Shopify vs Etsy: I Explore Key Features, Pricing, & More

Get a quick and clear overview of BigCommerce and Shopify in the table below:

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Shopify	BigCommerce
Overall rating 4.8	Overall rating 3.7
Starting Price $29 $1/mo for 3 months	Starting Price $29
Pros Unlimited products AI-powered Shopify Magic & Shopify Sidekick tools 100+ payment options Huge app market Multichannel selling POS tools	Pros Unlimited products 0% transaction fees on all plans International shipping options Multiple storefronts Mobile-responsive store
Cons Limited customization options Additional app costs Lacks built-in features Most templates cost extra	Cons Slow performance Limited customization options No built-in AI tools No free custom domain for first year
Free plan or free trial 3-day free trial	Free plan or free trial 15-day free trial
Number of templates 800+	Number of templates 200+
Try Shopify	Try BigCommerce

What Kinds of Business Is Shopify or BigCommerce Best For?

Have a specific business need in mind? Here’s a summary of what kinds of businesses Shopify and BigCommerce are best for:

The Winner

Shopify and BigCommerce’s pricing is the same

Both builders offer three premium plans, ranging from $29 to $299 per month (billed annually). This means Shopify and BigCommerce are both expensive options for selling online.

If you’re looking for the best value builder, Shopify and BigCommerce are evenly matched. Both platforms offer the same pricing structure and are expensive compared to other builders on the market.

How Much Do Shopify and BigCommerce Cost?

Shopify’s pricing ranges from $29 to $299 per month (billed annually) – the same as BigCommerce’s three plans. However, Shopify’s introductory deal means you can get your first 3 months for just $1/month.

You can quickly compare the pricing below:

If you’re most interested in the number of features on each pricing plan, Shopify has more sales features than BigCommerce overall. For example, you’ll receive versatile shipping, payment, and multichannel selling options from its cheapest plan.

That said, both Shopify and BigCommerce’s plans are at a high price point. Because of this, I’d recommend avoiding either if you’re a small business with an equally small budget. For more affordable plans, consider GoDaddy or Squarespace instead, whose ecommerce plans start at $20.99 per month and $16 per month, respectively.

The Winner

Shopify’s sales features were unbeaten in our testing

Shopify has an impressive suite of ecommerce features to support online stores, and provides over 100+ payment options. Plus, you can add extra functionality with one of its 8,000+ third-party apps.

Based on our 2025 research into nine ecommerce website builders, Shopify offers the best sales features overall that are ideal for helping growing businesses scale up their operations.

Sales Features

Shopify and BigCommerce offer comparable sales features for online stores, such as abandoned cart recovery, discount codes, and multichannel selling capabilities through marketplaces and social media. These are useful tools when trying to boost customer engagement and sales.

Shopify has always been ahead of the game with its AI integration Shopify Magic. This AI tool suite comes with useful features, such as:

• Shopify Sidekick: an AI-powered assistant that can answer key questions about running your store
• Theme generation: this tool rolled out in 2025 and lets you generate a personalized storefront theme for your business
• Text generation: you can generate copy for your store, be it product descriptions, blog posts, or newsletter copy

💭 Notes from our testers

I found Shopify’s AI assistant so helpful when using the ecommerce builder. I could access it from my dashboard at any time and ask it to analyze my store’s data, give me instructions on how to set up a domain, or generate imagery for my website.

Holly Choules Writer

In comparison, BigCommerce doesn’t have any built-in AI tools. However, you can download its BigAI Copywriter app from the app store if you need help with copy generation. This free app helps merchants craft SEO-friendly, engaging product descriptions, and when I tested it out, I was impressed with how quick and effective it was to use.

Payment Options

When testing both builders, I simply had to navigate to my account settings to set up payment options.

To accept payments with Shopify, you must connect to one of over 100 payment methods, including popular options like PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can use multiple payment options at once, giving your customers a choice at checkout.

Alternatively, you can use Shopify Payments, the builder’s native payment gateway, which minimizes transaction fees based on your website subscription. On the cheapest Basic plan, you’ll be charged 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, but this drops to 2.5% + $0.30 per transaction on the Advanced plan.

In comparison, BigCommerce provides more than 65 payment gateway options, including PayPal and Stripe, but offers no built-in solution. However, a real bonus to consider is that you won’t pay transaction fees on any BigCommerce plan, saving you money in the long run.

App Market

Shopify’s app market boasts over 8,000 third-party integrations. While this is an impressive number, Shopify relies on these apps to provide you with additional functionality, rather than including these features built into its plans, which would make them more easily available.

Not only does it cost you time to explore the apps to find what you want, but select Shopify apps come with a price tag, so this is an additional cost to consider when setting up your business. Skip to 00:30 in the video below for a tour of Shopify’s app market:

Play

BigCommerce’s app store offers just over 1,200 apps. This said, it has many built-in features – like unlimited staff accounts, product reviews, and real-time shipping quotes – which reduces the need for an app store as impressive as Shopify’s.

BigCommerce’s apps can be filtered by new and popular options, or by business needs such as “Checkout,” “Merchandising,” and “Shipping & Fulfillment.” And, like Shopify, certain apps include premium plans. For example, the ShipStation app costs $9.99 per month on the Starter plan.

Shopify’s app-heavy model is great for businesses that want a highly customized storefront, whereas with BigCommerce, you’ll get a comprehensive array of ecommerce features without having to research apps and pay additional third-party subscription fees.

The Winner

Shopify has better tools to promote your business and products online

Shopify’s built-in features and large app store make it easy to market your business and connect to other channels for selling, such as TikTok.

While setting up your inventory and prepping your online store for selling is important, none of that matters if you don’t market or promote your business successfully. Customers can’t buy your products if they don’t know they exist. Let’s take a closer look at some key areas for marketing:

Marketing Tools

Shopify offers a ton of useful features to help you engage with customers. You can connect your store with social media platforms, like Instagram and TikTok, or download the Shopify Marketplace Connect app to sell across marketplaces like Amazon and Etsy. This makes it really easy to sync your products across multiple channels.

If you’re interested in email marketing, I could use the Shopify Email feature to build and customize email marketing campaigns from my account.

💭 Notes from our testers

Though Shopify Email is a useful tool, it does need a few improvements. During testing, I noticed that Shopify doesn’t pull the branding colors from your website, so customizing your email campaigns does feel like quite a manual process. I needed to add the right colors, fonts, and imagery one by one.

Holly Choules Writer

With BigCommerce, I could create promotional banners, set up automated emails (for abandoned carts and purchases), and review my site’s newsletter settings from my dashboard. However, to create personalized email marketing campaigns or connect with social media platforms, I had to download the relevant app.

SEO

Considering Shopify offers so much to help businesses grow, it’s no surprise to see that it excels in our SEO testing. Businesses can expect standard SEO features from both Shopify and BigCommerce, such as sitemaps and image alt text, but Shopify adds a few extras.

For example, Shopify partnered with SEO analysis platform Semrush to create the Ecommerce Booster app, which helps businesses create a detailed SEO plan to help optimize their websites through actionable recommendations.

Internationalization

For online stores targeting markets around the world, internationalization features are a must-have. Shopify supports over 30 languages and helps you set up translated storefronts to automatically redirect customers based on their browser’s language.

Similarly, BigCommerce’s multi-currency feature allows merchants to display, transact, and settle in multiple currencies. These features make both builders capable of streamlining the shopping experience for global markets.

The Winner

Shopify’s simple editor is much more user-friendly

Shopify keeps things simple with a quick onboarding process to identify your business needs, a section-based editor, and a robust product backend to manage your inventory.

When testing the two, I found that Shopify offers a more user-friendly experience, whereas BigCommerce’s editor and interface are a little trickier to understand.

My Experience Testing Shopify

When testing Shopify, I was initially asked to describe the state of my business by choosing one of two options: “I’m just starting” or “I’m already selling online or in person.” Other questions included:

• If you’re a new business, where you’d like to sell (e.g. social media or via an online store)
• If you’re an established business, where you’re currently selling (e.g. eBay or alternative website builders)
• What you plan to sell (e.g. products you’ve made, dropshipped items, or services)

My Experience Testing BigCommerce

With BigCommerce, the signup process was a different story. Shopify was easy and took seconds, whereas BigCommerce left me pulling out my hair when trying to access the free trial. Finding the website builder is the first hurdle – you’ll need to click the “Essentials” tab at the top of the homepage.

BigCommerce requires more than just an email address and password to sign up – I had to input my name, phone number, and essential information about my business, like its name and size. This is considerably more detailed than other ecommerce website builders I’ve tested and shouldn’t be necessary for a free trial.

It then took two minutes to process my account and direct me to another onboarding question. This section asked me:

• Do you have an existing website?
• What will you be selling?
• What best describes how you currently sell your products?

While my experience was relatively slow and long-winded, other members of the Website Builder Expert team have had real difficulty accessing BigCommerce’s platform in the past with repeated error messages when trying to log in. So, be warned!

What’s the Next Step After The Onboarding Process?

After onboarding, both builders then present you with your account dashboard. From here, you can add products, start designing your site, or play around with your site’s settings.

BigCommerce and Shopify recommend adding products as your first step, but Shopify’s setup checklist is better for businesses finding their feet online with 13 steps in comparison to BigCommerce’s brief four-step guide.

The Winner

Shopify offers a more diverse range of templates for different industries

While Shopify and BigCommerce have similar template libraries and pricing, Shopify’s templates are modern, stylish, and customizable for different business needs.

Your online store needs to make a good impression from the start, which means choosing a beautiful template. For this, I recommend Shopify’s design options over BigCommerce.

Shopify offers more than 200 templates, covering a diverse range of industries and sectors, such as “Pet supplies” and “Jewelry and accessories.” BigCommerce’s template library features a similar number of themes to choose from – these are also categorized by business type.

However, both builders offer a limited number of free templates, which isn’t ideal for budget-constrained businesses that are just getting started.

Shopify only has 24 free templates and its premium options range between $100 and $500. BigCommerce only offers 12 free templates and its premium options range between $100 and $400. These template fees are a one-time charge in addition to your website builder subscription.

The Winner

Shopify better supports businesses with 24/7 customer service

You can reach out to Shopify at any time of the day or week through its AI-powered live chat service, or use its detailed Help Center to further your website building knowledge.

Every business needs a helping hand now and again, so I highly recommend checking a website builder’s support options before signing up. This is a great way to assess contact options and reliability – and, luckily, both Shopify and BigCommerce offer 24/7 support channels.

That said, Shopify’s customer service takes the lead in our help and support testing. To fairly compare their help and support options, I’ve collected the key positives and drawbacks of each builder:

We regularly review and analyze the best ecommerce website builders using our carefully shaped and rigorous research process. This helps us identify the best platforms to recommend to our readers.

In 2025, we carried out over 300 hours of testing across seven key areas, which were weighted according to their importance to our readers:

• Sales Features – 30%
  • We test the ecommerce capabilities of a website builder
• Website Functionality – 15%
  • We test the quality and quantity of website features available, such as SEO
• Design Features – 15%
  • We look at templates and design options for online stores
• Help and Support – 15%
  • We test what support channels and resources are available for businesses
• User Experience – 10%
  • We make sure to test every ecommerce website builder ourselves to assess its ease of use and accessibility
• Pricing – 10%
  • We review an ecommerce website builder’s pricing plans to see what you can get for your money
• Reputation – 5%
  • We look at how customers view each platform and how it performs in comparison to its competitors

Most importantly, I’ve tested both Shopify and BigCommerce myself to make sure the insights and recommendations I share with you are based on real, first-hand experience with both platforms. I’ve included screenshots from my testing throughout this comparison to help you get an idea of what each platform is like to use, and which might be best for you.

For businesses looking to scale their online store, Shopify is the best ecommerce website builder out there. Its sales features were unmatched in our testing, offering impressive tools to help businesses grow.

BigCommerce offers similar features to Shopify, all at the same price points. However, BigCommerce removes transaction fees entirely, making it a cheaper option in the long run. Plus, BigCommerce offers a 15-day free trial, giving entrepreneurs and small businesses a chance to get familiar with the builder ahead of committing to a plan.

While Shopify might be our top choice overall, I recommend giving the two builders a test run with their free trials to see which is the best fit for your business.