BigCommerce is one of many online shopping cart solutions, and it’s definitely one of the most popular. But is it the right platform for your business? This is an important decision to make, and before you choose to go with a particular eCommerce platform, you should be aware of its positives and negatives.
BigCommerce has a lot going for it, and could be an excellent choice for you as long as you understand some of its caveats. Read on to find out more.
Ease of Use
BigCommerce customers generally find the platform very easy to use and intuitive. The dashboard is easy to follow, and it’s pretty easy to find what you’re looking for. There’s also a short tutorial to help you pick up the basics.
Adding products, creating and editing orders, creating discount codes and more are all straightforward. It’s easy to see why many online merchants find BigCommerce easy to work with.
Template Choice
Not everyone can afford custom design, so it’s always important to check out the templates (or themes) a given eCommerce platform has to offer. We’re happy to say we’re pleased with BigCommerce’s template selection. They’re attractive and mobile-responsive, and the new “Stencil” themes are easy to customize with the built-in editor.
Features
BigCommerce has a great feature set built into the platform, which is always an advantage over third-party apps. You’ll have access to SEO tools, analytics, bulk product import and export via CSV, customer segmentation, social sharing, built-in blogging, and more. In fact, BigCommerce has a lot of features that its biggest competitor Shopify doesn’t have. Definitely a strong point.
However, it’s commonly said that BigCommerce is slow to add new features that its users request, so just be aware of this if something you think you’ll need is not currently available — you might wait a while to get it.
Support
BigCommerce has a good reputation for customer support. They provide free 24/7 support through live chat, email, and on the phone, available for all plans. You can also refer to their Resource Center and Knowledge Base if you just want to find an answer on your own.
There are also several BigCommerce Guides available, including a guide to using their features and a guide for designing and editing your store template.
Integrations and Payment Processing
Integrations are different from built-in features, as they provide a method to connect your BigCommerce store to third-party services like QuickBooks. BigCommerce offers a good selection of apps and addons to get your store connected to some of the best eCommerce tools available, like MailChimp, ShipStation, Avalara, Trustpilot and more.
For payment processing, BigCommerce has integrations with approximately 60 payment gateways, including the most in-demand ones. Your store can connect with PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, Square, and more. Higher-tier BigCommerce plans also enjoy a reduced PayPal transaction fee, which many other eCommerce platforms cannot offer.
Pricing
Most of the complaints you’ll see online about BigCommerce revolve around their pricing structure. Their plans and fees used to be a lot more straightforward, but they made some changes near the beginning of 2016 that resulted in many of their merchants being boosted up to higher plans with higher charges per month. What this means is that if your store performs better than expected, you’ll soon find yourself paying more than expected — which in turn means BigCommerce is not the best platform in terms of scalability.
The lower-tier plans, Standard ($29.95/mo.) and Plus ($79.95/mo.) seem to currently retain the earlier straightforward pricing. But the next plan up, Pro ($249.95/mo.) bears the risk we mentioned of being boosted to the higher plan if your sales reach above $400k. If you surpass this limit, you’ll need to pay extra per month. The pricing on their Enterprise Plan is also somewhat unpredictable, as it requires a custom quote and may also rise if your business outperforms expectations.
Overall
We consider BigCommerce a good shopping cart platform. It has tons of features, great templates, and pretty much everything you need to run an online store. It’s only the pricing that you need to be wary of. It’s worth noting that while the practice of boosting low-tier merchants to higher-tier plans based on their sales seems to have slowed down, it could still happen — basically, if BigCommerce thinks you’re making enough money that you can pay for a higher-tier plan, they can move you up to it and charge an increased fee. Unfortunately this breach of trust has marred an otherwise stellar eCommerce platform.
Still, if you’re pretty sure you’re going to stay within the sales limits, and feel completely prepared for a surprise monthly plan hike, BigCommerce is in every other way an excellent choice for your online store.