BigCommerce vs Shopify – A Comparison for eCommerce Enthusiasts

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BigCommerce vs Shopify A Comparison for
eCommerce Enthusiasts
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Introduction
BigCommerce vs Shopify This game of verses
has always been the talk of eCommerce
world! Shopify or BigCommerce? Choosing between
the two is quite a dilemma! The question pops up
whenever an eCommerce store is on the verge of
emergence! Both the SaaS hosting solution
providers are different yet similar in their own
ways. Via this post, weve tried to compare the
two in an as objective way as possible. The
decision does not rely on just the themes or the
pricing theres much more to it. Weve covered
aspects that are important for eCommerce
businesses before landing their choice on one.
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Lets get started....
Choosing between the two is quite a dilemma!
There are choices that we are regularly required
to make however, there are few of them that
determine the course of our lives. If you sell
through the internet, the ecommerce platform that
you utilize is one such choice.
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Pricing is an aspect that nobody gives all the
attention to, but do not neglect either!
Especially when we talk about SMBs, it holds
importance to compare the month/annual plan
prices. When we talk about BigCommerce vs Shopify
price comparison, they arent at afar difference
to one another, BUT the features are!
Pricing
Shopify has 5 pricing plans Lite (9 / month),
Basic Shopify (29 / month), Shopify (79 /
month), Advanced Shopify (249/ month), and
Enterprise level plan.
BigCommerce has 4 pricing plans Standard
(29.00 / month), Plus (79.00 / month), Pro
(299.00 / month) and Enterprise level plan.
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BigCommerce and Shopify both provide Cart
Abandonment Recovery options, but there are a few
catches that you need to go through before
choosing a platform.
Cart Abandonment Recovery
The major and probably the most important
difference between Shopify and BigCommerces cart
abandonment recovery feature is its availability
on all the plans. Shopify provides this feature
to its most basic plan subscribers whereas
BigCommerce only has it for its Plus plan
merchants.
Shopify and BigCommerce both have third-party
apps for cart abandonment recovery emails (paid
and free) for the merchants and the manual email
sending provision is there too.
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Both Shopify and BigCommerce allows eCommerce
owners to optimize their store with basic but
pivotal SEO features. We tried taking a free
trial on both BigCommerce and Shopify for better
understanding, and here are the screenshots of
SEO optimization features on both the platforms.
eCommerce SEO
An integral part of organic traffic is the
websites blog section. The frequently updated
blogs pull more traffic as they establish good
credibility in the eyes of the search engine
bots. Here, both platforms provide the basic blog
section for eCommerce stores. Shopifys blog
section interface, however, is more user-friendly
and easy to understand.
Theyve taken care of the basics that help in
product search engine rankings. Moreover, another
SEO optimization factor Blog is also covered on
both platforms. Regularly updated blogs play a
major role in the websites search rankings.
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The URL customization in Bigcommerce is not
restricted to any categorization or product list.
It lets you bend the URL terms the way you want
which Shopify lacks. On Shopify, /products/ and
/collections/ are enforced. BigCommerce allows
full editing of URLs.
But, if we dig a little deeper for the SEO part,
the key findings mentioned below changes the
whole eCommerce SEO game
The robots.txt files block certain pages for
Google bots. The dynamic pages such as carts and
search results should take advantage of this
feature. Shopify doesnt allow edits to these
files whereas BigCommerce allows all sorts of
modifications for your eStore.
BigCommerce merchants can make the most out of
its in-built Google AMP-enabled themes. Shopify
users need to use third-party apps for the same
feature. This one here is a major feature
eCommerce stores cant afford to overlook!
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BigCommerce and Shopify both claim for a 0
transaction fees on the products sold. Shopify
shows a 0 transaction fee option but the twist
is ONLY when you use their payment gateway
Shopify Payment. Those fees are different in
both Shopify and BigCommerces cases.
Transaction Fees Credit Card Fees Comparison
1. Shopify
Lite 2.9 30c per transaction
2. Basic Shopify 2.9 30c
3. Shopify
2.6 30c
4. Advanced Shopify 2.4 30c
Shopify
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Bigcommerce Standard 2.9 30c per transaction
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Bigcommerce Plus 2.5 30c
3. Bigcommerce Pro 2.2 30c
4. Bigcommerce
Enterprise 2.2 30c
BigCommerce
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The Verdict Shopify Pricing vs BigCommerce
Pricing
As clear as it looks, BigCommerce comes out as a
promising, convenient, and economical option than
Shopify. The pricing comparison of credit card
and transaction charges has BigCommerce as its
hero. In both cases, BigCommerce charges
considerably less than that of Shopify.
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How the eStore looks, is definitely the major
concern for any owner! After all, aesthetics and
visual appeal matter the most! When we talk about
the eCommerce store setup, both the platforms
provide enough theme variants to choose from.
eStore Themes and Templates
If we straight go by the numbers, sure
BigCommerce shows a bigger picture in terms of
theming options for both paid and free
categories. But, if we go by the actual amount of
variations in styles, Shopify has better
provisions. BigCommerce theme variants are
basically with minor changes of colors and image
resolution, wherein Shopify has more styling
variations in a single theme. This is the major
comparison difference that stood out when we
compared both!
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Additional Points
Shopify themes represent a more modern approach
when it comes to designing, and on the other
side, BigCommerce is with professional-looking
and contemporary theming. Another major
comparison point that we observed is the AMP
Enabled themes by BigCommerce. With Google
collaboration, they have a separate category for
AMP-enabled themes which Shopify lacks. Of course
with the help of tools, developers, and Shopify
App Center, this arrangement can be done, but
embedded enablement of AMP is quite a star for
us. With search engines providing major
preferences to AMP websites, having an eCommerce
store on this category sure helps the rankings!
The paid themes on both the platforms are no
doubts come with more styling, optimizing, and
layout options. But we recommend free themes more
as there are ample amounts of variants you get in
here too.
A point that is worth noting is the way Shopify
has designed its theme offering page. With
various styling choices, theyve made sure to
point out navigation, product page, homepage,
marketing, and other essential aspects that
affect an eCommerce store. Anyone new to the
online biz. world would get the most out of
Shopifys simple, hassle-free eCommerce store
setup mechanism.
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Fraud prevention plays a major role when it comes
to chargebacks. Especially for the small and
medium-sized businesses, the suspicious order
detection is essential.
eCommerce Fraud Prevention
Shopify has an in-built functionality of
fraud-analysis which uses machine learning
algorithms to help bring suspicious orders to
your attention. For the Basic Shopify plan, then
fraud analysis includes indicators and support
for third-party fraud apps.
On the BigComemrces hand, fraud prevention
functionality is only available through
third-party app integrations. They recommend two
of the apps (Signifyd and Klarna) for eCommerce
fraud prevention while numerous other app
integrations are already available on their app
store.
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When it comes to setting up an eCommerce store,
the ease of access is something that these
hosting platforms should never miss out on. Most
of the time, people who have negligent to basic
knowledge about HTML, JAVA and other coding
languages come on board. lets look at what
other comparisons have to say and what the Google
trend shows for BigCommerce vs Shopify.
Ease of Use
Shopify clearly has more simple, detailed, and
easy-to-understand explanations of what the
merchants might look for.
BigCommerce is considered quite difficult to use
when tried by beginners, whereas, setting up an
online store on Shopify is fast and uncomplicated.
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A crucial aspect when we compare Shopify vs
BigCommerce is the mobile app availability. With
all the generations turning to smart devices, how
can we not mention this?
Extra Pointer
Shopify has a mobile application for merchants
who want to run and scale their eCommerce store
from their phones. The Shopify App allows us to
manage basic aspects of the eStore like
fulfilling the orders, add/edit products, and
view reports.
BigCommerce, on the contrary, does not provide
any official mobile app for merchants. And, the
third-party smartphone apps available, cant
expect support from BigCommerce.
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Is BigCommerce better than Shopify? Or Which is
better, Shopify or BigCommerce? These questions
are natural but not totally justifiable. Both
eCommerce hosting solution providers have their
own star offerings and get low at some point or
the other than the rival.
BigCommerce is considered quite difficult to use
when tried by beginners, whereas, setting up an
online store on Shopify is fast and
uncomplicated. We compared BigCommerce and
Shopify and the above story is what we want to
present to you.
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