BigCommerce and Shopify are two of the most popular hosted platforms in the eCommerce industry.
Both are known for their advanced functionality, reliable support, user friendly dashboards, all at highly competitive prices. Figuring out which one best suits your business can be a hard decision.
Today we’ll take a look at the details and features of both these platforms to help you decide on the best one for your business, before signing up with either.
Choosing Between BigCommerce And Shopify
Ask any business owner about the value of the right eCommerce platform, and the response would be more than just pleasant-looking designs and website uptime. Instead, eCommerce sites are created to be customer friendly and drive conversions, and not all platforms are created equal. In this locking of horns between the two eCommerce solutions, both of them are fairly young and rising exponentially in their scale and popularity worldwide.
Here’s a graph that shows both of their search trends over the last 5 years. Compared to Shopify, BigCommerce has stayed relatively static. Shopify is certainly the more popular platform. But this isn’t a popularity contest.
To gain more in terms of perspective, here are some comparisons:
- Pricing: Shopify vs BigCommerce
In terms of cost-effectiveness, both Shopify and BigCommerce are highly competitive with their prices, free trials that can go for 15 days for BigCommerce, and 14 days for Shopify. The package details of Shopify are as follows:
- Basic Shopify Package: $29 monthly
- Regular Shopify: $79 monthly
- Advanced Shopify: $299 monthly
In the case of BigCommerce, the packages start at $29.95 monthly, which includes online sales for brands going up to $50,000 per year. The package details for the same are:
- BigCommerce Plus: $79.95 monthly
- BigCommerce Pro: $199.95 monthly
Both also provide a discount for purchasing yearly plans instead of monthly. Both brands are about the same prices for getting started, so it’s best to go with whichever provides the best solutions for you.
- Ease Of Use
Both platforms provide a high-performing and easy-to-use framework for businesses to operate. Similar to adding media on a WordPress blog, Shopify and BigCommerce are exactly that easy to handle, with the former being recognized for being the cleanest platform online.
Shopify’s extremely simplified dashboard makes it easy to navigate all common store functions from the left side bar, where one can easily add new products, discounts, or any other content.
However, if any company is seeking a custom-developed, user-friendly admin panel, BigCommerce can be a great start. Its multi-level functionalities and readable programs help beginners mostly to develop the best of the eCommerce environments without having to have a deep technical understanding of the platform.
- Platform Features
BigCommerce and Shopify are both scalable in nature and come with dedicated plans for business owners. Shopify comes with 2 staff accounts for the basic plan, 5 for the regular, and 15 for the advanced plan. BigCommerce offers unlimited staff accounts for all tiers. If you need a lot of staff accounts, BigCommerce may be a better choice.
In general, BigCommerce seems to have more functionality and therefore can help you to make better choices in terms of coupons and discounts. You can also portray your products in a side-by-side manner, via the category pages on BigCommerce by default.
One of the main features BigCommerce lacks is POS integration, at least for the Non-Enterprise version. Shopify offers POS equipment, which may be essential if you plan to operate a brick-and-mortar store.
- Navigation and Usability
Both platforms offer numerous intuitive solutions that could provide you maximum flexibility to play around with elements. While Shopify rules the numbers game in terms of its vast ‘cool stuff’ with more themes, but that necessarily doesn’t mean any added benefits, since you still may need to pay for features like a customizable landing page for Shopify.
Therefore, if you really need to understand what could work best for you, you can opt for the free trial period to understand their scope. You may discover that a lot of features that come straight up with BigCommerce, would require to be bought as an add-on on Shopify, therefore the former can possibly prove to be more affordable than the latter.
- Transaction Fees
In its definition, the transaction fees are the amount charged by the platform on each of the purchases made by a customer. It’s similar to what PayPal charges for any business transactions; where the transaction fees are as much as a 2.9% cut + a base amount in terms of the total amount sent through.
For Shopify Basic, the transaction fees start from 2.9%, while for Shopify Advanced, the transaction is lower slightly. BigCommerce has similar fees, and they are generally a bit lower.
Conclusion
There is no one answer on which platform is better. Each offers different features and pricing that make it up to the needs of the businesses choosing their platform. Overall, Shopify and BigCommerce are more similar to each other in terms of their utility and features compared to alternatives like Magento.
If you need to hire a Shopify or BigCommerce expert, we recommend the following development agencies-
Goose
Offering SEO, development, and marketing services, Goose has everything you need in one place. They also support both BigCommerce and Shopify development!
CodeClouds
A global company, you get the best of both worlds- offshore developers, onshore support. They have both BigCommerce and Shopify developers for hire.
Nextbit
Primarily focused on design, Nextbit offers a variety of eCommerce services, including Shopify. They have an excellent portfolio, and they’ll surely set you up with a unique store!
