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Shopify is a better all-around ecommerce platform than BigCommerce.
While BigCommerce has a few clear benefits over Shopify due to zero transaction fees and great inventory management, Shopify bests BigCommerce when it comes to ease of use, pricing plans, and customer appreciation scores. Plus, Shopify has way more features than BigCommerce, making it the more versatile choice.
The Shopify vs BigCommerce question pits two of the biggest ecommerce companies in the world against each other. They’re both devoted to helping people like you sell stuff easily and successfully, both online and offline.
While they claim to do the same thing, which can make choosing between them complicated, here at Tech.co, we've done hours of in-depth user testing to separate the platforms, so you don't have to.
Want to get into the detail of why Shopify is better than BigCommerce? We’ll explain everything in the rest of this guide. But first, you can see some highlights of Shopify and BigCommerce's scores, prices, and features in the table below:
| Test Score Our score is based on independent assessments of ease of use, features, ecommerce functionality and value for money | Starting Price | Priciest Ecommerce Plan (per month) | Number of extra sales channels | Physical Product Sales | Digital Product Sales | Service Sales | Verdict | Try Click to check for deals, discounts and tiers of plans | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |  | |||||||||
| 4.8 | 4.5 | |||||||||
| $29 per month | ||||||||||
| $299 per month | ||||||||||
| 10 | 3 | |||||||||
| | | |||||||||
| App required | | |||||||||
| | | |||||||||
| Best for larger ecommerce businesses | Best for inventory management | |||||||||
Shopify vs BigCommerce: Head to Head
Shopify is a better choice than BigCommerce if you're creating an online store, because of its ease of use, customizability, and overall depth. All in all, as an ecommerce provider, Shopify is pretty hard to beat.
That said, BigCommerce isn't far behind it, and both brands emerged from our independent testing and user ratings with very respectable scores — BigCommerce and Shopify are both about equal when it comes to sales-centric features.
On the surface, they might look similar. However, there are some big differences between Shopify and BigCommerce that are worth bearing in mind before picking one to be your ecommerce platform.
Shopify
By our testing, Shopify ties with Wix as our top ecommerce platform on the market. It excels across the board in our testing, especially when it comes to its sales features and customer score.
Shopify also has brilliantly-designed online store templates and a variety of customization options, which will help make websites unique – BigCommerce’s designs, on the other hand, aren’t quite as slick. This is especially useful given that online transactions on mobile devices are set to reach $700 billion by 2025. Having a well-designed store could make the difference between a sale and a bounce.
You’ll be able to integrate loads of different sales channels into Shopify's platform, including everything from eBay and Amazon to Instagram and even real-life sales. Fortunately, Shopify’s straightforward and intuitive UI and reporting tools ensure that all of this functionality is easy to manage and optimize.
Shopify also has a comprehensive app store which can help augment the already sizable list of features on offer, like adding apps which let customers track the progress of their orders.
Pros
- Helpful and predictive website building experience
- Massive app selection for unlimited customizability
- Diverse multi-channel integration options
- DEAL: Only $1/month for first three months
Cons
- Limited customization options
- Few built-in features
- Apps cost extra
- High transaction fee without Shopify Payments
- Basic Plan: $29/month
- Advanced Plan: $399/month
- Plus Plan: $2000/month
- Transaction fees from 2.9% + 30¢
- Shopify offers a 3-day free trial
- Top rated ecommerce website builder
BigCommerce
While Shopify is our favorite ecommerce builder, BigCommerce has more than earned its place on our list of top ecommerce builders; it could be an especially good choice for businesses with complex inventory management needs or which have big ambitions to scale and grow over time. Unfortunately, it lets itself down in a couple of key areas when compared to its rival.
Let’s start with the positives, though. BigCommerce is an excellent sales platform that can build you an impressively-featured online store, and help you manage lots of disparate sales channels.
BigCommerce does beat Shopify when it comes to design functionality and customer support, although Shopify remains a solid pick for those categories. And, thanks to multi-channel integration and a wide range of payment options, our rating puts BigCommerce's sales features among the best that any top ecommerce website builder has to offer – although it still merely tied with Shopify. BigCommerce doesn’t charge transaction fees, either, unlike Shopify.
BigCommerce also has a large roster of built-in features – product reviews and coupon codes, for example – which on some rivals would have to be installed via an app store. This makes the whole experience of setting up your store easier, and saves you time right out of the gate.
However, it’s not all good news. While your BigCommerce online store will be replete with features and functionality, it won't look as good as a Shopify store, let alone a Squarespace one. Simply put, BigCommerce's range of templates isn’t as good, and its website customization tools aren’t as extensive as Shopify's. We also found BigCommerce’s customer satisfaction and general ease of use to be lacking when compared to Shopify.
Pros
- Free Trial
- Only platform with transactional emails
- Very user-centric experience
Cons
- Restrictive pricing plans based on annual turnover
- Limited template customization
- Steep learning curve with little assistance
- Three pricing plans
- Cheapest pricing plan: $29/mo
- Most popular pricing plan: $79/mo
- Pro Plan ($299/mo) has $400K sale cap
- No transaction fees
- 24/7 support
Best Value: Shopify
Both Shopify and BigCommerce have three main pricing plan tiers, and the option of custom pricing plans for high volume or high-value merchants. Shopify offers one additional plan more than BigCommerce — an inexpensive but limited starter option called Shopify Starter.
All told, Shopify’s low and middle-tier plans offer better value than BigCommerce's, which is why we've given it a win. But price for price, the two companies cost a comparable amount when paid annually.
BigCommerce does come out slightly ahead when looking at the features of the more expensive plans that both vendors have to offer — depending on your needs, BigCommerce is certainly worth considering for larger companies. Here's our detailed look at each provider's pricing options:
Shopify Pricing
| Plan | Price paid annually The price per month you'll pay if you choose to be billed annually | Price paid monthly The price per month you'll pay if you choose to be billed monthly | Staff accounts | Reporting | Gift cards | Online credit card rates | In-person credit card rates | Transaction fee if not using Shopify Payments | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | | ||||||||
| Basic | Advanced | ||||||||
|
| $299/month | ||||||||
| $39/month | $399/month | ||||||||
| Two | 15 | ||||||||
| Basic | Advanced | ||||||||
| | | ||||||||
| 2.9% + 30¢ | 2.4% + 30¢ | ||||||||
| 2.7% | 2.4% | ||||||||
| 2% | 0.5% |
Shopify’s cheapest plan, called Basic Shopify, starts from $29 per month. With this pricing plan, you’ll be able to run a fully-functioning online store: You’ll get access to all the sales channels offered by Shopify, the Shopify POS app for offline sales, and abandoned cart recovery.
Confusingly, Shopify’s middle plan is simply called Shopify, and costs $79 per month. With this plan, you get slightly cheaper credit card rates, and the ability to sell gift cards. The big changes come in the point of sale functions: you’ll now be able to manage register shifts, as well as support peripherals such as barcode scanners or receipt printers.
The most expensive plan is called Advanced Shopify, and it costs $299 per month. This plan will give you improved reporting tools, third-party calculated shipping rates, cheaper credit card rates, and up to 15 staff accounts.
BigCommerce Pricing
| Plan | Price paid annually The price per month you'll pay if you choose to be billed annually | Bandwidth | Storage | Abandoned cart recovery | Gift cards | Transaction fees | Maximum sales | Point-of-sale support | Support | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| | Best Value Plan | | | |||||||
| Standard | Plus | Pro | Enterprise | |||||||
| $29/month | $79/month | $299/month | On request | |||||||
| Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | |||||||
| Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | |||||||
| | | | | |||||||
| | | | | |||||||
| 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | |||||||
| $50,000 | $180,000 | $400,000 | Unlimited | |||||||
| | | | | |||||||
| 24/7 | 24/7 | 24/7 | Premium |
BigCommerce’s cheapest plan is called Standard, and costs $29 per month when paid annually. There aren’t any transaction fees, but there is a $50k cap on the value of online sales you can make per year. However, you’ll get access to real time shipping quotes, coupons, discounts and gift cards, and all the sales channels supported by BigCommerce.
BigCommerce’s middle plan is called Plus, and costs $79 per month when paid annually. This plan gives you abandoned cart recovery, raises the sales cap to $150k per month, and will allow you to store credit card details. Shopify’s plan certainly offers more features compared to its own bargain-basement option.
BigCommerce Pro, the most expensive plan, costs $299 per month, paid annually. It gives you Google customer reviews, improved on-site search functions, and a $400k sales limit.
Shopify vs BigCommerce: Which has the best free plan?
Neither service offers an ongoing free plan. Instead, they offer trial periods for all paid plans, letting users get a feel for the features before they need to pay a dime.
Shopify offers a 14-day free trial, and they're just-slightly one-upped by their competitor: BigCommerce lets you try the platform for free for 15 days.
Best for Features: Shopify
Both Shopify and BigCommerce offer a lot when it comes to ecommerce, but each one has its ups and downs. Here's how they match up against each other when it comes to basic and advanced website features and functions:
Website Editor
Simply put, Shopify lets you build a better-looking website than BigCommerce. It has a better online storefront editor than BigCommerce, allowing for more customization and editing. By our testing, Shopify rated a 4.1 out of 5 stars for website features, compared to BigCommerce's 3.4 star rating.
Website Templates
In the other corner, though, BigCommerce does offer a larger number of website templates – 187 to Shopify's 81. The gap is closer for free templates, as 10 of Shopify's templates are free, compared to 12 from BigCommerce. Quantity isn't everything, though, and we found that Shopify's templates were better looking and easier for users to navigate than BigCommerce's.
Inventory Management
Both services allow users to set up inventory tracking and adjust their inventory levels within their website accounts. In addition, BigCommerce offers plenty of integrations for inventory and order management, from a Buy on Google plugin that lets customers use Google's native checkout function for their purchases to an integration with Mercado Libre, an ecommerce site that can open your store to up a Latin America audience.
Page Security
Shopify and BigCommerce both have strong security features to offer their users. Both services support a customer login ability, which lets users give their customers personal accounts.
Unlike Shopify, BigCommerce even allows for the creation of a members-only area of the website, which can be useful for ecommerce sites. But Shopify also supports an additional measure that BigCommerce does note — Password protections for Shopify sites add another layer of security to its ecommerce websites.
Best for Ease of Use: Shopify
This category is a rare case where neither service is truly stellar. Shopify earned a 3.5 stars out of 5 for ease of use according to our testing, while BigCommerce landed 3.3 stars, putting both services underneath other other top ecommerce builders including Wix, Squarespace, and Square. Still, neither rating is bad, and with a bit of a learning curve, you'll likely be happy with either one.
Shopify is solidly simple to use, with intuitive menus and a straightforward design. BigCommerce isn’t bad, but it can’t quite match Shopify for pure simplicity.
Finding your way round Shopify’s menus is a piece of cake thanks to the useful setup tour you’re given. This simplicity will help you save time, and probably money, further down the line.
Best for Ecommerce: Shopify
This was always going to be close, given how these two are leading ecommerce platforms on the market. Both offer a wide range of sales channels, including eBay, Amazon, and social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram. Shopify is slightly better when it comes to offline point-of-sale transactions, thanks to its Shopify Payments processing tool, but that might not be ideal for everyone.
BigCommerce is able to rival Shopify's offerings, simply because many features which can help supplement the sales journey – such as customer reviews and coupon codes – come built-in.
Occasionally, though, BigCommerce won't offer a native functionality that Shopify does have, like when it comes to supporting multiple languages: Shopify's language support comes baked in, while BigCommerce requires a third-party integration called Weglot to do the same.
Best for Help & Support: BigCommerce
Shopify earns 3.6 stars out of 5 in our tests for help and support offered to customers by the service itself, but BigCommerce beats it with 3.8 stars.
The Shopify online knowledge base is packed with detail, but so is BigCommerce's own knowledge base, which includes a community Q&A section for common concerns, as well as a section for the latest product news and updates.
BigCommerce’s support staff were eager to pick up the phone and guide us through the early days of our site, offering exactly the support an uncertain customer would need to launch a site as well as the expertise an ambitious customer would need ensure the perfect results.
That said, we were able to create a shop easily with Shopify’s builder, without having to look at its support pages once, and that counts for something as well.
Other Website Builder Alternatives
Shopify stands out as the best website builder for larger ecommerce businesses, though BigCommerce isn't far behind with it's standout inventory management tools and customer service. But they're not the only options in town. What other website builders should be competing for your attention?
Our researchers have spent long hours compiling all the relevant metrics, from design functionalities and sales features to page security and value-to-cost ratios. Here are the big ecommerce competitors that you should have in the back of your mind when deciding which pick is best for your unque set of needs.
| Test Score Our score is based on independent assessments of ease of use, features, ecommerce functionality and value for money | Starting Price | Priciest Ecommerce Plan (per month) | Digital Product Sales | Service Sales | Sales Features Based on our research: number and quality of sales features | Value for Money Based on our research: feature offering vs average price plan price | Ease of Use Based on our research: customer and user testimonials | Try Click to check for deals, discounts and tiers of plans | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BEST OVERALL |  |  |  | |  |  | ||||
| 4.8 | 4.8 | 4.7 | 4.6 | 4.5 | 3.6 | 3.3 | ||||
|
| Free | $29 per month | $35 per month | Free | ||||||
|
| $79 per month | $299 per month | $299 per month | $19.99 per month | ||||||
| App required | | | | | | | ||||
| | App required | | | | App required | | ||||
| 4.6 | 4.4 | 3.4 | 3.6 | 4.6 | 3.5 | 2.4 | ||||
| 3.0 | 3.6 | 4.0 | 4.8 | 3.0 | 2.8 | 3.2 | ||||
| 3.7 | 4.4 | 4.4 | 3.9 | 3.3 | 3.2 | 3.7 | ||||
Wix
Wix is an all-timer: Our top-rated website builder, it comes with stellar ratings for features, sales functionality, CRM, customer approval, and help and support options. The price is right, with plans starting as low as $16 per month.
Wix does come with a few qualifiers, like the notable lack of a mobile editor and little help offered for SEO recommendations and best practices. But if you're willing and able to put in a little extra work in those areas, Wix is the best ecommerce website building solution on the market today for those businesses that need to build a quick, effective and economic online presence.
Pros
- Wix offers regular deals and discounts
- Virtually every ecommerce feature you could need
- More creative freedom with customization
- Consistently adds and updates sales channels
Cons
- Steep learning curve for beginners
- Slow server response times
- Weak knowledge center
- Free version available
- Free domain with 1-yr contract
- G-Suite Add-On: $6/month
Squarespace
Another top contender, Squarespace lets user build solid, dependable websites at a moment's notice, and it has the popularity to prove it, with 3.79 million subscribers and counting as of 2021.
Standout qualities for this service include a great website builder that tied with Wix for the top rating in our tests for a wide range of easy-to-use functions. It also comes with great, modern-looking templates that will work for all audience demographics, plus social and email marketing abilities that can help guide users towards the best platforms for building a larger audience.
Pros
- Get 10% off with code TECHCO10
- Incredible value for the money
- Extensive marketing features to reach new customers
Cons
- Poor site speed performance
- Few ecommerce templates
- Basic Plan: $27 per month
- Advanced Plan: $49 per month
- Mobile optimized
- Domain included with 1-yr contract
- No transaction fees
- 14-day Free Trial
Square Online
Finally, Square Online is definitely worth considering, with a great free plan and rock-solid features for getting the essentials of an ecommerce website, no bells and whistles. Ease of use is another big perk, as the Square website editor can be understood better than most other top website builders (Wix and Squarespace were easier in our tests, but Square delivers a better value for its cost). The featureset makes Square particularly good for restaurant and hospitality businesses, as well.
That said, you'll also run up against some design limitations — the natural downside to a simplified website building experience — as well as high transaction fees. But, if a just-the-basics approach is for you, Square will fit the (inexpensive) bill.
Pros:
- Allows users to sell for free
- Great integrations with POS system
- Ideal for small stores and restaurants
Cons:
- High transaction fees
- Restrictive designs options
- Confusing layout with unfamiliar technology
- Includes Free Plan
- Plus Plan: $29/month
- Premium Plan: $79/month
- Transaction fees start at 2.9% + $0.30
- Domain included with all paid plans
The Verdict
That said, BigCommerce remains a worthwhile option, particularly for its inventory management tools, design functionalities and lack of transaction fees — even BigCommerce's customer approval ratings can’t match those Shopify has to offer.
FAQs
Which is the best ecommerce platform?
Our researchers found Wix to be the best ecommerce website platform, due to its great features, CRM, sales tools, help and support, and pricing, as well as its high customer approval rating.
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