BigCommerce vs Shopify: Which Ecommerce Platform Is Best for Your Business?

BigCommerce and Shopify are two of the most popular ecommerce platforms, but which one is better for your business? Find out what each platform has to offer so you can decide.

The “bigcommerce vs shopify market share” is a question that has been asked for years. The two platforms are often seen as competitors, but the truth is that they have different goals and needs. BigCommerce is more focused on e-commerce, while Shopify focuses on building an online store.

BigCommerce vs Shopify is likely to be the deciding factor in which ecommerce solution is best for your small company. We looked at pricing, simplicity of use, third-party app connectivity, and sales, payment, and administration options when comparing the two.

Shopify strikes a balance between simplicity and ease of use by including all of the capabilities that small companies need. Shopify is the ideal ecommerce platform for most small companies because of this, as well as powerful point-of-sale applications, a big app ecosystem, and plans that can expand with your company.

Meanwhile, BigCommerce enables you to compare transaction costs from various payment processors. BigCommerce, unlike Shopify, does not restrict the amount of variations each product may have, making it a better choice for expanding ecommerce enterprises with complicated product assortments or those looking to save money on processing costs.

Quick comparison between BigCommerce and Shopify

When Should You Use Shopify?

Shopify is a superior option if you’re a small firm that relies heavily on internet sales. Shopify’s user interface is simple to use, yet it’s packed with administration and sales capabilities (as well as dozens of third-party connectors) that help you expand your company successfully.

The platform also allows you to sell on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, as well as provide a POS system that integrates with your online shop for omnichannel sales like purchase online, pick up in store, and explore in-store, buy online.

When Should You Use BigCommerce?

BigCommerce is a close second to Shopify as the finest overall ecommerce platform in our opinion. BigCommerce is especially recommended for high-volume enterprises looking to save money on transaction costs.

It enables you to choose your payment platform without incurring any additional transaction costs (unlike Shopify, which charges a fee if you use a third-party processor). You can look around for the best pricing this way. BigCommerce also provides unique PayPal savings, has over 55 payment methods, and supports a variety of currencies.

BigCommerce is a better option for an online shop with a complicated and big product inventory than Shopify. BigCommerce allows you to create up to 600 product variations and 250 product alternatives, which is more than other ecommerce systems, including Shopify, allow.

Shopify is the most cost-effective option.

The Shopify Lite option ($9/month) provides the most remarkable value of Shopify over BigCommerce, since it includes basic capabilities like as the Shopify POS software, the ability to process credit cards, and connectivity with your current website. That’s a lot for $9 a month, and BigCommerce hasn’t responded.

BigCommerce and Shopify offer surprisingly comparable three-tiered pricing systems and specialized options for commercial organizations. Basic features, such as a branded online shop, limitless product sales, social network integration, and 24/7 support, are included in the lowest levels. Premium options, such as thorough reporting and client segmentation, are only available after you start paying more.

Assume you’re unpacking the base plans for both platforms, Basic Shopify and BigCommerce Standard. BigCommerce’s Standard plan includes more advanced features, such as:

• Features for professional reporting
• Rating and review system built-in
• Geolocation-based automatic currency conversion
• Shipping quotations from third-party carriers in real time

Basic Shopify, on the other hand, provides the following advantages:

• There are no sales limitations, however BigCommerce Standard has a $50,000 annual sales cap.
• BigCommerce’s entry-level plan does not have Recovery of Abandoned Carts; BigCommerce’s Plus plan ($79.95/month) does.

Shopify is the best option for payment processing.

Shopify Payments and Shop Pay (its one-click checkout solution) both include built-in payment processing. This implies that anybody may begin receiving payments right away without first obtaining and connecting a separate merchant account. Most small and new companies will find this to be the most convenient alternative, since Shopify’s transaction costs are very common.

BigCommerce has a huge edge over Shopify when it comes to processing costs since it doesn’t charge any transaction fees for connecting a third-party processor. Rather than bundling its payment processor, it allows you to choose the best payment gateway for your needs. As a result, bigger companies that handle a high number of transactions may shop around for the best prices.

Shopify’s unique point-of-sale (POS) software is perhaps its most significant advantage versus BigCommerce. Without the trouble of setting up a third-party system, you can start accepting payments right away with the POS app. If you’re selling in person, Shopify has a number of credit card scanners available. However, you are not obligated to use Shopify’s payment system, and the service is compatible with the majority of BigCommerce’s third-party solutions.

Payment Providers Included

• BigCommerce: PayPal powered by Braintree offers competitive PayPal processing rates as well as a mechanism that allows customers to pay with PayPal without ever leaving your shop.
• Shopify Payments allows you to add a local currency to your checkout page and use the Shop Pay function, which works similarly to Apple Pay and Google Pay in that it allows customers to complete purchases in one click.

Shopify is the best option for ease of use.

Onboarding & Setup

When we compared BigCommerce and Shopify, we discovered that they’re both quite user-friendly. Shopify, on the other hand, has a big benefit in that practically anybody with even basic computer abilities can quickly learn it.

Using BigCommerce to Create an Ecommerce Site

BigCommerce might be difficult to use if you’re new to selling online. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the platform’s breadth and reach. Nonetheless, there should be nothing you can’t figure out after a few runs through the procedure.

When you sign up with BigCommerce, you’ll see a setup process on your dashboard. It also contains connections to various parts of the backend where you may configure sophisticated shop settings.

Using Shopify to Create an Ecommerce Site

Shopify is the most user-friendly ecommerce platform available—think of it as WordPress for online stores. Every interface window has access to the whole feature set, and all of the tools are simple to understand and use. If you’re having problems using Shopify’s features, there’s a multitude of resources available to explain you precisely how to accomplish things.

The setup procedure on Shopify is simple to use, with prompts and assistance bubbles that you can click to access extensive step-by-step guidance in the help center.

Management of the Store

Both systems are simple to use and manage, but BigCommerce’s features are more expandable, allowing for more adjustments, making it less suitable for novices.

It’s simple to add goods to your Shopify shop. You may customize every aspect of your product page, including descriptions, photos, inventory, shipping, and even SEO.

Adding items, for example, is simple with Shopify. In most professions, there are also several aid bubbles, such as a sales hint regarding price comparison.

Product listings in BigCommerce are very customisable. You can see in the photos below that when listing your items for your BigCommerce shop, you can add as much information as you wish.

All of the adjustments for your goods are available in the sidebar navigation menu.

Shopify has the best templates, while BigCommerce has the best drag-and-drop builder.

Shopify and BigCommerce both provide tools to let you build a fully customizable online shop. Despite this, customer feedback indicates that Shopify has a greater range of template designs. BigCommerce, on the other hand, has an advantage with its website editing tool.

Shopify features a user-friendly theme shop that includes both free and paid alternatives. (Image courtesy of Shopify)

Shopify and BigCommerce both provide a variety of free and premium themes. Shopify themes provide a wider range of design options, while BigCommerce themes are sometimes described as merely differing in color.

The drag-and-drop builder in Big Commerce enables you to view changes to your business in real time.

When it comes to editing, BigCommerce’s page builder has a drag-and-drop interface that makes it simple to make changes and view them in real time.

WYSIWYG is the native editor of Shopify. It did, however, release Online Store 2.0 (OS 2.0) in July 2021, along with new themes that give more personalization choices than the previous edition of the website builder. OS 2.0 provides sections and blocks that provide modularity, flexibility, and drag-and-drop functionality to some level. It is still not applicable to all themes.

You may anticipate a more user-friendly setup with drag-and-drop construction components with the OS 2.0 upgrade in Shopify themes.

Best Product & Order Management: BigCommerce

Management of Products

Importing & Exporting Products or Data

When it comes to data export, Shopify enables you to do it in CSV format. BigCommerce is more versatile since it supports CSV and XML exports.

Product Groupings

Although both Shopify and BigCommerce make it easy to create collections, Shopify’s method is superior since goods may be automatically generated based on tags or product descriptions. BigCommerce provides a “bulk edit” option for assigning goods to categories, however it lacks the “smart collection” feature.

Smart tags in Shopify make it easy to classify your items. This, together with specific product types and collections (categories), enables consumers to quickly categorize and search your Shopify shop.

Unlike Shopify, BigCommerce allows you to create categories from the product listing view, but in a hierarchical manner.

Optional Products

BigCommerce allows you to establish up to 250 alternatives per product, however Shopify only allows you to put up three. It can also produce SKUs for all of the numerous variation combinations. It has a limit of up to 600 product varieties, compared to Shopify’s limit of just 100.

You can only have three versions per product on Shopify. Size, color, and material are the three options in our case.

From your collection of variations, Shopify will automatically assemble feasible variant combinations of your items. From there, you can specify price and inventory levels.

Tools for creating custom products or work orders

If your store’s items offer customization options (such as engraving, picture uploads, and more), BigCommerce makes it simple to put them up utilizing custom fields and image uploads. Images of up to 500MB may be uploaded. This is only possible with third-party applications in Shopify.

Custom work order tools, such as custom messages (text, number, date in single or multiple lines), swatches, and photos, are available in BigCommerce.

Management of Inventory

With Shopify, keeping track of your inventory is a breeze. The “Goods” page shows you how many products you have on hand and how many are on the way, as well as allowing you to take automatic actions when inventory runs low. Furthermore, each item you sell has an easily editable product page where you may enter and adjust a range of options, such as descriptions, pricing, and shipping, among other things.

An example of Shopify’s Management of Inventory system: You can set stock inventory levels per product in the product listing pages or go to the inventory tab from your dashboard. It is easier to see at a glance which stocks are running low and add incoming inventory.

Shopify has a slight edge over BigCommerce in this area when put side by side. Shopify has smart Management of Inventory tools to automate Product Groupings and a fulfillment network for storing and fulfilling orders. You can even adjust inventory from the mobile app. Plus, a complete setup with Shopify POS gives you full visibility to manage products and orders in an omnichannel setting. It is our top recommendation for multichannel POS systems.

Meanwhile, BigCommerce’s main interface’s “Goods” page provides fast access to your inventory, making it simple to view what’s available in your shop, add new products, and search your inventory. You can even use the UI to import your inventory spreadsheet. When you first start off, you’ll have a sample product inventory to assist you learn—something Shopify doesn’t provide.

An example of BigCommerce’s Management of Inventory system: Stock levels are not expressed in numbers in the general view. You need to click on the products, choose Bulk Edit from the action dropdown menu, and set stock inventory levels.

It’s comparable to modifying values in a spreadsheet when it comes to mass editing stock inventory levels for BigCommerce.

Shipping Instruments

You may set up a number of shipping policies in both BigCommerce and Shopify, including:

• Shipping is always free.
• Rates are fixed.
• Rates depending on price
• Rates depending on weight
• Third-party carriers’ calculated (“real-time”) shipping prices

BigCommerce, on the other hand, comes out on top when it comes to offering clients with third-party real-time shipping prices, which it offers on all of its plans. To use this functionality with Shopify, you must be on the $299 Advanced Shopify plan.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you utilize Shopify Shipping and its partner couriers, you may get real-time shipping prices and savings on any plan.

Tied for first place among sales tools

Your sales aren’t limited to your online shop with BigCommerce and Shopify. They allow you to sell on prominent online marketplaces including Facebook, Amazon, eBay, and Instagram. Shopify, on the other hand, has industry-leading connections with social media platforms like as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Shopify is the platform to choose if you want to provide in-app social media sales.

BigCommerce, on the other hand, lets you sell via business and ecommerce tools like Google Shopping, Walmart Marketplace, and PriceGrabber. These are significantly more possibilities than Shopify provides. BigCommerce is the best choice if these marketplace channels are more essential to you than social networks.

Shopify has the best marketing features.

Both Shopify and BigCommerce, as sophisticated ecommerce platforms, understand the significance of marketing for online businesses and offer fantastic tools to help you get your site recognized.

Recovery of Abandoned Carts

One feature worth highlighting is the Recovery of Abandoned Carts for marketing. Setting up Recovery of Abandoned Carts emails lets you interact with customers who don’t place or finish their orders to lure them back. You can customize your emails and add schedule triggers and discount codes as a way of enticing customers back to your store. You can also customize confirmation emails sent to customers when they order.

Compared to Shopify’s single email, BigCommerce’s abandoned cart saving function promises to recover up to 15% of lost purchases and allows you to send up to three automatic follow-up emails. The functionality, however, is accessible on all Shopify subscriptions (beginning at $29), but BigCommerce only offers it on the $79.95 tier.

Marketing through email

Sending e-newsletters to your mailing list is another important aspect of promoting your online shop. This aids in the increase of sales.

Shopify has a native Marketing through email tool, Shopify Email. Everyone on a paid Shopify plan is entitled to send 2,500 free emails each month. You get to customize your email look with templates and schedule their delivery, but advanced Marketing through email features—such as automation and customer behavior segmentation—are unavailable.

Shopify Email has templates for newsletters, announcements, and marketing emails that you may send to your customers.

BigCommerce doesn’t have a built-in Marketing through email tool yet, but free third-party Marketing through email integration options, like Mailchimp, are available.

Shopify is the best app store.

When it comes to third-party integrations, Shopify outnumbers BigCommerce, with more than 7,000 to BigCommerce’s 1,000+. If your shop requires anything, you’ll almost certainly find it in Shopify’s app store.

Thousands of connections with product suppliers, shipping solutions, affiliate programs, and more are available in Shopify’s app store. Its categories and suggestions are what we enjoy about it. You can quickly locate the program you want. (Image courtesy of Shopify)

Shopify and BigCommerce both feature well-organized categories that are easy to find.

Tied is the best option for security.

SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Certificates

Both BigCommerce and Shopify offer free SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Certificates on all of their plans. The only difference between the two platforms is that you cannot install a third-party SSL certificate on Shopify. With BigCommerce, you have the option to upgrade to a more advanced SSL certificate equipped with site seals and warranties. BigCommerce offers GeoTrust security certificates, and prices range from $59 to $299.

PCI DSS Compliant

BigCommerce and Shopify are both PCI DSS-compliant service providers. To defend against credit card data breaches, both systems comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.

Tied for best customer service

Shopify and BigCommerce want to take fantastic care of you, just as you should take excellent care of your own customers. If you ever have an issue, both companies provide help 24 hours a day, seven days a week via numerous channels.

BigCommerce’s help page is straightforward. The first step is to examine whether there is a simple solution to your issue that does not need the assistance of another individual. If a Help Center article does not address your problem, you may chat with an agent in real time, write an email, or call a representative. Whenever we spoke with customer service, the representatives were well-informed, kind, and willing to assist us in resolving both little and major concerns.

BigCommerce’s Help Center has shortcuts to its knowledge base, community forum, video lessons, and more, which we enjoy. Whether you go to the Contact Menu at the top, you may check if the platform is having system troubles (based on its state) and contact customer service for help.

Shopify’s help website works similarly to BigCommerce’s in that it attempts to fix your issue with articles and advice before referring you to support. They may be reached by live chat, email, and phone. They also respond to customer service requests on Twitter. Shopify’s crew, like BigCommerce’s, is professional, knowledgeable, and eager to help.

Start, sell, manage, promote, and grow are all categories in Shopify’s Help Center, and they all connect to various articles and tips on how to set up and manage a Shopify business. Its customer service button is widely featured across the website.

How Did We Compare BigCommerce with Shopify?

To help you decide which ecommerce platform is best for your store, we compared BigCommerce and Shopify on price, ease of use, store builder and design tools, Management of Inventory, and sales tools. We also added our own expert opinion based on years of experience testing different ecommerce platforms.

15%

Payment Processing and Pricing

30%

Design and Store Builder Features

30%

Features of Inventory and Sales

15% of the overall score

We looked at the cost of each basic plan that includes an online shop, as well as what plan alternatives are available as your company expands and payment processing choices, such as costs, flexibility, and one-click checkout options. In this comparison, Shopify triumphs over BigCommerce. Shopify gives a superior overall value with a free linked POS software and Shop Pay, yet they both have comparable plan choices (its one-click checkout option). BigCommerce, on the other hand, imposes sales limitations on its plan tiers, forcing you to upgrade to a more expensive plan.

30% of the overall score

We considered how easy it is to build and maintain a professional and attractive online store, including available templates, customization options, free domain and SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Certificates, unlimited storage and bandwidth options, and built-in SEO tools and site analytics. BigCommerce offers a better drag-and-drop site editing tool with more flexibility than Shopify’s WYSIWYG editor. However, Shopify offers more variety in its available themes, which is best for new ecommerce sellers.

30% of the overall score

We looked at what kind of product assortments Shopify and BigCommerce can accommodate; tools for in-store and mobile, integrated social media, and marketplace selling; and marketing tools. We also consolidated shipping options and PCI DSS Compliant. Shopify and BigCommerce are tied in this area. In general, they both offer similar features, with a few distinctions.

15% of the overall score

We chose systems that provide 24/7 customer care and several consumer touchpoints, such as phone, email, and chat, since online retailers are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Both Shopify and BigCommerce provide service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, therefore they’re tied. Shopify’s platform, on the other hand, is more straightforward and simple to use, particularly if you’re new to ecommerce and site builders.

10% of the overall score

We took into account total value, feature quality, popularity/customer happiness, and simplicity of use. We also took into account our personal work experience with each platform as well as input from firms that utilize each system. Because of its popularity, simplicity of use, and industry-leading advancements, Shopify outperforms BigCommerce in our expert evaluation.

*Percentages based on total score

Conclusion

It all comes down to the kind of company you have when deciding between Shopify and BigCommerce. BigCommerce is required if you operate a big business that needs several user accounts. Shopify, on the other hand, is the obvious winner for small companies, solopreneurs, and nascent firms due to its ease of use and Shopify Lite offering.

We suggest Shopify to anybody starting their first (or second, or third) internet business. It’s simple to start selling your items on the first day of your 14-day free trial, so get started now.

Go to Shopify to learn more.

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“BigCommerce vs Shopify: Which Ecommerce Platform Is Best for Your Business?” is a question that has been asked by many people. The “bigcommerce vs shopify” is a comparison between the two platforms. The “woocommerce” is a third platform that can also be used to compare. Reference: bigcommerce vs shopify vs woocommerce.

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