BigCommerce was launched in 2009, aimed to make it easier for small businesses to sell online. Since then, it has evolved to become one of the leading solutions for mid-market and enterprise businesses as well. This platform is known for providing an extensive set of features out of the box and a strong focus on in-built SEO. With a steady increase year after year, there are currently around 50,000 live stores powered by BigCommerce.
Although it’s possible to run a BigCommerce store from anywhere in the world, the platform is mainly used in the US and other English-speaking countries (66.5% of its merchants are from the US, and around 17% more are from UK, Australia, and Canada combined).
With over 4 million stores, Shopify possesses a much bigger market share. For instance, in the US, Shopify accounts for almost 20% of e-commerce sites, while BigCommerce has only 0.3%. This is not to underestimate the latter, as it’s still a strong competitor, and some merchants are migrating from Shopify to BigCommerce (as well as the other way around).
Shopify is currently the biggest e-commerce platform there is. It offers an extensive suite of features, as well as thousands of apps for additional integrations and customizations. Compared to BigCommerce, Shopify has a much wider global reach, having hundreds of thousands of stores in Europe and Latin America. The platform is targeted at stores of different sizes, offering an easy way to launch a store for new businesses and a separate service, Shopify Plus, for established enterprise-level merchants.
According to the latest statistics,
The Shopify's GMV reached more than $197B in 2022
The basics offered by Shopify and BigCommerce
BigCommerce and Shopify provide you with everything needed to set up an online store: hosting for your site, page builder, and various e-commerce functionality. While they differ in the latter and some nuances in store design, the technical basics are pretty much the same: you’ll get a fast and mobile-optimized site maintained by the platform.
Both BigCommerce and Shopify guarantee security and fast loading. The platforms use CDNs with globally distributed nodes to ensure great site speed for both customers and search engines. They also automatically provide stores with free SSL certificates, whether you buy a custom domain through the platform or transfer it from elsewhere. The difference with security certificates is that BigCommerce allows merchants (on Pro and Enterprise plans) to use this-party SSL certificates (for instance, when they need a wildcard SSL from an external issuer), while it’s not possible on Shopify.
BigCommerce vs. Shopify: store design
In terms of design capabilities, BigCommerce and Shopify are on par. They both have a library of themes that includes a dozen of free ones and plenty more paid ones. You can also search for external themes on marketplaces like Envato: there’s a selection of BigCommerce themes there, as well as templates for Shopify. With any of these platforms, you’ll have plenty of options for choosing the best theme for your store.
In the BigCommerce editor, you can open any page and adjust it using drag-and-drop blocks of content. These blocks include typical sections like popular products or reviews, as well as customizable layouts where you can include various widgets.
Shopify’s editor works in a similar fashion. You’ll have numerous content blocks to use, and each can be further customized regarding size, color, and additional settings.
Both BigCommerce and Shopify allow you to create as many pages as you want, including custom non-product pages. You’ll also be able to customize the checkout by adding your logo and background image or changing colors and fonts. Additionally, BigCommerce allows for heavier checkout customization—you can upload a JS file with custom checkout. Shopify only permits such customizations to Plus merchants and is generally less flexible when it comes to changing the logic of a predefined checkout experience.
Speaking of checkout, it has actually been one of the biggest attractions for stores choosing BigCommerce over Shopify—for instance, some claimed to reduce the number of checkout steps from seven to three, which led to increased conversions. However, Shopify has recently introduced one-page checkout, so both platforms enable a fast checkout experience.
Finally, while both e-commerce platforms allow adding custom code files, BigCommerce features the Script Manager that makes it easy to control all scripts used on a store (including not only custom scripts but also those created by apps and plugins). This tool is available to all merchants using the latest themes and is a great way to customize the store’s appearance. By contrast, Shopify only lets Plus merchants customize their store’s backend. They can do so with Shopify Functions, a powerful tool for customizing fulfillment strategies, creating complex discounts, or adding cart validators.
Shopify vs. BigCommerce: SEO features
In terms of search optimization, BigCommerce is a bit ahead of Shopify. Both platforms take good care of technical SEO such as speed, image optimization, automated sitemap update, etc. However, BigCommerce is more flexible: it automatically puts relevant structured data (you’ll need an SEO app for that on Shopify) and allows changing the URL structure (Shopify doesn’t).
Payment options on Shopify and BigCommerce
Overall, Shopify is more powerful in its payment ecosystem. It supports over 100 payment providers, with transaction fees depending on the pricing plan. The platform also has its own gateway, Shopify Payments, that doesn’t charge fees and provides merchants with a unified view of payments and orders. It also allows for accelerated checkout, and there’s an option to display the Shop Promise badge that guarantees a certain delivery timeframe.
In turn, BigCommerce supports 65+ payment gateway integrations that work for 100+ countries and support 250+ payment methods. The list includes popular digital wallets, installment payments, and bank transfers. Each payment method comes with a fee that starts at 2.59% + $0.49 per transaction.
Unlike Shopify, BigCommerce doesn’t have its own POS but it supports plenty of POS systems like Square and Clover. Shopify offers its POS system for free on all pricing plans and the Pro version for an extra charge (with in-store analytics and more staff permissions). Shopify POS also has a mobile POS terminal for even easier in-person sales (currently available only in the US).
BigCommerce versus Shopify: store analytics
Both BigCommerce and Shopify provide merchants with detailed reports on various aspects of running a store. The analytics suite on BigCommerce includes 11 sections that include merchandising, marketing, purchasing funnel, customer behavior, and sales tax. The platform also features E-Commerce Insights that put together information about products (most promising, most abandoned, etc.) and customers (which are automatically grouped into segments by AOV, repeat purchase rate, and other factors). This customer segmentation functionality can be really helpful for identifying the most loyal shoppers or those you’re at risk of losing. On Shopify, granular customer groups can only be created with the help of segmentation apps.
For the most part, Shopify has similar analytical reports, although some of them are quite limited in the cheaper plans. For example, with the Shopify Basic subscription, you won’t have any reports on orders, sales, and customers. Only merchants who use Advanced or Shopify Plus have access to all reports, including the option to create custom ones. By contrast, BigCommerce keeps all its reporting capabilities accessible on any plan. What BigCommerce doesn’t feature compared to Shopify is inventory reports: the latter offers data on inventory sold per day, ABC analysis per product, etc.
Shopify vs. BigCommerce: scalability and international sales
BigCommerce has more scalable merchandising capabilities, allowing for a greater number of variants per product (600 compared to 100 on Shopify) and a much greater number of variant options (250 compared to 3 on Shopify). This detail might be crucial for enterprises in Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce comparison. Although, when it comes to product filtering, it’s not available to all merchants on BigCommerce but only to those on Pro or Enterprise plans. Plus, BigCommerce prides itself on having more generous API call limits and was recognized as the leading platform for B2B stores by Forrester and Paradigm.
In turn, Shopify wins in localization capabilities, which might also be a major consideration for enterprise businesses. In each plan, you can sell your products in 20 languages from a single store (customers will be automatically shown the URL in their language).
By contrast, you can only have one language on the BigCommerce storefront. The platform supports translations (although not fully, having some uneditable strings in 10 languages only), but you won’t be able to display multiple languages without creating separate stores for each region. Shopify also has its limitations (for instance, you can’t localize URLs or translate tags) but in general, it offers more for selling internationally.
It’s also easier to work with multiple currencies on Shopify. While BigCommerce supports multi-currency stores, some of its features don’t (price ranges in store search and filtering, gift wrapping, and store credit payments). On top of that, Shopify has the Shopify Markets tool which allows you to create custom pricing and product rules for each location-based segment you’re targeting.
Another thing that might interest stores that are looking to scale and expand is marketplace sales. Both BigCommerce and Shopify allow for omnichannel sales, but with the former, most marketplace integrations (Walmart or Etsy, for example) go out of the box, while with the latter, you’ll need to use dedicated apps.
Shopify and BigCommerce comparison: pricing plans
BigCommerce’s pricing starts at $39 per month for the Standard plan (25% off if paid annually). You’ll get access to all the basic features but not advanced ones like customer segmentation or persistent carts. However, it’s not the feature set that defines your plan but the volume of your yearly sales. If it surpasses $50k, you’ll be automatically moved to a higher-tier subscription.
The Plus and Pro plans cost $105 and $399 per month (or 25% less if paid for a year) and are accessible to stores with up to $180k and $400k in yearly sales, respectively. They allow for more inventory locations (up to 5 and 8) and more storefronts to manage from a single account (up to 5 and 8, respectively). Also, they have additional features like automated abandoned cart email sequences and product filtering (the latter is only available in Pro).
Lastly, the Enterprise plan is designed for large stores. All the limits in this plan are discussed on a case-by-case basis, and so is the pricing. Also, this subscription comes with the lowest transaction fees, priority support, API access, and B2B features.
Shopify has very similar pricing, with Basic, Shopify, and Advanced plans charging $32, $92, and $299 per month, or at a 25% discount when paid annually. The major differences between these plans lie in reporting tools: Basic provides limited access to analytics, and only under Advanced, merchants have all the reports including custom ones. Besides that, cheaper plans don’t support some advanced functionalities like e-commerce automations or third-party calculated shipping rates.
For enterprise-level businesses, Shopify offers Shopify Plus with custom pricing (starting from $2,000 per month) and individually discussed customizations. The platform also has modular pricing called Commerce Components where you pay for the features and limits you use. Finally, there’s the Starter plan for those looking to start selling on social media without creating an online store yet.
At the first glance, BigCommerce and Shopify have almost identical pricing strategies, but if we go through the features, it’s clear that Shopify is way more flexible. BigCommerce automatically upgrades the plan if you’re surpassing the limit of yearly sales, so you can’t choose the plan based on the features you need. Plus, some of the features that aren’t available in all plans are pretty basic—for instance, abandoned cart reminders are helpful to businesses of any size.
The advantages of BigCommerce are unlimited staff accounts in any plan (compared to 2-15 on Shopify), all reporting capabilities in any plan, and the possibility to run multiple storefronts under a single account (although, this might be needed for several localized versions, which on Shopify you can create without additional storefronts). In turn, Shopify offers a lot more inventory locations (up to 1,000 in any plan, compared to 4-8 on BigCommerce) and generally more features.
Comparison table
basic overview
Starting price (per month)
$32 (varies depending on the region; costs 25% less if paid for a year ahead)
$39 (costs 25% less if paid for a year ahead)
Free trial
Duration varies
15 days
Transaction fee
0.5-2% depending on the plan (no fees on Shopify Payments)
from 2.59% + $0.49
Unlimited products
Embedded payment gateway
24/7 free support
Number of apps
8,000+
1,200+
Migration from other platforms
Can be done manually or with the help of apps (both free and paid)
With the help of data migration apps or BigCommerce’s migration services
Mobile app to manage stores
features
Blog
Built-in SEO
Global CDN
Hosting
SSL certificate
Subscription sales
(with the help of apps)
(with the help of apps)
Digital products
Social selling
Number of staff accounts
2-15 depending on the plan
Unlimited
POS
Supports third-party POS providers
Inventory locations
1,000
4+ depending on the plan
Manual orders
Automatically calculated shipping rates
Automated sales tax
Only for the US
With paid apps
Own fulfillment network
design
Drag-and-drop editor
Theme customizations
Number of themes
100+ (11 free themes)
200+ (11 free themes)
Unlimited pages
Possibility to add custom code
Smart search with autocomplete and error tolerance
With paid apps
Site backup
global reach
Multi-language stores
Multi-currency stores
Multiple inventory locations
Automated translations
Local payments
Automated domain redirection based on geolocation
Market-specific product selection
Analytics & reporting
Live view
Marketing reports
Finances reports
Inventory reports
Product analytics
Visitor behavior
Google Analytics integration
Payments
Number of supported gateways
100+
65+
PCI DSS compliance
Credit cards
(supported by Stripe)
Google Pay
Apple Pay
Amazon Pay
PayPal
Crypto
Installment payments
Klarna
Afterpay
iDEAL
Wire transfer
Cash on delivery
Accelerated checkout
(including its own solution Shop Pay)
Summary
Features
100%
90%
Design
90%
90%
Global reach
100%
50%
Analytics & reporting
100%
100%
Payments
100%
80%
