When you’re starting out an online store, you need to pick an eCommerce platform that makes the set up easy - but also, easy to scale. Both BigCommerce and Shopify are powerful eCommerce site builders used by thousands of online merchants, so choosing one among the two can be tricky.

Now if you’re someone who chose BigCommerce, you may be facing a few challenges when it comes to customizing your store or growing it. This is where we can surely entice you in giving Shopify a try. 

In this article, we will compare both the platforms in detail so that you can make an informed decision. 

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Comparison

A quick overview

BigCommerce 

• Has high loading speed
• Is easier to use
• Tonnes of SEO features to help you rank on Google
• Excellent multi-channel selling capabilities

Shopify

• Has a range of themes that are not available elsewhere
• Large community to help you out with queries
• 24 hours dedicated support team
• Much easier to use
• Good backend with a host of ways to add functionality

Also read: Here's why eCommerce business owners choose Shopify

Detailed comparison

We will be comparing Shopify and BigCommerce, using the following 5 key parameters:

1. User Experience/ Design 
2. Ease of Use
3. Pricing
4. Security
5. Scalability

1. User Experience and Design

Customers are picky these days, that is a simple fact. If your site can’t grab their attention in the first 30 seconds, then they will abandon their cart and move on to the next eCommerce site available.

Shopify: Let’s start with Shopify, when it comes to comparing the design of both these platforms. Shopify has more than a 100 design themes available, and all of them look super cool.

Many of these designs look and feel similar to any other Content Management system (CMS) like Wordpress, so you don’t have a steep learning curve when it comes to setting up an awesome looking website using Shopify.

The themes, usually designed by third party designers, also have a nice look and feel to them. They usually cost in the range of $80 to $200 to install.

BigCommerce: BigCommerce also has a list of great design themes when it comes to building your online store, with some of them going up to as much as $300.

But Shopify has a slight edge over BigCommerce simply due to the fact that many of BigCommerce’s themes are simply various colour combinations of existing themes, and the actual number of “free original BigCommerce themes” are less than 10.

Both BigCommerce and Shopify use the ‘drag and drop’ editors which are almost similar in quality, but Shopify has a small advantage that it lets you work with more types of content blocks.

So when it comes to UX and design, Shopify has a slight edge over BigCommerce. 

2. Ease of Use

If your platform is easy to use, it saves both time and effort, and entrepreneurs today want the easiest solution out there possible. This is where Shopify scores big time over BigCommerce.

Shopify is hands down the easier tool among the two when it comes to how easy it is to add a small detail, such as a product, to your eCommerce website. Shopify has a better on-boarding process and its editor is more user-friendly.

Shopify comes with a detailed step by step instructional wizard that helps you launch your online store with ease.

BigCommerce on the other hand is for a more professional online website builder, since the terms used are a bit technical. You need to spend considerable time getting used to the platform and getting familiar with the nuances of the website to perform a basic task, say, adding a new item or a product.

If you don’t want to invest a lot of hours on learning a platform to build just one eCommerce website, then Shopify is your choice.

3. Pricing

Pricing is a key concern when it comes to an eCommerce store owner to choose a platform, especially when the resources are limited. 

Shopify has the following pricing plans:

• Lite: $9/month
• Basic: $29/month
• Shopify: $79/month
• Advanced Shopify: $299/month
• Shopify plus : Based on requirements

BigCommerce has the following plans:

• BigCommerce standard: $29.95/ month
• BigCommerce Plus: $79.95 / month
• BigCommerce Pro: $299.95/month
• BigCommerce Enterprise: Based on requirements

Simply put, if you’re just starting out, Shopify gives you more room to grow. You have the option to start slow and gradually scale to a higher plan, as your business flourishes. 

4. Security

If you are running an online store, data security is of topmost concern to you. This data can be in the form of the customer’s critical financial information, data related to your own financial transactions, and safeguarding the reputation of your website as a safe place to do business.

As you see, data security is extremely important, and these two platforms take data security seriously. Shopify’s stores are PCI compliant by default, which means your data, as well as the data of your business, is secure. After adding a custom domain, Shopify further protects your website by providing an SSL certification.

Being a bigger player in the market, BigCommerce provides security that is a bit more advanced than Shopify. File intrusion scanners, intrusion detection software, perimeter and server specific firewalls, and servers protected at PCI DSS level 1.

So the two platforms are equally competent. 

5. Scalability

Shopify comes with over 4000 apps, making it the biggest app store in the market. This lets you add new features to your storefront to offer a tailored shopping experience to your audience with a simple plug and play action. 

Furthermore, Shopify also offers upgrading to Shopify Plus that gives you access to more advanced features and let’s you also explore headless commerce. 

On the other hand, BigCommerce users benefit from over 900 apps in different categories such as Checkout, Payment and Security, Accounting etc. They too offer a plug and play functionality, but any kind of customization may require some level of coding. 

BigCommerce vs Shopify: Which one should you choose?

So now you have two great platforms which you can choose to build your online store, and are in a conundrum as to which one to choose? It all depends on the size of your team and how you would like to scale your online store.

If you are leading a small team and are just setting up an online store for the first time, we would highly recommend Shopify. If you would like to manage your little online store all by yourself, then BigCommerce will tie you down with technical terms and features that you will find hard to execute.

Instead, choose Shopify for its intuitive nature and for the fact that it offers more customizable features. Also, with Shopify, you get access to a community of online merchants willing to work with one another, an extensive list of Shopify design and development experts, and app partners that can help you succeed. 

How to migrate from BigCommerce to Shopify

The migration process from BigCommerce to Shopify will take the transfer of all the contents of the website and the transfer of the domain name. In addition to this, you will also need to make adjustments to your website and SEO settings to keep your Google Search Rankings intact.

With that information in our hands, let’s jump right into how we migrate.

Step 1: Sign Up for Shopify

Explore the features of Shopify, see what all the platform has to offer, and make sure that this is THE platform you want to build your eCommerce store on. 

Once you sign up, the platform will ask your goal about using the platform, your industry and your email id. Provide these details and boom, you are ready for the next stage.

Step 2: Export your product data from BigCommerce

Once you sign up for Shopify, you can then export product, customer and order data from BigCommerce. All your BigCommerce data is converted into the form of a CSV file, which you can use to import your data into Shopify.

Step 3: Import your data into Shopify

Once you have the CSV files exported from your BigCommerce data, you can use these into Shopify using a few simple steps. Note that while importing products, you need to add the exported files for both the default and the Bulk Edit templates for the data to be imported properly. 

If you don’t find your platform in the Store Importer, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Select a Different platform.

Step 4: Review and update your imported data

If the data import was successful, then your customer, order and product data are all available in your Shopify admin. If the import was unsuccessful, you can add the data later manually.

Once you’re all set up with your data, remember to then preview your storefront before going live. 

Parting words

Setting up an online store for your business is not a daunting task, and you need not be afraid of both these platforms when starting out for the first time. 

We hope the above blog gave you a small intro as to how these platforms work. 

But if you need help choosing an eCommerce platform or migrating from BigCommerce to Shopify, reach out to the Shopify experts at XgenTech today.