business effects with vital metrics for orders, customer data, marketing, and more.

SSO

For custom single sign-on (SSO) or plug-and-play partner solutions like LoginRadius or Okta, use our customer login API.

For custom single sign-on (SSO) or plug-and-play partner solutions like LoginRadius or Okta, use our customer login API.

Open Platform

API Breadth

The API has access to more than 90% of the BigCommerce platform’s results.

API Performance

BigCommerce supports over 400 calls per second, making it possible to perform 24,000 product updates in under a minute.

CP & Storefront SSO

For custom backend SSO, use our login API, or go for a best-of-breed partner solution like LoginRadius, Okta, or OneLogin.

Headless Commerce

Server-to-server API functions for Headless Commerce allow for a full headless commerce experience.

SEO

Customizable, SEO-friendly URLs, as well as out-of-the-box Metadata and robots.txt editing, can help you get more traffic.

Reliability & Security

World-Class Uptime

BigCommerce runs on a High Availability (HA) infrastructure that allows us to provide our merchants with 99.99 percent uptime, resiliency, and efficiency.

Certified Secure

As a Merchant and Service Provider, BigCommerce is ISO/IEC 27001:2013 accredited and PCI DSS 3.1, Level 1 certified.

Backup and Restore

To minimize possible loss, reinforce the store’s data with two data centers and a third, back-up data center that are spatially isolated.

Ecommerce Expertise

Services

Services are launched quickly with the assistance of in-house experts who have a thorough understanding of your market, KPIs, and objectives.

Support

BigCommerce provides supplementary Account Management, Solution Architecting, Strategic Account Management, Implementation Project Management, and in-house Catalog Transfer Services, as well as 24/7 technical support.

Documentation

With appropriate documents and tools for BigCommerce merchants, you can get the answers you need.

APIs

APIs Use APIs and superior data orchestration to link the BigCommerce platform to the rest of your ecosystem.

Ecosystem

Get access to hundreds of applications that can help you extend your features, as well as APIs that integrate seamlessly with your infrastructure.

Get access to hundreds of applications that can help you extend your features, as well as APIs that integrate seamlessly with your infrastructure.

Competitor Comparison

Each eCommerce platform has its own set of benefits and drawbacks. Businesses must assess the different platforms based on their own unique requirements and use cases. oHere is an overview of the comparison between BigCommerce and some of the most popular eCommerce platforms.

BigCommerce vs Shopify

Design and Flexibility

As important as it is for your store to function properly, you also want it to look appealing enough on the front end for your customers to want to shop. Here’s how BigCommerce and Shopify’s store design choices compare.

Bigcommerce

Themes for BigCommerce are organized by sector, layout, and price. There are a lot of sectors to choose from, but not quite as many as with Shopify. BigCommerce’s free themes, on the other hand, might look a little dated, which isn’t ideal if you’re trying to expand your company in the long run. This will almost certainly necessitate a rebrand and the switch to a paying theme in the future. These are priced between $150 and $300.

Shopify

Shopify themes are available in a variety of industries and styles, with prices ranging from $100 to $180. It’s simple to find your ideal theme by filtering by shape, store size, sector, navigation style, and other factors. Shopify’s themes are modern and professional, whether you choose the free or paid choices. The Shopify themes make for a great deal of customization. They’re simple to customize and appear professional.

Just a few of BigCommerce’s themes are open to mobile devices. However, all of Shopify’s themes are mobile sensitive and will reformat to suit the required screen size. You can also make unlimited changes to both versions to ensure that your site looks fantastic on every platform. In the demo, Shopify also allows for a smartphone preview.

Inventory Management

BigCommerce

To control stock levels and understand order patterns, BigCommerce provides a simple, native, and efficient inventory management system. With seamless integration between online and offline platforms, you can keep track of your inventory.

Shopify

Set up inventory tracking, display your inventory, change your inventory counts, and view the history of inventory changes for product variants in Shopify’s inventory region.

Sales Channels

BigCommerce

The platform includes BigCommerce Channel Manager, designed to help retailers increase revenue while simplifying multi-channel selling. You will be able to connect your store and start selling on Facebook, Pinterest, and eBay.

Shopify

You may use Shopify to sell your goods through a variety of online marketplaces. You can keep track of your items, orders, and customers in one location by linking each sales channel to Shopify. Shopify works for a variety of online distribution platforms, including Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Instagram, and others.

hopify works for a variety of online distribution platforms, including Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Instagram, and others.

Point-Of-Sale

BigCommerce

BigCommerce connects your online store with point-of-sale systems, allowing you to sell both online and offline. It also allows you to control your product catalog from a single location and sync inventory across multiple locations. Many of the POS integrations provide both online and offline payment processing. To use POS with BigCommerce, you’ll need to use hardware from third-party platforms like Hike, Vend, and Clover.

Shopify

On the other hand, Shopify offers an app for IOS and Android that functions as a point-of-sale device that you can use to sell your goods in person.

Shipping and Payments

BigCommerce

When it comes to third-party real-time delivery rates, BigCommerce allows you to use this feature on all of its plans, while Shopify requires you to be on the “Advanced Shopify” plan. If you’re in the United States, Australia, or Canada, and “Shopify Shipping” is available on all plans, you can get discounted shipping labels without having to create your own account.

Shopify

On the other hand, Shopify charges 0% on all plans if you use their own “Shopify Payments” method to process credit card purchases. Shopify Payments is Shopify’s in-house payment processor, obviating the need for a third-party payment processor. The most important thing to remember about Shopify Payments is that it is only available in those countries. If you don’t live in one of those countries, you’ll have to pay transaction fees and use an external payment gateway service.

Dropshipping

The ability to quickly and easily procure goods from manufacturers, add them to their shop, and have the sale and shipping processes automated is the most important thing for drop shippers.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce also has a decent app store, which includes a couple of excellent product sourcing applications. The standard of BigCommerce’s other applications, on the other hand, varies greatly, and none of them are as well-known and detailed as Oberlo.

Shopify

Shopify’s collaboration with Oberlo is its standout feature for drop shippers in this regard. Oberlo is your one-stop-shop for a wide range of products at wholesale prices. On the Shopify app store, several related applications concentrate on different niches, marketplaces, or regions. They’re almost all highly regarded and excellent at what they do because of Shopify’s strict curation standards.

Despite the fact that both platforms have apps that allow you to do everything from source items to set up shipping through your suppliers, Shopify’s range simply has the highest quality, and Oberlo is the one powerful tool that gives Shopify the edge in dropshipping.

Marketing Features

BigCommerce

Email marketing allows you to quickly reach out to consumers and sell your goods. BigCommerce integrates the store’s data with popular email marketing platforms like MailChimp and G Suite.

Another valuable marketing feature is that BigCommerce offers features that are aligned with SEO best practices, ensuring that all of the pages have industry-standard SEO. In addition, you will have complete control over URLs, title tags, header tags, and metadata. When the name or URL of a product, category, or web page is updated in BigCommerce, 301 redirects are generated automatically.

Shopify

Shopify Email, on the other hand, has built-in tools to help you create long-term customer relationships. You can select from a variety of ready-to-use models on Shopify and start using them right away. Inside your dashboard, you can even manage and evaluate all marketing activities.

Shopify’s SEO features a custom title tag and meta summary configuration with a simple interface in every product and page editor, allowing for on-page optimization. Inside Shopify, 301-redirects are also simple to set up and are triggered automatically when a page or product URL changes.

Scalability

BigCommerce

The functionality of an eCommerce shopping cart is critical. It ensures that your visitors find you, stay for a while, and don’t leave because your website is sluggish. Visitors expect sites to load quickly in terms of load time and page speed. This is also important for results, which is an important feature of successful user experiences. Your chances of converting customers are better if your site is fast. Both platforms load quickly, with Shopify being the quicker of the two, but BigCommerce’s average time isn’t poor either. Shopify was first among the top 10 eCommerce platforms, with pages loading in an average of 1.4 seconds, while BigCommerce sites take 2.4 seconds to load.

Expanding your sales to international markets can have a significant impact on your business. If you sell in the currency that your web users use, you will usually get more online sales. Allowing your future buyers to select their own currency is a smart idea if you’re selling in several countries. Shopify allows you to do this to some extent right out of the box: its free ‘Debut’ and ‘Brooklyn’ themes have a currency selector. If you don’t use one of these themes, you’ll need to add some code to your site to make the selector work.

Shopify

An automatic currency conversion, which uses IP addresses to determine visitor locations and present prices in the appropriate currency, is more useful than a currency selector. If you’re on the Shopify Plus plan or using a third-party app, this is only available in Shopify. Users can be prompted to move currencies using Shopify’s free “Geolocation” software. This is convenient, but not as convenient as automated currency conversion. You’ll get a much better multi-currency solution out of the box with all BigCommerce free themes, one that allows for automatic currency conversion based on IP.

Security

BigCommerce

One of the advantages of introducing protection for eCommerce is that you can gain your customers’ loyalty by making them feel comfortable purchasing from you while also protecting their confidential data and that of your online store. When you put the right security measures in place on your website, you’re also ensuring your customers’ privacy and dignity, as none of the information they post online will be used without their permission or consent.

BigCommerce offers several layers of strong protection for all of the sites it hosts as a SaaS. To defend against credit card data breaches, all servers are PCI DSS level 1 accredited. Additional security features include perimeter and server-specific firewalls, file integrity scanners, intrusion detection software, human monitoring 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and fraud transaction authentication. It’s fair to say that BigCommerce’s approach to security leaves a lot to be desired.

Shopify

As well as an SSL certificate for a particular domain or subdomain provided by a trusted third party. It ensures that all information exchanged between a user and the site is kept secret by verifying that a protected web page is properly encrypted. All of Shopify’s stores are PCI compliant by default, ensuring that payment information and business details are kept safe for you and your customers.

After your custom domain has been properly added, Shopify will provide SSL certificates to your store. SSL certificates encrypt your store’s content and publish it using HTTPS instead of HTTP, which improves protection.

SSL certificates encrypt your store's content and publish it using HTTPS instead of HTTP, which improves protection.

BigCommerce vs Shopify Plus

Cost

Shopify Plus

It is vital to optimize the costs in order to run a profitable company. Since Shopify Plus does not publish comprehensive pricing on their website, you will need to contact them to obtain this information. You can, for example, bargain for lower prices based on your sales volume.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce’s website, like Shopify Plus, does not feature comprehensive pricing. They also ask that you contact them for personalized pricing. It’s worth remembering that BigCommerce boasts that its custom pricing is less expensive than Magento and Shopify Plus.

All in all, the pricing of BigCommerce might be lower than Shopify Plus.

Support

Shopify Plus

With a Shopify Plus package, you’ll have access to a dedicated Merchant Success Manager who will assist you via email, phone, and live chat 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You may seek their assistance with a variety of issues, including brand planning, conversion, and market management, in addition to technical issues.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce Enterprise provides technical assistance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Account Management, Solution Architecting, Technical Account Management, Implementation Project Management, and in-house Catalog Transfer Services are all supported by this network. Your request will receive priority support as a larger merchant. That means a Senior Technical Support agent will answer your call in under 30 seconds.

The Premium Account Services team at BigCommerce Enterprise will provide business recommendations and guidance to help you succeed, in addition to technical support.

In this criterion, there is no winner. Shopify Plus and BigCommerce Enterprise both have outstanding customer service in terms of both technological and business issues.

Flexibility

Shopify Plus

Shopify Plus has its own Scripts and Script Editor feature that allows you to personalize your customers’ cart and checkout experiences by changing small pieces of code.

BigCommerce

On the other hand, apart from the storefront API, BigCommerce Enterprise also has a checkout API and built integrations with WordPress and Acquia to allow users to create a content-driven online store with a customizable front-end design.

To summarize, although Shopify Plus and BigCommerce are both hosted platforms, their headless architecture allows for extremely versatile front-end design. However, if the goods have a variety of features, BigCommerce is the way to go.

Multi-store Management

Shopify Plus

Shopify Plus has three features that allow you to manage multiple stores:

  • Expansion store: In addition to the main store, Shopify Plus allows you to add 9 more storefronts for shoppers from different locations. You can control all of your stores’ results, employee accounts, user permissions, and resources from a single dashboard. This Shopify Plus feature, however, has some limitations. You can’t create unique product IDs for each store or install apps that aren’t tied to either of them. You just can’t handle global and local attributes separately.

  • Currency converter: Shopify Payment users have access to this feature. The conversion charge will be applied to the final price and will be adjusted automatically using the current foreign exchange rate. It’s worth noting, though, that you can’t get different rates for different places.

  • Multi-warehouse: Shopify Plus lets you set up several locations to keep track of your inventory and easily fulfill orders. For a Shopify Plus package, the maximum number of locations you can set is 20.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce Enterprise, on the other hand, has yet to deliver an add-on to enable data management across multiple stores. Nonetheless, the multi-store management possibilities for this platform’s partner integrations include:

  • Multi-store: With BigCommerce, you can create several websites and use a BigCommerce partner product information management system to track all product and marketing data and update global storefronts.

  • Multi-brand: Using the BigCommerce Stencil platform, you can create localized content for each geographic place.

  • Multi-currency and localized payment options: BigCommerce offers over 65 payment gateway integrations as well as over 250 local payment methods. This platform also includes integrations with the most widely used digital and mobile wallets, including Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Venmo, etc. BigCommerce also allows for automatic currency conversion based on a customer’s IP address.

  • Localized catalogue and pricing: You can also tailor product catalogs, pricing, and promotions to your target markets.

  • International shipping: BigCommerce has integrations with the world’s most common shipping companies, allowing for international shipping.

Both platforms are severely restricted when it comes to multi-store management if we only consider the built-in features. On the other hand, Shopify Plus is used by more multi-brand and foreign retailers than BigCommerce Enterprise.

On the other hand, Shopify Plus is used by more multi-brand and foreign retailers than BigCommerce Enterprise.

Merchandising

Shopify Plus

Multiple product forms (such as basic goods, downloadable products, virtual products…) are not included in Shopify Plus. With additional software support, you can also use product variations for configurable goods and sell downloadable products. You can sell gift cards in your store just like any other item.

As a result, the number of product types available in Shopify Plus is quite reduced. It does, however, offer you a lot of merchandising choices. Users can manually reorder items in their collections and select from a variety of base ordering choices.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce Enterprise, in addition to easy and configurable goods, enables you to offer downloadable products by design. A downloadable product can have an unlimited number of files attached to it. Customers can purchase gift cards on your BigCommerce Enterprise store, just as they can on Shopify Plus.

BigCommerce Enterprise also comes with a slew of built-in features that will help you boost your conversion performance. You may, for example, use bulk pricing to entice consumers to purchase larger quantities.

BigCommerce Enterprise also has a built-in feature called Product Choice Filtering, which allows you to add filters like color, size, and sale off to help your customers find the items they want in seconds. Customers can also check out without building an account or signing in to their current accounts, allowing for faster service.

In terms of merchandising, we can easily see that BigCommerce has more built-in features than Shopify Plus.

B2B Functionality

Shopify Plus

Although Shopify Plus Wholesale Channel can support a number of basic functions, it does not allow for theme customization or any other customization outside the areas that can be configured against the channel. BigCommerce, on the other hand, has built several native B2B features into their platform.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce allows you to handle vast catalogs with SKU-level consumer and pricing segmentation. BigCommerce Enterprise also includes a number of B2B-specific features. The following are some of the B2B features that come standard with this website builder: Customer-specific pricing (via price lists), Quote / CPQ management, Volume / tiered pricing (which can also be set at a customer level), Purchase Orders and credit terms management, payment methods, shipping options, customer-specific catalogues, availability, content and more, customer segmentation features, advanced shipping capabilities such as customized shipping rates (via ShipperHQ), advanced product management features (attribute sets, custom fields, variant handling, etc.), Quick order functionality.

Overall, BigCommerce Enterprise is more efficient than Shopify Plus in the B2B room.

Extensions and Apps

Shopify Plus

On its marketplace, Shopify Plus has thousands of applications for merchants. Shopify Plus Certified Apps, a list of 42 free and paid apps selected by Shopify for their high quality, are also available on this website.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce Enterprise offers over 600 apps in 19 categories on its marketplace, including Marketing, Analytic & Reporting, Payment & Security, and Accounting, among others. The following are some advanced applications that businesses would undoubtedly find helpful:

Although both Shopify Plus and BigCommerce Enterprise offer various robust applications, Shopify Marketplace outnumbers BigCommerce Marketplace in terms of product selection.

SEO

Shopify Plus

A simple collection of SEO options is available in Shopify Plus. At the server level, you can make any configuration you want. You can edit meta tags and customize your inventory as well as your product page with Shopify Plus.

If you change the name of a page’s URL, the platform can create redirects for you. However, some technical SEO improvements, such as changing the URL structure and hierarchy and caching headers, are difficult to implement. Building a Shopify Plus store on a sub-directory is also unlikely. In terms of SEO, Shopify Plus isn’t very flexible.

BigCommerce

The SEO functionality of BigCommerce Enterprise, on the other hand, is a huge plus. This platform gives you a lot more options for optimizing your store’s SEO. BigCommerce gives you complete control over URLs, as you can adjust the configuration of URLs for various pages and there are no forced directories. You can also use directories in URLs and edit the robots.txt file.

It’s also simple to deal with stuff like canonical URL logic, hreflang implementation, structured data, and so on. BigCommerce also allows you to handle rapid mobile sites and redirects.

BigCommerce vs Magento Ultimate

Pricing Plans

BigCommerce

BigCommerce currently has four pricing options: prices ranging from $29 to custom costs. Also, when you pay annually for the Plus and Pro plans, you can save up to 10%. In general, all BigCommerce packages provide important features and functions that make it simple and effective to start your online company. Some of the popular features you can get with any pricing model include an amazing single-page checkout, unlimited items, a responsive website, and no transaction fees, among others. There are some exceptional ones that can only be found in more costly plans.

Magento

Magento currently offers three editions:

  • Magento Open Source (previously known as Magento Community).
  • Magento Commerce Edition (previously known as Magento Enterprise).
  • Magento Commerce Cloud (previously known as Magento Enterprise Cloud. The old name is Magento Enterprise Cloud Edition).

You don’t have to pay a license fee for Magento Open Source Edition, unlike Magento Commerce and Magento Commerce Cloud. However, a hosting fee ranging from $4 to $1000 is needed for both Magento Commerce Edition and Magento Open Source Edition. You would be able to use more functionality with the former than with the latter. For more detail, see our article comparing Magento Community vs. Enterprise Edition.

Support

BigCommerce

BigCommerce currently provides support for all plans 24 hours a day, 7 days a week via phone and live chat, email, and the help center. When you sign up for a free trial, you’ll also get an email inviting you to a 10-minute phone call to talk about your company and how BigCommerce will help you succeed.

Priority support is available, especially with enterprise plans. This involves an onboarding consultant and phone calls that are prioritized. You should reach out to highly-trained customer service representatives right away.

Magento

Magento, unlike BigCommerce, does not offer several service options. Magento Forums are the only place where you can get answers from other seasoned users and developers if you’re using Magento Open Source. You’ll get more help via live chat and email when you sign up for Magento Commerce and Magento Cloud Edition.

Themes and Interface Customization

BigCommerce

BigCommerce currently offers 12 free themes and 100+ paid themes ranging in price from $145 to $235. With the support of Stencil – BigCommerce’s front-end development platform, all of these themes are mobile sensitive and simple to customize.

Magento

Magento, on the other hand, offers a total of 14 free and paid theme choices. Paid options range in price from $29 to $499, with 10 of them being entirely mobile sensitive. You can also create your theme from scratch with Magento, but this takes extensive coding skills, or you can employ developers to do it for you.

BigCommerce has a lot of themes to choose from, but Magento has a lot more design versatility than BigCommerce. If you have enough coding experience, Magento allows you to customize your themes in any way you want.

Apps and Extensions

BigCommerce

BigCommerce, as a hosted platform, comes with a number of powerful built-in features that can help your online store perform better, including:

  • Abandoned cart reminders: This function enables users to generate and send automatic emails to any website visitors who have gone through the sales funnel but have not completed the transaction.

  • Analytical tools and reporting:* This feature allows you to monitor your site’s performance and evaluate campaigns.

BigCommerce also offers a variety of applications to help you extend the capabilities of your shop. It currently supports over 600 Apps in a variety of categories, including Marketing, Analytic & Reporting, Payment & Security, and Accounting, among others. The MailChimp app, which is available for free download, is one of the most well-known extensions. Automatic product suggestions based on past transactions are one of its key features.

Magento

Magento, like BigCommerce, has a number of useful built-in features, including integrated checkout, payment, and shipping; mobile-friendly shopping; catalog management; instant order, and so on. You can also purchase third-party extensions on Magento Marketplace, which now has 5831 extensions across all categories. Here are some of Magento’s most common extensions.

In a nutshell, both Magento and BigCommerce support a wide variety of extensions on their marketplaces and provide many robust integrated features. Magento, on the other hand, comes out on top in terms of quantity.

Payment Options and Fees

BigCommerce

BigCommerce consumers have access to over 65 integrated payment gateways. PayPal, Stripe, Square, Apple Pay, among others are some of the major bosses. There are no transaction costs in any of BigCommerce’s plans. You only have to pay credit card rates; the higher the package you choose, the lower your credit card rates would be.

Magento

Unlike BigCommerce, Magento requires the use of third-party payment methods; however, there are 364 Apps to choose from in the Magento Marketplace. As a result, selecting and integrating can take some time. On the other hand, some applications provide gateways to other countries and languages suitable for foreign companies.

On the other hand, some applications provide gateways to other countries and languages suitable for foreign companies.

SEO and Marketing Tools

BigCommerce

BigCommerce has some SEO features built-in, such as:

  • Unique URLs: Ensure each unique page has only one URL to avoid being penalized for duplicate content.

  • Microdata: BigCommerce has incorporated microdata (rich snippets) into your product pages to add details including ratings, pricing, brand, and stock levels to your search result listings.

  • 301 redirects and URL rewrites: When you rename a product, it generates a new URL automatically, and the old URL is redirected to the new URL. This allows search engines to recognize when you’ve made changes or moved pages on your site without having to go through the trouble of manually doing so.

The CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a function that works in the background to ensure that your site loads quickly for both visitors and search engines. The faster the site loads, the higher the website’s search rankings would be.

You can also choose from 600 BigCommerce apps to add SEO apps if you like. Shogun page builder and FavSEO are two common SEO apps that you can use.

Magento

Since Magento doesn’t have as many built-in SEO features as BigCommerce, you’ll need to use third-party SEO software. The following are some of the applications that support Magento SEO functionality:

Some of the outstanding features offered by SEO Toolkit include: Generate relevant meta tags with ease, help you build robust sitemaps, Quickly import and export product tags, Make your product reviews SEO-friendly, Show rich snippets in search results, Create and automate meta tags templates.

Multi-channel Integration

By default, both BigCommerce and Magento allow you to sell your products on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, eBay, Amazon, and other social media platforms. Although these distribution channels are available on the BigCommerce site, Magento users need to install extensions (M2E or Sellbrire) to integrate them.

To summarize, BigCommerce outperforms Magento in terms of optimized marketing features, SEO, and automatically linking the store to multiple platforms such as Facebook, Amazon, and eBay. If you want to rate your website with Magento, you must purchase SEO extensions from the Magento Marketplace and Magento also support third-party extensions for multi-channel sales.

Scalability

BigCommerce

BigCommerce has a number of great features that can help you prepare for your store’s potential growth:

BigCommerce’s open API allows developers to build a fully customized user interface for their customers.

As your company expands and traffic rises, 100 percent uptime becomes increasingly necessary. During peak hours, BigCommerce will ensure that your store maintains its usual loading speed.

Using an ERP to bring order to the back end: Employees in various departments (for example, accounting, logistics, and sales) may rely on the same information and data source with an integrated ERP.

Magento

The following are some of Magento’s outstanding consistency and scalability standards:

  • On the same hardware, it processes considerably more orders per hour.

  • Provide near-instant server response times for catalog browsing. Reduce response times for cart and checkout pages by double digits.

  • Improve the ability to manage high-volume orders, extra-large catalogs, and large client lists.

BigCommerce vs WooCommerce

Themes and Customization

BigCommerce

A well-designed and attractive storefront would leave a lasting impression on tourists. BigCommerce currently has 12 free themes and over 100 paid themes available in their theme shop. Paid themes range in price from $145 to $235, which is very high as compared to other hosted solutions. Furthermore, BigCommerce themes are overly close to one another.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that profits from the CMS, so developers have worked hard to make WooCommerce compliant with WordPress themes. Themeforest and WooCommerce themes stores have thousands of free and paid WooCommerce themes.

WooCommerce isn’t exaggerating when it says it’s the most customizable eCommerce site with themes. Not only are WooCommerce themes less expensive than BigCommerce themes, but they’re even more customizable. Customize your themes with the WooCommerce HTML/CSS editor.

Inventory Management

Any online business now requires an inventory management system. It aids in tracking your goods, the development of reports, and the making of data-driven decisions.

BigCommerce

Fortunately, BigCommerce has a robust inventory management system that eliminates the need for additional software. Tracking your stock by SKU, setting low stock notifications, and adjusting stock levels individually or in bulk are just a few of its features. You can also expand BigCommerce’s functionality by integrating it with third-party inventory management software.

WooCommerce

It will help you with simple tasks like generating inventory reports and making adjustments to any aspect of your goods with WooCommerce. However, managing WooCommerce inventory is not as simple as it appears, especially when dealing with bulk stock. It’s because making a simple adjustment necessitates visiting several pages and toggling a plethora of settings individually. Another reality is that WooCommerce struggles to manage a vast database if the inventory increases every day. To solve this problem, simply install inventory management plugins for your WooCommerce shop.

To solve this problem, simply install inventory management plugins for your WooCommerce shop.

Payment Options

Online stores that offer a variety of payment options will sell to a wide range of customers in a variety of countries. At this time, both BigCommerce and WooCommerce can handle any payment gateway requests you may have.

BigCommerce

It’s even better to note that BigCommerce doesn’t charge you a transaction fee when you use third-party payment solutions.

You may select appropriate payment gateways for your store on purpose. If you fail to set one up, BigCommerce can use the payment gateways that are accessible to you based on the country and currency of your shop.

WooCommerce

If you prefer WooCommerce, you will have access to the WooCommerce store’s 100+ payment gateways. It’s nice to know that WooCommerce comes pre-installed with big payment processors, including PayPal and Stripe.

WooCommerce also has its own payment gateway that is only available to WooCommerce stores. This payment plugin is available for download for free, and there are no setup or monthly payments. You’ll be able to accept big credit and debit cards with WooCommerce Payments easily. It can also help you improve conversions by allowing customers to check out without having to leave the site.

Apps and Plugins

Adding applications and plugins to an eCommerce platform will fill in the gaps left by a limited set of features. Both BigCommerce and WooCommerce will now completely please their users with vast libraries of applications and plugins.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce comes with over 800 applications to help you expand your store’s functionality. It divides applications into a number of different categories. As far as transactions go, analytics, marketing, and payment are among the most common.

WooCommerce

In comparison to BigCommerce, WooCommerce offers a wider range of plugin options for expanding functionality. WordPress is a fantastic open-source platform because it gives you access to over 55.000 free plugins and thousands of paid plugins. These plugins are available on the WordPress.org plugin repository, the WooCommerce official website, and other plugin websites. WooCommerce plugins are available in a variety of categories, including Store management, shipping, and payment.

SEO

If you want to succeed in your online business, you must invest in SEO and marketing. What would happen if you had the best goods in the world but didn’t know how to promote them on SERPs? Fortunately, whether you choose BigCommerce or WooCommerce, you’ll have access to powerful SEO and marketing tools to help you grow your company.

BigCommerce

With BigCommerce, you’ll be able to edit meta titles and descriptions, customize URL slugs, add alt text, and get keyword support, among other things. It’s good to know that BigCommerce comes with an SSL certificate, which lets search engines verify your website’s protection.

BigCommerce also offers the Microdata feature, which allows you to add more website details to search results, potentially increasing click-through rates. Adding apps can also help you boost your SEO results.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce, like BigCommerce, allows you to customize URL slugs, edit meta titles/descriptions, and add image alt text. Since search engines place a high value on the number and consistency of links pointing to your site, blogging can be an excellent way to supplement your SEO efforts. It’s fantastic to learn that WooCommerce inherits WordPress’s excellent blogging function. From the WordPress Admin dashboard, you can easily build a blog by adding a message.

Unlike BigCommerce, you will have to purchase an SSL certificate for your shop. WooCommerce, on the other hand, is unquestionably the king when it comes to SEO plugins. Yoast SEO has to be the most common SEO plugin for WooCommerce, with a premium edition costing $89 per year.

Yoast SEO has to be the most common SEO plugin for WooCommerce, with a premium edition costing $89 per year.

Security

BigCommerce

Regardless of which eCommerce platform you select, one of the most important factors to consider is security. BigCommerce is currently more popular with the general public. As a complete hosting website, BigCommerce will take care of protection as part of your monthly fee. On the other hand, the SSL credential provides SEO benefits and ensures the highest level of website protection. As I previously said, BigCommerce has the upper hand when providing SSL certificates as part of any strategy.

BigCommerce servers are PCI DSS 3.2 accredited at level 1, which protects against credit card data breaches to secure payment card transactions. This will save you money and time by allowing you to handle enforcement on your own. BigCommerce also provides apps to help you avoid fraudulent transactions and improve your security.

WooCommerce

On the other hand, the majority of WooCommerce security work must be done by you. First and foremost, before beginning your WooCommerce venture, you should carefully select your hosting provider. Notably, WooCommerce hosting is the primary security mechanism in the event of an attack.

You should keep upgrading WooCommerce to the latest versions to get better security updates and repair bugs. The platform helps you to build two-factor authentication, which is great news from WooCommerce. This feature helps to reinforce access to your website and is especially useful when your password falls into the wrong hands. Unlike BigCommerce, WooCommerce users typically have to pay for SSL certificate providers.

You would be liable for PCI enforcement if you use WooCommerce, but you can get help with that. Follow the WooCommerce Docs to learn about the PCI compliance criteria for your website. WooCommerce also provides security plugins to help you secure any aspect of your online store.

Support

Another important consideration while deciding between BigCommerce and WooCommerce is support.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce offers outstanding support as a fully hosting website. You can contact customer service via phone, email, or live chat right from the dashboard. They also have a user group where you can talk about any problem or interesting subject. Remember that BigCommerce provides help 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so you can ask your questions whenever you want. What’s more, BigCommerce developed the Help Center, which houses documentation for users at all levels, from beginners to seniors, non-techies to developers.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce, on the other hand, primarily provides resources through the WooCommerce Docs and offers little or no personal assistance. You should send a ticket to their developers for assistance. WooCommerce, in particular, has a large community of users and developers, so you can request assistance from them at any time.

BigCommerce vs Ecwid

WooCommerce, in particular, has a large community of users and developers, so you can request assistance from them at any time.

Design and Flexibility

BigCommerce

BigCommerce has over 100 themes to choose from, with 12 free themes and over 100 paying themes ranging from $145 to $235. Those 12 free themes, however, seem to be the same with different color options. Since it is free, this is simple to comprehend. Furthermore, if you are an expert and want to get your hands dirty with all the CSS or HTML coding, BigCommerce is a good option.

BigCommerce has recently launched Store Design, a new visual merchandising method. The Store Design tool gives you an interactive menu where you can customize anything from the background colors to the size and placement of your logo.

Ecwid

Ecwid, a BigCommerce rival, has only one theme for stores that are starting from scratch. Users can either go for this theme or go to the App Market for paid themes. Ecwid came up with the concept because it aims to help users incorporate Ecwid into their existing websites. Ecwid is not for retailers who want to reinvent the wheel and create a brand new website with all the bells and whistles.

Selling Channels

BigCommerce

If you want BigCommerce or Ecwid, you’ll be able to “sell anywhere” and increase sales thanks to the integration features. Simply put, you can sell through social media, marketplaces, and your dashboard can handle anything. Users may use BigCommerce’s data reporting tools, which could give it an advantage over the competition. Identifying consumer patterns, monitoring your store’s results, conversion rates, and more are all part of this process.

Ecwid

Although Ecwid can be integrated into any website or network (such as WooCommerce, Wix, and others), BigCommerce’s Buy Buttons can only be integrated into a few social media and marketplaces.

Payment Options

Any Bigcommerce vs. Ecwid plan has no transaction fees. However, you must pay the payment processor credit card transaction fees. There are about 40 payment methods available for BigCommerce and around 50 for Ecwid, but keep in mind that card processors are also country-specific.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, Bigcommerce provides everything an e-commerce store owner might need. Bigcommerce has you covered, whether you just want the basics or want to dive deep into your store’s choices.


Roger has over 4 years of experience in SEO. While in college, he started learning about SEO and showed a passion for the field. Right after graduation, he embarked on SEO projects and achieved great success. After years of working, he has learned deeply about SEO. Currently, he is the SEO team leader at avada.io

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