BigCommerce vs Shopify Plus: which e-commerce platform suits you best?

BigCommerce vs Shopify Plus

Although Shopify Plus is known by almost everyone, BigCommerce also offers great opportunities for companies in the e-commerce sector. BigCommerce is perhaps less known, but has made great strides in recent years and is rapidly gaining market share. Therefore, we compare both platforms in terms of costs, headless possibilities, customisation, maintenance and support and future proof.

The costs of Shopify Plus and BigCommerce

One of the first questions you will ask is what both e-commerce platforms cost.

Both Shopify and BigCommerce work with pricing plans. Shopify has five, while BigCommerce offers four plans. Since Shopify Lite, Basic Shopify and Shopify are not suitable for SME+ or Enterprise applications, we will leave them out of consideration. As a result, with Shopify you will have to rely at least on the Advanced Shopify price plan, which costs $299 per month. For even larger enterprises, there is Shopify Plus, where costs vary according to your needs.

Also with BigCommerce, the first pricing plan, Standard, drops out for SMB+ or Enterprise applications. A BigCommerce Plus subscription costs $79.95 per month, a Pro subscription costs $299.95 per month and the pricing of the Enterprise solution varies depending on your requirements. It is important to note that pricing for BigCommerce is revenue-dependent. Your subscription will automatically upgrade as your business grows.

The biggest difference in costs is based on the types of features available with each subscription. For example, BigCommerce does not charge a transaction fee even in the Standard plan, while Shopify Plus does.

Maintenance and support

Of course, price is not the only thing you select. Maintenance and support are at least as important. But here too, both e-commerce platforms hardly differ. Whether you choose Shopify Plus or BigCommerce, you get access to:

• 24/7 phone support

• 24/7 live chat

• Help Center

• Forum support

• Email

• Video tutorials 

• Advanced Specialist Support

Once you sign up for a free trial with BigCommerce, you will receive an appointment for a 10-minute consultation. In this way, BigCommerce gets to know your company better and is therefore able to provide better advice. If you ultimately opt for the Enterprise subscription, you can make use of consultants who help you with the onboarding.

Shopify, on the other hand, also offers support through their social media channels.

Customisation

Both Shopify Plus and BigCommerce have an extensive partner ecosystem that can be linked through APIs. Shopify offers various technical solutions from its own catalog and benefits customers when they use these solutions.

Bigcommerce is a true Open SaaS Platform and offers native integration at no extra cost with, for example, payment providers such as Stripe and Mollie. With this, Bigcommerce supports in choosing the best solution for your company.

Unlike BigCommerce, Shopify penalizes you with transaction fees if you don't opt ​​for proprietary solutions, such as Shopify Payments.

Headless possibilities

Going headless means that you decouple the frontend and backend of your e-commerce solution. An e-commerce platform is used to power your commerce engine and a separate content management solution for the display layer. 

Creating a headless build is possible with both BigCommerce and Shopify. But it's easier with BigCommerce. This is because BigCommerce has invested heavily in headless technology. Over 90% of the platform is exposed via APIs (the connections between frontend and backend that make headless possible). BigCommerce also has pre-built integrations with popular frontends, including WordPress, Drupal, Adobe Experience Manager, Contentful and Storyblok. The BigCommerce Channel Toolkit makes it easier for developers to build custom frontend solutions that can be used with BigCommerce on the backend. 

Shopify also has a headless commerce offering, but with only allowing Although Shopify also offers headless capabilities, they are more limited than with BigCommerce. The platform therefore has no pre-built integrations with Adobe Experience Manager, Acquia, Drupal or Sitecore. The platform requires a third party to integrate with WordPress. 

Shopify Plus and BigCommerce future readiness

When choosing a new e-commerce platform, you want to be sure that you are ready for the future. You don't want to have to switch to another platform in a few years' time. If your selection criteria include growth potential, BigCommerce offers clear advantages: not only is it well-suited for businesses in all stages of growth, it can also handle large catalogues. For example, you can add up to 600 SKUs per product. Shopify applies a maximum of 100 SKUs per product.

Besides that BigCommerce offers you the possibility to create multiple storefronts from one account in a few easy steps. If you want to manage multiple storefronts through Shopify Plus, you will have to create a new account for each shop. This makes it more difficult to manage things like inventory for multiple shops in Shopify Plus.

Conclusion

Which e-commerce platform suits your organisation best, depends on your situation. If your shop is fairly standard, it is more logical to choose Shopify Plus. This platform scores better on available templates and ecosystem. But if you have a high demand for customization, and want to offer a truly unique user experience or want to manage multiple storefronts, BigCommerce is the better choice for your organisation.

As you can see, both Shopify Plus and BigCommerce are excellent e-commerce platforms and there is a lot of overlap. Therefore, it's hard to point out an absolute winner. Still, we hope this article has made the choice easier for you.