BigCommerce Vs Shopify – Key Difference

According to google reports, current e-commerce statistics state that 40 percent of worldwide internet users have bought products or goods online via desktop, mobile, tablet or other online devices. This amounts to more than 1 billion online buyers and is projected to grow exponentially.

Anyone in search of a fully hosted shopping cart, predominantly go for Big-Commerce or Shopify. These are the two best e-commerce solutions available in the market. Both platforms are often mentioned in TOP lists that are created by web building advisors. However, the choice becomes much more difficult when it comes to choosing between BigCommerce vs Shopify. It fully depends on the particular needs of an individual. All shopping cart solutions will be contrasted and evaluated, based on the following parameters:

Cost: What is the true cost of running a store on these platforms and which solution is cheaper?
Out Of The Box Feature Set: Which cart does the box have more features?
3rd Party Ecosystem: That cart has an ecosystem of larger apps?
Model: Which cart has more versatility and themes that look better?
Optimization of the search engine: Which cart has great SEO functionality?
Blogging: Which cart has more flexible options for blogging and WordPress integration?

BigCommerce Vs Shopify: Which Shopping Cart Costs More?

It can be difficult to find out the “real cost” of running an online store on either of these sites as it depends on the functionality you need for your shopping cart. All shopping carts seem to be priced exactly the same by design. But what you get is drastically different between the two for that base price. First of all, the Shopify shopping cart base is pretty bare bones and lacks a lot of features most shopping carts have out of the box. As a result, you will need to buy and pay for additional plugins with recurring fees to cover the functionality you lack. BigCommerce on the other hand, even with the lowest priced plans, is a fully featured shopping cart out of the box. But are these features that are missing really important? It’s up to your needs. Just to give you an example, the discount and coupon program for BigCommerce is considerably better than out of the box for Shopify. While Shopify only allows you to discount a particular dollar or percentage, BigCommerce goes one step further to discount by allowing you to:

• Offering “buy and get a free promotion” of the same or different item.
• Offer a random item at a discount when buying a specific item.
• Provide tiered quantity-based discounts.
• Offer discounts for repeat customers only.
• Offering these same discount options on Shopify allows you to pay multiple plugins bearing recurring monthly fees.

The upshot is that to determine the true cost of either platform, you need to break down the functionality you need and take into account the added cost of recurring cost devices. In other words, you can not compare the price simply by looking at each shopping cart’s base monthly fees. Any Shopify app that you add will dramatically jack up the price.

BigCommerce Vs Shopify: An Out Of The Box Pricing Comparison Without Plugins

Ultimately, the monthly pricing of BigCommerce is much easier to understand because it provides a robust box set feature. In other words, all BigCommerce plans, without paying for extra plugins, will have most of the functionality you need. No transaction fees, no charge for bandwidth, none. Instead, based on your annual revenue (trailing 12 months), you pay a flat monthly rate for your shopping cart plan. As of this 2019 update, BigCommerce charges

• A flat $29.95/month for a store that generates up to $50 K in annual revenue.
• A flat $79.95/month for a store that generates up to $150 K in annual revenue.
• A flat $249.95/month for a store that generates up to $400 K in annual revenue.

In addition, BigCommerce allows you to use any arbitrary payment processor free of charge, while Shopify charges a $5-229.95/month for a store that generates up to $400 K in annual revenue.

BigCommerce Vs Shopify: Which Cart Has A Better App Ecosystem?

Although BigCommerce appears to be cheaper than Shopify, it is stupid to judge a shopping cart based solely on price. Essentially, if it will help your company, it pays to spend more. At the time of this release, Shopify powers approximately 4X more stores than BigCommerce and one of the greatest strengths of Shopify lies in its 3rd party app ecosystem. For instance, if there’s a feature missing from your store, you’re likely to find an app that does just what you need. In reality, the 3rd party ecosystem of Shopify’s app is almost six times the size of BigCommerce. (This amount should be taken with a salt grain as BigCommerce needs less plugins from the box). As Shopify is a more popular platform, more 3rd party developers can be drawn to write apps for their cart. This also means that if you need an expert to help with your design, there are more Shopify developers to choose from. Overall, this is Shopify’s main advantage over BigCommerce, and it’s a great advantage. Generally speaking, a wider third-party community ensures that cutting-edge shopping cart technologies are more likely to hit Shopify before BigCommerce.

BigCommerce Vs Shopify: Which Cart Has Better Search Engine Optimization?

Whatever you want, all shopping carts provide the ability to adjust the SEO title tags and meta descriptions. Yet one thing about Shopify that’s irritating is you can’t customize your SEO URLs. The words “collections” and “things” are completely foreign terms that Shopify introduces by default into the URL and you can not modify this even with a workaround that results in a suboptimal URL layout.

BigCommerce Vs Shopify: Which Cart Is Better For Blogging And Content Marketing?

Finally, every serious owner of an ecommerce store will want to put a blog on their website. After all, content marketing is an excellent way for the search engines to generate free and targeted traffic. Google and Bing represent more than a third of my total sales each year for my online store, and it’s 100 percent open. But the problem with fully hosted ecommerce platforms such as Shopify and BigCommerce is that they have very limited functionality on their blogging platforms.

Conclusion

It’s not straightforward to decide between Shopify and BigCommerce and there’s no hands down winner. Both carts have their strengths and weaknesses, and depending on the functionality you need, the right choice. BigCommerce wins hands down in terms of features out of the box. You’re not going to need that many applications and the base price is indicative of what you’re going to spend monthly. As a result, it will likely be less expensive to run your store on BigCommerce than Shopify.

When you plan to add a WordPress blog alongside your shopping cart, then because of their smooth WordPress integration, BigCommerce also wins this matchup hands down. Shopify, however, has a superior third-party platform and much better support for third-party developers. As a result, over any other shopping cart, new cutting edge technologies are more likely to reach Shopify first.

If you really want to explore your ideas or want to know the key differences between BigCommerce Vs Shopify, please contact us or mail to info@letsnurture.com