When building an e-commerce store , it is important to choose a platform that will expand and grow as your business grows.
A reliable platform with all the tools you need to manage your store, as well as excellent service, is very important to keep your customers happy, and most importantly, to keep them coming back.
There are two very popular platforms in the eCommerce world: Shopify and BigCommerce.
Shopify has been doing well since 2004, and BigCommerce is a relatively young company that started offering its platform as an ecommerce solution in 2009.
Both have a lot to offer to current store owners as well as those just starting out.
In this article, we’ll take a deeper look at the benefits of the BigCommerce and Shopify platforms. This way you will be able to use the best one that suits your online store.
At a Glance: BigCommerce vs Shopify
Which one to prefer? Shopify or BigCommerce? Which online store is best for you?
Both BigCommerce and Shopify are hosted platforms, meaning you don’t have to spend extra money on hosting and installing additional software.
In terms of features, both platforms offer an easy-to-use admin interface where you can add your products, customize the look of your store, manage inventory, shipping orders, and handling.
They also offer a set of features that include email marketing, social media integration, blogging, and cart load reminders.
Now, let’s take a closer look at them (starting with BigCommerce and then exploring Shopify’s details):
1. BigCommerce – Looking Deeper
It is an e-commerce platform that has recently undergone a major rebranding, improved its features and introduced many new ones.
It is the only online store that integrates directly with the Google Merchant Center, allowing users to promote their products on Google Shopping.
The main advantages of BigCommerce:
- Free and paid themes that are easy to customize
- Safe shopping cart
- Integration with major payment gateways such as Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay and more
- Lots of marketing tools that enable sales across multiple platforms such as Amazon Marketplace, Facebook, eBay, Pinterest, email provider integrations and more
- Inventory management, delivery and return systems
- Multi-currency support
- Dropshipping and warehouse integration
This eCommerce platform makes a bold claim to provide all the features you need to grow and accelerate your business. It offers plans that fit both large, well-established businesses and fast-growing brands.
Let’s take a look at the main advantages of BigCommerce:
BigCommerce Themes and Designs
Prices range from $ 145 to $ 235 and are divided into several categories for a variety of niches.
There are many great third-party BigCommcere themes on the market for a variety of purposes. They have great features to help you build an engaging store quickly. Browse our curated selection of the best BigCommerce themes:
It’s worth noting that all themes are optimized for mobile devices and come with a lot of customization for your site’s color scheme, font selection, adding your own logo, icon, and more. There are quick product browsing features, a mega menu, an excellent product carousel, and the ability to create wishlists.
You can use one of these professional BigCommerce themes to design your online store:
BIGCOMMERCE
SEO tools
BigCommerce comes with advanced SEO features to drive traffic to your store. To get started, you can change the name and description of the product, optimize the product images, and enter keywords specific to each product. You can take advantage of the ability to iterate through the largest product comparison engines such as Nextag, PriceGrabber, Shopping.com and others.
On top of that, BigCommerce has its own content delivery network to optimize store load times. Other features to help your search engine rankings include mobile optimization, site HTTPS, automated sitemaps, microdata, and more.
Integration of payments
BigCommerce teams up with over 60 payment gateways to accept payments, including PayPal and Stripe. You can collect offline payments, process them in different currencies, and set up shipping rates.
Why BigCommerce
The main goal of BigCommerce is to provide the tools you need to accelerate your business. It is highly convertible and has impressive features that back up their claims.
The platform allows you to create a variety of promotions and coupons to boost your sales by allowing you to sell to third-party markets directly from your BigCommerce store.
Every BigCommerce customer will receive AdWords Credits to start promoting their store, as well as the ability to use built-in social media apps and receive their customers’ email addresses.
As far as inventory management is concerned, you can assign different categories to your products and process all incoming orders. With integrations with third-party vendors such as ShipperHQ, you can even manage product searches and tracking.
Finally, BigCommerce integrates with other applications and software that make it easier to manage day-to-day store operations. For example, these are QuickBooks, Olark LiveChat, Optimizely and many more.
Customer service and support
Customer service and support is another area where BigCommerce strives to provide everything you might need. The admin dashboard provides easy access to their support portal, many online tutorials and how-to videos. You will have access to your own consultant, 24/7 chat, email and phone support in the USA.
BigCommerce currently offers 4 pricing plans.
Their standard plan is $ 29.95 per month and includes the following features:
- Unlimited products
- Unlimited storage and bandwidth
- Availability of multiple sales channels
- Ability to accept credit cards and PayPal
- No transaction fees
- Live agent support 24/7
According to their website, this plan is best for businesses that make up to $ 50,000 a year.
The Plus plan is priced at $ 79.95 / month and is for businesses that make up to $ 150,000 per year. It has the features included in the standard plan plus:
- Real-time delivery
- Saving basket orders
- Advanced customer segmentation
The Pro plan includes everything in the Plus plan and is suitable for businesses that make up to $ 400,000 / year. It’s priced at $ 245.95 with Google Reviews access and an in-store search filter feature.
Finally, the Enterprise plan is recommended for large enterprises and brands. Requires a call to their support for pricing terms. This plan comes with a dedicated SSL certificate and IP address, and priority support.
Now, let’s take a closer look at Shopify and compare to BigCommerce:
2. Shopify – look deeper
Like BigCommerce, Shopify is a hosted platform that allows you to quickly create an online store.
One of the benefits of Shopify is the “Shopify Button” – a widget similar to PayPal buttons that you can embed on your existing website or your company Facebook page.
The main options of the Shopify online store platform:
- A wide range of themes from Shopify and even more professional Shopify themes on our ThemeForest marketplace:
- Integration with over 70 payment gateways + Shopify Payments
- Marketing and SEO features such as integrations with email providers, social media and Facebook sales opportunities.
- Inventory Management
Shopify themes and design options
Its offers free and paid themes ranging from $ 100 to $ 180. Similar to BigCommerce, themes are organized by industry and can be easily customized.
ThemeForest has many fresh Shopify online store themes with the option to integrate with newsletters, lookbook, quick product view, zoom and 360-degree view, full customization control, mega menus, social sharing and more.
Browse our curated selection of the best Shopify themes for your online store:
SEO tools
When it comes to SEO, Shopify follows all the best SEO practices and will automatically generate an .XML map for your store. You can optimize product descriptions, titles, and images.
The platform uses dedicated servers that speed up page load times and include an SSL certificate on each plan for free.
Integration of payments
We mentioned that Shopify integrates with over 70 payment gateways, and there is also the option to use Shopify Payments, which allows you to accept credit card payments on your site, not through a third party service.
Why Shopify
Shopify’s top selling item is a hassle-free approach. You can easily create a full-fledged online store or grab the Lite plan and Shopify button if you’re not ready to launch yet.
You can offer discount codes and gift cards to your customers, advertise yourself on social media while creating an email list at the same time. An intuitive platform with drag and drop website design.
Shopify offers integration with QuickBooks, ShipStation, MailChimp, ZenDesk, and more. They also offer a suite of free tools like their Logo Maker, Invoice Generator, Business Card Maker, Profit Margin Calculator, and more.
Customer support
Shopify provides detailed documentation, an active support community, and a 24/7 support team.
Prices
Shopify offers three pricing tiers.
The cheapest plan costs $ 29 and includes the following features:
- Unlimited products
- 2 employees
- Label printing
- Fraud analysis
- Manual order creation
- Discount codes
- SSL certificates
The next level is priced at $ 79 and gives you the ability to add professional reports, 5 team members, and automatically send an email to restore your cart.
The most expensive plan costs $ 299 and includes everything Shopify has with third-party shipping rates and advanced reporting.
Which one should you choose? (BigCommerce or Shopify)
Both BigCommerce and Shopify have features that appeal to business owners looking to build their online store. However, there are downsides to consider before making a final decision.
1. Pros and cons of BigCommerce
Despite its youth, BigCommerce has a fairly powerful set of features. Here are the platform’s biggest pros and cons:
pros
- Powerful marketing features with the ability to sell on third-party platforms out of the box
- POS Integration
- No transaction fees
- Single page check
- Mobile responsive themes
- Comprehensive support
- Affordable credit card processing fees
Minuses
- Small selection of themes
- Fewer apps to integrate with third parties
- No mobile app
2. Pros and cons of Shopify
Shopify has its pros and cons:
pros
- Large selection of themes
- Large selection of third-party applications
- POS Integration
- Additional payment gateways
- Best classification for creating a product line
Against
- Their most expensive plan is priced higher than BigCommerce
- There is no way to sell on third-party markets
- Recycle bin recovery by email has a time limit
- Limited product options
- Using an external payment gateway includes transaction fees ranging from 2.0% to 0.5%
BigCommerce or Shopify?
Both Shopify and BigCommerce are the leading eCommerce platforms. Both have powerful feature sets, but it’s worth mentioning that BigCommerce offers more options on its cheaper plans than Shopify. BigCommerce offers better bottom rate reporting and does not add transaction fees.
Shopify, on the other hand, has more themes to choose from and interesting free branding tools for small businesses just getting started online. You can manage your store from your phone or tablet on the go.
