Shopify vs BigCommerce: Which is Best in 2022?

How much do their monthly packages cost?

One of the main things to consider when deciding on an ecommerce platform is the price. You’ll want to get the package with the most effective cost to feature balance, and that means considering exactly what you want your website to offer. Both Shopify and BigCommerce offer tiered price packages, to help you customise your plan as much as possible. 

Shopify

BigCommerce

While BigCommerce’s prices are higher, this platform offers more packages than Shopify, allowing you to personalise your plan as much as possible. Both companies’ plans are feature-based, but they approach from different angles; Shopify offers your shop additional site functionality with its packages, while BigCommerce offers maintenance, support and marketing features to optimise your sales. 

BigCommerce offers a wide range of SEO functions, ranging from marketing and aesthetic advice to automated improvement. Its packages are centred around website advice and SEO improvement to boost sale rates: this includes features such as product urgency features, which encourage customers to buy products by making countdowns and interest levels visible. 

Shopify offers site functionality features such as abandoned cart recovery and setting up international domains (though neither at the time of writing allows for easy set up of multiple international stores from a single domain using subfolders – e.g. mystore.com/fr or mystore.com/de). 

What support will I get from BigCommerce or Shopify? 

What can you expect from BigCommerce or Shopify packages? How much will these companies help you with setup and maintenance, and can they be reached quickly if necessary? The purpose of an ecommerce site is to host and maintain your website, so you’ll want to make sure you can rely on them in the day-to-day running of your business.

Shopify

Shopify’s packages don’t offer direct account support, but Shopify does offer customer support and additional help to get started. 

• Shopify experts: Shopify offers hireable experts to help you migrate your shop to their platform, or set up shop altogether. 

• Customer support: Shopify accounts have access to a 24/7 support team in case of shop issues or queries. They offer communication via live chat, email or phone. 

• Discussion forums: Shopify’s discussion forums allow you to ask and answer questions within its customer base, which can help you to find solutions and guides provided by other customers with experience using Shopify.

• Learning resources: Shopify has an archive of learning resources online to help you boost your shop’s SEO, and to give you a better understanding of business marketing and other useful tips. 

BigCommerce

BigCommerce addresses customer support by promising active marketing assistance. They offer individual support depending on your package. 

• 30 minute meeting: as part of their ‘Basic’ package, BigCommerce offers a thirty minute introductory meeting. This will help you set up shop, and will also provide tips to improve your shop’s marketing value. 

• 6 month account manager: An account manager will help you set up, list items and maintain your site for six months. They will also offer you marketing and website advice to optimise sales. 

• Full time account manager: BigCommerce offers a direct line to your account manager, allowing you to make inquiries about the maintenance of your shop. The account manager will also help with your plan features and setup. 

• Full time ‘pro’ account manager: The ‘pro’ account manager will manage your account, taking care of content and design requests and managing listings and marketing on request. You will also have a direct line of communication, in case of any queries.

• Helpline: BigCommerce features a priority system for plans, fast tracking helpline calls depending on your package. 

What features do BigCommerce & Shopify offer to encourage my sales?

Your website’s purpose is to ensure sales for your business. What features can you expect BigCommerce and Shopify to offer to make sure that your site is optimised in as many ways as possible? 

Shopify

Shopify is a feature-based service. Its features are designed to help increase your sales and the quality of your store in order to present a good user experience to your customers. 

• Abandoned cart recovery: Shopify offers the option for abandoned cart recovery, an email sent out to potential customers with items in their cart. These emails are designed to remind customers of your business, and encourage them to complete their purchases. 

• Reports: in its ‘Shopify’ and ‘Advanced’ plans, Shopify offers reports so you can view shop statistics such as traffic, recent visitor activity, your shop speed and transaction history. This gives you an overview of your shop’s efficiency, allowing you to make changes in the right places in order to appeal to your customers. 

• International support: depending on your package, Shopify allows you to adjust pricing per location, and to host international domains to increase interest and the SEO ratings of your shop. You can also sell in up to 20 different languages, reaching a wide customer base.

• Subscription payments: Shopify offers the option to set up repeat purchases for your customers, encouraging a regular customer base and improving the consistency of your sales. This is not provided by Shopify itself, instead requiring third party apps to function. 

• Third party shipping rates: on the ‘Advanced’ Shopify plan, your shop can show shipping fee rates calculated from third-party services. This allows your site to display third party shipping rates to your customers, alongside a calculation for expected shipping time. 

BigCommerce

BigCommerce’s model is built around marketing your business to customers and building confidence in your brand. Despite focusing on this, BigCommerce also offers features to make your store functional and reliable. 

• Subscription payments: BigCommerce also offers repeat subscriptions to allow customers to automate their payments, but like Shopify this service is external and relies on third-party services to function. 

• International support: In order to sell in other languages, BigCommerce requires Weglot translate, a third party service. 

• API access: BigCommerce supports API access, allowing you to access and transfer data from your ecommerce shop to the internal systems of your business. 

• Product urgency features: These features allow you to display timers and demand statistics on your site, encouraging sales by prompting your customers to complete their purchases quickly. 

• ‘Evolution mode’: BigCommerce will evaluate and make suggestions or adjustments to your shop depending on your package: this includes aesthetic and functional changes that could improve your website’s rating. 

• SiteLock™ security: BigCommerce’s ‘pro’ package offers SiteLock™ security to keep your transactions and information secure. 

Which is more popular, Shopify or BigCommerce?

Shopify and BigCommerce are both well known platforms when it comes to hosting your business, but just how popular are they? We examined data from Google Trends and Keyword Finder to find out the global popularity of each site. 

• Shopify has more online interest than BigCommerce, although they reached similar levels at the end of 2021. 

• While Shopify’s popularity is consistent, BigCommerce experiences larger fluctuations in interest.

• Interest for both platforms peaked in June, July and August of both 2020 and 2021, and sank again in December. 

• BigCommerce had 145,000 average monthly searches over 2021, compared to Shopify’s 3.25 million. 

Shopify and BigCommerce have been competitors ever since BigCommerce was launched in 2009. Both companies have wide user bases and are relatively well-known in the ecommerce industry; despite this, the two have only recently matched in trend popularity at the end of 2021.

BigCommerce and Shopify are two popular options to host your ecommerce site, and they both have pros and cons of their services. The fundamental difference is their focus; BigCommerce aims to market your company with SEO techniques, while Shopify is feature-based to ensure the best service for your customers. 

We hope this comparison has helped you to make one of the biggest decisions your business will make. If Shopify or BigCommerce don’t appeal to you, there are plenty more options available online.