BigCommerce vs. Shopify: Differences, pros and cons in 2023

When it comes to building an e-commerce website, users in 2023 have plenty of options — and two of the biggest are BigCommerce and Shopify.

We’ve scoured both professional and user reviews and closely examined each product to determine which is better in certain categories. In sum, both platforms shine in different areas. 

In this BigCommerce vs. Shopify review, we’ll look at what sets these two e-commerce platforms apart, what they have in common, how they’re different and what type of user can benefit from each. 

BigCommerce vs. Shopify: Quick overview

Like any side-by-side comparison, BigCommerce and Shopify have their share of similarities and differences. From pricing plans to SEO tools to web editor functionality, both perform better in different areas. 

In this table, we offer an overview of the features each provider does or does not have, then we discuss them more in depth in the following sections.

Pricing and value

Verdict: Shopify

While Shopify and BigCommerce have identical pricing on three plans, Shopify offers two other useful options. They have an $89 per month per user retail plan designed for stores that want to sell online and build an online presence. It also offers Shopifyplus starting at $2,000 per month per user, a plan that is designed for high-volume businesses. 

BigCommerce pricing and value

BigCommerce offers three plans increasingly more expensive:

• Standard: Allows you to manage your online store and sales with pricing at $39 per month or $29 per month when billed annually. 
• Plus: Designed to grow online businesses with marketing tools to increase conversion with pricing at $105 per month or $79 per month when billed annually. 
• Pro: Built to scale growing businesses with a comprehensive set of features. Pricing is $399 per month or $299 per month when billed annually. 

BigCommerce says you can try its product for free for 15 days to determine which plan you want to choose. Of note, once you cross certain revenue thresholds, the company will automatically upgrade your plan. 

Shopify pricing and value

Shopify offers three main plans with identical pricing as BigCommerce: 

• Basic: Designed for individuals and small businesses and costs $39 per month or $29 per month if paid annually. 
• Shopify: Offers more features for small businesses and costs $105 per month or $79 per month if paid annually. 
• Advanced: Designed for medium to large businesses with pricing of $399 per month or $299 per month when paid annually. 

The company also offers a $2,000 per month plan for companies with very large sales volumes as well as a retail plan for $89 per month that offers tools to sell in person paired with simple features for building an online presence.

Web editor

Verdict: Shopify 

Both Shopify and BigCommerce offer web editors with many valuable features. That said, Shopify’s web editor is more user-friendly and easier to learn, especially for beginners. 

BigCommerce web editor

With BigCommerce, you can set up multiple storefronts — up to three with its Standard plan all the way to eight with the Pro plan. All plans also offer unlimited staff accounts. BigCommerce sets itself apart through its ability to scale as the company grows. 

Because BigCommerce’s features are more scalable, professional reviewers say it’s not easy to pick up quickly, making it not ideal for beginners. Their product is also ideal for larger or quickly growing businesses, which might make it more complex for smaller and solo businesses. BigCommerce also offers 10 free themes and more than 200 paid themes. 

Shopify web editor

Shopify’s web editor is praised for its ease of use by professional reviewers. It has a clean user interface that’s easy to manage, even for beginners. The editor makes it easy to add and edit products, and it allows you to add an unlimited amount of products no matter which plan you choose. 

Shopify also offers a drag-and-drop interface, which means you to build a website without needing to know code. They also offer tutorials to help you build your site. However, the company does offer 12 free and more than 150 paid themes in its themes store. 

E-commerce functionality

Verdict: BigCommerce

While Shopify offers a large amount of third-party apps to improve their overall product, BigCommerce includes a lot of built-in features. 

BigCommerce e-commerce functionality

BigCommerce offers standard features that include a variety of shipping tools. For example, you can set your shipping location and print your own labels. It also offers a free SSL certificate for security and allows you to sell across Facebook and Instagram. It further offers an integration with WalMart.com.

The company set itself apart when it comes to the amount of built-in features. A few of these tools allow customers to review the product directly on-site, offer real-time shipping quotes on-site and take advantage of unlimited staff accounts. 

Shopify e-commerce functionality

Shopify offers some of the same standard features as BigCommerce listed above. 

The biggest difference is adding features requires a little more effort with Shopify because they use third-party apps, with more than 8,000 available through their app store. This will require more legwork on the user’s behalf, but it also offers more personalized customization.

That said, the costs of these apps aren’t included in your plan’s pricing. Some of these apps are free, but many of them are not. After a free install, you’ll choose a pricing plan within the app — which, depending on the app, can cost anywhere from a few dollars per month to several hundred. 

Blogging

Verdict: “Tie”

Both BigCommerce and Shopify offer blogging platforms, and both are very basic. In truth, these products are for sales, not blogging. Though it’s nice to have that option, you can expect a very basic, limited experience from what you would get with WordPress. 

BigCommerce blogging

BigCommerce offers a built-in blog across all of its pricing plans. This added feature is meant to be a marketing tool to help promote content to your potential customers. 

The BigCommerce blog does integrate with other platforms like WordPress. The built-in blog doesn’t have an RSS feed, which allows other websites to easily pick up your content on their site (i.e., for newsletters). The blog also won’t allow you to group posts by category — which isn’t helpful for SEO.

Shopify blogging

Like BigCommerce, Shopify’s blogging platform is quite simple. Users complain about the “clunkiness” of the interface and the difficulty of posting from Shopify’s mobile app. 

The good news is Shopify has plenty of WordPress plug-ins available. You can also use a WordPress blog in your Shopify account, but it has to be built on a separate subdomain. This isn’t great for SEO either because Google treats subdomains as separate entities from their main sites. 

Marketing and SEO

Verdict: BigCommerce

Both BigCommerce and Shopify offer a wide range of SEO and marketing tools, but BigCommerce’s out-of-the-box features give it the edge. 

BigCommerce marketing and SEO

BigCommerce shines when it comes to SEO and marketing features. The platform allows you to completely customize your website URLs, keeping them short to match SEO best practices.

 It also offers built-in metadata and the ability to customize your robots.txt file, making it easier for search engines to know which pages to index and which to avoid. BigCommerce also gives you access to all of its thorough reporting features for your store, no matter which plan you use. 

Shopify marketing and SEO

When it comes to Shopify’s SEO and marketing features, this platform’s strength is its ability to integrate with more than 600 SEO-focused apps. While most of these apps may offer a free plan, full functionality will require going with a paid plan, which is separate from your Shopify plan. 

Like BigCommerce, Shopify integrates well with Google Analytics. However, unlike BigCommerce, you’ll have to upgrade to its advanced plan for the most thorough reporting data. 

Performance and security

Verdict: “Tie”

BigCommerce and Shopify offer excellent security features that make your online store safe. Both platforms offer fast performance and page load times compared to other competitors on the market. 

BigCommerce performance and security

BigCommerce has some impressive security features. It offers free SSL certificates across all of its plans. They are also Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant. This means they’ve met the requirements to protect against data breaches. The company offers its own fully managed cloud-based hosting solution. 

Shopify performance and security

Similar to BigCommerce, Shopify also offers free SSL certificates with all of its plans and is PCI DDS compliant. It also provides its own in-house hosting solution, meaning you won’t need to find a shared option. 

Shopify hosts sites on what they say are “fast global servers.” It also offers an online speed report for your store and provides resources to help you understand how to make your load times faster. 

Mobile app

Verdict: Shopify 

Both of these e-commerce platforms offer mobile apps with mostly positive user reviews. However, Shopify’s app sets itself apart through its functionality that mirrors the desktop experience in many ways — including the ability to create your store on the go. 

BigCommerce mobile app

BigCommerce offers a free mobile app that allows you to check performance metrics, view and update orders, manage products and search for customers. 

Though the app receives mostly positive ratings on the Apple App Store, with a 4.5 out of 5, some users complain that the app is buggy, lacks features and has a difficult interface to use. The app receives a 3.6 rating out of 5 on the Google Play store, with some users calling it basic and buggy as well. 

Shopify mobile app

Shopify has a robust, free mobile app that allows you to create your store, promote your business and manage your store, all from your mobile device. The app features a single dashboard that gives you the ability to manage orders, shipping, inventory and payments.

The Shopify app receives 4.5 out of 5 in the Apple App Store and a 4.1 out of 5 rating in the Google Play Store. Most users are complimentary of the app, but some do complain about bugs, as well as difficulty using the app after updates. 

Final verdict

Winner: Shopify

Both of these platforms offer their fair share of helpful features and benefits to business owners. When it comes to security and blogging features, the platforms are very similar. 

That said, Shopify edges out BigCommerce in our view because of its more diverse pricing plans, easy-to-use web editor and robust mobile app. BigCommerce is still a quality platform and may be ideal for users who are more concerned about built-in e-commerce functionality and SEO tools. 

Who is BigCommerce best for?

BigCommerce offers more benefits for larger and faster-growing businesses because of its ability to scale. The platform also has more built-in features when it comes to SEO and e-commerce functionality, allowing users to quickly take advantage of BigCommerce right out of the box instead of searching for apps. It’s also ideal for online-only companies that want to expand through multiple storefronts. 

Who is Shopify best for?

Shopify is ideal for both new and small businesses that want an easy-to-use, highly customizable, app-friendly platform. Shopify’s web editor shines, making it ideal for inexperienced users and even beginners. Its plans are diverse and offer tailored solutions, such as a Starter plan and a Retail plan. And, unlike BigCommerce, Shopify doesn’t automatically upgrade your account when your sales volume reaches certain levels.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

Which is better, BigCommerce or Shopify?

In our thorough research and evaluation of both user and professional reviews, Shopify slightly beats out BigCommerce because of its wider variety of pricing options, easy-to-use web editor and robust mobile app. It’s ideal for individuals and smaller businesses. 

However, BigCommerce is a good platform as well, ideal for users with large and fast-growing businesses and those who are looking for SEO functionality. BigCommerce has similar pricing plans to Shopify. However, it automatically upgrades your plan once you reach certain annual revenues — an issue that Shopify users won’t have to face.

What are the drawbacks of BigCommerce?

One of the biggest drawbacks with BigCommerce is that the company automatically upgrades pricing plans once your store reaches a certain revenue threshold. 

For example, once users on BigCommerce’s Standard plan reach $50,000 in trailing 12-month sales volume, they’re automatically upgraded to the Plus plan — which allows for $180,000 in annual sales. That’s an instant price increase of $39 per month to $105 per month. 

BigCommerce also has fewer pricing options than Shopify, its web editor is a little more difficult to use and the mobile app doesn’t offer as many features.

What are the drawbacks of Shopify?

Compared to BigCommerce, Shopify has fewer SEO and e-commerce features. The company does allow you to fill in those gaps with more than 8,000 third-party apps available through its app store. The platform isn’t as ideal for larger and fast-growing businesses that need a platform that scales easily. 

What should I look for in an e-commerce platform?

With any e-commerce platform, you should look for the most applicable features and functions that fit your needs and align with your budget requirements. To evaluate whether an e-commerce platform meets your needs, answer the following questions:

• How easy is the platform to learn and use?
• What functionality does it offer when it comes to SEO, blogging and its web editor?
• Do the more expensive pricing plans offer the value to justify the price increase?
• Does it have built-in capabilities, or are third-party apps required?
• Does it integrate well with other platforms?
• What type of security features does it have?
• What does its mobile app offer?

Make sure you understand each platform’s features and which are best for you before settling on a pricing plan.