BigCommerce Review – Is the Website Builder Right for You?

BigCommerce is an ecommerce website builder designed to manage larger inventories with advanced shipping needs. Our research found it offers an excellent selection of sales features, including comprehensive payments options, robust ecommerce analytics, and compatibility with lots of other online marketplaces.

While BigCommerce excels when it comes to sales features, making it one of the best website builders in our research, we found it struggles in some areas. It has no in-person selling functionality, and its design features are limited, which made our site look outdated compared to more modern competitors. Plus, while there are no transaction fees across all paid plans, the overall cost is a bit more expensive than some of its rivals, particularly considering the limited features.

In this review, we’ll use our in-depth research of the BigCommerce platform to cover all the features, prices, pros, cons and competitors, so you can get a clear picture of what the ecommerce website builder has to offer.

In this guide:

• BigCommerce Review: Quick Fact File
• BigCommerce Key Features
• BigCommerce Pricing
• Does BigCommerce Have a Free Plan?
• Who Should Choose BigCommerce?
• BigCommerce Alternatives
• Verdict: Is BigCommerce Worth It?

BigCommerce Review: Quick Fact File

Before we dig into the more granular aspects of BigCommerce, let’s get some of the basics out of the way. Here are some quick facts about BigCommerce that should help you decide whether or not it’s the website builder for you.

• BigCommerce is an ecommerce-exclusive website builder, so if you don’t want to build an online store, move along. 
• BigCommerce offers no transaction fees and unlimited products across all paid plans. 
• BigCommerce can integrate with third-party POS systems but offers none of its own. 
• BigCommerce allows for the seamless management of multiple storefronts with comprehensive dashboards.
• BigCommerce provides no AI website building features. 

Check out our guide to the best ecommerce website builders to learn more about how BigCommerce matches up against the competition.

BigCommerce Features

Now that you know some of the basics about BigCommerce, including how much it costs, it’s time to look into what the ecommerce website builder can actually do. Here are some of the key features that you can utilize with BigCommerce.

Drag-and-drop editor

Yes, it’s a fairly common feature in a lot of website builders, but it’s still reassuring to know that BigCommerce offers its users a drag-and-drop editor to build your website. We found that the intuitive functionality made it easy to design our site exactly how we wanted it, providing clear instructions along the way.

As for how it works, it’s quite simple. All we had to do is select an element or widget from the side bar on the left – as seen in the image below – and drag it into one of the available spots on our page. And just like that, we were designing our website to attract new customers.

We found the BigCommerce editor easy to use, especially when dragging and dropping layers into our site. Source: Tech.co testing

Customizable shipping

In our research, we found that BigCommerce was one of the best website builders when it comes to providing customizable shipping functionality for its users. This means that you’ll will be able to set up the right shipping options for your customers.

More specifically, BigCommerce allowed us to connect to UPS and FedEx, as well as EasyShip and FlavorCloud, so our customers can get accurate estimates for their shipments. On top of that, BigCommerce checked every box in our inventory management research, offering different shipping methods (seen below), dropshipping features, and click and collect functionality.

BigCommerce allowed us to thoroughly customize our shipping options, including integrating with FedEx and UPS. Source: Tech.co testing

Tax settings

For larger businesses with lots of inventory, handling taxes can be a bit of a hassle. Fortunately, BigCommerce has some helpful tax settings built into the platform that helped us avoid fines and stay transparent with our customers. We were able to have different tax rates incorporated into the platform too, so our customers knew exactly how much they’re going to pay.

Even better, BigCommerce offers third party integrations for tax systems, like Avalara AvaTax, so you can take advantage of a full-on tax platform directly integrated in your website builder.

We were able to easily adjust our tax settings in the setup process on BigCommerce. Source: Tech.co testing

BigCommerce Plans

BigCommerce pricing starts at $29 per month, offering four different pricing plans to choose from depending on the needs of your business. Each plan allows users to create an online store and provides unlimited products, storage, and bandwidth. Importantly, BigCommerce charges no transaction fees across all its pricing plans.

Knowing how much it costs to build a website is important, which is why we’ve outlined the BigCommerce plans below:

• Standard – $29 per month billed annually
• Plus – $79 per month billed annually
• Pro – $299 per month billed annually
• Enterprise – Custom

While the starting price for BigCommerce is a bit high compared to the average in the industry – typically in the $18-22 per month range – many other builders offer ecommerce functionality at a premium, while BigCommerce offers it in its starting plan. Even better, BigCommerce allows for unlimited products across all of its pricing plans, so you can sell whatever you want with the starting plan.

Below, we’ve outlined the four BigCommerce pricing plans and broken down exactly what you can expect from each one. You can also check out our BigCommerce pricing guide to learn more.

Does BigCommerce Have a Free Plan?

Unfortunately, BigCommerce does not offer a free plan, so you’ll have to pay upfront if you want to sell anything in your online store.

That doesn’t mean you can’t test out the platform before you buy it, though. BigCommerce does offer a 15-day free trial, which gives you access to all of the features available in the Plus plan from the ecommerce website builder. Two weeks should be enough time to find out if BigCommerce is right for you.

But if your budget just can’t swing it, check out our guide to the best free website builders to find one that fits your needs.

Who Should Choose BigCommerce?

Here are some of the types of businesses that would be best suited to use BigCommerce for their website building needs.

• Ecommerce businesses – For starters, BigCommerce is an ecommerce-only website builder, so if you want to do anything other than create an online store with your site, BigCommerce is not for you.
• Businesses with complex inventory – BigCommerce offers some of the best inventory management features, like multi-managed functionality and customer wishlists, so businesses with complex or large inventories will have what they need.
• Businesses making a lot of transactions – BigCommerce is one of the few ecommerce website builders that offers its service with no transaction fees at all across all paid plans, which is a good way to keep costs low for transaction-heavy businesses.
• Businesses that need advanced shipping options – BigCommerce is also one of the best website builders for shipping, providing delivery options with FedEx and UPS, as well as other lesser-known solutions. Plus, it allows users access to dropshipping, printable shipping labels, and automatic address population.

If we’re being completely honest, though, there are better ecommerce website builders out there that are likely going to offer more for your business. Shopify is our top pick, and it matches BigCommerce on virtually every sales feature, while providing more website design flexibility and better customer support, all at a similar price (although Shopify does charge transaction fees).

BigCommerce Alternatives

By now you likely know whether or not BigCommerce is going to be a good fit for your particular website building needs. If you’ve decided that it’s not for you, you’re in luck. There are plenty of top website builders out there that offer different features and pricing options.

For ecommerce, Shopify is one of our top picks. Like BigCommerce, its pricing starts at $29 per month and it offers unlimited products across all paid plans. On top of that, it offers an extensive app library, so you can expand the functionality of your site, but it might cost a bit extra.

For general website building, Wix took the crown in our research. It’s a true all-around winner, offering a lot of design flexibility and seamless integration between in-store and online sales with its POS hardware and accessories.

Check out some of our other top website builders below to find one that’s right for you.