Shopify vs BigCommerce: Why Choose Shopify?

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In the pursuit of finding the right ecommerce platform, you will have undoubtedly come across Shopify and BigCommerce, wondering which solution is best for your business and brand. While both Shopify and BigCommerce offer a robust set of tools to empower online businesses, their strengths cater to different needs, making one a better choice over the other.

Shopify and BigCommerce are some of today’s most powerful and popular ecommerce platforms available on the market. The choice often comes between the two, as both make it easy to create, market, and grow an online business. These two rivaling ecommerce platforms power a host of online retailers, with Shopify powering 4.8 million online stores worldwide, and BigCommerce well behind at under 50 thousand stores.

These two ecommerce platforms are known to be beginner-friendly, and offer a plethora of easy-to-use features and an overall design built for ecommerce—but each platform has its strengths and weaknesses, and the choice will ultimately depend on your goals.

In this article by Ecommerce Pro-Shopify Migration Experts, we are giving you the key insights on how Shopify performs against BigCommerce, going head-to-head in our comparison so that you can make the right choice between Shopify and BigCommerce.

Ready to migrate from BigCommerce to Shopify? Get the seamless support your brand needs to make a smooth transition—Get in touch with Ecommerce Pro-Shopify Migration Agency today.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is an all-in-one hosted ecommerce solution that enables you to create an online store from the ground up. First founded in 2006, Shopify has grown to power millions of businesses of all types and of all sizes worldwide. The platform is known for having a user-friendly interface that can be managed with low technical knowledge, a fact that has made the platform surge ahead of the competition.

Shopify stores are also widely customizable with templates and apps so merchants can enhance store functionality, creating the online store they have always imagined for their brand. The platform runs on a subscription-based model, where businesses can choose the right plan for all stages of their online business. Shopify is known for its scalability, making it suitable for small businesses and large enterprises alike.

What is BigCommerce?

BigCommerce was founded in 2009 and is another player in the ecommerce platform market. The ecommerce platform is also fully hosted, providing merchants with a powerful and easy-to-use platform to set up shop on the web and start selling their wares online.

BigCommerce provides a comprehensive set of tools, offering more built-in features and functionality, as opposed to apps, to help businesses create and manage online stores. Like Shopify, BigCommerce offers a variety of templates and integrations, aiming to cater to businesses of all sizes. BigCommerce prides itself on its flexibility and arsenal of built-in features, particularly its robust SEO and multi-channel selling capabilities.

Shopify Vs BigCommerce: Going Head-to-Head

1. User-Friendliness

Shopify is renowned for its intuitive and user-friendly interface. According to a survey by G2, 89% of users rated Shopify’s interface as easy to use compared to 84% of BigCommerce responders.

The Shopify platform manages to successfully simplify the process of setting up and managing an online store, making it accessible even to those with minimal technical knowledge. The drag-and-drop functionality and clear, step-by-step guides help users get their stores up and running quickly.

As BigCommerce is more feature-rich, it can require a steeper learning curve for merchants and their teams. Meanwhile, Shopify offers thousands of apps available in the Shopify app store, that merchant can select and integrate to get their desired function, all without technical knowledge.

At first glance, Shopify is certainly easier to use than BigCommerce. BigCommerce comes with powerful features, but it takes some time to understand how best to utilize them. Shopify, on the other hand, provides a very guided step-by-step approach to building and launching your store, leading you through the entire process, and lending to a more user-friendly experience overall.

2. App Ecosystem and Integrations

Shopify's App Store offers over 8,000 apps, whereas BigCommerce Apps has around 1800 apps available. The extensive app ecosystem is one of Shopify’s biggest strengths over other platforms, allowing you to extend the functionality and design of your online store. With thousands of apps and integrations available, businesses can easily add new features and functions, whether it's for marketing, inventory management, or customer service. Shopify’s App Store provides a solution for almost every need, allowing for significant customization and scalability for your brand.

However, because BigCommerce is a feature-rich platform, you probably won’t need as many third-party apps, because the ecommerce solution already provides many built-in integrations you can use without the extra cost of an additional app.

3. Conversion Rates

Shopify's checkout has a 12% higher conversion rate compared to BigCommerce's, on average. In fact, this has been one of the driving factors for migration from BigCommerce to Shopify— merchants see their brands make more on the Shopify Platform.

This is partially due to the fact that Shopify happens to have the best-converting checkout platform in the online shopping world. According to a study, Shopify checkout converts up to 36% better than other ecommerce platforms, having fine-tuned the checkout experience to be as streamlined and intuitive as possible.

We all know that the checkout is a crucial process that turns visitors into paying customers and Shopify has finessed its checkout process to curb abandoned cart numbers like never before. Because of this, many online brands are migrating to Shopify to improve their conversion rates.

4. Marketing and SEO Tools

Both Shopify and BigCommerce offer a range of marketing and SEO tools to help you drive traffic and improve your online store's visibility. However, their approaches are slightly different. While Shopify does have plenty of built-in SEO functions that you can tweak, Shopify can rely on app integrations for marketing and SEO functions, for instance, if you wish to add email marketing or product reviews. This gives you high customization but can also add ongoing costs for essential apps—although this is not always necessarily the case as many apps are free.

BigCommerce, on the other hand, offers a more built-in approach to marketing and SEO tools, with ready features like email marketing tools, product reviews, and social media integration directly within the platform. While this might limit some customization options, it can be more cost-effective initially.

In terms of SEO specifically, Shopify allows you to edit meta titles, image alt-text, meta-descriptions, and URLs for blog posts and product pages. All of this can be done easily without the help of a developer.

5. Payment Gateway Options

Shopify supports over 100 payment gateways, while BigCommerce supports around 65.

Having multiple payment gateway options is crucial for online businesses that are operating in different regions and markets around the world. If you wish to reach a global audience, a platform that supports multiple payment gateways becomes indispensable. Shopify’s extensive range allows you to extend your reach to a worldwide audience, providing all the flexibility and convenience for customers. Their extensive variety of payment options helps businesses meet customer preferences, whether they prefer to pay using credit cards, digital wallets, or, even local payment methods.

The wide availability of payment gateways helps merchants curb their cart abandonment rates, a rampant issue where potential customers leave a site without completing a purchase, which can sometimes be due to a lack of a preferred payment method. With Shopify, businesses can seamlessly add all common payment methods and more local or emerging methods.

While BigCommerce offers a respectable range of payment gateways, its options are limited compared to Shopify’s superior range.

6. Market Share and Brand Trust

Shopify holds a significant market share in the U.S., with 29% of ecommerce websites using its platform. Trusted by millions of merchants, Shopify is the most popular ecommerce platform, powering over 4.8 million online stores worldwide, while BigCommerce supports under 50,000 stores.

Shopify's dominant market share is a clear testament to its reliability and popularity among online businesses, from startups to major enterprises. This extensive adoption goes to show that Shopify enjoys a high level of trust and satisfaction among merchants, which is a critical factor when choosing an ecommerce platform.

In contrast, BigCommerce, while also a reputable platform that has been making its own waves, has a significantly smaller market share, having grown at a much smaller pace than Shopify over the years. This difference in user base size is worth taking into consideration because the user base can impact the level of community support and the availability of external resources and experts. Although BigCommerce users benefit from a strong platform, the small user community limits the shared resources and third-party expertise available. Compared to Shopify, the platform has a robust community and a diverse array of support and resources, with many Shopify Experts to outsource.

Conclusion

Whether you want to start a new business with no prior experience or further grow a multi-million dollar enterprise, Shopify has the right tools for you to achieve your vision.

While both Shopify and BigCommerce offer powerful tools for building and managing online stores, Shopify’s ease of use, extensive app ecosystem, superior conversion rates, robust SEO marketing tools, diverse payment gateways, and dominating market share make it the preferred choice for many businesses.

Shopify Migration Partners: Ecommerce Pro

Struggling with your current ecommerce platform? Migrate to Shopify with the help of Ecommerce Pro—Shopify Migration Agency.

We specialize in ecommerce migration to Shopify and Shopify Plus, having helped hundreds of clients worldwide migrate their businesses to the Shopify platforms. Our full team of Shopify Experts will ensure your online business receives the intuitive solutions necessary to get settled into your new ecommerce platform of choice.

With our team of certified Shopify migration experts overseeing and guiding your website’s migration, we guarantee a smooth and efficient migration from your old ecommerce platform to Shopify. With Ecommerce Pro managing the transition, you’ll be up and running in record time.  

Ready to migrate to Shopify or Shopify Plus?

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At Ecommerce Pro - Shopify Migration Agency, we help entrepreneurs and business owners build better and more successful Shopify businesses. Have a question or a project in mind? Get in touch with us today!