BigCommerce vs Shopify 2023: Which Is Better for You?

Shopify and BigCommerce are two of the most effective e-commerce platforms in the entire e-commerce market. Shopify takes up to 27% of the market share while BigCommerce takes less than 1% of the market share. Both platforms make it easy to create, sell, grow and sustain a profitable business in an online store. These two e-commerce platforms host thousands of online merchants generating billions of dollars worth of business. The two platforms each have their strengths and weaknesses depending on the different features.

Shopify - Shopify is an e-commerce platform that allows people to set up an online shop and sell their products. It helps small business owners to build an online store through one streamlined dashboard. Shopify merchants can also sell their products Shopify POS on social media sites, blogs, email, text, chat, and more. It is a subscription-based software sales platform that offers four standard store subscription plans at $29 per month. In the past 16 years, Shopify has generated over $590 billion in sales with 2022 having the potential to reach half a trillion dollars in total sales made through the platform.

BigCommerce - BigCommerce is a leading E-commerce platform. It allows business owners to start an online store, customize it according to their preference, and then sell a various number of products. People can build and control their online store from anywhere in the world. BigCommerce does not want you to buy any web hosting to use it. BigCommerce is a Software-as-a-Service platform in which you only have to pay a monthly fee for using it. It also offers customizable templates to help you in designing your online store. BigCommerce makes it easy to display and delivers effective tools to help you market your product to online customers.

Comparison Between BigCommerce & Shopify:

Shopify:

Ease of use - Shopify is very simple to use. It does not take time to set up and doesn’t need any technical understanding to customize products. It has a clear and suitable dashboard that does not confuse the user with unnecessary features.

Pricing - Shopify offers three plans

It also has a 14-day free trial period. All offer an unlimited number of products and file storage but vary in functionality. Business owners can also sell products both offline and online. The final plan that Shopify has is Shopify which is a separate SaaS platform.

Design -Shopify themes have 100% responsiveness which looks trendy and professional. Shopify’s themes are easy to change and modify, you can choose any theme whether it's free or paid to make the online store more impressive.

Sales and Marketing Features - Shopify's marketing strategy promotes online stores and products through online marketing with the help of email and advertising campaigns, a Customer Loyalty Program, a Referral Program, and so on. It builds brand awareness and retains existing clients by improving customer loyalty.

Support and Security - Security is very important while setting up an online store on an E-commerce platform which involves customers’ confidential information such as their payment details and addresses. But Shopify is an e-commerce platform developed for small and medium business owners that dedicatedly have appointed automatic systems to monitor data security and money transfers that helps to secure payments.

Functionality - Shopify functions with unlimited bandwidth and customization options with plenty of marketing tools and great SEO. It can also effortlessly integrate with other systems.

BigCommerce:

Ease of use - BigCommerce is helpful and intuitive because when you log in to the admin panel, it displays what to do next Add Products, Set Up Shipping, etc. It gives modules for customization which is very helpful for an inexperienced individual.

Price - Bigcommerce pricing plans are

It has unlimited bandwidth in every plan with great features even the cheapest one. The functionality increases with each upgrade in the subscribed plan. The Pro plan has a limitation in that it only allows 3,000 orders per year and the platform charges an extra $80 per thousand on new orders after that.

Design - Bigcommerce has around 100+ great design themes. The quality of themes is far better than other E-commerce platforms.

Sales and Marketing Features - BigCommerce does Email marketing by including online store data with email marketing platforms to reach out to customers and sell their products. BigCommerce offers many other marketing features such as best SEO practices, and full control over URLs, title tags, etc.

Support and Security - BigCommerce offers layers of security protection for all the sites that it uses as a SaaS. An E-commerce platform protects customers’ confidential data and gains loyalty by making them comfortable while buying products from an online store. Proper security measures ensure customers’ privacy and any information can not be used without their permission. BigCommerce's all servers are PCI DSS level 1 accredited to protect against any credit card data breaches. It also includes server-specific firewalls, file integrity scanners, 24 hours human monitoring, fraud transaction authentication, etc.

Functionality - BigCommerce provides more advanced tools such as Title tags, descriptions, and keywords for each product. It also has custom URLs and makes your own 301 redirects which are robust features but more challenging to manage.

The Final Verdict:

Both platforms are developed to help business owners to build an online store. Shopify is easier to use which makes it easy to choose for beginners but BigCommerce offers powerful and advanced built-in tools that require some knowledge. Shopify platform is more user-friendly but it mostly focuses on its app.

Try both platforms, and figure out what works best for your business needs or suits you the most. We hope this article gives you some insights on these eCommerce platforms.