People’s lives were changed by the pandemic, so you might want to open an online store. It’s safer and easier for people to buy their daily needs online. So, starting an online store is a very good way to make money as a business.
If you want to start an e-commerce business in 2023, you may have to decide between Shopify and BigCommerce. Which one should you choose for your e-commerce business? You can figure it out with the help of this article.
It will look at Shopify and Bigcommerce in a number of ways. When you know these differences, you’ll understand what they have to offer and know which one to choose.
Comparison of Shopify and BigCommerce:
First of all, why did we choose to compare Shopify and BigCommerce when there are so many other options, like Wix and Squarespace? It’s easy to figure out. They are more useful. They have some of the best features for really low prices and are also very easy to use. For online entrepreneurs, impressive features and affordable prices are vital. You can use the short explanation below to help you understand. Check out the article Shopify vs. Wix: Which Is Better for Your Business in 2023 to learn more about how they compare.
Shopify
Shopify was started in Canada in 2006, and it has become one of the most popular platforms for online shopping. Shopify is a platform that lets you open an online store and get it up and running smoothly.
It provides all the necessary features needed to manage the store and build your brand. It also integrates with tools for making reports that help you keep track of how your business is doing. Also, it has dropshipping tools like dropship-empire that can help you fill orders.
BigCommerce
Founded in 2009, BigCommerce has more than 600 employees and supports more than 90,000 online stores in over 120 countries now.
As a premium hosted E-commerce solution, BigCommerce lets you build an online store, customize it to your liking, and sell an unlimited number of digital, physical, and even service-based products. Also, to use it, you don’t need to buy web hosting or install anything on your computer.
Specific Differences Between Shopify and BigCommerce
Pricing
First, let’s look at how Shopify and BigCommerce compare in terms of pricing and features:
You can see that the pricing plans for the two platforms are a lot alike. If you buy a one-year subscription for the Plus or Pro plans on BigCommerce, you can save 10%. Like BigCommerce, Shopify gives a 10% discount on annual plans and a 20% discount on two-year plans that are paid for in advance.
Even though the plans are similar, Shopify is less expensive to start because it comes with a “buy button.” With this button, you can place an order not only on Shopify but also on your own site, on any other site, and even on social media. Then you won’t need a separate website to open your online store.
App Store
Both BigCommerce and Shopify have their own app stores. These stores host a number of proprietary and third-party applications for both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) businesses. This lets you add more features to your site.
You can add products, make coupons, find suppliers, bundle products, place multiple orders at once, sell on social media, and more with these apps.
Shopify is the winner in this area because of how big it is. Shopify has a much larger number of users, so it’s more likely that third-party developers will make tools for the platform.
The truth is that Shopify’s app store is so big that there are apps for almost anything you can think of.
Mobile Apps
As mobile becomes more and more important in our daily lives, you may need an e-commerce website builder that lets you take advantage of the mobile revolution. It means making sure that your customers can shop online without having to worry about using their phones. But you might also want to check to see if BigCommerce and Shopify also have apps that can help you reach your goal.
Shopify has more features and apps that you can use to run your store from anywhere at any time. Shopify POS and Shopify App are the two main competitors. With the Shopify App, you can track orders and make reports. Shopify POS, on the other hand, lets you sell from a Shopify store that is in a physical store.
BigCommerce also has a mobile app that lets you manage orders and see information about your customers. But BigCommerce’s app isn’t as good as Shopify’s.
Payment processors
For online sales, you need a way for customers to pay, like Stripe or PayPal. Check out Does AliExpress Accept PayPal: Find Out Here + Other Payment Options if you want to learn more about how to pay.
BigCommerce integrates with 65 popular payment gateways, while Shopify integrates with more than 100, including its own payment gateway, called Shopify Payments.
And if you use third-party payment gateways instead of Shopify Payments, there are transaction fees. The prices depend on what plans it has:
- Simple Shopify: 2%
- Shopify – 1%
- 0.5% of Shopify Advanced
- But you don’t have to pay transaction fees with BigCommerce. But the truth is that their technology might not be as advanced as Shopify’s. Shopify Payments was made to make this process easier for customers and require fewer settings.
With Shopify Payments, your customers can pay you using any of the most common payment methods. Shopify Payment is a good choice unless you have a strong reason to use a different payment gateway.
Dropshipping
The most important thing for dropshippers is to be able to quickly and easily find products from suppliers, add them to your store, and have the selling and shipping processes taken care of automatically.
BigCommerce has a good app market with some great apps for finding products.
On Shopify, there are similar apps that focus on different markets, niches, or regions. Almost all of these apps have high ratings and are good at what they do.
Even though both platforms have apps that let you do everything, from finding the product to setting up shipping through the supplier, you can do it all from one place. Like dropship-empire, Shopify’s apps are better, so in this way, Shopify is better than dropship-empire.
Run an online shop
Shopify users often need to install a third-party app to change an order or add a credit to a customer’s account when managing their online store. Shopify also lets you change a customer’s address, but you can’t change the order itself. If a customer needs to change something about an order on Shopify, they have to cancel it and make a new one. If not, the person would have to pay for a different app. But if you use BigCommerce, you can easily change the size of the product on an order from your control panel.
Also, giving store credit to customers can be a great way to keep them coming back. On BigCommerce, it’s easy to put a customer’s credit toward purchases in the future. To handle store credits with Shopify, you might need to give out gift cards or install a third-party app.
Customer support
It’s important for all businesses to look for tech support. Customer service is how online business owners help their clients.
When you need help, you can find similar options on both Shopify and BigCommerce. Here are some of the ways they can help:
- 24/7 support
- Help center
- Support forum
- Email Video tutorials
- Advanced help from experts
- When you start a free trial of BigCommerce, this platform will call you for 10 minutes. BigCommerce will know more about your business after the call, so it can give you better advice.
Also, if you choose the enterprise-level plan, BigCommerce will send you professional consultants and have highly skilled staff call you.
BigCommerce’s customer service section is much less clear than Shopify’s. On Shopify, all of the different parts are clearly split up. What you want is easy to find.
Shopify’s customer service is also available through social media. It is not the same as BigCommerce. When you ask for an answer to a question, Shopify will send you to the right page in its knowledge center. It’s a great way to get help, and in this way, Shopify is better than BigCommerce.
Features of Marketing
Marketing tools and strategies are important for getting the word out about your business. Email marketing is a good way to reach out to customers and get the word out about your products. Check out the What Is Email Marketing article to find out more about email marketing.
BigCommerce uses email marketing platforms like MailChimp and G Suite to the fullest, which helps you keep your online store’s data in sync. Shopify email, on the other hand, has tools built in to help you build relationships with customers that will last. It helps customers trust you and stay with you.
There are SEO-related features on BigCommerce. It makes sure that all BigCommerce sites can have SEO that is up to par with the rest of the industry. Shopify’s SEO helps with on-page optimization by making it easy to change the title tag and meta description settings in each product and page editor.
The pros and cons of Shopify vs. BigCommerce
Now you know how Shopify and BigCommerce are similar and how they are different. Both ways of doing business online have their pros and cons. So it’s time to look at what’s good and bad about each.
Shopify is a good place to start.
PROS:
- Add sales features to your online store.
- There are several plans to choose from, such as Shopify Plus and Advanced Shopify.
- Strong backend with a variety of ways to add functionality through plugins and extensions
- Great inventory management system to keep track of your sales.
- Support for selling through multiple channels on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and other places
- There are different styles and themes to choose from.
- Amazing online support, with a team on hand 24 hours a day.
CONS:
- Scalability is limited by: You have to use multi-currency apps made by someone else.
- Unless you use Shopify Payments, you should pay fees for each transaction.
- When you switch templates, you have to change the way your site looks.
Now, let’s talk about what’s good and bad about BigCommerce.
PROS:
- It has a lot of plug-ins for online selling
- There are no transaction fees, so your store will make more money.
- There are a lot of good SEO features that will help you rank online.
- Scalability for large online businesses that want to grow quickly
CONS:
- It’s hard for beginners to use because the language is so complicated.
- If you want to get the most out of the tech, you need to know how to code.
- Its plans have sales limits for each year. If you want to sell more than those limits, you have to pay more.
- With BigCommerce, it’s not easy to make a store that sells in more than one language.
- Beginners may find it hard to use the editing interface.
One Last Thought
Both Shopify and BigCommerce are powerful e-commerce platforms with a wide range of tools to help you run and grow your online business.
But Shopify is the better choice because it doesn’t limit the number of sales you can make. It also has a wide range of themes, mobile apps, POS systems, and apps.
Also, setting up Shopify couldn’t be easier, even if you’ve never made an online store before. Shopify also gives you a lot of options for design and themes, both free and paid. Because of this, Shopify is always easy to use for new users.
Now that you know what you need to know, it’s time to start your dropshipping business with a Shopify store.