BigCommerce Reviews & Pricing

by BigCommerce Pty. Ltd. | Founded 2009, Austin, TX

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Overview Pricing Benefits Reviews Features

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What is BigCommerce?

Industry Specialties: Serves all industries

BigCommerce is a powerful SaaS platform for designing and managing multiple eCommerce websites. It centralizes product information and helps you distribute catalogs across marketplaces, social media and business websites. You can manage inventory, orders and shipping from any device and set up unique automation to increase productivity and avoid errors.

What sets it apart is its open and headless architecture, which allows for customization and integration. It offers a storefront editor with customizable themes but doesn’t restrict you from using other editors.

During testing, I could use the platform’s backend for product management, order fulfillment and customer data handling while having complete freedom to design and develop custom storefronts.

Another area in which BigCommerce excels is international commerce. Its support for multiple currencies and integration of global payment methods and shipping options make expanding into new markets a breeze.

The platform's handling of international taxes and duties is also impressive, saving considerable time and effort. Additionally, it charges zero transaction fees, helping control costs for businesses with large sales volumes.

Lastly, BigCommerce helps you remain nimble due to its flexibility. It offers open access to its APIs, SDKs and data without any proprietary blockers or frictions. This allows you to connect the platform to any software and build the perfect tech stack for your evolving needs.

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User Sentiment

Based on 1676 reviews:

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Product Screenshots and Videos

BigCommerce Pricing

Based on our most recent analysis, BigCommerce pricing starts at $30 (Monthly).

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Starting From: $29.95
Pricing Model: Monthly
Free Trial: Yes, Request for Free

Training Resources

BigCommerce is supported with the following types of training:

Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars

Support

The following support services are available for BigCommerce:

Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Help Desk
Knowledge Base
Tickets
Training
24/7 Live Support

BigCommerce Benefits and Insights

Why use BigCommerce?

Key differentiators & advantages of BigCommerce

Market Leader: BigCommerce is one of the top-rated eCommerce platforms, according to our research. Our analysts rated it 97 rating, right alongside industry stalwarts like Shopify (100) and Adobe Commerce (96).
Efficient Marketing Across Channels: According to our data, the platform scores full marks (100) for its marketing and SEO optimization tools. You get every key marketing feature required in eCommerce platforms out of the box, including a channel manager, A/B tester, branded domain, custom email addresses, sitemap generation, Google Ads account, SEO product tags and more.
Organized Data For Easy Reporting: The platform offers 100% of key reporting requirements out of the box, including centralized data warehousing, a BI module and analytics tools. It helps you visualize data and understand how to grow your business online. Additionally, you get a customer data platform to create customer segments and design personalized shopping experiences for better conversion.
Streamlined Shipping Management: BigCommerce is one of the best solutions for handling shipping, with a perfect rating of 100 based on our data. It offers real-time shipping rates from popular carriers, multiple shipping rules based on customer segment or geography and a shipping status tracker. Additionally, it doesn’t charge for shipping like Shopify. However, unlike Shopify, the platform has no transaction charges, further lowering the TCO.

Industry Expertise

Serves businesses of every type and scale looking to launch an online storefront.

BigCommerce Reviews

Average customer reviews & user sentiment summary for BigCommerce:

1676 reviews

86%

of users would recommend this product

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Based on an aggregate of BigCommerce reviews taken from the sources above, the following pros & cons have been curated by a SelectHub Market Analyst.

Pros

Customer Service and Support: Many reviews highlight excellent customer service, with helpful and responsive support teams that are available via phone and chat.
Functionality and Customization: BigCommerce offers a robust set of features, including SEO tools, custom URLs and 301 redirects. It also has strong B2B capabilities, multi-store functionality and a variety of apps for integration.
Stability and Reliability: Users praise the platform for its reliability and lack of downtime.
Scalability: The platform is scalable, making it suitable for businesses of different sizes, including those looking to grow.

Cons

Cost and Hidden Fees: BigCommerce has tiered pricing based on sales volume. Many users feel this pricing model can be restrictive and costly, especially for businesses with significant brick-and-mortar sales.
Limited App Selection: Reviews mention a relatively limited selection of apps compared to competitors like Shopify. Users may need to rely on external developers for custom integrations.
Limited Free Website Themes: Some reviews have complained about the lack of free storefront themes and templates. Users have to pay for good templates on top of the subscription fee.

Researcher's Summary:

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.

Key Features

Storefront

Page Builder: You can create and edit web pages without coding. Or you can jump into built-in HTML, CSS and JavaScript for advanced customization. Plus, you can ensure your pages look great on mobile devices and use Stencil CLI for in-depth development.
PunchOut: BigCommerce makes it easy to create a unique checkout experience for customers. You can either use their server-to-server checkout API or the PunchOut2GO solution.

Storefront Conversion

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Optimize product listings, meta descriptions and URLs to attract organic traffic. It also offers built-in tools to analyze website performance and identify areas for improvement.
Product Discovery: You can direct customers to find desired products quickly with the universal search bar. While using the platform, I could implement advanced search filters using Elasticsearch (a third-party app) and custom fields to refine search results based on specific criteria.
Product Recommendations: The platform tracks customer personas and increases sales and customer satisfaction by suggesting relevant products. It uses customers’ purchase history and browsing behavior to create personalized product recommendations.

Cross-Channel Commerce

Multi-Channel Sales: Expand your market reach by selling on multiple platforms. Sync inventory, orders and customer information across different channels. You can also connect the platform to social networks to showcase products and drive traffic to the online store.
Platform Integrations: Enhance website performance and user experience by integrating with Google Cloud, Google AMP and Akamai Image Manager. You can also streamline content management with Acquia Digital Experience.

B2B

Customer Segmentation: Create tailored shopping experiences for different customer segments. The platform offers personalized pricing, promotions and product catalogs to meet the specific needs of wholesale, corporate and enterprise customers.
Flexible Pricing: You can implement complex pricing structures to optimize profitability. Define product-level pricing, bulk discounts and tiered pricing based on customer volume or order value.
Purchase and Quote Management: Streamline B2B operations with efficient purchase order and quote management. Improve order accuracy and reduce processing time.

International Commerce

Global Expansion: Reach customers worldwide by accepting multiple currencies, offering auto-translated product descriptions and providing optimized shipping options. Expand your market presence and increase sales revenue.
Tax and Shipping Compliance: Simplify international operations by automating sales tax calculations and managing cross-border shipping. You can ensure compliance with local regulations and provide accurate shipping estimates to customers.
Performance Optimization: Deliver fast and reliable shopping experiences to global customers. Use a content delivery network (CDN) to reduce website load times and improve user satisfaction.

Core Commerce

Product Management: Centralize your product information for easy distribution across multiple sales channels. Organize products, variants and inventory levels efficiently. You can also access the catalog API to design custom connections with an external channel.
Shipping and Returns: The system offers competitive shipping rates and options to enhance customer satisfaction. Streamline the returns process to improve customer loyalty.
Data Analytics: Gain insights into your business performance and make data-driven decisions to optimize marketing campaigns, inventory management and customer experience.

Open Platform

Customization: Tailor BigCommerce to your specific business requirements. Integrate with third-party apps, customize checkout flows and create unique shopping experiences.
Security: Protect your business and customer data with SSL-certified web pages, PCI-DSS-compliant checkouts and encrypted data transfers. The platform also helps you comply with industry standards and safeguard sensitive information with multi-factor staff authentication.
User Management: Manage user access and permissions effectively. Integrate with identity providers to streamline user authentication and authorization.

Approach to Common Challenges

Overcoming Design Hurdles: Building a professional online storefront doesn't have to involve coding. Use a drag-and-drop editor to design professional websites easily, or build a website on WordPress and install the plugin for eCommerce functionalities.
Mitigating Security Risks: Protecting customer and business data is crucial. Create a safe path to purchase for customers and store data to maintain compliance and year-end audits. The platform is ISO/IEC 27001:2013 & PCI DSS 3.2 compliant and level 1 certified. Online stores have multiple layers of firewalls, integrity scanners and intrusion detectors.
Boosting Marketing Effectiveness: Reaching your target audience and driving sales requires a strategic approach. Distribute products on multiple social networks and marketplaces and manage every listing from the centralized dashboard. Upsell products by creating native discounts and promos. Design SEO-friendly URLs and maximize visibility by customizing metadata and robot.txt.
Delivering Personalized Experiences: Personalization is key for modern shoppers. Create a central repository of customer data, make groupings and profiles, and offer AI-powered personalized suggestions, bundles and discounts. Integrate with Google Analytics for cart tracking.
Expanding Your Global Reach: Breaking into new markets doesn’t have to be challenging. Sell to global customers and businesses, accept multiple currencies, and translate the website frontend into any language through third-party translation services.
Streamlining Fulfillment Operations: Efficient order fulfillment is crucial for customer satisfaction. Centralize product, order and shipping management to get a clear overview of the entire fulfillment process. Automating tasks like pricing, quoting, tax calculation, order routing and invoice generation can reduce errors and accelerate order processing.

Cost of Ownership

Frequently asked questions regarding BigCommerce pricing include:

Q. Can I use the BigCommerce mobile app for free?

A. Yes, the BigCommerce mobile app is available for free download on both iOS and Android devices. It allows you to manage your store, fulfill orders, and stay updated on sales and customer inquiries on the go. However, you'll need an active BigCommerce plan to access all its features.

Q. What are BigCommerce’s pricing options?

A. BigCommerce offers the following subscription plans:

Standard: Charges $29 per month when billed annually. It offers unlimited staff accounts, sales channel integration, a storefront editor, multi-currency, a built-in blog and a mobile app. You can make up to $50k in sales and pay extra for additional revenue.
Plus: Charges $79 per month when billed annually. It supports up to five storefronts, enables customer segmentation, tracks abandoned carts and stores customer credit card information. The annual sales cap is up to $180k.
Pro: Charges $299 per month when billed annually and caps out at up to $400k in annual sales revenue. You get dynamic pricing, unlimited API calls and inventory management across eight locations.

Q. Are there any additional costs to BigCommerce?

A. There might be additional costs depending on your specific business needs. These could include:

Payment processing fees: These are charged by your chosen payment gateway, not by BigCommerce.
Domain name registration: You may need to purchase a domain name for your store.
Third-party app costs: Some apps and integrations may have additional fees.
Shipping and fulfillment costs: These depend on your chosen shipping carriers and fulfillment methods.
Marketing and advertising expenses: Costs for paid advertising, email marketing tools or other marketing initiatives.

It's important to consider these potential costs when budgeting for your online store.

Limitations

At the time of this review, these are the limitations according to user feedback:

Limited free website templates.

Demo Resources

Help Center: BigCommerce offers interactive demos to showcase the platform's features and capabilities. These demos are a great starting point for visualizing how the system can fit your business needs. It covers a wide range of topics, from setting up your store to advanced customization.
Partner Services: BigCommerce has a network of partners offering specialized services such as web design, development, marketing and fulfillment. These partners can assist businesses in optimizing their online stores and achieving their goals.
Podcasts and webinars: To stay updated on industry trends and best practices, BigCommerce provides a variety of podcasts and webinars featuring eCommerce experts. These resources offer valuable insights and actionable advice for online retailers.

FAQs

Frequently asked questions regarding BigCommerce include:

Q. Can I migrate my existing store to BigCommerce?

A. Yes, BigCommerce provides migration services to help you smoothly transition from your current platform. Their expert team assists with transferring products, customer data and order history, ensuring minimal disruption to your business.

downloads. Whether you're selling handmade crafts, high-end fashion or software subscriptions, it offers the tools and scalability to grow your business.

Q. Is BigCommerce right for my business?

A. BigCommerce is a versatile platform suitable for various types of businesses. Its flexible structure accommodates a range of products, from physical goods to digital downloads. Whether you're selling handmade crafts, high-end fashion or software subscriptions, it offers the tools and scalability to grow your business.

Q. How long does it take to set up a BigCommerce store?

A. While the time to launch a store varies based on complexity, many businesses can go live within a few days. You can start with a basic store and gradually add features as your business grows.