Choosing between BigCommerce vs. Shopify can be a challenge, given that both website builders/e-commerce platforms are widely loved by users and come with a variety of plans and tools to help you build and run your online store. That’s where this guide comes in. We’ll take you through how the platforms compare and help you decide which one meets your business needs best.
Ease of use
Above Average
On Wix’s Website
On Squarespace’s Website
AI powered tools
Easy to use drag-and-drop builder
On Web.com’s Website
On Shopify’s Website
BigCommerce vs. Shopify snapshot
BigCommerce plans
BigCommerce offers three plans: Standard, Plus and Pro. All plans pack in the following features:
- Single-page checkout
- Unlimited staff accounts
- Unlimited product and file storage
- Integration with multiple sales channels, including Amazon and Instagram
- 24/7 customer support via phone, chat and ticket
OK, so that’s how the plans are similar, but what differentiates them? Let’s take a closer look:
Standard plan
Priced at $29 per month (when paid annually), BigCommerce’s Standard plan is geared toward small-business owners who have relatively simple needs as far as features go and a low sales volume. Annual sales are capped at $50,000; once you hit that threshold, BigCommerce automatically moves you to the next highest plan, the Plus plan. The Standard plan offers up to three storefronts and four inventory locations.
Plus plan
Priced at $79 per month (when paid annually), the Plus plan is aimed at scaling businesses. It offers advanced features that help you grow sales, like persistent cart, customer segmentation and abandoned cart saver.
With the Plus plan, you get five storefronts and five inventory locations. In addition, the annual sales cap rises to $180,000, which gives you more breathing room in terms of sales volume.
Pro plan
The Pro plan is for established and complex businesses, offering advanced features like Google Customer Reviews and product filtering. It costs $299 per month (when paid annually) and gives you up to eight inventory locations and storefronts.
The Pro plan caps annual sales at $400,000. If you earn more, BigCommerce charges you $150 or more per month for each additional $200,000 you make.
On Shopify’s Website
Shopify plans
All Shopify plans offer multiple sales channels and e-commerce features like customer segmentation and marketing automation. However, each plan caps the number of staff accounts you get and the number of markets you can sell to. In addition, transaction fees on the third-party payment gateway you use vary according to the plan you choose.
Basic plan
This plan targets new small-business owners by giving them all the tools they need to get their store up and running. It costs $29 per month (when you pay annually) and allows you to sell to three markets.
The plan charges a 2% transaction fee when you use Stripe or another third-party payment gateway instead of Shopify Payments.
Shopify plan
The Shopify plan is geared toward helping business owners with small teams grow their sales. It costs $79 per month (when paid annually) and gives you five additional staff accounts. However, the number of markets you can sell to stays the same at three.
The Shopify plan charges you a 1% transaction fee when you use a third-party gateway.
Advanced plan
This last plan targets rapidly growing online stores. It costs $299 per month (when paid annually) and gives you features to further support your store’s growth, like custom reports and more checkout capacity.
The plan also offers 15 additional staff accounts and enhanced chat support, as well as more markets (over the standard three) for an extra $59 per month per market. Transaction fees for third-party payment gateways fall to 0.6% on every order.
Verdict: BigCommerce and Shopify offer identical plan pricing, but each has pros and cons
BigCommerce and Shopify each have three primary plans, priced the same. BigCommerce limits your sales under its plans and automatically pushes you to the next plan when your sales exceed the limits. Shopify, on the other hand, charges a transaction fee on all payments unless you choose Shopify Payments, which isn’t available in all countries.
Templates and website editor
An easy-to-use website editor with a variety of templates is essential for any e-commerce platform. We compared the editors from both BigCommerce and Shopify to see how their template variety and platform usability stacked up.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce gives you roughly 250 responsive e-commerce templates to choose from. To help you find the perfect template for your website, BigCommerce lets you filter by industry; view free templates, paid templates or both; and sort by collection or newest templates first.
All templates are customizable with the drag-and-drop page builder. You can use it to move website elements (carousels, buttons, dividers, etc.) from the sidebar into the template you select.
Dropping website elements into the template isn’t very intuitive though. During our testing of the page builder, we found there was a lag between when you select the element and when it falls into place. This lag gets frustrating after a while and makes designing your website feel slow and unintuitive.
Once you’re done designing your online store, the page builder lets you create a private link for sharing the store design before publishing it.
Source: BigCommerce
Shopify
Shopify has over 100 free and premium templates that you can use for your e-commerce website.
You can filter Shopify’s templates by price, collections, industry, product catalog size and features. Once you select a template, you can use Shopify’s easily navigable website editor to customize it, such as by changing colors, adjusting the padding between sections, and adding new sections and buttons.
Source: Shopify
Verdict: Shopify’s website editor is easier to use than BigCommerce’s
Although easy to use on the whole, BigCommerce’s editor isn’t as smooth and intuitive as Shopify’s. In our experience, it can take some time to get used to BigCommerce’s editor. In contrast, Shopify’s is clean and easy to navigate, making it particularly helpful for first-time website builders.
Setup and ease of use
Since you’ll be regularly using your website’s e-commerce platform to manage part of your business, you want it to be as easy to use as possible. Besides testing how user-friendly BigCommerce and Shopify were, we also combed through user reviews to find out what other business owners had to say about their usability.
BigCommerce
Once you’ve created an account, BigCommerce provides you with a checklist of essential to-dos in its main dashboard to help you set up your store. The same dashboard also walks you through important action items, like customizing your online store and listing products on Google.
Source: BigCommerce
BigCommerce users widely acknowledge the platform’s ease of use — appreciating its responsiveness, user-friendly backend design and easily navigable admin dashboard.
If you ever need help, BigCommerce makes it easy to find answers through its knowledge base, which offers guides, FAQs and videos to help you master the platform. You can also join BigCommerce’s active community.
Migrating your store to BigCommerce? The platform gives you step-by-step guides to make the process easy. And if you’d like additional assistance, you can work with BigCommerce’s in-house service migrators. The cost of migrating your store will vary based on factors like size of inventory and complexity. BigCommerce can provide you with an estimate of the cost and resources needed to migrate your store.
Shopify
Setting up a store in Shopify is fairly simple. Here’s the process in a nutshell: The platform starts by asking you about what you’re planning to sell. Then it gives you a personalized setup checklist with a clean, easy-to-navigate user interface.
Source: Shopify
Users applaud Shopify for its clean user interface and organized dashboard, and appreciate how easy it is to list products, add text and upload images.
Like BigCommerce, Shopify offers plenty of helpful resources. Your options include a blog, free webinars and a help center that lets you search by topic. There’s also a Shopify user community that you can join.
If you’re moving your store to Shopify, you can do it yourself using Shopify’s resources on migrations. Alternatively, you can use a third-party migration app or work with an external Shopify Partner if you want more assistance.
Verdict: BigCommerce and Shopify are both easy to use
We’re calling a tie in this category because both Shopify and BigCommerce make setting up an online store easy and straightforward. In addition, they both offer extensive help resources, including blogs, videos and tutorials.
E-commerce tools
In this section, we’ll take a look at the kinds of e-commerce tools BigCommerce and Shopify include in their plans.
BigCommerce
From professional reporting tools to over 65 payment gateways, BigCommerce provides an impressive selection of tools to help grow your online store. Budget-conscious business owners will be happy to hear that most of these tools are available with BigCommerce’s cheapest plan, including real-time shipping quotes and unlimited staff accounts.
BigCommerce offers up to 250 options per product, allowing you to create 600 variants. This way, you can provide customers with a wide variety of choices per product (for example, more colors and sizes), and they can choose from several variants (size and color combinations).
Shopify
Depending on your plan and payment gateway, you’ll have access to a variety of native tools, such as for fraud analysis and local and curbside pickup; however, many of these tools are limited in functionality. For example, local delivery works with Shop Pay (Shopify’s one-click checkout method) but not with other accelerated checkout methods, such as Apple Pay or PayPal.
What’s more, several features are only available with Shopify’s higher-priced packages, including real-time shipping quotes, custom reports, and a higher number of staff accounts and markets.
Shopify only provides you with up to three options per product, with a maximum of 100 product variants. That’s still a lot, but nowhere near as many as BigCommerce offers.
Lastly, while Shopify integrates with over 100 payment gateways, you’ll be charged third-party transaction fees on every purchase made with one of those.
Verdict: BigCommerce offers more e-commerce tools on its cheaper plans
Although Shopify offers more payment gateways than BigCommerce, it also charges a transaction fee on all of them. In addition, many of Shopify’s features are only available on its higher-priced plans. In contrast, BigCommerce doesn’t charge third-party transaction fees on different payment gateways. And it offers more e-commerce tools on its cheaper plans.
Summary: Which e-commerce platform should you choose?
While BigCommerce and Shopify are both robust e-commerce platforms and widely applauded by their users, the former is the only one that doesn’t push you to use a specific payment gateway to avoid transaction fees. BigCommerce also offers more features on its cheaper plans, which means small-business owners can get the most out of their online store right away without having to worry about running up against limitations as they scale.
When should you choose BigCommerce?
You should choose BigCommerce if you don’t want to pay more for the option to choose your own payment gateway. In addition, all of its plans come with a variety of useful features, including unlimited staff accounts, unlimited file storage and more product options. This abundance of features, even on lower-tier plans, makes BigCommerce a better option for rapidly growing e-commerce stores.
When should you choose Shopify?
Shopify is best if you’re looking for a robust e-commerce platform with a website editor that is more beginner-friendly. You can also avoid the extra transaction fees if you limit your checkout options to Shopify Payments.
Ease of use
Above Average
On Wix’s Website
On Squarespace’s Website
AI powered tools
Easy to use drag-and-drop builder
On Web.com’s Website
On Shopify’s Website
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
Is Shopify better than BigCommerce?
Shopify is better for businesses building their first e-commerce site that don’t mind using its native payment gateway, Shopify Payments.
What are the disadvantages of Shopify?
While it might seem like everything you need is included in Shopify’s Basic plan, the reality is that several important features are reserved for its more expensive plans. For example, only Shopify Plus users receive phone support and unlimited staff accounts. What’s more, Shopify charges between 0.6% and 2% in transaction fees per purchase when you use third-party payment gateways.
What are the disadvantages of BigCommerce?
Several essential e-commerce features don’t run natively on BigCommerce and are only available with integrations, including fraud detection. To boot, BigCommerce caps the annual online sales you can make: For example, if you exceed $400,000 in sales on its Pro plan, you’ll have to pay an extra $150 per month for each additional $200,000 in sales.
Can I migrate my store from Shopify to BigCommerce?
Yes. Depending on the size of your store, you can either migrate it manually or hire BigCommerce’s in-house migration service providers. You can also reference BigCommerce’s step-by-step migration guide, which is available on its website.
What is the best e-commerce platform?
The best e-commerce platform depends on your needs. For example, if you’re looking to run a small online store using a platform’s native payment gateway, Shopify is the best option. Similarly, if you’re looking for an e-commerce builder to complement your brick-and-mortar store, Square Online is a great option because of its streamlined system for accepting and managing online and in-person orders.
