BigCommerce vs Shopify 2023: Which Is Better for You?

Further Information

• Just getting started? Read our overview of BigCommerce for an introduction to this powerful ecommerce builder
• Read our overview of Shopify to familiarize yourself with this top ecommerce platform

The Winner

Shopify has better value for money than BigCommerce

Shopify has a better value-for-money score in our research than BigCommerce, getting a 3.6 out of 5 compared to BigCommerce’s 3.4 out of 5 score. It won because of the addition of the $5 Starter plan, which is a great value plan for users on a budget.

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When it comes to ecommerce website builders, the recurring monthly cost of a plan is the most important factor for your budget. That said, there will also be additional costs like credit card fees and transaction fees. We’re going to cover monthly plan prices first, and then explain the additional costs you’ll encounter with Shopify vs BigCommerce.

BigCommerce has actually reduced its prices since last year to match Shopify’s. Now both providers offer the same prices for plans. So how does Shopify still score higher than BigCommerce?

Well, Shopify also offers a $5/month Starter option, but this doesn’t actually provide an online store. Instead, it simply allows you to sell your products to customers via social media platforms, such as TikTok and Instagram, as well as messaging channels, like WhatsApp and email. It’s also only available to new merchants in the 3-day free trial window.

So, back to the online store plans – let’s break those ranges down:

(For very large businesses, BigCommerce and Shopify also offer pricier, more tailored solutions – BigCommerce Enterprise and Shopify Plus – that we’ll discuss later on).

On the surface, these prices don’t seem very different at all. But that changes when additional costs come into play.

Transaction Fees

Transaction fees are the percentage of revenue that a website builder takes from each sale you make. You’ll be happy to know that BigCommerce has no transaction fees on any of its plans. Shopify, on the other hand, charges between 2% and 0.5%, depending on the pricing plan you choose. The only way to avoid Shopify’s transaction fees is to use Shopify Payments (as opposed to third-party payment processors like PayPal).

Credit Card Fees

While transaction fees are between you and your ecommerce platform, credit card fees are what you pay to the third party payment processor that you use when you make sales. There are tons of payment processors to choose from – BigCommerce offers over 65 integrations, while Shopify offers over 100.

You can get special rates on some of the payment processors that come recommended by Shopify or BigCommerce. Shopify recommends its in-house Shopify Payments option, and BigCommerce recommends the ever-popular PayPal – both of which charge fees of 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction.

Which Has Better Value for Money?

In our research, Shopify scored higher for value for money 

Both BigCommerce and Shopify offer free trials, BigCommerce for 15 days and Shopify for 3 days (they also offer $1 per month for the first three months on selected plans). It’s also safe to say that these platforms don’t have major price differences – but it’s all about what tools and features you actually get for the price you pay.

Both ecommerce platforms scored a 3 out of 5 for value for money in last year’s research, and both rose when we tested them this year, with Shopify rising by 20% and BigCommerce by 13%. But it was Shopify that ended up the winner with its $5 per month Starter plan, which allows users on a budget to use the platform.

We just found Shopify to be more compatible for users overall. The features offered versus the price increased in our research by 33% from 3 to 4 out 5, the only ecommerce platform in our research to do so.

You do need more third-party apps than BigCommerce, and these can cost money (drag-and-drop builder apps like Buildify cost an additional $12.99/month). But overall, Shopify provides more value for money by allowing more people to use it.

Further Information

• Read our BigCommerce Pricing review for more information on BigCommerce’s pricing plans
• Read our Shopify Pricing Plans review for a full breakdown of Shopify’s plans
• Interested in Shopify Plus? Why not read our Shopify Plus Review to find out if it’s the smart choice for your business

The Winner

Shopify is easier to operate than BigCommerce

Shopify’s ease of use makes it the top choice for beginners. BigCommerce is more powerful, but it’s a harder platform to master – although its drag-and-drop builder is definitely giving Shopify a run for this title.

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First, the basics: Both BigCommerce and Shopify use a straightforward content management system, complete with a modern dashboard and a straightforward website editor.

Both the BigCommerce (left) and Shopify (right) dashboards are simply formatted and full of helpful tools and pointers.

That said, users find Shopify easier to use than BigCommerce. Because BigCommerce’s features are more scalable, they’re also less suited for beginners. Meanwhile, Shopify is a slightly less powerful platform, but you won’t be left to your own devices. In our own research, we have Shopify a 4 out of 5 for ease of use overall, a rise of 13.4% from last year’s score of 3.5 out of 5.

But just take our word for it, here’s what one Shopify user had to say:

“In the backend where you add your products, it’s fairly easy to do, there is plenty of information and everything you could imagine that you would want to edit about that product is there and easy to find.”

With Shopify, adding products is as simple as filling out a quick form for each item. And there are plenty of pointers along the way, like this useful sales tip about comparing prices:

BigCommerce, on the other hand, offers sales features for larger stores that require a bit more of a learning curve:

See that “Product Information” menu on the left? There are a lot more factors to worry about here, but if you’re willing to put in the time, then customers will appreciate the categorizations and info available from your BigCommerce store. BigCommerce has remained consistent since we last tested, staying at its 3.3 out of 5 overall ease of use score.

As one BigCommerce user explained:

“It’s difficult – it’s not overly easy to use, but you can see why. It’s because it’s basically there to run your business for you. But, creating a website was not the easiest of experiences, and clearly isn’t what BigCommerce is about.”

Plus, BigCommerce has made some recent improvements to its ease of use. BigCommerce’s drag-and-drop builder actually outdoes Shopify in terms of design flexibility, and all you have to do is select a page element you like and insert it wherever you want it to go.

Shopify, meanwhile, doesn’t offer the same hands-on editing experience as BigCommerce. With Shopify, you can switch the order of page elements from a list, but you can’t actually drag and drop an element wherever you want it on a page.

Further Information

• Read our Shopify Review for more detail on this ecommerce builder and find out if it’s right for you
• Check out our BigCommerce Review to find out more about this platform’s ease of use, features, and more
• See more ecommerce builders in our Best Ecommerce Builders Comparison Chart and find the best one for you
• Have a look at our interactive article on the Best Ecommerce Platforms if you prefer a long-form comparison

The Winner

Shopify has better design functionality

While it’s true that BigCommerce’s design is more flexible, Shopify has the better overall design in our research due to allowing a greater range of online stores thanks to its better ease of use and more aesthetic range of templates.

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Free Themes

Both Shopify and BigCommerce offer a slim amount of free themes – 13 from Shopify, and 15 from BigCommerce.

Shopify is easier to use than BigCommerce, so even beginners are able to create an attractive storefront. In our research, Shopify scored 4.4 out of 5 for design, a 14.3% rise from last year’s score of 3.9 out of 5. This was due to an increase in both UX and omnichannel design. For users, this means Shopify now looks and works better than ever, both for your store and wherever else you want to sell.

Shopify’s free themes are less uniform to begin with anyway, so you won’t have to tweak much. Either way, it will set you up for success in a world where 57% of visitors will stop engaging with a website if they find the content or layout unattractive!

Free themes are a great way for new businesses to cut costs while starting out. But most mid to large-sized online stores will quickly outgrow these basic styles and need to upgrade to a paid theme that better reflects their brand.

Paid Themes

Shopify offers over 140 paid themes ranging from a one-time payment of $100 to $180. Specific themes are available for every industry, from food and drink to home and garden. You can also search by number of products, layout style, navigation menu styles, and more.

Most themes come with two or three different color and style options to choose from. Take the Ira theme, for example:

You won’t be limited to these prepackaged styles, either – Shopify’s themes are easy to personalize even further, and you can switch your theme at any time.

Similarly, BigCommerce offers over 160 paid themes for a one-time payment of $150 – $300, which you can browse by industry, catalog size, layout, and more. Like Shopify, each theme comes in a few different style palettes.

While it’s true that BigCommerce offers more themes than Shopify, note that some of BigCommerce’s themes are just slight variations of the same “family.” Take the Geneva template family, for example:

These are all different variations of the same layout, but they’re listed as four separate templates. So in reality, BigCommerce offers about the same amount of template styles as Shopify.

This was not the only thing we found disappointing about BigCommerce. While Shopify made great strides to improve one of its weakest areas, BigCommerce remained the same and so it dropped -8.9% in our research, from an overall design functionality score of 4 to 3.6 out of 5.

Further Information

• Interested in Shopify’s designs? Read our Shopify Themes and Shopify Experts Review for more detail on how Shopify can help you create a stunning online store

The Winner

Shopify has better sales features

Shopify’s sales features are more customizable, and even though BigCommerce includes more useful in-built features right off the bat, Shopify’s more fluid nature and honed-in focus on multichannel selling make it better for the majority of users.

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BigCommerce used to be number one in our research for its sales features. Shopify wasn’t far behind in second place.

But after the most recent round of testing, the reverse has happened, with Shopify rising by 4.2% in overall sales feature score to 4.7 out of 5 from 4.5. BigCommerce, meanwhile, stays consistent with its 4.5 out of 5 score.

They both offer essential features as standard, such as:

• Basic shipping tools – Set shipping locations, amend rates based on weight or order value, and print your own shipping labels
• An SSL certificate – Standing for Secure Sockets Layer, this certificate protects your store and validates it as a safe place to process online payments
• Multichannel selling – Sell across multiple platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest

But these are all to be expected from two massive ecommerce platforms. So, how did Shopify steal the win?

Shopify: Best for Customizable Features

To get a similar amount of features for a Shopify store, you’ll need to make good use of Shopify’s app store.

Adding features with Shopify can require more effort than BigCommerce. However, Shopify has made improvements to its own in-built features, now allowing digital product sales instead of a third-party app.

You will still need apps for a lot of functions, but its no real loss as Shopify’s app store is considerably larger than BigCommerce’s app store – so not only will you have plenty of useful tools at your disposal, but you can also be much pickier about the tools you decide to include on your site, whether it’s curbside pickup options or personalized appointment booking forms.

Just keep in mind that, while some of these plugins are free, many of them cost an extra fee that won’t be included in the monthly cost of a Shopify plan. Paid Shopify apps typically cost between $0 and $200+ dollars per month, and that huge price proves that there are best-fit apps available for every type of ecommerce store.

What has really put Shopify over the edge to take the number one spot is its focus on multichannel selling. Shopify now allows selling on both Snapchat and TikTok. These are huge markets, with TikTok Shops ecommerce sales expected to reach $20 billion this year alone.

Couple this with Shopify’s social media-only $5 per month Starter plan, you see that Shopify is really allowing a flexible nature to its selling, letting its users use whatever sales avenue works best for their inventory.

Think of Shopify as a food truck and BigCommerce as a restaurant. With Shopify, you can bring your store to wherever your main audience is. With BigCommerce, you have more space and inventory, but you have to wait for your customers to come to you.

BigCommerce: Best for Built-In Features

BigCommerce has an incredible amount of sales features already built-in to your store from the get-go. Its app store is much smaller than Shopify’s, but that’s because you won’t need to go to the trouble of downloading a ton of apps to add functionality to your BigCommerce store. One of our everyday users put it best:

“It was great knowing that I didn’t have to go looking for a third party to support me with certain features or apps. It shows that this platform just has its house in order, that they don’t have to outsource a central feature to work properly.”

These are some of the most useful features that come built-in with BigCommerce, that Shopify only offers through separate apps:

• Ratings and reviews – Allow customers to provide product reviews directly onsite
• Real-time shipping quotes from third party carriers – Give customers the most accurate shipping information available
• Unlimited staff accounts – Grant access to you site admin to as many staff members as you need

There are other features that do come built-in with both BigCommerce and Shopify, but are more advanced with BigCommerce. For example, platforms let you offer different variations of the same product, such as a sweater in multiple colors and sizes. But while Shopify only offers 100 variants per product based on three options (for example size, color, and material), BigCommerce offers 600 variants per product.

BigCommerce even offers a partnership with Walmart, which means BigCommerce merchants can start selling products directly on the Walmart Marketplace as quickly as possible – and that means access to the millions of unique customers who pass through Walmart.com each month.

Further Information

• Interested in Shopify’s in-house payment gateway? Read our Shopify Payments Review to learn more
• Read our Shopify Point of Sale (POS) System Review for details on managing your online and offline sales with Shopify
• Discover the Best Shopify Apps to find out which ones the experts recommend!

The Winner

It's a Tie!

As powerful ecommerce platforms, both Shopify and BigCommerce know the importance of marketing for online stores, and they both provide great tools to help get your site noticed.

To repeat, BigCommerce has more built-in features than Shopify, but Shopify has more options available in its app store. So, what does each platform have to offer in terms of marketing tools?

In our research, Shopify beats BigCommerce in the marketing sub-category with a 5 out of 5 versus a 4 out of 5, but BigCommerce beats Shopify in the equally important SEO category with a 5 out of 5 versus a 4 out of 5.

A tricky conundrum indeed, so it’s a tie! Each builder brings its own qualities as a marketer, with BigCommerce being better at ranking in search engines and giving you full control over in-built factors, while Shopify has more third-party plugins to play with in regard to email marketing and promotions, such as Klaviyo and SMSBump.

Let’s look at both the builder’s marketing offerings:

Marketing Features: BigCommerce

Every BigCommerce plan includes the following:

• Ability to create discount codes for shoppers to use
• Automatic sitemaps and customizable URLs, title tags, and metadata for best SEO practice
• One-click Google Shopping integration
• Professional reporting tools

BigCommerce’s more advanced plans also come with segmentation tools to help you personalize your customers’ shopping experience, as well as the ability to send automated abandoned cart recovery emails to customers who have abandoned their shopping cart at checkout.

Marketing Features: Shopify

Every Shopify plan comes with:

• Ability to create discount codes and gift cards
• Automatic sitemaps and customizable URLs and headers
• Analytics for product performance and finance summaries

Shopify’s basic plan offers great insights into product performance – you can understand how specific products have been selling over time – but it doesn’t come with all of the analytics that you might want. For example, you’ll have to upgrade to a more advanced Shopify plan to gain access to sales and profit reports.

Further Information

• Read about BigCommerce’s WordPress plugin in our review
• Want to know about Shopify’s built-in SEO features? Read our Shopify SEO Review to find out more!

The Winner

It Depends!

It really depends on your business. Shopify is best for B2C businesses, but BigCommerce is better for very large B2B stores that are only selling online.

For enterprise-level ecommerce, both Shopify and BigCommerce offer custom plans to equip your store with advanced tools and support. Shopify Plus and BigCommerce Enterprise are available to help large businesses maximize their potential online.

While Shopify and BigCommerce can be used by both large enterprises and large store owners, based on our interactions with them both Shopify is more suited to business-to-consumer (B2C) selling whereas BigCommerce is more suited to business-to-business selling (B2B).

Shopify’s customization and focus on design suggest trying to attract a wider range of customers with products, whereas BigCommerce has more power and a larger inventory, and is more suited to selling a specific library of products for wholesale.

Pricing

Both plans are based on bespoke quotes adjusted to your yearly revenue. Shopify Plus will charge a minimum of $2,000 per month, while BigCommerce Enterprise quotes are usually priced somewhere between $500 and $15,000 per month.

Features

BigCommerce Enterprise has a much wider range of built-in tools than Shopify Plus, which relies on its app market for most of its customization. Because powerful apps often come at a considerable price, large businesses could end up saving as much as $30,000 per year in app subscription costs by using BigCommerce instead of Shopify.

BigCommerce Enterprise can also handle hundreds of API calls per second, while Shopify Plus has a limit of 10 calls per second. This means you’ll be able to sync your product catalogues far more quickly with BigCommerce. Plus, that Walmart partnership we mentioned earlier means that BigCommerce merchants are in a great position to grow their customer base and sell more widely.

As one user said:

“BigCommerce is 100% geared to larger enterprise level businesses.”

The Winner

Shopify has better customer support

Both BigCommerce and Shopify are secure ecommerce platforms, and Shopify’s customer support is slightly better than BigCommerce’s. Both platforms offer 24/7 live chat and phone support, but Shopify’s knowledge center tips it over the top.

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Shopify vs BigCommerce: Support

Whether you choose Shopify or BigCommerce, you’ll have access to the following:

• 24/7 phone support
• 24/7 live chat support
• Help center
• Community forum
• Email support
• Video tutorials

24/7 phone and live chat support are the standout tools here, but useful knowledge centers make a difference, too. BigCommerce’s help center is full of useful information. But what we really liked about Shopify is that there are helpful prompts throughout its website dashboard that link directly to a relevant page within the Shopify knowledge center. This is a great feature for those looking to learn more on their own time. It can be so frustrating trying to get to grips with a new piece of software. As one of our users put it:

“The help and support knowledge center was really great. By following the guidance, I was able to identify straight away how to add in a product review section. Well done shopify for your attention to detail.”

For both platforms, upgrading to the highest plan also unlocks priority support. For Shopify, this means gaining access to a dedicated support agent on the Shopify Plus plan. With BigCommerce, you’ll get an onboarding consultant as part of the BigCommerce Enterprise plan, and receive priority treatment when requesting phone support.

BigCommerce dropped -12.8% in the overall score for help and support, however, falling from 3.9 to 3.4 out of 5. The reason, rather upsettingly, is BigCommerce has completely put a stop to all green offsetting. Most companies commit to a green offset, where they promise a giveback for all the carbon the company produces.

BigCommerce giving up this promise is very disappointing, especially when climate change is such a pressing issue.

Shopify vs BigCommerce: Security

As we mentioned earlier, both BigCommerce and Shopify offer free SSL certificates on all of their plans. You can also upgrade to a more advanced SSL certificate (equipped with site seals and warranties) with BigCommerce, if you like. BigCommerce’s paid SSL options range from $59 to $299.

Both BigCommerce and Shopify are also PCI DSS compliant providers, meaning they meet the requirements of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard to protect against credit card data breaches.

The BigCommerce vs Shopify battle is one that has a different winner depending on who is judging the fight. They’re big competitors, so whichever you choose, you’re sure to receive a stellar service. But there are some important differences, so let’s have a quick recap.

You Should Use BigCommerce If…

• You want built-in features without the hassle of installing or paying for them separately
• Want better SEO capabilities
• You run a purely online business looking to grow across multiple channels

You Should Use Shopify If…

• You want more control over the aesthetic features on your website
• You want as much choice as possible between third-party apps
• You want expand your growth with multichannel selling

The better platform ultimately comes down to what you’re looking for. That said, our testing found Shopify to be the winner for its ease of use, sales features, design functionality, and help and support options.

Have you made your decision? Leave us a comment and let us know which builder you choose – we’d love to hear about your experience!