Shopify Vs. BigCommerce (2024 Comparison) – Forbes Advisor INDIA

Shopify and BigCommerce are two of the most powerful e-commerce platforms on the market. They make it easy for anyone to create, market, grow and maintain a highly profitable business all from one website. The two e-commerce rivals host tens of thousands of online retailers generating billions of dollars’ worth of business. The two platforms are both beginner-friendly, offer a variety of easy-to-use features and provide responsive, mobile-friendly templates but each has its own strengths and weaknesses depending on your goals.

Get the key insights on how Shopify stacks up to BigCommerce with our head-to-head comparison of Shopify vs. BigCommerce.

Shopify vs. BigCommerce: At a Glance

Shopify and BigCommerce are both subscription-based e-commerce platforms that help businesses of all sizes, from solopreneurs to large international companies. Both platforms offer unlimited products, file storage and bandwidth on all their plans along with online storefronts, POS, online sales channels, customer support and gift cards.

Both offer essential e-commerce features, such as basic shipping tools, a secure sockets layer (SSL) certificate that protects online payments and the ability to sell products over multiple social media channels. Both platforms are similarly priced, however, BigCommerce offers more built-in features while Shopify offers more than 8,000 paid and free third-party apps in its app store.

Because BigCommerce is more feature-rich, those features are scalable, requiring a steeper learning curve. Meanwhile, Shopify offers an easier base platform with the ability to scale by integrating some of the thousands of apps available in the Shopify app store.

FEATURED PARTNER OFFER

Shopify

Starting price

INR 20 per month (Introductory offer for three months), then INR 1,499 per month (Billed monthly)

Starting price

INR 20 per month (Introductory offer for three months), then INR 1,499 per month (Billed monthly)

Why We Picked It

Shopify is a subscription-based e-commerce platform that allows users to create a website, build an online store, sell digital and physical products straight from their website, generate shipping labels and push out social media posts. Founder Tobi Lütke created the platform in 2004 to launch an online snowboard store.

Since then, it has grown into a behemoth online sales platform supporting millions of merchants. Shopify is known for its easy-to-use platform and gorgeous themes. Shopify is considered one of the most user-friendly platforms, making it ideal for small business owners without any coding experience. To learn more about Shopify, read our Shopify review.

Pros & Cons

• Tons of industry-specific themes
• Easier to use than BigCommerce
• Free 14-day trial

• Transaction fee of 2%
• Over-reliant on third-party apps
• Limited staff accounts

FEATURED PARTNER OFFER

BigCommerce

Starting price

INR 3,231.68 ($39) per month (paid monthly)

Starting price

INR 3,231.68 ($39) per month (paid monthly)

Why We Picked It

BigCommerce is an SaaS (software as a service) e-commerce platform for building and hosting online stores. Clients range from startups to midsized businesses to high-level companies such as Ben and Jerry’s, Sturgis Harley-Davidson and GE Appliances. BigCommerce uses a straightforward content management system with a modern dashboard making it easy to navigate the online store’s backend. It has powerful, scalable sales features, making it ideal for companies that have big growth plans.

Pros & Cons

• Highly scalable e-commerce features
• No transaction fee
• 24/7 customer support
• Solid SEO features help website rank online
• Free 15-day trial

• Not as beginner-friendly as Shopify
• Automatically upgrade to more expensive plan with increased revenue
• Limited free design templates

How Shopify vs. BigCommerce Stack Up

Shopify allows users to get started at INR 20 per month which is billed every 30 days for three months, and opt for any Shopify plan as per their requirements. For INR 1,499 per month (billed annually), Basic Shopify includes a buy button, an online store with two staff accounts, an online credit card processing fee of 2.9% plus 30 cents and up to four inventory locations. For INR 3,231.68 ($39) a month (paid monthly), BigCommerce Standard plan provides similar features with the exception of unlimited staff accounts. While Shopify charges a 2% transaction fee when users do not use Shopify Payments, BigCommerce does not have a transaction fee.

For INR 6,546.22 ($79) (paid monthly) Big Commerce’s Plus plan also includes extra tools to help increase customer conversions such as a stored credit card feature, abandoned cart saver and the ability to reward frequent customers with loyalty programs. Shopify’s Basic plan already includes abandoned cart recovery and discount code features, includes five staff accounts, up to five inventory locations, discounted credit card rates and discounted transaction fees.

Advanced Shopify at INR 22,680 per month (billed annually) includes advanced reporting, 15 staff accounts, up to eight inventory locations, duties and import collections for international sales, custom pricing by market and further discounts on credit card and transaction fees. Big Commerce’s Pro plan at INR 33,062.54 ($399) per month (paid monthly) unlocks Google customer reviews, custom product filtering and special credit card rates.

Unlike Shopify, BigCommerce forces customers to upgrade plans depending on their online store’s annual sales. BigCommerce Standard is for shops that sell up to INR $50,000 per year, Plus plan is for stores with annual revenue of up to $180,000 and Pro is for annual revenue of up to $400,000.

In addition to the similar three paid plans, Shopify does offer a Shopify Lite plan for those who want to sell products without maintaining an online store. The INR 745.77 ($9) per month plan allows users to embed a Buy Button on their personal website or sell items in person using the Shopify Point of Sale app and a card reader.

Themes

Shopify and BigCommerce both have responsive themes. Shopify has eight free themes and BigCommerce has 12 free themes. Each can be customized to fit various industries. Shopify sells more than 70 themes ranging in cost from INR 12,429.52 ($150) to INR 29,002.23 ($350). BigCommerce has 150 themes that range in price from $150 to $300. While both platforms offer mobile-friendly, responsive themes, Shopify has a reputation of always being a few steps ahead of the competition as far as theme design and usability.

Online shoppers are easily distracted. If the checkout process is not quick and easy, store owners can lose potential customers easily, which is why a store’s shopping cart feature must be seamless. Shopify relies on third-party apps for a wide range of discount functionality including cart-level discounts, quantity breaks or tiered pricing and automatic discounts for specific customer groups. BigCommerce allows users to create cart-level discounts and coupon codes as well as automatic discounts for customers tied to customer groups without the need for a third-party app.

Shopify offers more than 100 payment providers to support customers’ preferred payment methods while BigCommerce offers 65 pre-integrated online payment options.

SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is important for higher search rankings. BigCommerce offers several SEO features right out of the box, such as optimized URLs, unique URLs, embedded microdata into product pages and URL rewrites that will automatically adjust the URL any time a product is renamed. Shopify allows users to add keywords, modify meta titles and descriptions and edit URLs for blog posts.

BigCommerce also offers professional reporting tools in each of its plans, while Shopify only offers standard reporting with its mid-tier plan and advanced reporting tools with its most expensive plan. Both BigCommerce and Shopify users can integrate Google Analytics for more in-depth reports on website user behavior. BigCommerce does a better job with out-of-the-box SEO features, however, Shopify has a better selection of available third-party apps to incorporate for SEO purposes.

Bottom Line

Both platforms allow beginners to build a beautiful online store. For true website building novices, Shopify is easier to use, making it a go-to choice for beginners. One of the reasons BigCommerce is such a powerful e-commerce builder is that it offers built-in tools that require a learning curve. Shopify, on the other hand, is fairly reliant on its app store, making its basic platform more user-friendly for beginners. Still can’t decide? Both platforms offer free trials, so experiment with each platform to determine what works best for your company.