March 15, 2022
Both BigCommerce and Shopify are online store builders that allow you to sell physical or digital products, and although Shopify is deemed to be one of the most successful ones in the market, its biggest competitor is BigCommerce, as per statistics.
Both of them are aimed at people who are starting a business without a large budget for web-development and those who want to take a ‘do-it-yourself’ approach to building an online store and both of them are ‘software service’ (SaaS) tools, meaning that there is an ongoing cost to use them- you pay a monthly or annual fees for access to the software.
They might seem similar, but they differ in the features that they provide-
BigCommerce offers 4 pricing plans:
Certain features that are common in all of the plans are:
– Unlimited Products, file storage and bandwidth;
– Staff accounts
– Mobile responsive website
– Mobile responsive website
– Single-page checkout
– Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay
– Coupons, discounts and gift Cards
– Multi-Currency
– Real time shipping quotes
– Built-blog
-Product ratings and reviews
– Free Sitewide HTTPs and dedicated SSL
Apart from the common ones that are available in all the packages, the ENTERPRISE package has additional benefits like Customer groups and segmentations, Abandoned cart saver, persistent cart, stored credit cards, Google Customer reviews, product filtering, Custom product Filtering, Price lists and Unlimited API Calls.
The PRO package has all the above features except for price lists and unlimited API Calls, while the PLUS package lacks Google Customer reviews, product filtering, Custom product Filtering, Price lists and Unlimited API Calls and the PLUS package lacks Google Customer reviews, product filtering, Custom product Filtering, Price lists and Unlimited API Calls, yet is the most popular among the rest.
Shopify on the other hand, offers 5 pricing plans:
Some of the notable features of this plan include the affordable monthly price, a package that includes all of the basics you need to get up and running and it’s upgradable, so it will grow with your business.
Small-businesses who have outgrown the basic plan and are looking for an upgrade might be intrigued with this one, as it comes with additional features such as gift cards, abandoned cart recovery as well as a better rate on credit card transaction.
Larger businesses will find the ADVANCED SHOPIFY and SHOPIFY PLUS plans quite convenient if you want to take more control and initiate better growth for your businesses. They have a number of features and are worth the money that needs to be paid.
Thus although you can start selling your products online at a much cheaper rate with just 674.71 INR with Shopify Lite, compared to BigCommerce, you don’t actually get a fully functional online store and are rather allowed to make use of a “Shopify Button” (an embeddable widget, sort of like a Paypal ‘buy now’ button, to add a shopping cart to an existing website or online presence) and use your Facebook page (or other social media channels to sell products).
Which is not the case with BigCommerce, thus proving that, BigCommerce is a little more convenient, at a comparatively tad higher price but with better features.
PART 2- TRANSACTION FEES
A very important question that potential online sellers on Shopify or BigCommerce often have is- what’s the site’s cut of my sales, that is, the transaction fee per sale, going to be?
This answer is easily an advantage for BigCommerce users as it charges 0% transaction fees on all its plans, whereas Shopify charges 0% on all plans, only if you own ‘Shopify Payments’ system to process card transactions rather than an external payment gateway.
If not, then transaction fees do apply and vary according to the type of plan you’re on: 2% for Shopify Lite and ‘Basic’; 1% for ‘shopify’ and 0.5% for ‘advanced shopify’.
Another probable disadvantage of Shopify, even if you use Shopify Payments is that it can only be used in certain countries, such as- Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, and so on and if you don’t reside in one of those countries, you will have to pay transaction fees.
In case of credit card processing, for BigCommerce the recommended partner is Paypal powered by Braintree, making BigCommerce credit card fees slightly cheaper than the shopify equivalents, where the more expensive plans are concerned.
Merchants selling low volumes of goods won’t necessarily notice the difference too much unlike store owners with high volumes.
A notable feature about Shopify Fees structure is that it has no sales limit at all, unlike BigCommerce.
In conclusion, when it comes to which one is better, there are a lot more points to consider, stay tuned…
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