BigCommerce vs Shopify Comparison 2021: Which is Better?

Updated: March 01, 2023

The two most popular eCommerce cart solutions available are Shopify and BigCommerce. Both services deliver fantastic usability, affordable pricing, outstanding website architecture, and efficient customer support. But when the chips are nearly down, and you have to consider how you can pick the out of two successful choices?

This article will walk you through the differences between BigCommerce vs. Shopify in detail. We hope that after reading this, you will be able to choose the appropriate solution for your business.

BigCommerce vs Shopify: An overview

A contrast between BigCommerce VS Shopify is a close contest, with two deserving eCommerce rivals. Both systems have good credibility, and both are outstanding in categories such as built-in functionality, integrations enabled, and customer service. Perhaps your particular desires and interests are the best choice.

This is where we walk in. We come in here. We spend hours studying eCommerce sites at Retailer Maverick. We reviewed both Shopify and BigCommerce and analyzed each business’s functionality, pricing, and credibility in detail. We can speed up the places where one cart excels, and the other does not fit so that you can make the right option for your business’s particular needs.

An overview of BigCommerce

In 2009, BigCommerce arrived on the eCommerce stage. Since then, over 153,000 customers have been funded through revenue of over $365 billion globally. BigCommerce hosts both smaller and bigger consumers. A website decent enough to satisfy the eCommerce needs with businesses as diverse as Skullcandy and Ben & Jerry’s.

BigCommerce is a fully-hosted SaaS network, providing a cost-effective scalability platform and the opportunity to personalize the experience with a variety of integrations and additional functionality. It features an administrative panel that helps you handle products and orders and various integrated marketing tools. Even if you have no background in developing or operating a platform or are totally new to the field of e-commerce, when you start to use BigCommerce, you would have few obstacles. When you have registered with your name and contact address, you can answer a few simple questions about what you plan to offer. You will then be brought to this dashboard automatically, where you can start constructing your shop.

BigCommerce will host retailers offering an amount of merchandise, from tangible and digital goods, subscriptions, and even event tickets, completely cloud-based, without download. You may also offer on other platforms using BigCommerce, including eBay, Google Shopping, Twitter, Pinterest, and Amazon. It comes with built-in stock management software, packaging, marketing, and many more – that is, about all you need to operate your online shop.

An overview of Shopify

Established in 2004, Shopify is one of the top eCommerce actors with more than one million traders in 175 countries and sales of over one billion dollars per year. About 218 million customers have ordered something from a Shopify store in the last year. You do not assume that Heinz, The Economist, Crabtree & Evelyn have much in common, but that each large brand uses eCommerce solutions from Shopify. After its establishment, the platform has supported commercial revenue of over $100 billion.

Shopify is a full host SaaS, and provides full eCommerce solutions to retailers of all types, from entrepreneurs to major players. Hundreds of applications and add-ons are built-in to Shopify to provide all you need to start and operate your eCommerce business. And its top-selling point can only be its incredibly convenient use. Start with the free 14-day trial and the user interface can comfort you easily. It takes minutes to create a simple online store, and the only stuff you have to submit is your name and address and the answer to a couple of fundamental questions about what you want to offer.

Shopify makes e-commerce simple even though you don’t have goods to sell. If you’re interested in starting a dropshipping business, you should look for a product to add to your shop rather than introducing original items.

Shop choices for food and beverage providers, including simple ways to incorporate shipping and collection hours.

BigCommerce vs Shopify: The comparison

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Pros & Cons

It is worth having a brief look at each other’s advantages and drawbacks before you can determine if you want to access Simple Shopify or Shop Price or explore the possibilities with the addition of HTML to BigCommerce. Both eCommerce website construction tools are optimistic and bad.

Some tools provide free subjects and SSL licenses, while others offer excellent distribution software and excellent backend compatibility.

BigCommerce Pros

Tons of optimized features for online transactions
No transaction fees to worry about, so you get more money
Many strong SEO features allow you to role yourself online
Scalability for enterprises who wish to expand quickly online
Fantastic multi-channel distribution capability

BigCommerce Cons

Difficult to use for beginners, particularly with complex terminology
Needs any coding expertise if you want to make the best of the technologies
BigCommerce programs have annual sales limits - you pay extra as you move above them.
Multi-lingual shops with BigCommerce are not simple to build
Interface editing can be hard for beginners

Shopify Pros

Excellent to link revenue to the eCommerce platform
A number of plans, including Shopify Plus and Advanced Shop
Nice backend with several options to integrate functionality and extensions with plugin software.
A wide group of citizens, including shop specialists, to support you
Brilliant inventory framework for transactions processing
Multi-channel sales assistance on social networking channels and other contexts
Many themes and styles from which to pick
Support with a 24-hour devoted staff is outstanding

Shopify Cons

Restricted scalability options: You need to focus on multi-currency apps from third parties
Transaction costs are a challenge because you use Shopify Payments
Any time you alter models, you must reformat your website
The functionality of the blog is not as nice as elsewhere
SEO URL architectures are not suitable

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Pricing & Plans

Another (though maybe not the most important!) query regarding BigCommerce vs Shopify which potentials users have is how much does it cost? We’re going to take a look.

BigCommerce Pricing & Plans

There are 4 plans available for you if you choose BigCommerce. Moreover, you are also offered a 15-day free trial.

BigCommerce Standard: $29.95/month
BigCommerce Plus: $79.95/month
BigCommerce Pro: $299.95/month
BigCommerce Enterprise: depending on features and requirements

Shopify Pricing & Plans

Like BigCommerce, Shopify also provides a free 14-day trial. However, Shopify offers 5 plans that you can make a deal.

Lite: $9 per month
Basic Shopify: $29 per month
Shopify: $79 per month
Advanced Shopify: $299 per month
Shopify Plus: depending on features and requirements

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Features

Both BigCommerce vs Shopify provides the standard e-commerce functionality you’d get from the package. There’s nothing lost – and although that’s a positive thing, the choice between the two may be a little more complicated.

When you look carefully at two solutions, there’s not much distinction. This is understandable since Shopify and BigCommerce pay heed to the demand and strives to incorporate any new feature launched by the competition. Nothing remains the sole outlet for a long time.

Shopify appears to be simpler when it comes to multilingual settings and has incorporated dropshipping software. In the other side, BigCommerce boasts its distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) defense and multi-layered security for publishing. They also ease the presence of your products on product comparison pages.

BigCommerce also incorporated a more sophisticated website search feature. Shopify’s all right if you’re selling any stuff. You will need to install an app for bigger online retailers. Coupon and coupon functionality in BigCommerce are better than Shopify’s. Some of these are concessions for individual consumer segments and quantity-based price ranges. You either have to be part of Shopify Plus (custom pricing) or buy apps on Shopify.

You may sell consumers two or more items compare alongside each other via the BigCommerce category sites, but Shopify does not offer the integration. BigCommerce also displays consumers similar goods. This functionality is not possible without an app on Shopify.

Although your consumers earn real-time prices independent of your BigCommerce price schedule, Shopify needs you to be at least at the highest level or purchase an app.

However, BigCommerce doesn’t have anything. There is no 1-click upselling of its key functionalities, for example. Neither is it part of Shopify, but an app is accessible on the Shopify app store.

In comparison, these are not entirely compatible with GDPR. Of course, before signing up users on the mailing list, you should provide a privacy policy, set cookie notices, and get permission. Neither has an alternative to encourage users to agree to cookies that they wish to operate or cancel later.

Analytics

Shopify and BigCommerce provide a number of monitoring instruments, including:

Marketing reports – how you received your clients
Search data files – what items consumers in your shop asked for
Customer reports - the ratio of potential consumers toward returning customers, overall spending while the customers last put an order.
Reports on financing – revenue, tax reports, etc.
Reports of abandoned cards

Besides the aforementioned posts, you can also see some other reports on both websites.

Shopify enables you to create custom reports on advanced Shopify and Shopify Plus plans. BigCommerce offers you links to e-commerce reports at an extra charge, such that you have more accurate knowledge of your goods, clients, and carts.

In the Regular Plus Options, you can spend $49 extra, then in the Pro Package $99 a month, and in the Business Plan $249 a month. Although Friday is the choice for insight, BigCommerce eventually provides more to report than Shopify. Much of the available reports are typical on every BigCommerce schedule.

If you use the cheaper shop plans, you can obtain some statistics with the online shop’s dashboard, but they are very easy. You should install Google Analytics and use the targets to calculate conversions and deliver personalized reports if you like more visibility into the traffic that comes to your shop.

Accounts of Workers

When it comes to the personal accounts function of BigCommerce vs Shopify, BigCommerce undoubtedly succeeds over Shopify.

The Shopify framework has stringent restrictions on the number of users that are allowed to log in and access the store. There may only be one user to 15 users, depending on the schedule. In the other side, BigCommerce helps you to build an infinite amount of employees’ accounts on any schedule of your store.

If your organization has a huge amount of people who need access to the back end of the shop, you would surely enjoy the versatility provided by BigCommerce.

Multiple-currency transaction

More online sales can be achieved if buyers are able to buy in multiple currencies. Although it’s not really a great problem if you’re only selling in one country, it is a good idea to allow your potential customers to choose their own currency if you decide to expand to countries with other currencies. It is even better to present products in the currency of your visitors.

Shopify allows you to do this in a certain degree with its debut and Brooklyn themes. These subjects have a selector of currencies. However, if you do not use one of these subjects, to enable the selector, you have to add some code to your site.

Automatic currency conversion is even more useful than a currency selector. The user IP address is used to specify the location of visitors and shows prices in the corresponding currency. This feature is only available in Shopify when you use the Shopify Plus plan, which costs $2,000 a month or more. Alternatively, a third-party app can be used.

You can also use the free Geolocation app from Shopify to prompt users to switch to the appropriate currency. This is helpful but not as good as automatic conversion of currency.

You will have a much better multi-currency solution from the box with BigCommerce free themes and one that facilitates automatic currency conversion based on the user’s IP address.

If you use a premium template that does not have this feature, you must use a third-party app like Shopify.

All in all, BigCommerce has the edge to make multi-devises sales and payments easier.

Categories of Products

The majority of online stores will probably use different product categories. For instance, you could find collections for each of the major instruments the store sells in a music-related shop.

Collections are easy to set up on both BigCommerce vs Shopify. Ultimately, however, I think that Shopify approaches a little better since you cannot just add products manually, but you can also create collections that are automatically supplied with products on the basis of the condition you offer. With Shopify, you can create intelligent categories known as automated collections.

In order to create a collection, this approach uses several criteria, including the product title, tags, price, weight and more. Then, instead of going through all of your music stores and adding all of your acoustic guitars manually to the acoustic guitar collection, you could tell Shopify to include any product with the words “acoustic guitar’s” and its title in the acoustic guitar collection.

It’s particularly useful if you have hundreds or thousands of products. However, it is important that you remember to use consistent product title naming conventions, so it works.

BigCommerce has a mass edit option to speed up the assignment of the category, but does not yet offer an intelligent collection feature.

Options for Product

For which BigCommerce does not have its product option functionality in the category categorization department. In this respect, it is much better than Shopify.

On Shopify you can only offer customers three sets of products, including color, size or materials. These options are easy to set but frustrating if you need to sell products in more than three versions. Workarounds are available, but they often take time to implement or buy a third-party application, which increases your monthly platform cost.

You can create a large list of product options with BigCommerce up to 250. If your products come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, BigCommerce offers the flexibility you need.

File uploads and fields of text

Traders may require customer data to be entered at the point of purchase. For example, brokers may ask a customer to enter text for customization. You can do so with Shopify and BigCommerce, but setting up with BigCommerce is significantly easier as you just add a text field to your product as an option.

If you use Shopify, you have to add or use an app to handle a piece of code to your template.

When it comes to uploading files, the situation is similar. For example, if you sell clothing or photography that requires a client to upload an image, the functionality of BigCommerce is included. Still, you have to resort to some coding or use Shopify’s third-party app again.

So if you are a merchant that must gather personalized information from your customers to supply personalized products, you will see that BigCommerce makes things much easier.

Product Data Import and Export

BigCommerce and Shopify both allow you to upload a CSV file containing all your product information.

Shopify allows you to use the CSV format when it comes to exporting your data. BigCommerce is more flexible by choosing between CSV and XML. It is advisable to export CSV formats whenever possible.

Neither BigCommerce nor Shopify is great for importing or exporting other content types because either platform does not provide any clear or easy means of importing and exporting blog posts or static pages. However, you can use third-party applications to help with this problem.

Multi-lingual support

You can sell both BigCommerce vs Shopify in several languages. Shopify offers you this feature built-in, but you’ll have to use a third-party app to do it with BigCommerce. You can translate your website into five languages with the Shopify Plus plan, which allows you to translate it into up to 20 languages. However, certain site elements such as your product and block tags cannot currently be translated.

In Shopify, a language folder is added to your domain if you enable multi-language sales, so you end with domain.com/fr/for French, etc. It is not currently possible to host a single Shopify site for separate languages across separate domains.

The use of BigCommerce with the Weglot approach from a third party has some advantages and disadvantages. You can offer your website in over 100 languages and automatic translations. You have the choice to edit them manually if you want. However, you will pay at least another $21 a month for the Weglot app for this freedom and flexibility.

It should be noted that with Shopify too, you can use the Weglot app, so Shopify is the most flexible solution in multilingual shops as the built in features can be used together with a translation app.

Cart Recovery Abandoned

Between BigCommerce vs Shopify, BigCommerce left the cart saver far better than the Shopify equivalent. BigCommerce claims that 15% of lost sales can be recovered. This is probably because up to three automated follow-up emails can be scheduled. Shop, on the other hand, you can only send an automated follow-up email.

Having said that, it can be annoying and conducive to being reported as Spam to send several emails to people who do not finish shopping. Although the abandoned cart saver tools are extremely useful, they should be used carefully.

At Shopify, only the following intervals can be sent to you:

One hour later
Six hours later
Ten hours later
Twenty-four hours later

Of these, Shopify recommends selecting an interval of 1 hour or 10 hours later, as their research indicates that it is most likely that users who have abandoned their vehicles will return and finish the purchase when receiving an e-mail after that period.

Since the abandoned cart recovery can increase your sales significantly, a plan with this feature is definitely worth considering irrespective of which online store builder you decide to use.

I suspect that many users here consider Shopify because although BigCommerce has an abandoned, much more flexible cart-saving feature, it’s also much more expensive to use.

Point Of Sale (POS)

Even if you plan to operate your company mainly online, there may be times when transactions need to be handled offline. You need to consider the POS when comparing everything from Shopify and BigCommerce.

Both BigCommerce vs. Shopify supports online selling mobile devices. Can add things such as barcode scanners, label printers, receipt printers, and tills, depending on your type of experience. All of those tools help you move your store to the next level since you can create pop-up shops and benefit from other business activities in the physical world.

You need to integrate hardware with third-party platforms to use a POS solution for BigCommerce. This means using stuff like shopkeeping or square. With Shopify, 3rd party apps are not required. Shopify hardware solutions are directly available, so you don’t have to worry about working with several brands.

However, if you want to use Shopify POS, it should be pointed out that you have to pay for Shopify POS Pro to get the most out of it. This is a costly add-on for $89 a month. Although you can still use e-commerce solutions on standard shop plans for your physical storefront, the add-on offers you further ways to grow.

You intend to create an online shop to compliment your station, the add-on support:

Purchase pick up online in-store
Multiple places of sale
Sales allocations for specific employees
Printed support for receipt
Management of staff roles and permissions

Mobile Experience

As more people in the world rely on mobile devices to meet their internet needs, your e-commerce website has to work well. If you don’t, you risk losing money. When they use their phones, your customers need to be able to shop online without worrying.

Shop and BigCommerce allow company owners to present their product pages in AMP format, quickly load their web pages and have Stellar experiences on multiple devices. You do not have to add additional charges to the price to unlock the app functionality. You can use amp technologies for all Shopify models as long as you have the correct program enabled.

As the owner, what about you? You must be sure that you can manage your store effectively without having to be on a computer.

Shopify provides more features and ways to control the shop regarding company owners’ smartphone applications. You have the POS Store and the Shop app. You will track orders and files with the Shopify app. The Shopify POS is the software that enables you to sell from your shop physically.

BigCommerce has a mobile app that supports customer order management and viewing, but next to Shopify is the BigCommerce app.

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Payment

Shopify and BigCommerce enable you to connect various payment gates to your shop, but the number of options available differs by region. BigCommerce and Shopify also endorse big payment gateways such as PayPal, QuickBooks, Worldpay and 2 checkouts. Yet Shopify provides far more choices. With Shopify, you can pick from over 100 compared to about 40 in BigCommerce.

The introduction of a third-party payment gateway may usually be a somewhat repetitive operation. Often contracts and subscription payments are concerned, so consumers who cannot choose either of the solutions provided by shop and the BigCommerce out-of-the-box.

This implies for Shopify either Shopify Payments or PayPal.

Paypal is operated by Braintree for BigCommerce. BigCommerce has partnered with Braintree to offer a service that enables consumers to compensate for PayPal’s discounted Paypal treatment deals without ever leaving their shop.

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Ease of use

BigCommerce and Shopify offer administrators that are easy to use. You won’t have much trouble on either platform if you’ve posted to a WordPress blog or sold on Etsy in the last years, as you choose a subject, change settings and load the products and images. Both extend a supporting hand via telephone support, forums, a knowledge base, video tutorials and more if you need assistance with the installation.

BigCommerce provides a user-friendly administration panel that facilitates the performance of tasks necessary to operate your store. Because BigCommerce provides more functionality than Shopify, you need to learn more about the backend. But a little more time should be committed to a well-functioning store that benefits from reporting and discounting.

You will find one of the cleanest user interfaces on the market when you log on to Shopify. All you are looking for is readily available in the left sidebar. It is easy to add products, create discounts, and edit your site’s content through smart WYSIWYG editing tools.

The truth is that a comparison between BigCommerce vs Shopify clearly shows that both offer features, navigation, and usability of a high-ranking shopping cart solution. However, Shopify can make a narrow win in this category, as it’s a simpler off-the-box program for most beginners. Your choice depends entirely on your personal preference at the end of the day. Again, the free trial period offers a good opportunity to test the company’s reaction and resources.

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Support

Both carts offer lots of assistance through phone, email and live chat in the form of 24/7 support, which already exceeds many eCommerce solutions. Overall, most users seem to be adequately satisfied with their platform. Again, the free trial period offers a good opportunity to test the reaction and resources of the company.

Both platforms hold an impressive library of published materials. BigCommerce offers a forum, resource center and know-how. The equally impressive resources of Shopify include a forum, a blog and a knowledge base. Each platform has received its share of recognitions — and complaints — for the level and usefulness of customer support choices, but each has more positive than negative information.

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Which is better?

Both BigCommerce vs Shopify are highly scalable, especially when dedicated business plans are included. The particular way business growth is handled is a key difference between the two platforms.

BigCommerce will be better for your business if:

Your company already has stable sales and rapid, significant growth is not part of your objectives. For instance, suppose your monthly average sales are around $4,200. You can subscribe to the $30 monthly plan. If your monthly average sales rise above $4,167, your sales will be above $50,000.

At this level it will take you to the next highest level automatically, jumping from $30 to $80 per month. You may not blink at this increased cost. But if your sales exceed 180,000 dollars per annum (or an average of 15,000 dollars every month), you will jump to the 300 monthly plan from the 80 dollars monthly plan. Despite the very welcome revenue increase, the automatic, unavoidable increase in monthly costs cannot be comfortable.

Shopify will be better for your business if:

Over time, your small business plans to grow. The pricing structure of Shopify better adapts the smaller enterprises to their $9 and $29 plans while still allowing for greater enterprises and those who are hoping to grow. Look carefully for Shop Payments to ensure that you can access them as a payment gateway or are prepared to include transaction fees in your business budget.

Shop limits on the number of employee accounts you can add by plan, while BigCommerce imposes income limits. For instance, once you have more than two restricted staff members to add to your site, you need to upgrade to Shopify’s $79/month plan. For BigCommerce, you are automatically bumped into the $79.95/month plan once you cross the income for $50K per year (around $4,170/month).

Conclusion

In all honesty, in a BigCommerce vs Shopify match-up, you will find an embarrassment of riches regardless of what you want. Both offer attractive templates, easy-to-use tools to set up a store quickly, many add-ons and integrations that enable you to tailor your store to your exact specifications and secure customer buying experience on multiple platforms. Anything missing from either platform can, it seems, be created with a readily available add-on.

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