Which is better when comparing Shopify vs BigCommerce? Which of those two is easier to use, offers more features, and has a lower price? Shopify and BigCommerce are two of the most popular eCommerce platforms, so it’s not easy to choose between them.
They actually have different approaches to how things are being done. That’s especially visible in how you get your access to the features: Shopify depends heavily on apps to extend the platform, while BigCommerce tries to give you a lot more selling and design functionality from the start.
Which approach is better? Well, neither one is necessarily better than the other. I would say that the sheer size and range of Shopify’s app marketplace ultimately makes it more extensible and scalable than BigCommerce.
However, you do need some work to collect all the apps needed to build an online store. And since those apps are all premium, expected online store prices quickly go up.
NOTE: Be sure also to check Shopify vs Volusion, Shopify vs Squarespace, BigCommerce vs Squarespace, Shopify vs WordPress, Shopify vs Wix, Shopify vs WooCommerce.
Table of Contents
Shopify vs BigCommerce
Shopify and BigCommerce both have fairly similar prices and offer a similar list of features, but things start looking a little bit confusing once you look closer.
With BigCommerce, you get all the essential tools included in the plan (gift cards, reports, real-time shipping quotes, etc.), while Shopify requires paying for each separately.
Therefore, for the same features, you may pay a different price in the two, which means any potential buyer is subject to some serious research to find out which platform will be cheaper for their specific needs.
On the design side, however, I didn’t feel like I developed a strong preference for either Shopify or BigCommerce. And yet, Shopify had a couple of extra aces up its sleeve.
Both platforms offer just a handful of free templates – and there’s also a much wider selection of paid themes. Shopify gives you a little more flexibility to customize your theme because, unlike BigCommerce, here you get a drag-and-drop editor for rearranging page sections.
I was very impressed with the dashboard setup of both BigCommerce and Shopify. The layout is excellent and easy to navigate, which really streamlines the task of managing your business. Shopify stands out here for offering more payment gateway options and making it easier for you to sell bookings in addition to physical products.
In this BigCommerce vs Shopify comparison, I’ll walk you through everything you need to know about these two competing eCommerce solutions.
Along the way, I’ll highlight the essential features that might tip the scales towards one of these platforms over the other for your business. And for more detailed info regarding both options, I have written a detailed Shopify review and BigCommerce review.
Ease Of Use
I found both BigCommerce and Shopify to be extremely easy to use. I liked the dashboard setup in BigCommerce slightly better, but I thought it was equally simple to set up a new store on either platform.
When it comes to scalability, Shopify has a slight edge because of its more extensive app store.
Dashboard
The dashboards in Shopify and BigCommerce are so simple a baby could accidentally start an international enterprise.
The menu structure is simple and makes it very easy to find the pages you need for tasks you want to accomplish.
For example, right after being logged into the Shopify store, I could quickly get a sense of navigating it. Categories are clear, and action buttons are all in place. Simply put, no previous experience is needed to start doing things.
Still, if I had to choose, I’d pick BigCommerce’s dashboard. That’s because the home page is a little bit more organized, with a set of options that give you quick access to manage your business or make changes to your storefront.
In Shopify, there’s something similar, but the layout means that I had to search for the options I wanted, and I still ended up Googling stuff anyway.
Also, I liked the way that BigCommerce handles store settings. It puts your settings into ‘Store Setup’ and ‘Advanced Settings’ menus, making it easier to find what I need. In Shopify, there’s simply a settings page where you’ll find a dozen different sub-menus.
Website & Store Setup
I didn’t find that much difference when comparing BigCommerce vs Shopify in terms of website setup. It’s incredibly easy to set up your storefront with either eCommerce platform.
BigCommerce makes the process go a little faster because there are fewer customization options. But, if you don’t make any changes to your template, Shopify is just as quick.
I was impressed that both platforms allow you to change your theme at any time without losing your content.
Oh, and if you’re looking to do some more stuff than mere moving of the content blocks, good news for you. Both Shopify and BigCommerce give you a dedicated code editor if you decide to dive into your theme’s CSS files.
One of the things that also stood out to me in BigCommerce was that you could make a copy of your theme and then make new style changes without losing what you had before.
All of your product options are on a single page, which I loved. Plus, there’s no wrangling over variants since the two platforms make it easy just to delete variant combinations that don’t exist.
Scalability
Once your business is set up, and you are looking to scale, I think you’d be better off using Shopify. This, however, isn’t reflective of the platforms themselves. Both of them allow you to change plans and negotiate different fees pretty much at will.
The real difference is noticeable when looking at both Shopify and BigCommerce app marketplaces.
Shopify is the most popular eCommerce platform globally, and it shows in the service’s app store. For every business need, there are a dozen or more apps. When it comes time to scale your business, that just makes it so much easier to find the perfect service or add-on and integrate it into your website.
BigCommerce’s app store is a lot smaller. There are less than 1,000 apps in total, compared to Shopify.
That’s not to say you won’t be able to find the tools you need to grow your business, but you might not always have a choice of apps or pricing options. It also means that you might not be able to integrate some other services you use with your BigCommerce store since they’re less likely to have BigCommerce extensions.
Mobile Access
Finally, I think it’s worth looking at whether or not you can access your site and manage your orders on the go. Shopify and BigCommerce offer a mobile app.
With Shopify app you can approve orders and manage shipping, but you’re pretty much limited to changing product images and descriptions in terms of design.
The BigCommerce mobile app gives you the ability to check key performance metrics, view and update orders, manage products and search for customers on all of your BigCommerce stores. The app is developed by BigCommerce and is free to download from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
EASE OF USE WINNER: BigCommerce and Shopify are both very user-friendly eCommerce platforms. I liked BigCommerce’s dashboard set up a bit better, but Shopify’s enormous app store makes it easier to scale down the road. Importantly, Shopify allows you to manage your business from a smartphone app, whereas BigCommerce doesn’t have an app at all.
Design & Templates
When comparing BigCommerce and Shopify templates and design, I kept finding myself leaning towards Shopify. Why?
Shopify’s premium templates are cheaper, and the platform’s designer lets you add in page sections to change the look of your storefront, whereas BigCommerce is much more rigid.
Templates
Although Shopify and BigCommerce both gave me a handful of free templates to choose from, I wasn’t exactly impressed. I’d say they all fall into the good but not great category.
Of course, “good” isn’t a bad thing. But if you’re looking to make a big business, should you really settle for only “good”?
One key difference between the two platforms is that Shopify has more free templates. On top of that, Shopify’s premium templates are far more reasonably priced.
The native Shopify themes range between $140 and $180, while BigCommerce charges upwards of $200 for most of its templates.
In addition, it’s much easier to find third-party templates for Shopify. These are typically $60 or less, and some can be pretty cheap. The small selection of third-party BigCommerce templates I found averaged around $150 in price.
The other thing I found was that BigCommerce’s themes screamed eCommerce, whereas Shopify’s could be a bit more subtle.
BigCommerce themes often put your or categories right on the homepage, often in place of a full-width image introducing customers to your store. This could work for some businesses, particularly low- and mid-end retail shops, but it just wasn’t my idea of an inviting template.
Shopify offered many themes with the same design, but there were also more options for other styles. For instance, I saw a lot of templates with full-width homepage images.
And I could also modify the template’s page sections giving me a lot more control – so any template could morph into a website of your dreams.
Shopify also had a lot more themes with unique gallery-style layouts. That could be a big asset for businesses that focus on art, photography, or other image-heavy products. Alternatively, it can be used for high-end retail businesses to help set your shop apart.
Storefront Customization
You get way more customization options in Shopify than in BigCommerce. This is another area where I saw quite a bit of daylight between the two platforms.
In BigCommerce, customization features are almost nonexistent. You can’t change the structure or layout of your pages at all from what your theme gives you. If you want to add a text box where there isn’t already one, for instance, you’re basically out of luck. This is even worse when adding things like call to action buttons or newsletter sign-up forms.
In contrast, Shopify gives you the ability to create page sections and reorder them on your pages. These page sections are limited compared to what I’ve seen in website builders, but they are miles ahead of what you get in BigCommerce.
More exciting page section options include slideshows, images with text overlay, galleries, and newsletter sign-up boxes. The fact that you can rearrange them is also a big deal because it means you’re not strictly limited to the page organization your theme ships with.
That said, I think BigCommerce actually offers a few more options for adjusting your theme styles than Shopify does. How come?
Both platforms’ themes come with multiple styles, which you can switch between to change color palettes and, to a limited extent, layouts. In Shopify, the only other styles you can edit are colors, fonts, and social media icons.
BigCommerce gives you more control over the look of your page elements. You can control some aspects of the header and footer, as well as your fonts, checkout page, and call to action buttons.
It’s still very limited, but this is definitely an improvement considering you can’t edit the layout of your template.
Importantly, both platforms allow you to edit the theme’s style files. They each give you a dedicated code editor to do so. Most business owners won’t want to touch these files, but having access to them opens up the possibility to make more sweeping changes to your theme down the road.
Product Design
The two product designer interfaces are extremely similar, so this isn’t an area that will help you decide between the two platforms. Nonetheless, I was pretty happy with the product design tools in both Shopify and BigCommerce.
There are a couple of things worth highlighting how product design works.
First, each platform puts all product options on a single page, making entering information much more streamlined.
In addition to defining variant and weight classes for shipping, you can enter information about the brands behind your products and place them into categories.
BigCommerce does give you a few extra options in defining your products. For example, you can decide what type of gift wrapping to offer, if any, and add custom fields to your product page.
International shippers may appreciate that Shopify allows you to add customs information, but you can use custom fields to accomplish this with BigCommerce.
There isn’t anything special about the base product displays on either platform from the customer’s perspective. If you want to dress up your product pages, you’ll need to use apps.
Both BigCommerce and Shopify have apps for allowing your customers to zoom in on product images, for example, or for creating 360-degree product displays on your website. They may, however, come from separate, premium apps.
DESIGN & TEMPLATES WINNER: Overall, I liked Shopify’s design capabilities a lot better than BigCommerce’s. There are more free and premium template choices available, and you have the option to customize your storefront with added page sections. Beyond that, the two eCommerce platforms offer essentially the same features for designing and displaying your product offerings.
eCommerce Options
Most of the differences between Shopify and BigCommerce are in their eCommerce features.
Shopify has a better product categorization includes abandoned cart recovery with all plans. However, BigCommerce allows way more product variants, and there’s a great product review and rating system.
Overall, the Shopify app store allows customizing features like payment gateways or drop shipping options, while BigCommerce includes good but limited functions with the plan.
Each platform has strengths and weaknesses that push the scales back and forth.
Payment Processing
I’m pretty torn about whether BigCommerce or Shopify is the better platform for payment processing.
On the one hand, Shopify has more than twice the number of payment gateways available as BigCommerce. BigCommerce has around 40 payment gateway options available and offers preferred pricing with PayPal through a Braintree partnership.
Most of the big names are available, including Square, Stripe, Amazon Pay, WorldPay, and more. There are also numerous options for countries outside the US and Europe.
Shopify blows BigCommerce out of the water, with over 100 payment processors listed for integration. That means you won’t have any trouble finding a payment processor for any country you sell to.
However, Shopify charges a commission if you use anything other than Shopify Payments. So, if you want to take advantage of the platform’s many payment gateway offerings, you have to pay for it.
The fee decreases with higher plans:
- 2% for Basic Shopify users
- 1% for Shopify users
- 0.5% for Advanced Shopify users
Product Categorization
BigCommerce and Shopify both let you create an unlimited number of product categories, which customers can then search through to find what they want. But, I’d argue in favor of Shopify’s categorization tools here. That’s because Shopify has what the platform calls automated collections.
Essentially, you can define smart categories that automatically rope in products that fit the criteria you define. Any product with a specific keyword can be added to a smart category or define categories by weight, price, or other features.
This is particularly cool for dropshippers, who may be importing dozens of products at a time. You’d have to manually place those products into categories with BigCommerce, but you can automate the procedure with Shopify.
Product Options
Strangely, Shopify puts very tight limits on how many options you can have for any single product. You can only define three options per item.
Three? That’s ridiculous if you’re selling something that varies in color or size (for example, clothes). Is there a way around that? Sure – more premium extensions from the app store.
In BigCommerce, the options limit is 250. So, it’s basically a non-issue.
This puts BigCommerce way out ahead of Shopify for a huge range of businesses, and particularly retailers. Think about how many clothes, for example, have more than three variation options. With BigCommerce, you can list them all out without running up against artificial platform limitations.
Abandoned Cart Recovery
BigCommerce makes you upgrade to its $79 Plus plan to get abandoned cart recovery, while it’s available for just $29 in Shopify. However, if abandoned cart recovery is a big-ticket item for your business, BigCommerce’s tool is way more advanced than what Shopify offers.
The main difference is that Shopify gives you only one chance to recapture customers who left your site with items in your cart. You can only define one email across your online store.
In BigCommerce, you get to set up three different emails. That’s three chances to push your customer over the edge and complete your sale.
You’ll have to be careful not to drive away customers by spamming them, but BigCommerce claims that its users see 15% of lost sales recovered thanks to this feature.
In addition, BigCommerce doesn’t put any restrictions on when you can set your automatic emails to be sent. Shopify only gives you four options: one hour, six hours, 10 hours, or 24 hours after the cart was abandoned.
To be fair, Shopify’s app store does have a host of more flexible abandoned cart recovery tools.
But, it’s hard to justify going for these expensive add-ons when you already have this feature, even if it’s less than perfect. Plus, you’d dramatically reduce the price difference between Shopify and BigCommerce for this functionality if you turn to the app store.
Shopify should take notes from its app creators – they do many things better than Shopify itself.
Product Reviews & Ratings
Another big plus to BigCommerce is the platform’s product reviews and rating system. This is a standard feature, whereas in Shopify you’ll need to turn to the app store. Thankfully, there are a number of free options there.
I was very happy with the system BigCommerce has in place. You get the option to approve reviews before they go up, so you have control over what’s written about the products in your store.
You can also respond to negative product reviews, which can really bolster your business’s reputation for supporting its customers.
Where BigCommerce pulls away from the free Shopify apps is with the Pro plan. If you have that, you can actually choose to include product ratings in Google search results – that is expected to raise your sales, and in the Big Commerce vs Shopify comparison, it’s a big plus for the former.
That makes your products distinctly easier to find when customers search for something, and if you have strong reviews, there’s a built-in incentive to choose your store over other search engine results.
And it just looks nicer on Google, so the users are more likely to click on your site. I’ve fallen victim to shiny stars before. Bet that I’m not the only one.
Shipping
BigCommerce and Shopify are more or less evenly matched on shipping tools. However, you’ll need to upgrade to Shopify’s mid-tier plan ($79/mo) if you want to get real-time shipping quotes. BigCommerce makes this function standard.
BigCommerce provides discounts for all of its store owners with FedEx, DHL, and USPS, while Shopify works with UPS, DHL, and USPS. Beyond that, though, they have almost everything in common.
Each platform allows you to define flat shipping rates, country-specific rates, weight-based rates, or size-based rates. You can also print shipping labels directly from your online store account.
Shopify’s advantage over BigCommerce is that the app store has far more shipping integrations. Still, this is one area where BigCommerce’s marketplace competes — there are 70 different extensions related to shipping and order fulfillment.
Overall though, both platforms have shipping covered.
Inventory Management
Inventory management is another feature that’s basically equivalent between the two platforms. Both make it easy to enter your stock for any variant of your products, and they automatically track your inventory on hand as you make sales.
Shopify and BigCommerce allow you to set email alerts when a product is running low. One extra feature that Shopify offers is importing inventory data from a spreadsheet.
This is a tool that most business owners won’t bother with, but it offers one more way to streamline your business. Simply plug your latest order from your supplier into Shopify, and your inventory is updated.
Sales Channels
BigCommerce and Shopify differ quite a bit in how they offer sales channels. Even though BigCommerce has many integrations with the plan, Shopify apps allow more.
BigCommerce comes with a handful of integrations baked into the platform. These include integrations for eBay, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.
You can add a few additional channels through the BigCommerce app marketplace, but not many. So, you’re mostly limited to selling on popular channels in the US.
Shopify has a much broader reach. All of the integrations are through the app store, but there are way more of them. You get access to all the channels BigCommerce covers, plus platforms like Catch in Australia, Buzzfeed, Wanelo, and Kelkoo.
It’s not that you can’t sell on these platforms if you use BigCommerce. But, you’ll have to do it outside of your BigCommerce shop if there’s no integration available. That means sales on external platforms will need to have shipping and inventory managed separately, and they won’t be counted in your analytics.
Shopify is simply more suited for multi-channel sales.
Point Of Sale
Another big difference between Shopify and BigCommerce is that Shopify offers its own point-of-sale hardware. So, if you use Shopify, you can run all of your in-person sales through your platform without a hitch.
Shopify even offers more favorable credit card transaction processing rates for in-person sales than for sales through your online store.
That’s not to say that you can’t get a point-of-sale with BigCommerce.
It’s not all that difficult to integrate a Square or Stripe point of sale with your store, and it’s just as seamless as using the Shopify ecosystem. This comes down to convenience and whether or not you already have a point of sale from another provider.
Keep in mind that there will be differences in pricing to think about. Shopify’s point of sale is only available if you’re on the Shopify higher plan. But you also need to consider how many staff PINs you need and what your processing fees will be compared to a third-party provider.
You can, of course, integrate a Stripe, Square, or another point of sale system with your Shopify account if you prefer.
In general, POS is available in both – but Shopify’s integration is slightly better. And if you’re looking to do it, make sure you use just the plan you need.
Dropshipping
You can easily use either BigCommerce or Shopify for dropshipping. Both platforms support it through apps rather than as a native feature. So, the main difference here is that there are more Shopify dropshipping apps to choose from — which translates to more manufacturers and products to choose from.
Still, this is another area where the BigCommerce extension shop isn’t far behind. AliExpress and wholsale2b, two of the larger dropshipping services, are both available on the platform.
Shopify and BigCommerce each offer a vast array of eCommerce features. Shopify wins for automatic product categorization, abandoned cart recovery, and an immense array of payment gateways and apps.
BigCommerce still has a lot going on with product reviews, fewer costs, and more fully developed selling tools.
Marketing & SEO
BigCommerce and Shopify are almost indistinguishable in the categories of marketing and SEO. That’s because both platforms have few built-in functions instead of delegating these parts of your business to apps.
The larger size of the Shopify app store comes in handy here again. There are simply more options to choose from, which means you get access to a much wider variety of marketing features than in BigCommerce.
Just keep in mind that many apps are highly specific – and here comes the tale as old as the time itself – you’ll have to pay for a lot of them to build out your marketing capabilities.
As you’d expect, both platforms have apps for email marketing and ads on Facebook and Google. I also like that you can easily find options for setting up customer loyalty programs in both extension stores.
However, Shopify began to pull ahead when it came to more subtle marketing tactics. There were a variety of apps for upselling and cross-selling customers, as well as for running contests and promotions.
As for SEO, both Shopify and BigCommerce allow adding meta titles and descriptions to each product. Unsurprisingly, BigCommerce is thin on apps to improve your SEO.
And yet, everything you could need, such as schema.org structured data, alt text for product images, and keyword analysis, is available.
But, you have to buy basically every app in the BigCommerce store for hundreds of dollars a month in total.
Shopify has more options, but honestly, it wasn’t much better in terms of pricing. The SEO apps are just as fragmented, so you’re forced into deciding which SEO elements are most worthy of your budget.
Be prepared to pay for marketing and SEO. You’ll have more app options in Shopify, but marketing extensions aren’t cheap on either platform.
Analytics
Visitor analytics are pretty similar in BigCommerce and Shopify. Both platforms give you a high-level overview of your sales, traffic, and purchasing funnel.
However, that data alone isn’t all that actionable. You can’t easily see which of your products are driving sales or which products are getting a lot of views but not purchases. If you want that kind of data, you’ll need to turn to the app stores.
BigCommerce has a built-in solution for this, called ‘Insights.’ It costs $49 per month for Standard and Plus users or $99 per month for Pro users.
Although expensive, I liked that this tool can tell you exactly which product photos and descriptions need to be updated to help drive sales. There are also several other apps within BigCommerce that focus on visitor analytics and customer segmentation.
In Shopify, you have a ton of third-party analytics options.
Many are significantly cheaper than Insights (for example, the Best Sellers app is $29 per month). But, you may have to combine two or more analytics apps to get everything that Insights offers.
Overall, there’s plenty of room to expand your online store’s data and analytics capabilities. I’d love to see more built-in features from Shopify or BigCommerce on this front. But, for better or worse, you’re left paying for the most crucial analytics data through the app stores.
ECOMMERCE WINNER: Comparing all the features related to eCommerce, Shopify gets my applause for the great level of flexibility. There is a wide range of apps to customize your store for whatever needs you have. But BigCommerce gets points for a much more budget-friendly approach – there’s a lot more included in the cheapest plan, which will prove very useful for small businesses.
Pricing
BigCommerce and Shopify offer decent starter packages for $29/month, but BigCommerce offers a slightly better deal because it includes more important features for the same price.
BigCommerce gives you a lot more functionality with its basic plan, although there are restrictions on how much you can sell. Shopify has fewer limits, but they even out with BigCommerce at the medium-tier price point.
Apps & Themes
You’ll probably end up paying for apps and premium themes with both BigCommerce and Shopify. So is there any difference between the two app stores?
BigCommerce adds more functionality from the start, so you might need more apps when using Shopify.
For instance, one thing that the entry BigCommerce plan has and Shopify lacks is a product rating system. In Shopify, there are apps for that (and many of them are both great and expensive, like Okendo).
So, is Shopify an upselling monster, while BigCommerce saves your money in every step?
BigCommerce’s app store has additional apps that can be purchased if you’re looking for more than the plan offers. There are apps for accounting, CRM, marketing, shipping, etc.
BigCommerce has some pricing gimmicks, too. And they’re hidden in the price of templates.
Shopify charges between $140 and $180 for its premium themes, although you can find a ton of third-party template options for less than $60. BigCommerce templates cost between $200 and $400, which is much more.
Occasionally, you’ll find a sale on the BigCommerce website or discover a handful of third-party templates on Template Monster for around $150 each. It costs money to look pretty, especially if you’re running a BigCommerce store.
Service Plans
The best place to start comparing BigCommerce and Shopify directly is at the $29 per month price point. Shopify offers a $29 per month ‘Basic Shopify’ plan, while BigCommerce offers a $29.95 per month ‘Standard’ plan.
At this price tier, I’d argue that you get many more essential features you need to run a business from BigCommerce. The platform includes real-time shipping quotes, an unlimited number of staff accounts, the ability to sell gift cards, and professional reporting tools. With Shopify, you only get two staff accounts and none of the other features.
However, Shopify does dangle an important carrot: abandoned cart recovery. This is one of the cheapest eCommerce plans I’ve seen that includes this important tool for converting sales.
Shopify has another trick up the sleeve that gives it an advantage over BigCommerce. It’s important to note that BigCommerce plans put sales limits on your account. If you sell more than $50,000 worth of products in any 12 months, you’ll automatically be bumped up to the next pricing tier.
It’s not a huge deal if you’re bringing in that much revenue, but Shopify plans doesn’t impose any such limits by comparison.
The mid-tier plans cost very similar, too – BigCommerce’ Plus’ plan costs $79.95 per month, and the Shopify ‘Shopify’ plan will set you back $79 per month. Shopify adds in all of the essential features that were missing in the cheaper Basic plan, while BigCommerce only adds abandoned cart recovery and a couple of other features.
Also, note that your BigCommerce selling limits are bumped up to $150,000 per 12-month period.
BigCommerce’s ‘Pro’ plan is the same price as Shopify’s ‘Advanced Shopify’ plan, at $299.95 per month vs. $299 per month.
The added features are pretty different between the two platforms here. Shopify gives you access to its point of sale app for in-store sales as well as an advanced report builder.
BigCommerce, on the other hand, offers product search filters and puts your customer reviews on Google.
I should also note that both platforms offer enterprise solutions for larger companies where plans at Shopify start at $2,000 per month, while BigCommerce doesn’t advertise a price.
These plans can be tailored to your needs, so it could be worth negotiating between the two providers if you have needs exceeding all available options.
Finally, Shopify also offers a ‘Lite’ plan that’s just $9 per month. I didn’t mention this earlier because you don’t actually get a full-fledged online store. Instead, this plan allows you to sell products through a Facebook page or add a ‘Buy’ button to a self-hosted website. BigCommerce doesn’t have anything comparable.
Payment Processing Fees
There are online credit card transaction fees if you use their built-in payment gateways (Shopify Payments for Shopify and PayPal for BigCommerce). For Shopify Basic they are 2.9% + 0.30 USD and for BigCommerce Standard 2.59% + $0.49 USD.
BigCommerce drops to 2.05% + $0.49 for Pro users, while Shopify charges 2.4% + $0.30 for Advanced users.
However, there is an important difference in fees if you use a non-standard payment gateway. Shopify charges a 0.5% to 2% commission (depending on the plan) on transactions processed by a means other than Shopify Payments.
BigCommerce puts sales caps on each of their plans, and Shopify also has a way of doing something similar. Be vary whether you wish to use Shopify’s payment processor or allow yourself a transaction fee this big.
BigCommerce, meanwhile, doesn’t penalize you for using a different payment processor.
PRICING WINNER: Putting all the pricing together, Shopify and BigCommerce are quite similar. However, at the lowest price point, BigCommerce simply offers better value than Shopify. It requires fewer apps and has better payment gateway fees. Shopify’s themes are cheaper, and there’s the point of sale included with the plans.
Shopify & BigCommerce Alternatives
If neither Shopify nor BigCommerce quite fits the bill of what you’re looking for, don’t worry. There are BigCommerce and Shopify alternatives. Three that I think are worth checking out are Strikingly, Squarespace, and WooCommerce.
Strikingly
Strikingly is an online store builder designed to create one-page shops. It’s perfect if you only have a handful of products and don’t need all of the functionality that Shopify or BigCommerce offer.
Plus, it’s a lot cheaper at the end of the day since you don’t need to pay for extensions.
Squarespace
Squarespace is primarily a drag-and-drop website builder, but it has an impressive suite of eCommerce tools added on. It’s a closed ecosystem with no apps, so it’s not as scalable for growing shops as Shopify or BigCommerce.
But, that also means there are very few additional costs beyond the monthly subscription.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce, an eCommerce platform built for WordPress, is a close competitor to Shopify and BigCommerce. Setting up a WooCommerce store requires some technical know-how, but the possibilities are even more unlimited than BigCommerce or Shopify.
The app store is also enormous, but you should expect to run into the same problem of paying for a lot of essential design and selling tools.
BigCommerce vs Shopify Conclusion
Comparing Shopify vs BigCommerce, I must admit that both platforms are competent eCommerce solutions. If I had to choose personally, I’d choose Shopify. It has more diverse, cheaper templates and an easier editing experience. And, of course, it offers more capabilities overall thanks to its larger app store.
However, I can’t declare it an outright winner – far from that. BigCommerce offers more features out of the box that can help save your business a lot of money. Google review integration is one example, and the advanced abandoned cart recovery tool is another.
I also think it’s important that BigCommerce doesn’t limit your product options or charge you for using alternative payment gateways.
So overall, the decision for you may be formed by exactly which features you want your online shop to have. Considering that a lot of them may be possible only with bigger plans, or premium apps, the prices of both platforms may increase significantly.
So, it’s really important to think about your budget and business goals when comparing BigCommerce vs Shopify.
If you want a platform that can scale no matter how big your business gets, Shopify is the way to go.
If you need the most selling tools for the least money, I think BigCommerce is a slightly better bet.
DISCLOSURE: Posts may contain affiliate links. If you buy something through one of those links, I might get a small commission, without any extra cost to you. Read more about it here.