You need to select what eCommerce platform you want to use before jumping into the development process. There are many website builders out there with eCommerce, and a lot of them are very good.
However, most of them are not especially easy to use, and to build a site with them almost requires expert experience. It will significantly affect your knowledge and the background of your client to decide which eCommerce platform your site operates on.
BigCommerce and Shopify are both strong builders of eCommerce sites and managers of online stores, so they are good choices. That being said, the two platforms have a few main differences that can help you decide which is the right choice for you.
Bigcommerce or Shopify for beginners, while both BigCommerce and Shopify are excellent in their own right, some variations make either application better suited to particular user scenarios and styles.
We will compare BigCommerce vs Shopify in this article, compare the two and highlight their main difference to help make your decision a little easier.
Recommended Read: How Shopify made your Ecommerce Business Launch Easy and Fast
What is Shopify, and what makes it unique?
In the e-commerce space, Shopify is one of the pioneers. Even if you don’t have any coding skills or website development experience, it’s a complete tool that helps you create a functioning e-commerce store. Shopify will ultimately be used by someone who wants an e-commerce shop and does not want to employ someone for the job.
One of the easiest-to-use such options out there also is Shopify. The key point of selling is that it is targeted at beginners, helping them out in various ways.
Some of the standard perks in Shopify:
- For your e-commerce store, a subdomain and hosting space
- Control of products and inventory.
- Management of order (plus online payments)
- Database of customers and specific capabilities for relationship management.
- Reports in depth.
- Discounts and maintenance of the coupon code.
- Social Media Integration.
All of the additional instruments that you get somewhat as a bonus are also what makes Shopify special. The key is their POS (point of sale) system, which allows payments to be received anywhere (be it your brick-and-mortar store, a trade show, or even a one-on-one meeting).
This is a truly innovative way to combine the offline world with your online e-commerce shop, and it certainly creates a lot of opportunities.
Recommended Read: How to add products from Shopify to Facebook shop
Shopify provides fantastic support tools that can be a real time-saver but are not so well advertised. You will find stuff like:
- Logo maker (albeit for simple logos).
- Business name generator.
- Slogan maker.
- QR code generator.
- Business card maker.
- Invoice generator.
- Refund policy generator, and much much more.
Shopify saves you a lot of time, particularly in the otherwise boring fields of business behaviour. But Shopify gives you a lot of creative flexibility regarding the areas that matter (such as providing your customers with a better shopping experience) while also ensuring that everything is optimized.
Recommended Read: How to Sell on a Shopify Store?
What is BigCommerce, and what makes it unique?
BigCommerce is a full e-commerce solution that allows you to create an online store from scratch, just like Shopify, and then lets you operate it on an ongoing basis. It also gives you access to a full range of tools that you might need along the way.
Although BigCommerce can be used by companies completely new to e-commerce, if you’re a fast-growing brand or a high-volume company, you can get the most out of it.
Bigcommerce merchants are rising 28 per cent year on year, almost double the industry average, according to research by Ipsos, as shared on the official Bigcommerce website.
Bigcommerce is also proud to offer an overall uptime of 99.99 per cent and a complete 100 per cent availability during Cyber Week. It’s somewhat similar to Shopify’s when it gets to the control panel. The main dashboard is where you can find information about your recent orders, traffic on the web, income, and so on.
Also, Bigcommerce lets you create blog posts and sites, apart from the e-commerce-related material, and make them part of your entire website. In other words, it enables you to create something more than just the e-commerce aspect of your website.
Lastly, for items like coupons, search marketing campaigns, transactional emails, and more, you access marketing features. Overall, BigCommerce tends to be more focused on companies that already work and generate strong sales or have a good strategy on how they can do that. That being said, if you are a complete beginner too, you will not miss out on anything.
Pricing:
How much do they cost? is one of the first concerns new consumers have about Bigcommerce vs shopify market share. BigCommerce and Shopify are also offering free trials. They also have plans for rates ranging from around $29 to $299. On pricing, both BigCommerce and Shopify are equally level with each other. Just $0.95 is more expensive per month for BigCommerce. Let’s take a look.
BigCommerce offers four pricing plans:
- Standard: $29,95/month
- Plus: $79,95/month
- Pro: $299,95/month
- Enterprise: Pricing varies based on specifications.
Shopify offers five pricing plans:
- Lite: $9/month
- Basic Shopify: $29/month
- Shopify: $79/month
- Advanced Shopify: $299/month
- Shopify Plus: Pricing varies based on specifications.
The difference between the two platforms depends more on the types of features that the plan has available.
Bigcommerce vs. Shopify for dropshipping one area where BigCommerce has an advantage is transaction fees. As opposed to Shopify, the Regular Plan’s unlimited staff accounts would have extra transaction fees and just 15 staff accounts even for the Advanced Plan.
While in the Basic Plan, Shopify has the abandoned cart recovery feature, while BigCommerce only activates this feature in the Plus Plan, which can be extremely useful for you.
Support:
Shopify: Shopify has an expert team to provide its users with 24/7 support via email, phone or live chat. It has continued to provide the best service without any problems since the beginning.
Bigcommerce: In this aspect, Bigcommerce also does not fall behind Shopify since it also provides support via traditional media such as live chat, phone call or email, round the clock. It was not originally used to provide 24/7 support, but it has now increased with improvements and is very good for its users.
Theme/Design:
Shopify: The development of Shopify websites offers updated and impressive themes that have been crafted to give them an advanced and fresh look by technically sound designers. These themes will assist you in making the online store attractive. These are, obviously, beneficial from a company point of view. One downside is that some of its themes are premium, and their prices range from $80 to $180.
This is a one-time investment, though, but it can be worthwhile to make the store look attractive. This investment is the best deal for increasing exposure and revenue to keep the audience engaged for a longer time.
Bigcommerce: BigCommerce offers more than 100 free themes, but you won’t find any of them when visiting its official website to check for these themes. This is an odd thing because it won’t show that it’s free to use pieces for future users. It has an expanded range of themes, ranging from $120 to $250, with 28 new mobile-friendly themes.
E-commerce Tools:
Shopify: Shopify consists of numerous specialized resources to run and build an e-shop, all found in its App Store, including product reviews, product suggestions and customer wish list.
These paid devices also promote the testing of free trial times. Shopify Payments is one of the truly fruitful features of this shopping cart, allowing you to stay away from different payment gateways and deliver your payment gateway to handle dashboard transactions & save time. You have to purchase an additional app for Shopify tools to integrate it with the site.
Bigcommerce: Bigcommerce provides you with a comprehensive range of out-of-the-box tools, but they come in monthly premium packages. You can get advanced tools with more value in this way, which is very cool. Bigcommerce is not helpful since it does not require the usage of its software by an external app.
Recommended Read: 5 Ways To Reduce Product Returns In Shopify, Magento And Other Webstores
Pros and Cons:
BigCommerce Pros:
- BigCommerce provides better value than Shopify for money. Neither will drain your bank account and ultimately, when it comes to pricing, BigCommerce and Shopify are pretty well matched. BigCommerce, however, has the slight advantage due to its features built-in and less extra costs.
- It has more built-in features, which are considerably more attractive.
- More versatile if you want to change your theme.
- Provides tools and functionalities for marketing to develop the business.
- Provides the necessary functionality for the security and validation of secure online payments in your shop.
- The difference in the number of apps can be explained by the fact that BigCommerce offers much more functionality, resulting in fewer users having to download apps.
- When it comes to enabling multi-currency payments, BigCommerce has a very strong advantage.
BigCommerce Cons:
- The features built into BigCommerce make it a lot harder to use, while Shopify has a user-friendly interface nailed to it.
- There are not as many themes for BigCommerce to choose from as you get with Shopify. The free themes from BigCommerce can also look a little outdated.
Shopify Pros:
- There is great customer service for Shopify. Thanks to its automatic path to related support pages, it has the edge over BigCommerce. There are several support platforms for both eCommerce builders, but Shopify has extra social media support.
- It has better designs, both in functionality and in more up-to-date templates, and provides more variety.
- Shopify is simpler to run than BigCommerce, making it the Bigcommerce or shopify for beginners top option.
- Because of its huge app store, it has more personalized features on sale than BigCommerce.
- The one strong tool that gives Shopify the upper hand for dropshippers is Oberlo.
- Shopify facilitates the exchange of information from the business, increases the interest of consumers and motivates action.
- The user base of Shopify is much greater, hence the larger number of available applications.
- Shopify offers the required features for secure online payments for your store security and validation.
Shopify Cons:
- Also, with the Advanced Plan, Shopify applies extra transaction fees and just 15 staff accounts.
- Only the ‘Advanced Shopify’ package enables real-time shipping rates from third parties.
Final words:
Both BigCommerce and Shopify are exceptional online managers and site creators, and there is a lot of overlap between Bigcommerce and Shopify pricing. Overall, it isn’t easy to pick a definite winner when considering BigCommerce vs. Shopify. Finally, some variations between the platforms will help you differentiate between the two when choosing which one to go for. In conclusion, the choice is in your hands. Hopefully, this article has provided you with enough information to help you choose the best platform that can best meet your business’s needs.