If you’re new to online marketing and the intricacies of setting up an eCommerce store, then planning and launching your first online business can seem like an overwhelming endeavor. For starters, you have to settle on a platform that’s perfect for your particular business. Chances are that your search has boiled down to two of the biggest players in the eCommerce industry: BigCommerce and Shopify.
Keep reading as we pit these two options against each other and contrast their core features, subscription models, customization scope, and UI accessibility — essentially, everything that you want to know before making your decision.
What Is BigCommerce?
BigCommerce is a subscription-based hosted platform that enables entrepreneurs to create an online eCommerce website. As a whole, BigCommerce is a software as a service (SaaS), which is to say that you pay a subscription fee to use it, and you don’t own any part of the software.
With its enterprise-level features and data analytics tools, BigCommerce is a choice product for businesses that are already scaled or are growing rapidly and need to ascend to the next level in their scaling strategy.
BigCommerce comes with a range of customizations across its platform to help you design and personalize your online store. The platform is intended for entrepreneurs without the know-how of coding and web design aptitudes. But if you know your coding, you can fine-tune the HTML and CSS of your store as well.
What Is Shopify?
Like BigCommerce, Shopify is a market-leading SaaS eCommerce platform that offers an excellent suite of accessible features. At the most basic level, you can build online shopping sites and easily integrate social networking channels, list product inventories, design shopping carts, embed payment gateways, and automate order processing — all incorporated within a robust infrastructure.
Being a cloud-based and hosted platform, Shopify handles maintenance and server upgrades. Whichever plan you choose from its multi-tier subscription model, you don’t have to be concerned about the backend, network security, or PCI compliance. Shopify does it all for you.
Unlike other platforms which demand a certain understanding of websites infrastructure, cloud hosting, or even coding languages, Shopify is specifically intended for anyone with a website or brick-and-mortar business who has the vision to start an online store.
Do BigCommerce and Shopify Offer the Same Services?
Being in the same market segment, BigCommerce and Shopify offer more or less the same set of features and restrictions. Unlimited inventory listings, data storage, and network accessibility are offered by both platforms along with almost similar support options.
Both BigCommerce and Shopify’s client interfaces can be accessed through a web browser, making your store easily managed from anywhere in the world, and no local installation on your computer necessary.
Both provide sufficient features to set up a perfect top-tier professional online store while providing opportunities for effective SEO, inventory management, and a wide selection of third-party apps and payment interfaces.
But how are they different? Let’s compare BigCommerce and Shopify’s features and see if one holds the edge over the other in the final countdown.
User Interface (UI) and Design
Winner: Shopify
BigCommerce and Shopify are essentially sales-oriented eCommerce platforms, not design-centric website builders like WordPress. However, as far as theme selection goes, Shopify has themes that are fairly easy to navigate, look stylish and professional, and offer an excellent level of customization to meet your business’s particular needs.
BigCommerce’s themes, on the other hand, offer way less variety than what you get with Shopify. Even though BigCommerce boasts a fairly extensive range of free and paid themes, be certain that you’re picking one that’s fitting for your business. BigCommerce’s free themes nonetheless can look a little obsolete, and the solution is likely to use a paid theme, which will cost you between $150 to $250.
Related Reading: Which is best for eCommerce: Shopify or WordPress?
Hosting, Domains, and Security
Winner: Tie
For your online store to stay live 24/7, you need comprehensive network security and a near 100-percent uptime. Simply put, it’s important to keep your chances of catastrophic downtime at a minimum.
Both BigCommerce and Shopify score perfect on this test with an impressive 99.99% uptime guarantee with great connection speed. Furthermore, both can instantly deliver content around the globe, thanks to providing all users access to their efficient Content Delivery Networks (CDNs).
Both Shopify and BigCommerce provide you with the option to purchase domains to enable you to set up your online store instantly without the hassle of configuring DNS (domain name settings) records with domain name providers. They both also provide a free SSL certificate, which is a necessary safety feature of any trustworthy site.
BigCommerce servers are PCI DSS 3.0 certified at Level 1 to protect against credit card data breaches. Shopify stores are Level 1 PCI DSS compliant and are protected by an automatic backup system. Both platforms have additional security features such as:
- network firewalls
- file scanners for malware
- anti-intrusion measures
- 24/7 live assistance
- DDOS moderation solutions
SEO and Social Media
Winner: BigCommerce
Considering that they are both online selling platforms, BigCommerce and Shopify are optimized enough to perform exceptionally with effective SEO and social media integration.
The built-in tools for on-page SEO in both platforms are quite straightforward, and changing page titles and meta descriptions are a piece of cake, so is adding headings and alt text.
Creating page redirects is also fairly simple for both platforms, all in all, though, BigCommerce offers a slightly better SEO performance because it provides Google-friendly URLs. Even though you can customize your URLs in Shopify to mention keywords, it also adds prefixes to your pages. BigCommerce, on the other hand, creates smaller URLs that search engines prefer. At the same time, Shopify boasts a robust SEO framework too, and obviously, with such a great level of customization allowed, you can tweak your SEO preferences for search engines in each platform.
Needless to say, to perform well in search results, be it BigCommerce or Shopify, time and financial investment are required to take care of link building, on-page SEO, and keyword analysis.
Both platforms offer the opportunity to sell on social media with the help of a vast range of plugins and apps, customizable buttons, and profile links. With Shopify, you can add the “Buy” button to another store, website, or social media platform. In BigCommerce, the “Buy Button” app needs to be installed first, followed by a similar process for implementation.
Related Reading: Actions you can take to make your Shopify site rank
Customer Support
Winner: Shopify
Whether you choose BigCommerce or Shopify, you will get access to the service’s:
- 24/7 support phone line and live chat
- active support forum
- advanced specialist support
- email assistance
- video tutorials
BigCommerce’s help center is helpful but less concise than Shopify’s in understanding and solving issues. Moreover, Shopify also provides assistance through social media, which BigCommerce does not. Shopify has a clear edge over BigCommerce due to its efficient handling of customer queries and its abundance of product support pages.
Related Reading: 11 Best resources for troubleshooting Shopify
Pricing
Winner: BigCommerce
Both BigCommerce and Shopify offer free trials and have multi-tier subscription plans. Shopify’s three-tier plans range from $29 to $299 a month. However, with Shopify, adding additional plugins and third-party apps can increase your expenditure substantially. Keep this in mind when outlining a budget for any plan.
BigCommerce monthly subscriptions start from $29.95 and top-tier plans are Enterprise plans with custom pricing. In total, BigCommerce offers four subscription packages, fitting for scaling your business over the long term.
Generally speaking, BigCommerce offers more value for money when compared with Shopify. Overall though, BigCommerce and Shopify have pretty similar pricing models. BigCommerce has a slight edge attributing to its built-in features and almost no additional costs.
Related Reading: How much does Shopify really cost?
BigCommerce vs. Shopify: Which Is Best?
Choosing between BigCommerce and Shopify depends on your perspective and specific business needs. Both are reputed industry behemoths, so you’re guaranteed to get stellar service compared to other eCommerce competitors. With that being said, there are significant differences as well, so let’s have a quick recap of what was covered above.
Shopify UI for both site visitors and store admins is very convenient to use, whereas BigCommerce is more tricky to get the hang of.
If your business is already established and needs a lift, BigCommerce has the potential to do just that. On the contrary, Shopify is fit for eCommerce stores of any size. With its huge collection of add-on plugins, features, and third-party apps, Shopify has the answer to all of your highly specific eCommerce needs.
BigCommerce is the best scalable eCommerce platform currently on the market. It has all the built-in features for your online store, so there’s no need to rely on third-party apps. On the other hand, Shopify is more flexible for stores of all sizes. Whether you’re a small food shop taking your first online sales or a large company jumping into eCommerce, Shopify has the tools to make it happen. While we’re partial to Shopify because of its simplicity and versatility from the most modest businesses to large multinational corporations, there are definitely some benefits to using BigCommerce that may speak to you.
