BigCommerce vs Shopify – A Comparison for eCommerce Enthusiasts
                     BigCommerce vs Shopify – A Comparison for eCommerce 
Enthusiasts
Introduction
BigCommerce vs Shopify – This game of ‘verses’ has always been the talk of eCommerce 
world!
Shopify or BigCommerce? Choosing between the two is quite a dilemma! The question 
pops up whenever an eCommerce store is on the verge of emergence! Both the SaaS 
hosting solution providers are different yet similar in their own ways. Via this post, we’ve 
tried to compare the two in an as objective way as possible. The decision does not rely on 
just the themes or the pricing; there’s much more to it. We’ve covered aspects that are 
important for eCommerce businesses before landing their choice on one. 
Let’s get started....
Choosing between the two is quite a 
dilemma! There are choices that we are 
regularly required to make; however,  
there are few of them that determine 
the course of our lives. If you sell  
through the internet, the ecommerce 
platform that you utilize is one  such 
choice.
Pricing is an aspect that nobody gives all the 
attention to, but do not neglect either! 
Pricing Especially when we talk about SMBs, it holds 
importance to compare the month/annual plan 
prices. When we talk about BigCommerce vs 
Shopify price comparison, they aren’t at afar 
difference to one another, BUT the features are! 
Shopify has 5 pricing plans:  Lite ($9 / month), Basic  Shopify ($29 / month),  Shopify 
($79 / month),  Advanced Shopify ($249/  month), and Enterprise  level plan.
BigCommerce has 4 pricing  plans: Standard ($29.00 /  month), Plus ($79.00 /  
month), Pro ($299.00 /  month) and Enterprise  level plan.
BigCommerce and Shopify both provide Cart 
Abandonment Recovery options, but there are a 
Cart Abandonment Recovery few catches that you need to go through before 
choosing a platform.
The major and probably the most important difference between Shopify and 
BigCommerce’s cart abandonment recovery feature is its availability on all the 
plans. Shopify provides this feature to its most basic plan subscribers whereas 
BigCommerce only has it for its ‘Plus’ plan merchants. 
Shopify and BigCommerce both have third-party apps for cart abandonment 
recovery emails (paid and free) for the merchants and the manual email sending 
provision is there too. 
Both Shopify and BigCommerce allows eCommerce 
owners to optimize their store with basic but pivotal 
eCommerce SEO SEO features. We tried taking a free trial on both 
BigCommerce and Shopify for better understanding, 
and here are the screenshots of SEO optimization 
features on both the platforms.
An integral part of organic traffic is the website’s blog section. The frequently updated 
blogs pull more traffic as they establish good credibility in the eyes of the search 
engine bots. Here, both platforms provide the basic blog section for eCommerce 
stores. Shopify’s blog section interface, however, is more user-friendly and easy to 
understand.
They’ve taken care of the basics that help in product search engine rankings. 
Moreover, another SEO optimization factor ‘Blog’ is also covered on both platforms. 
Regularly updated blogs play a major role in the website’s search rankings.
The URL customization in Bigcommerce is not 
restricted to any categorization or product list. 
But, if we dig a little deeper for the SEO part, It lets you bend the URL terms the way you 
the key findings mentioned below changes the want which Shopify lacks. On Shopify, 
whole eCommerce SEO game: /products/ and /collections/ are enforced. 
BigCommerce allows full editing of URLs. 
The robots.txt files block certain pages for Google bots. The dynamic pages 
such as carts and search results should take advantage of this feature. Shopify 
doesn’t allow edits to these files whereas BigCommerce allows all sorts of 
modifications for your eStore.
BigCommerce merchants can make the most out of its in-built Google AMP-
enabled themes. Shopify users need to use third-party apps for the same 
feature. This one here is a major feature eCommerce stores can’t afford to 
overlook!
BigCommerce and Shopify both claim for a 0% 
transaction fees on the products sold. Shopify 
Transaction Fees & Credit Card Fees shows a 0% transaction fee option but the twist is 
ONLY when you use their payment gateway 
Comparison ‘Shopify Payment’. Those fees are different in both 
Shopify and BigCommerce’s cases.
                                     1. Shopify Lite: 2.9% + 30c per transaction
    S  h   o  p   i f  y                     2. Basic Shopify: 2.9% + 30c
                                     3. Shopify: 2.6% + 30c
                                     4. Advanced Shopify: 2.4% + 30c
                                     1. Bigcommerce Standard: 2.9% + 30c per transaction
B   i g   C   o  m    m    e   r  c  e          2. Bigcommerce Plus: 2.5% + 30c
                                     3. Bigcommerce Pro: 2.2% + 30c
                                     4. Bigcommerce Enterprise: 2.2% + 30c
The Verdict – Shopify Pricing vs 
BigCommerce Pricing
As clear as it looks, BigCommerce comes out as a promising, convenient, and economical 
option than Shopify. The pricing comparison of credit card and transaction charges has 
BigCommerce as its hero. In both cases, BigCommerce charges considerably less than 
that of Shopify.
How the eStore looks, is definitely the major 
concern for any owner! After all, aesthetics and 
eStore Themes and Templates visual appeal matter the most! When we talk 
about the eCommerce store setup, both the 
platforms provide enough theme variants to 
choose from. 
If we straight go by the numbers, sure BigCommerce shows a bigger picture in terms of 
theming options for both paid and free categories. But, if we go by the actual amount of 
variations in styles, Shopify has better provisions. BigCommerce theme variants are basically 
with minor changes of colors and image resolution, wherein Shopify has more styling 
variations in a single theme. This is the major comparison difference that stood out when we 
compared both!
Additional Points
Shopify themes represent a more modern approach when it comes to designing, and on the other side, 
BigCommerce is with professional-looking and contemporary theming. Another major comparison point that 
we observed is the ‘AMP Enabled’ themes by BigCommerce. With Google collaboration, they have a separate 
category for AMP-enabled themes which Shopify lacks. Of course with the help of tools, developers, and 
Shopify App Center, this arrangement can be done, but embedded enablement of AMP is quite a star for us. 
With search engines providing major preferences to AMP websites, having an eCommerce store on this 
category sure helps the rankings!
The paid themes on both the platforms are no doubts come with more styling, 
optimizing, and layout options. But we recommend free themes more as there 
are ample amounts of variants you get in here too. 
A point that is worth noting is the way Shopify has designed its theme offering 
page. With various styling choices, they’ve made sure to point out navigation, 
product page, homepage, marketing, and other essential aspects that affect an 
eCommerce store. Anyone new to the online biz. world would get the most out 
of Shopify’s simple, hassle-free eCommerce store setup mechanism. 
Fraud prevention plays a major role when it comes 
eCommerce Fraud Prevention to chargebacks. Especially for the small and 
medium-sized businesses, the suspicious order 
detection is essential.
Shopify has an in-built functionality of fraud-analysis which uses machine 
learning algorithms to help bring suspicious orders to your attention. For the 
Basic Shopify plan, then fraud analysis includes indicators and support for third-
party fraud apps. 
On the BigComemrce’s hand, fraud prevention functionality is only available 
through third-party app integrations. They recommend two of the apps (Signifyd 
and Klarna) for eCommerce fraud prevention while numerous other app 
integrations are already available on their app store.
When it comes to setting up an eCommerce store, 
the ease of access is something that these hosting 
platforms should never miss out on. Most of the 
Ease of Use time, people who have negligent to basic 
knowledge about HTML, JAVA and other coding 
languages come on board.  let’s look at what other 
comparisons have to say and what the Google 
trend shows for BigCommerce vs Shopify.
 Shopify clearly has more simple, detailed, and easy-to-understand explanations 
of what the merchants might look for. 
BigCommerce is considered quite difficult to use when tried by beginners, 
whereas, setting up an online store on Shopify is fast and uncomplicated.
A crucial aspect when we compare Shopify vs 
Extra Pointer BigCommerce is the mobile app availability. With all the generations turning to smart devices, how 
can we not mention this? 
Shopify has a mobile application for merchants who want to run and scale their 
eCommerce store from their phones. The Shopify App allows us to manage basic 
aspects of the eStore like fulfilling the orders, add/edit products, and view 
reports. 
BigCommerce, on the contrary, does not provide any official mobile app for 
merchants. And, the third-party smartphone apps available, can’t expect support 
from BigCommerce.
Is BigCommerce better than Shopify? Or Which is better, Shopify or BigCommerce? 
These questions are natural but not totally justifiable. Both eCommerce hosting 
solution providers have their own star offerings and get low at some point or the other 
than the rival. 
BigCommerce is considered quite difficult to use when tried by beginners, whereas, setting up an 
online store on Shopify is fast and uncomplicated. We compared BigCommerce and Shopify and the 
above story is what we want to present to you.
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