BigCommerce Vs Shopify: Which Platform is the Best in 2021?

Shivam B
6 min readSep 27, 2021

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BigCommerce and Shopify are two leading eCommerce platforms, and each has its benefits and downsides. However, both provide good all-in-one features and are especially helpful to business owners who want their store up and running as quickly as possible.

So in this article, I am going to share a quick comparison between these two amazing eCommerce platforms (BigCommerce Vs Shopify). So let’s begin -

Overview

Among the top eCommerce solutions on the market, these platforms are commonly used to start eCommerce businesses worldwide. Therefore, I will start by giving a brief overview of these two programs.

  • BigCommerce: A powerful eCommerce solution with strong payment processing capabilities. Businesses of all types and sizes can use it.
  • Shopify: The top eCommerce solution with rich features. It is one of the fastest and easiest platforms to use for starting an online business.

BigCommerce

The all-in-one platform allows you to manage your online store, sell on multiple channels, manage payments, orders, and shipping. A top competitor of Shopify, BigCommerce is highly praised for its robust features, user-friendly templates, and ease of use.

BigCommerce provides a wide range of eCommerce features, including:

  1. Exceptional SEO features
  2. No Transaction Fees
  3. 600 product options/variants
  4. In-depth analytics reports
  5. Excellent mobile optimization
  6. 24/7 customer support

Shopify

Shopify is the eCommerce platform used by over 800,000 businesses worldwide. It is an all-inclusive solution that lets you manage orders, store inventory, take payments, and build an online store on any device.

It is known as one of the fastest, easiest, and most customizable ways to get started in eCommerce — thanks to its user-friendly platform, customization capabilities, and built-in tools, as well as a broad range of integration options.

Shopify provides a wide range of eCommerce features, including:

  1. Integration of payment gateways
  2. Multichannel marketing features
  3. Built-in tools create marketing campaigns
  4. Robust customization
  5. Analytical reports with rich data
  6. 24/7 customer support

Comparison of BigCommerce and Shopify pricing

In terms of ecommerce website builders, the monthly cost of a plan is the most important factor for your budget. As a result, there will also be additional costs such as credit card fees and transaction fees. So let’s take a look at pricing.

BigCommerce offers 4 pricing plans:

  1. BigCommerce Standard: $29.95/month
  2. BigCommerce Plus: $79.95/month
  3. BigCommerce Pro: $299.95/month
  4. BigCommerce Enterprise: Pricing may differ depending on requirements

Shopify offers 5 pricing plans:

  1. Lite: $9/month
  2. Basic Shopify: $29/month
  3. Shopify: $79/month
  4. Advanced Shopify: $299/month
  5. Shopify Plus: Pricing may differ depending on requirements

Both BigCommerce and Shopify offer free trials. BigCommerce lasts 15 days, and Shopify lasts 14 days. Additionally, these platforms do not have a major price difference — it’s all about what you get for the price you pay.

For both platforms, prices don’t seem very different at all. But that changes when additional costs are added.

Transaction Fees

A transaction fee is the percentage of revenue that a website builder gets from each sale you make. You’ll be glad to know that BigCommerce does not charge fees for any of its plans. However, depending on the plan, Shopify will charge between 2% and 0.5%. To avoid Shopify’s transaction fees, you must use the Shopify Payments service (rather than a third-party payment processor like PayPal).

Credit Card Fees

The transaction fee is between you and your eCommerce platform, whereas credit card fees are what you pay to the third-party payment processor you use to process payments. Shopify has over 100 payment integrations, while BigCommerce offers 65.

BigCommerce vs. Shopify Winner: Pricing — It’s a tie! BigCommerce offers the same value for money as Shopify. However, BigCommerce has a larger selection of built-in tools, but Shopify has a lower price and offers discounts for students and non-profits.

Features

Let’s start with a comparison of the features of BigCommerce versus Shopify. How can these solutions benefit your eCommerce business?

BigCommerce

As a one-stop-shop for starting and managing your online store, BigCommerce offers a variety of capabilities.

  1. Building Websites: Select a theme for your online store from an array of free and paid themes. You can edit your store using the WYSIWYG editor or some custom code. With BigCommerce, all sites are mobile-responsive and have a mobile-friendly checkout.
  2. Hosting and Security: BigCommerce offers PCI-compliant hosting, HTTPS security, unlimited bandwidth, and the option to buy or use existing domains.
  3. Payments Option: BigCommerce offers various payment gateways that you can connect to or use Braintree’s special processing rates.
  4. Products and Orders: You can also send coupons, discounts, and gift cards with your orders. Ensure that your customers have a one-page checkout process and receive real-time shipping quotes.
  5. Multichannel Selling: Integrate your BigCommerce store with other sales channels such as eBay, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, and Google Shopping.
  6. Promotion Tools: You can promote your store using BigCommerce’s abandoned cart saver, user ratings and reviews, blog, international selling options, and analytical reports.
  7. Integration Options: Integrate your BigCommerce store with hundreds of third-party tools like marketing apps, shipping apps, CRM software and tax software and more.
  8. Customer Support: BigCommerce offers 24/7 live chat support and email, as well as resources on their site.

The above are just some of the most notable features BigCommerce offers. However, it’s important to note that the functionalities you receive are dependent on your subscription plan.

Shopify

Shopify offers robust features, which often make it the top-selling point of the software.

  1. Themes: Shopify offers over 70 free and paid themes for building and customizing your store. Themes on Shopify are mobile friendly, have a mobile shopping cart, and can be customized by dragging and dropping or by modifying HTML and CSS. In addition, all Shopify stores offer a full blogging platform and online content management system.
  2. Hosting and Security: Shopify offers web hosting, where customers can choose their own domain name or purchase one from the company. Also, SSL certificate support, PCI compliance, instant upgrades, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited email forwarding are included.
  3. Payments Option: Shopify’s online shopping cart supports over 100 different payment methods, including Shopify Payments and third-party payment gateways. Also, you can offer free shipping, check out in multiple languages, automatically calculate shipping rates, and automatically calculate taxes with Shopify.
  4. Products and Orders: With Shopify, you can list an unlimited number of products, manage your inventory, and fulfill orders easily with one click. In addition to connecting to fulfillment centers and drop shippers, customers can create profiles, accounts and groups for streamlined checkout and order management.
  5. Analytics and Marketing: Take advantage of Shopify’s SEO tools, offer discount offers and gift cards, and customize email templates. Additionally, you can integrate your social media accounts, sell on Facebook, access your analytics dashboard and reports, and link to Google Analytics.
  6. Mobile app: Use the free Shopify mobile app to manage your store, orders, inventory, and customers on the move. The Shopify app keeps all data in sync with the web platform.
  7. Integrations: The Shopify POS can be easily integrated with hundreds of tools in the Shopify App Store including apps for sales, marketing, inventory, productivity, reporting, etc.
  8. Customer support: Shopify provides customer support 24/7 via email, phone and live chat, as well as a help center, discussion forums and eCommerce university on their website.

Again, the specific features you receive will depend on the plan you choose.

Final Words -

Both BigCommerce and Shopify are excellent site builders and online managers, and there are many similarities between the two. However, it’s tough to pick a clear winner between BigCommerce and Shopify in terms of comparison. If I have to pick between these two then I would definitely go with Shopify.

If you are planning to migrate your platform to Shopify or BigCommerce, Galaxy Weblinks Inc. can help! As the world-leading web development company, they have performed many successful migrations for worldwide customers in 20+ years. They offer the following services:

  • Providers of end-to-end services
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  • A highly skilled and experienced team
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  • Maintaining and supporting facilities
  • You can hire them at any stage of your SDLC (Systems development life cycle)
  • Custom implementations and services

Contact them for more information at — https://www.galaxyweblinks.com/contactus?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=BigCommerce_Vs_Shopify&utm_id=medium.com

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