Shopify vs BigCommerce

Shopify is a robust platform for every type of eCommerce business. During testing, I loved its “Markets” feature that consolidates wholesale, retail, B2B and D2C operations into a single view. You can tailor experiences for each market without creating multiple stores and get a bird's eye view of it all from a unified screen.Its analytics module is a strong suit. Unlike other platforms that typically involve a 24-hour waiting period to access current data, Shopify lets you stream your business’s data in real time. The drag-and-drop interface is intuitive, and pre-built reports provide a solid foundation. However, the platform truly shines in its ability to access and customize ShopifyQL code for advanced analytics.Shopify's scalability is also impressive. The platform grows with your business. Starting with a basic store and transitioning to a complex, multi-channel operation is seamless. The headless architecture offers flexibility for customization, allowing you to create unique shopping experiences using its native Hydrogen visual editor or other third-party solutions.The mobile app has offline image editing, AI image generation and website editing capabilities. Also, Shopify's native AI, Magic, automates routine tasks and provides data-driven recommendations.Shopify’s AI-powered virtual assistant, Sidekick, trains itself on your store’s data, customers and transactions. You can ask anything, from using a feature to understanding your business data, and it always provides helpful, contextual answers. It lets you generate customer segments, design marketing campaigns and optimize your sales funnel. Sidekick also identifies customer segments and offers tips to boost conversion rates, like targeted emails, discount coupons and cart recovery strategies.However, Shopify's cost structure can be prohibitive for some. As the business grows, so do the expenses. And reliance on third-party apps for essential functionalities can lead to increased costs and potential performance issues down the line.While the platform offers a high degree of customization, mastering Shopify's Liquid coding language is necessary for complex changes, creating a barrier for non-technical users. Lastly, the short duration of the free trial might hinder the evaluation process for potential customers.Overall, Shopify is one of the best eCommerce solutions that can adapt to evolving business needs. However, you should carefully consider the platform's limitations in terms of cost, technical complexity and app dependency before jumping into a contract.

During testing, I noticed right off the bat that BigCommerce is a feature-rich platform that needs a lot of customization to fit my exact needs. Plus, there aren’t guided onboarding experiences, making implementation time-consuming. You must manually explore the interface to learn how to create or connect a domain, add products, set up fulfillment workflows, connect sales channels and design a storefront.Secondly, what caught my eye was the platform's speed and operability. BigCommerce boasts a 99% website uptime, and I could see why. It automatically optimizes images, minimizes HTTP requests and uses browser cache to identify customers. Also, a global content delivery network allows visitors worldwide to view your site from the nearest server.I loved how intuitive it is to connect and manage sales channels using BigCommerce. You can set up differentiated experiences for each channel using dynamic pricing, multiple product views, product swatches and bulk pricing tools. A robust customer segmentation module automatically groups similar customer personas based on your rules and helps design personalized experiences.The storefront editor uniquely lets you design a carousel for the website header. However, I didn’t like anything else about the storefront editor. It has limited free themes, and paid ones are comparatively more expensive than what competitors offer. That said, the platform's headless architecture helps compensate by enabling custom storefront development.My only point of contention was its unique pricing model. It charges a base subscription fee and puts a cap on your business's annual sales. If you exceed this cap, BigCommerce takes a percentage of your revenue based on your subscription plan.Also, if you connect the platform to a POS, every POS sale is considered an eCommerce sale, leading to a higher sales volume and cost. This leads to complex TCO calculations for enterprises with large sales volumes and international customers.Overall, BigCommerce is one of the best options for growing mid-sized businesses that can offset the platform cost with their sales revenue. It's flexible and can adapt to multiple business models, including B2B, D2C and dropshipping, with separate storefronts for each.However, the platform can be overkill for small businesses and may require significant investments to unlock its full potential. That's because all the good features like multi-storefront, personalization, customer segmentation and headless architecture are available in higher-tier plans. Also, lower-tier plans are comparatively more expensive than those of competitors like Shopify.