BigCommerce is a great ecommerce website builder, with one big advantage over market leader Shopify – it’s better value for money. We talk you through each of the BigCommerce pricing plans so you can understand how much BigCommerce will cost for your own business.

At the cheapest end, BigCommerce’s plans start from just $29.95 per month. That means you can get a fully-functioning ecommerce website for less than a monthly New York Times subscription. The good news? Regular BigCommerce deals and discounts mean you can typically save even further.

BigCommerce also has two other fixed-cost plans: the $79.95 per month Plus plan, and the $249.95 per month Pro plan. There’s also the custom Enterprise plan, which is strictly POA.

So why is BigCommerce better value than Shopify? We’ll explain everything in this dedicated guide:

In this Guide:

• BigCommerce Pricing Plans Explained – what you'll pay at each tier
• BigCommerce Standard Pricing – the cheapest way to get started with BigCommerce
• BigCommerce Plus Pricing – the next tier up for larger-scale businesses
• BigCommerce Pro Pricing – large online retailers will need this plan
• BigCommerce Enterprise Pricing – a bespoke BigCommerce plan for retail giants
• Is BigCommerce Good?– our verdict, plus user feedback

BigCommerce Pricing Plans Explained

As we mentioned above, BigCommerce has four pricing plans, each of which is designed to cater to businesses in different phases of their development.

The Standard plan is meant for ecommerce sites that are just starting up. The low $29.95 per month cost means that it’s ideal for businesses looking to test the water with minimal overhead.

The Plus and Pro plans are meant for ecommerce sites that are really hitting their stride. They offer increased maximum sales caps and more advanced sales features, such as abandoned cart recovery.

The Enterprise plans, meanwhile, are really meant for first-class businesses in need of custom solutions – and with BigCommerce, you’ll have the platform to get there.

What’s more, you won’t have to pay transaction fees on any plans – unlike some ecommerce platforms – plus you get unlimited products, storage, and bandwidth.

BigCommerce also offers a 14-day free trial to new users, in case you want to test the water before committing to a monthly or annual plan.

BigCommerce Standard Plan

• Best for startups and small businesses
• $29.95 per month or $359.40 per year

Despite its low price, the Standard plan has all the tools you need to start an online store. You’ll be able to sell an unlimited number of products, you can use pretty much any payment processor you want (unlike Shopify), and it even lets you integrate sales from bricks-and-mortar stores with its point of sale support.

You don’t get all of BigCommerce’s features on the Standard plan – credit card storing, abandoned and persistent shopping carts, for example – but there’s definitely enough here to get started with.

BigCommerce Plus Plan

Skullcandy's site uses BigCommerce

• Best for growing businesses
• $79.95 per month or $863.40 per year

BigCommerce’s Plus Plan doesn’t do a great deal to up the ante over the Standard plan, if we’re honest. However, it does allow you to sell up to $150,000 worth of products in a year, compared to just $50k on the Standard plan.

You do get access to some slightly more advanced sales features, including customer grouping to reward loyal customers, as well as store credit cards. It’s a useful plan for businesses looking to reach the next level.

BigCommerce Pro Plan

• Best for developed businesses
• $249.95 per month or $2,999.40 per year

The BigCommerce Pro plan is meant for established, successful businesses. You get access to Google customer reviews – which can be hugely important for earning customer trust – and have the option to import a custom SSL from a third party provider if you already have one.

The big difference, though, is that your sales limit jumps from $150k per year to $400k.

BigCommerce Enterprise Plan

• Best for the biggest businesses
• $POA

There’s no set price for the Enterprise plan — you have to call up and agree one with BigCommerce.

As a result, it’s a bit tricky to say whether it’ll be good value for money. However, you’ll be able to sell over $400k per year, while your site will get custom product filtering and priority access to help and support features.

Is BigCommerce Good?

Yes, BigCommerce is pretty good. It scores a solid four out of five stars in our testing, which puts it just half a star behind Shopify (our recommended provider). It’s a better solution for large ecommerce stores than Wix and Squarespace, which both score four as well.

But if you’re after a really good-looking site, BigCommerce probably isn’t for you. Our user testing revealed that not everyone was sold on its website design tools:

“The limited creative control really stops BigCommerce – and you – in your tracks. Once you get a theme, you can customize the aesthetics, colors, etc. But this is all just window dressing – you can’t move stuff around, you can’t add elements, and you can’t take elements away.”

However, BigCommerce does excel when it comes to sales features. This is welcome news – after all, selling stuff is the most important aspect of an ecommerce platform.

It’s BigCommerce’s lack of transaction fees that gives it a definite upper hand on Shopify (although if you use Shopify’s own payment processor, it waives the fees). BigCommerce is also great at integrating loads of different sales channels – making it significantly more useful for large businesses than some other platforms.

What’s more, it’s easy to set-up all of this functionality:

“There is a lot going on, but it is very structured. Everything is clearly labeled, and there’s just lots of customization – not directly with the design, but your store offerings. When adding products, I had comfortably the most options of any ecomm platform: you add the product, you add the weight, you add the dimensions so it can estimate the shipping costs, and you can amend the colors that it shows. It’s little touches like that, within the framework that it provides you. You can do loads.”

Next Steps Getting Started with BigCommerce

BigCommerce is designed for serious ecommerce platforms. Yes, there are website builder platforms that have arguably more attractive templates (Wix is one of the more user-friendly ones and perfect for a small boutique store thanks to its competitive pricing). But, the templates shouldn't matter as much as the underlying ecommerce platform, and BigCommerce gives you one of the best around.

With BigCommerce, your customers can get their shopping done quickly and easily, and you can scale up a truly huge online store.

If BigCommerce sounds like your kind of platform, get started here, or read our full review for more info.