BigCommerce vs Shopify: Which Is Best For You In 2023?

When it comes to selecting between two giant e-commerce platforms like Shopify and Bigcommerce, every brand/business gets in the loop. And, it’s natural as they both provide subtle e-commerce features at a reasonable price. So, if you are in the same position and looking for a better option between these two, then this Shopify vs BigCommerce comparison has got your back.

Here we will be discussing all the subtle aspects  — ease of use, design & customization, sales features, marketing features, pricing, and customer support of these e-commerce builders.  

By the end of this detailed BigCommerce vs Shopify comparison, you’ll also get to know — which one to choose. 

So stay tuned!

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Quick Comparison

Here is a quick comparison between BigCommerce and Shopify:

Comparison Criteria	BigCommerce	Shopify
Ease of Use	Setting up an online store on BigCommerce is easy, but it has many technical sales features that might overwhelm beginners.	All the features of Shopify are beginner friendly, and you can easily create your store and add products and descriptions to your store.
Transaction Fee	There is no transaction fee on any plan of BigCommerce.	You won’t have to pay any transaction fee if you are using Shopify payments. However, they charge for third-party payment methods.
Sales Features	BigCommerce offers better inventory management features, but it is not as compatible with other platforms as Shopify is.	Shopify has in-built sales features meaning you won’t need any third-party app to sell, but if you do, you can easily find it in the Shopify App Store.
Security	SSL certificate for your store and standard payment card security.	Similar security features as BigCommerce.
Free Trial	15-day free trial	3-day free trial + 3 months for $1/month
Pricing	Starts at $39/month	Starts at $39/month

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Key Differences

Here we have mentioned the key differences between BigCommerce and Shopify in detail.

• There is a 15-day free trial available on BigCommerce, whereas Shopify’s free trial only last for three days.
• To increase the capability of your store, you may need to add third-party apps to your Shopify store, which can cost extra. BigCommerce has so many in-built features that you may not need any third-party integration.
• BigCommerce does not charge any transaction fee on any payment gateway. Shopify charges a transaction fee if you use a third-party payment gateway, but it does not charge any transaction fee if you use in-built Shopify payment gateways.
• You can build more than one store with any BigCommerce plans, whereas only with Shopify Plus you can build multiple stores.
• Shopify does not have any sales limits, whereas BigCommerce does.

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Easy of Use 

A user-friendly interface soothes the experience. Right? No matter whether you are a beginner or an expert, the easy-to-use interfaces of Saas tools have always proved to be enticing to entrepreneurs. Keeping that in mind, here we will be comparing this feature of both Shopify and Bigcommerce. So, have a look below. 

Shopify 

Shopify is the go-to option for every brand or business. You don’t need to be tech-savvy to deal with this platform. Starting from setting up a store to selling the products to your customers, everything has a streamlined process. Moreover, we have asked lots of Shopify users and they have claimed that “it is very very easy to use for brands”. Once you set up your store on Shopify, you can choose the further process from the options popping up on the right-hand side. 

Bonus: Read how to start a Shopify store from our detailed guide here.

Bigcommerce

As Bigcommerce provides advanced-level marketing features, it’s a bit tricky to operate for beginners. You need to search for certain technical terms and tutorials to get the process done. For instance, if you want to add products to your Bigcommerce store, you have to undergo several technical processes in terms of product files, inventory, custom fields, and so on. That’s why Bigcommerce is less ideal for newbie entrepreneurs. 

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Design & Customization Options

Online stores are like doors to your page. Now, it’s up to you whether you’ll welcome your customers or not. So, make sure to make it enticing and attractive so that your customers visit your page frequently. But, Shopify or Bigcommerce – which provides more exclusive themes and designs? Let’s see.

Shopify Design Options

If you want to present a gorgeous-looking store to your customers, go for Shopify. It provides you with hundreds of premium themes and designs to customize your brand as per your need. Price ranges from  $100 to $180 for paid themes. Moreover, you can opt for free themes as well as they are more premium than Bigcommerce free templates.  

Apart from theme templates, Shopify has a number of customization options in terms of image banners, rich text, featured collections, collages, and so on. Moreover, you can use the video option to make your homepage more appealing to the customers.  You just have to drag and drop those elements as per your need. 

Shopify has not left one single chance to make your store enticing. Even, it allows the customers to design the product page based on their requirements.  So, it’s a huge deal for marketers and they can set up a well-designed store within a fraction of a minute. 

Bigcommerce Design Options

Bigcommerce lags behind in this battle. Bigcommerce themes range from industry, layout, and other stuff. But, they are not as exclusive as Shopify themes. The free theme templates aren’t applicable at all if you want to create an enticing store. So, if you want to grow your business in the long term, you have to opt for paid themes. 

If we talk about Bigcommerce’s page builder options, then it has given a neck-to-neck competition to Shopify by adding various convenient features for customization. Here also, you can use the drag and drop method to design your pages. 

Now, if we are to choose between these two based on their customization options, then it’s will be a bit tricky since they both are best in their own ways. For instance:

• Shopify has more designed and classy themes than Bigcommerce Theme templates Whereas Bigcommerce has an out-of-box feature set.
• Bigcommerce has a more convenient drag and drops method than Shopify. Whereas Shopify doesn’t allow you to drag the customization options directly to your pages. 
•  Shopify enables marketers to add extra convenient features in terms of e-newsletters,  blog posts, etc. But, Bigcommerce lacks here.

*Additional Tip:  If you aren’t satisfied with the already customized themes of these platforms, you can easily take help from third-party apps for premium theme templates. 

After evaluating all these criteria, we can come to the decision that Shopify has more diversified design options than Bigcommerce. 

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Marketing Features

A Quick Overview 

Marketing Features	Shopify	Bigcommerce
Built-in SEO tools	8.2	7.9
Storefront tools	8.5	8.2
Analytics tools	8.5	8.3
Social commerce options	8.7	8.1
Email Marketing	8.4	8.2
Personalization	8.2	7.8
Promotions and discount coupons	8.3	8.0

Shopify Marketing Features

• Built-in SEO tools to improve title tags, meta descriptions,  product details, and so on. 
• It enables you to collect visitor data from your sites
• Track your performance with a marketing dashboard report
• Promote your products via Email Marketing, Google Smart Shopping, and Facebook Ads.

Moreover, if you opt for the Advanced plan, you’ll benefit from Shopify’s exclusive marketing features such as unique customer groups,  google targetting ads, etc. 

Bigcommerce Marketing Features

• Abandoned cart delivery via email marketing
• Get control over your URLs, metadata, and header tags with built-in SEO best practices.
• Get traffic from various social media platforms on your page.
• Convert your visitors into revenue through marketing.

More or less, both Shopify and Bigcommerce offer the same marketing features as they can’t be compromised for e-commerce brands. So, it’s a tie!

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Sales Features

How can you avoid the sales features of any e-commerce platform if you want to nurture your conversion rates? And, as far as the comparison is concerned between these two platforms, let’s see who wins in the end? 

A Quick Overview

Sales features	Shopify	Bigcommerce
Multichannel selling options	8.4	8
Shipping	8.6	8.3
Order Management Process	8.8	8.6
Product Inventory	8.6	8.3
Refunds	8.5	8.3

Shopify Sales Feature

• It provides an SSL certificate that authenticates your brand identity
• Multichannel selling options 
• Inventory adjustments
• Shopify has the best  App store 

Remember, Shopify has a larger app store than Bigcommerce and you can add a number of efficient selling tools ranging from free to $200. 

Bigcommerce Sales Features

• Multiple selling tools and channels
• Simple Inventory management system
• It offers more than 600 variants of products
• It enables customers to add product reviews.
• One is able to track shipping information via third-party tools.
• Ability to add as many site members as you can as per your need

So, it’s a clear win for Bigcommerce as it offers better sales features to the brands than Shopify, whereas Shopify compensates for it with a larger Appstore.

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Payment gateways

Both of them provide super-smooth payment gateways to their users. They allow all the third-party tools in terms of Stripe, PayPal, Paytm, and Razorpay to make the payment easier. In addition to that Shopify has its own payment methods to build credibility with the buyers. To know more, have a look below.

Shopify Payment 

• Own in-house payment methods
• All third-party apps including Stripe, PayPal, Paytm, and Razorpay.
• No transaction fees
• Immediate approval
• You may also use cryptocurrency to get payment from buyers.

Bigcommerce Payments

• It has no built-in payment method like Shopify.
• Third-party apps are the only payment methods for Bigcommerce.
• No transaction fee

So, here Shopify takes the lead since it offers both built-in and third-party payment methods to the users.

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Pros & Cons

Here are the benefits & drawbacks of using Shopify and BigCommerce.

BigCommerce Pros

• You won’t be charged any transaction fees on BigCommerce on any payment gateway.
• BigCommerce offers plenty of product options compared to Shopify.
• It gives you the option to set your exchange rates so that you can easily sell in multiple currencies.
• BigCommerce offers professional reporting tools in all their pricing plans.
• The abandoned cart feature is much more flexible compared to Shopify.

BigCommerce Cons

• BigCommerce does not offer a lot of third-party apps compared to Shopify.
• There is a sales limit on BigCommerce, which is not good.

Shopify Pros

• You can get the abandoned cart recovery feature at an affordable price on Shopify compared to BigCommerce.
• With the help of the multilingual feature, you can create your store in multiple languages.
• Shopify comes with an affordable email marketing tool which can come in handy to attract consumers.
• You can embed the “Buy Button” on the entire product catalog and sell them in bundles.
• Shopify offers a lot more templates option compared to BigCommerce.

Shopify Cons

• You can not add custom fields on your Shopify store without adding any app or coding.
• Shopify does not offer professional reporting tools to show your store’s analytics.

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Pricing Battle

Here comes the answer to the most asked question – BigCommerce vs Shopify- which is more reasonable? Well, apparently both of them offer potent marketing features at a pocket-friendly budget, but there’s a subtle difference between the ranges. Prices start from $29 to $300 and they keep on changing every year. 

Now, to have a detailed comparison of the pricing plans, keep on scrolling further.

Shopify Plans and Pricing

Shopify mostly offers three types of pricing plans to the brands.

• Basic plan: It costs $39/month and is ideal for newbie businesses
• Shopify: It costs you around $105/month and is equivalent to growing businesses
• Advanced Plan: It costs $399/month and is applicable for giant businesses.

Bigcommerce Plans and Pricing

Note: If you wanna save a few extra bucks well check our working BigCommerce Coupon Code here.

• Standard: $39/month ( simple, well-designed online store)
• Plus: $105/month ( with marketing tools for better conversion rates)
• Pro: $399./month ( with additional features like Google customer reviews, product filtering, customer product filtering, and so on)
• Enterprise: It has no specific range since the prices vary from feature to feature.

Winner: Though you can consider it a draw between both of these platforms, Bigcommerce still takes the lead, offering multiple premium features in its standard plan. So, as per the comparison, Shopify is more budget-friendly than Bigcommerce.  But before opting for any paid plan, make sure to try the 3 days free trial to test all the features

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Customer Support

In this section, we will be comparing the customer support systems of both of these platforms. So, let’s see who takes the lead. 

Shopify Customer Support

Shopify has a super active customer support team. They are available 24*7, and you can connect with them via email and live chats. Moreover, several video tutorials are also available to ease the technical glitches. Moreover, you may visit their help center page to solve all your queries. 

Bigcommerce Customer Support

Like Shopify, Bigcommerce also offers 24 hours customer support to its users. Shopify has categorized its offerings as per the customers’ needs but on Bigcommerce, they provide a few contact details based on geographical locations. You might have a quick call with them and they will solve your issues.

Undoubtedly, Shopify will have the crown since it provides more detailed and categorized support than Bigcommerce.

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Which is Better for Small/Newbie Businesses?

Reviewing the above-mentioned features of both of these e-commerce platforms, Shopify is considered the most beginner-friendly e-commerce builder in the market. 

It is appropriate for every small business owner and especially for those who have no idea – where to start and how to start. On the contrary, Bigcommerce is for growing businesses as it has a bit tricky interfaces and you might need some support to run your business on Bigcommerce.

Moreover, Bigcommerce’s pricing is a bit higher than that of Shopify. And it’s not applicable to beginner brands. 

In a nutshell, Shopify is more appropriate for beginners than Bigcommerce.

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Which is Better for Large Businesses?

Overall, both Shopify and Bigcommerce are the perfect fit for large businesses. Shopify’s plus plan and Bigcommerce’s Enterprise Plan have especially been tailored for high-level businesses providing a range of premium tools and features. 

But, the Bigcommerce Enterprise plan has more seamless features that are highly efficient for high-end brands. Not only that, but here they also provide personalized attention to those who have opted for this package. 

On the other hand, one of the best features of Shopify’s plus plan is it allows the users to connect their online store to brick-and-mortar shops. 

So, it can be said that Bigcommerce is more coherent for the growth of your online business whereas Shopify has the best features to expand your stores to the next level. 

Related Read:

• Shopify vs WooCommerce
• Shopify Statistics
• Shopify vs Squarespace

Final Word: BigCommerce vs Shopify (2023)

We have reached the conclusion part of this article. Now, it’s high time to judge – who wins the battle ultimately? Well, directly, we won’t be able to come to any final judgment because both of them are giant e-commerce builders providing thousands of features to the users. Each of them satisfies different needs as per their plans and pricing. 

You can go for Bigcommerce if you want to grow your business worldwide by investing a high amount of money. On the other hand, you can opt for Shopify if you want to scale your brand via multiple channels and third-party tools. 

But, as per our judgment based on research and user reviews, we can conclude that Shopify is a clear winner here as it provides access to multiple premium features within a minimal budget. 

What’s your take on this? Let us know in the comment section below.

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