Big Commerce or Shopify: Which is better?
There are too many E-commerce platforms available in the market and choosing the right one is a tough call. When I first used BigCommerce and Shopify I knew I stumbled on to two of the best ecommerce solutions available today. Here is post which will guide you through the decision making process and help you understand which of the two online store softwares….. BigCommerce or Shopify is best for your online business.
Assuming you are not aware of it…
Both BigCommerce and Shopify has free trials. So you can try it before you buy it.
Features
When you look into BigCommerce or Shopify’s features, it is tough to make a decision because each of these software helps you setup almost everything an online store owner could ask for. Just sign up and upload your products and they provide you a decent shopping platform to start selling. Both BigCommerce and Shopify are very flexible to work on and each of them have unique features of their own.
Shopify Key Features
- Easy to use online store builder
- Fully customizable store design
- Secure shopping cart provided
- Ecommerce hosting included
- 20,000+ stores run on Shopify
Big Commerce Key Features
- Sell on Facebook and EBay
- Get found on Google
- Sell on iPhones
- Send automated emails easily
- Easy drag and drop design
Pricing
Shopify is little pricey when compared to Big commerce, both offer free trial for a while. Big commerce for half a month while shopify is for one month. The one advantage of shopify over big commerce is, all their plans are free for 30 days.
Shopify basic plan starts at $29 per month. They don’t charge you for setting up your store, it’s totally free. Unlimited bandwidth, transaction fee would be 2% and 1GB of storage. With this basic plan, user can have 100 stock keeping units (SKUs), this increase as you select other plans. On the other end we have big commerce with basic plan as bronze, and they charge you $24.95. The difference is 2GB bandwidth with 200MB of storage and there is no transaction fee.
Big commerce
Bronze – $24.95 per month, 100 products, 200MB Storage
Silver – $39.95 per month, 500 products, 300MB Storage
Gold – $79.95 per month, 1000 products, 500MB Storage
Platinum – $149.95 per month, unlimited products, 1GB Storage
Diamond – $299.99 per month, unlimited products, 3GB Storage
Shopify
Basic – $29 per month, 100 products, 1GB Storage
Professional – $59 per month, 2500 products, 5GB Storage
Business – $99 per month, 10000 products, 10GB Storage
Unlimited- $160 per month, unlimited products, Unlimited Storage
Design
Both these platforms are designed well. There are lot of templates that matches your need and they are available on the shopify theme store and Bigcommerce free themes section. Both BigCommerce and Shopify give you complete control over HTML and CSS. Templates for bigcommerce or Shopify can be purchased through 3rd party template designers too. So you have a plethora of options to choose from.
One great thing about BigCommerce which Shopify lacks is the intuitive drag and drop design functionality. Using which one can move around blocks of elements across the layout sparing you the time and effort which goes in to coding.
Product Management
You can add up products, edit products, organise products, and track the inventory. Shopify has very simple product management options. Shopify has an app store, they call it as shopify store add-ons. One thing to be noted is that ,in case if you need something which is not in the app store, then it becomes very difficult and a very serious task to be sorted out. Big commerce has eye catching features like pre order and also they have integration and apps service.
Final Verdict
I am a big fan of BigCommerce but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t suggest Shopify. Both are great ecommerce softwares in their own accord but there are few key points to note.
- Shopify charges a certain transaction fee on every purchase while BigCommerce does not. So if you find you are shelling out too much per transaction then BigCommerce is your best option.
- Also the dashboard usage and design interface of BigCommerce is not only better than Shopify but also beats other ecommerce solutions clean.
Are you still worried in selecting the best one?? Stay calm, both these services offer you free trial.
