WooCommerce vs. BigCommerce – A Full Comparison for Your E-commerce Store

WooCommerce vs. BigCommerce

To successfully run an e-commerce store, you need to choose a platform that streamlines and automates your processes, provides flexibility, and also offers all the bells and whistles you can possibly need.

WooCommerce and BigCommerce are two popular choices with unique features, automation, and advantages to help you create a successful online store. 

But which solution is better for you?

In this article, we compare WooCommerce and BigCommerce based on their:

• Integrations and add-ons
• Features
• Inventory management
• Payment gateway
• SEO
• Security
• Support
• Themes

Remember, this is just a comparison, and the final decision depends on your store’s specific needs, goals, and projected results.

What Should You Look For in Your E-Commerce Platform?

Several factors distinguish e-commerce solutions.

Here are six factors we consider fundamental when choosing an e-commerce platform.

Ease of use

Browsing is enough stress, and customers do not want a complicated, tedious, and slow website.

According to a survey study by the Baymard Institute, 17% of online shoppers abandon their orders because of a “too long and complicated checkout process.” In addition, 13% of shoppers abandoned the process because the website crashed or had errors. 

A user-friendly e-commerce platform will help you manage your store successfully and ensure your customers effortlessly breeze through the buying process.

Swift mobile responsiveness

According to Insider Intelligence, mobile e-commerce retail sales will reach 40.4%, or $534.18 billion, in 2024. Statista put mobile retail e-commerce spending in the US at $387 billion. The market driver is the smartphone, and to compete, your e-commerce store must allow mobile responsiveness.

SEO Factor

About 46% of product searches begin on Google. What use is an online store without an online presence? SEO can be the make or break for an e-commerce store.

It brings in customers, boosts sales and brand recognition, and builds trust. Not investing in an e-commerce platform with great SEO integrations means leaving money on the table. 

Customizability

Every e-commerce platform has selected themes, colors, designs, and so on for users to create a befitting website or storefront. Personalization boosts customer interaction and builds their trust in your brand. 

Remember, good design and themes are trust indicators for online shoppers.

Security and Support

Security is a fundamental feature for choosing your online e-commerce web hosting platform. Customers want to trust that their personal details remain on your website and nowhere else. 

Always choose a platform with robust and flexible security systems and encryption. Furthermore, their customer support system should be top-notch at all times.

Integrations and add-ons

It is best to have a web hosting platform that enables you to integrate other necessary solutions in a streamlined process. Integrations to payment gateways, inventory management systems, or marketing tools should be seamless.

Choosing the right online marketplace for you should be easy if you can differentiate your needs from your wants. On that note, let’s assess two major e-commerce platforms. 

BigCommerce – An Alternative to Shopify

BigCommerce is a ‘software as a service’ (SaaS)-based e-commerce platform that allows businesses and individuals to effortlessly set up and establish online stores effortlessly. 

Here are BigCommerce’s numbers:

• The company is worth $0.55 billion as of April 2023.
• The current COE since 2015 is Brent Bellm.
• The company started in 2009.
• Currently, it has over 60,000 small business stores.
• 1,300 employees

The numbers may make BigCommerce seem small, but similar to Shopify, it hosts some of the biggest e-commerce brands in the world, such as Sony, Bulk Apothecary, Ubisoft Store, Solo Stove, Bohemian Traders, Skull Candy, Woodland Hills Wine Company, and thousands of small businesses.

It is a suitable platform for e-commerce businesses and it packs the amenities of a marketplace, making it a major contender for serious entrepreneurs.

What are the pros and cons of BigCommerce?

Pros

• BigCommerce is a robust, easy-to-use e-commerce website builder with advanced SEO capabilities, built-in multi-channel selling and shipping options, and comprehensive analysis and reporting tools.
• It offers multiple integrations with third-party apps, including social media platforms, payment gateways (saving you a ton of money buying external third-party apps), and a premium customization tool that supports designs and inventory management.
• It is a reliable e-commerce platform suitable for businesses that want to scale. Additionally, BigCommerce has no limit on product variants, including digital and physical items.
• It is a transaction-free platform except for the plan price, and it also offers users the ability to create unlimited storefronts at once, depending on their plan.
• The security and support framework are tight with dedicated SSL. Customers also enjoy excellent assistance while using the platform.
• Users can access product review functionality, discounts, coupons, gift vouchers, edit CSS and HTML, and free design templates.

Cons

• Its limitations include customization options, design themes, blog functionality, and product variants.
• There is restricted API access for lower-priced plans.
• The enterprise plan is quite high.
• They do not have an online community where users can interact and share challenges and solutions.
• It has limited support for multi-vendor selling and lacks a built-in marketplace feature.

Integrations and Add-ons of BigCommerce

BigCommerce offers a wide range of powerful multi-channel integration and add-ons that enhance the functionality and flexibility of your online store. It has over 20 categories, with numerous apps and additions under each title.

For example, its payment gateway has over 79 options, making online payments effortless. Some common payment gateways include Amazon Pay, Bolt, Eye4Fraud, and Signifyd.

BigCommerce integrates with various marketing tools—up to 263 of them. Users can choose the best for their store. It covers all categories, including affiliate programs, email marketing, marketing automation, social marketing, and conversion rate optimization, to name a few.

Another popular category is the shipping provider, with subsections for shipping and fulfillment (144 options) and product and shipping protection (19 options).

BigCommerce also connects with major US courier services like UPS, USPS, and FedEx, giving its online sellers and buyers a range of shipping options.

The list is endless; check out the accounting integration if you want to manage your finances, expenses, or money flow. It has everything you need.

BigCommerce Key Features

BigCommerce has numerous built-in e-commerce features that make it convenient for merchants and sellers to build, launch, and sell profitably online. Here are some of them.

Abandoned Cart Recovery Tool

Customers abandon carts for several reasons, but your BigCommerce store has a tool that sends automatic emails encouraging them to complete their transactions. 

With BigCommerce, customers can complete sales quicker, reducing the number of abandoned carts and lost sales.

• Omnichannel selling integration helps sellers link their websites to other marketplaces and boost sales and brand recognition.
• Users can easily build several stores with just one account. The number of stores you can build depends on the plan you choose. For example, the “Standard” plan allows you to create 4 storefronts at $30 per store. The “Plus” plan allows up to 5 extra storefronts at $50 per store, and the “Pro” and “Enterprise” plans allow you to get 8 and unlimited at $100 per store.
• An SSL security certificate communicates to the buyer that your store is secure and that customer details are protected and safe for receiving online payments.
• A professional analytical and reporting tool allows you to monitor your website’s performance in all sessions to ensure you use the best marketing techniques and get the right results.

BigCommerce Inventory Management

The right inventory management strategy and tools for your online business are critical to its success. BigCommerce has a standard inventory management tool for personal stores or drop shippers to manage their inventory on all levels. 

Whether stock reporting, tracking orders, adjusting or updating prices, or forecasting supply and demand trends, with BigCommerce, this can all be easily achieved. 

Additionally, sellers can set up an automatic reorder strategy that sends notifications when stock levels drop, increasing profitability and efficiency.

BigCommerce Payment Gateway

There are over 70 third-party payment gateways for merchants and sellers on BigCommerce. Still, it offers an all-in-one solution via PayPal powered by Braintree that accepts credit and debit cards and other digital payments.

It also supports local payment gateway in countries where different online businesses operate to make transactions easier for improved e-commerce functionality.

BigCommerce SEO

This marketplace has one of the most updated SEO practices for e-commerce store owners. Its advanced SEO tools allow you to optimize your storefront and presence on search engines.

In addition to the keyword, product titles, and description features, it offers other SEO options for:

• Building SEO websites for product pages
• Creating sitemaps for search engines
• Writing meta descriptions and title tags for each page
• Implementing schema markup
• Increasing site speed and performance,
• Optimizing images

BigCommerce has solid built-in features with SEO capabilities to help e-commerce companies enjoy growth and establish a presence on search engines.

BigCommerce Security

BigCommerce, as an e-commerce hosting provider, is big on security and ensuring customer information is safe, secure, and protected. The platform complies with numerous security strategies to ensure absolute protection at all stages of use. Some of them are:

• PCI/DSS, or Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, which ensures the safety and security of credit card details collected by online organizations.
• SSL, TLS, and HTTPS, which are security protection layers that secure your website and customers. SSL (Secure Socket Layer) protects sensitive data using encryption tools. TLS (Transport Layer Security) helps manage and authenticate encrypted links between networks, and HTTPS is the padlock icon that usually symbolizes a secure website.
• 2-factor authentication (2FA), 2-step verification (2SV), and multi-factor authentication (MFA), which sellers are prompted to use as protection on their e-commerce store.

BigCommerce Support

Customers and merchants enjoy the platform’s robust support service tailored to all your needs. You can contact BigCommerce directly if you need immediate help.

The BigCommerce help center provides 24/7 web hosting support via phone, live chat support, and email, with shorter wait and response times for all plans. Express routing and API support are available for customers on the Enterprise plan.

BigCommerce Theme

BigCommerce is big on appearance and understands that websites must stand out in the digital space. If this is your goal, BigCommerce offers beautiful and responsive templates for your online store. BigCommerce has 15 free themes and 226 paid themes with variants so that you can choose the best for your website.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce platform built on WordPress that allows users to create and design their online store affordably and easily.  It is a fully customizable e-commerce platform that’s easy to use.

Like a BigCommerce store, it offers your e-commerce business a variety of features, including themes, inventory management, payment processing, a user-friendly interface, and customization.

WooCommerce is free and suitable for anyone seeking to launch an e-commerce store. In addition to its numerous plugins that enhance functionality, it is robust and flexible.

What are the Pros and Cons of WooCommerce?

Pros

• It is a free, open-source platform.
• It is a fully customizable e-commerce platform with exceptional customization features.
• It is incredibly flexible.
• Its security is regularly updated to keep the site protected.
• It has a large community of contributors, developers, and users ready to assist at any time.
• It offers a wide range of payment options.

Cons

• Too many plugins may be confusing, and there’s a bit of a learning curve.
• You will have to pay if you are downloading the app.

Integrations and Add-ons of WooCommerce

WooCommerce has over 800 extensions, 63 of which were developed by WooCommerce. 53 of these extensions are free for payment, marketing, customer service, shipping, and more.

As a WordPress website, users enjoy thousands of WordPress plugins that are seamless with the platform, making the process simple for those with less technical know-how.

WooCommerce Key Features

As one of the most powerful e-commerce platforms, WooCommerce has numerous e-commerce features, but only the most fundamental will be listed.

• As a WordPress website, WooCommerce relies on the former for a content management system that allows users to both create engaging content specific to their brand and publish. This simple SEO strategy builds your brand and boosts its presence on search engines. Its built-in blogging feature integrates seamlessly with WordPress and other plugins.
• It is simple to install and configure, even for non-technical users. Furthermore, with thousands of free and paid themes, it’s easy customizing your website to look and feel as you want.
• Sellers and buyers will love the payment gateway options, such as Google Pay and PayPal. The versatility allows for debit and credit card payments and even bank transfers.
• Flexible shipping options with customizable rates, shipping zones, and shipping services are available for local and international buyers, improving e-commerce functionality globally.
• It offers multilingual Support and Customer Communication. You can communicate with customers worldwide in their local language with automation features to reach a global audience.
• A WooCommerce store is secure and regularly updated to protect against potential security threats.
•  It integrates seamlessly with other WordPress plugins and tools.
• WooCommerce is fully responsive, ensuring a seamless shopping experience for customers on mobile devices.
• With thousands of available plugins, WooCommerce can be customized to meet your specific business needs.

WooCommerce Inventory Management

Running an e-commerce store without an inventory strategy means losing out on profit. An effective inventory management tool will help retain buyers and make them loyal customers. 

Taking stock of bought and sold items can make sellers omit a proper inventory tool, but is essential to manage your orders and sell online successfully.  

WooCommerce has 30 inventory management plugins that notify you when stock is low, reorders, send back-in-stock notifications, and more. These plugins keep you organized and allow you to maximize profits.

WooCommerce Payment Gateways

WooCommerce supports several payment gateways that enable users to accept or send payments to customers and merchants. The platform supports 84 gateways, such as PayPal, Amazon Pay, Stripe, WooCommerce Payments, and WooCommerce Deposits.

These gateways accept credit and debit cards, including digital payment channels like Google Pay and Apple Pay. Additionally, the platform supports regional payment gateways tailored for specific countries like PayU India, Opayo Payment Suite, Eway, and Alipay. 

Overall, the payment gateway flexibility makes WooCommerce a popular choice for all sizes and types of businesses.

WooCommerce SEO

Whether you are on WooCommerce or another e-commerce platform, SEO is one of the most crucial e-commerce features to succeeding online. WooCommerce has unique SEO tools because it is built on WordPress, so whatever is done for one applies to the other.

With WooCommerce SEO, you enjoy 

• Extensive analytical tools, including Google Analytics.
• Dual functionality on WooCommerce and WordPress.
• Access to numerous tools that help you manage, organize, and tag your products with the right attributes.

WooCommerce Security

You must always ensure security is tight on your e-commerce platform to avoid hackers. 

WooCommerce is a WordPress site, and WordPress offers several security plugins and extensions that can easily be installed to protect your own website from hackers. However, you must choose a solid security plugin.

In addition to picking the best third-party security plugin, you must strengthen your two-factor authentication. You must also update your WordPress sites and include the necessary permissions and configurations.

Finally, using a single security plugin can also put your website at risk. It is best to use a couple of different ones for each page.

WooCommerce Support

As a self-hosted platform, its support system is not always the best. However, it offers several other mediums where users can seek support or assistance, including social media pages, communities, and forums.

For plugin-related issues, visit their website’s support forum or WordPress.org. The platform also has an extensive range of tutorials, FAQs, guides, and help documents.

WooCommerce Themes

If you want to create an elegant and captivating e-commerce store, then WooCommerce themes are for you. 

WooCommerce has 77 incredible themes that allow you to create your page using simple drag-and-drop processes. Furthermore, most of them are free themes and super easy to use!

BigCommerce vs. WooCommerce – Pricing plans

Both BigCommerce and WooCommerce offer users different pricing tiers.

BigCommerce Pricing Plan

The platform offers four plans and a free trial of 15 days before needing to make a choice. It also offers a 25% discount on the Plus and Pro plans. 

The Standard, Plus, and Pro BigCommerce plans are geared toward small and medium-sized businesses. The Enterprise plan is for larger businesses and brands and has a custom price.

Each plan has a minimum number of storefronts a user can build. For example, the standard plan has 5 storefronts, while the Plus plan offers 8 extra storefronts for $30 and $50 each, respectively. 

WooCommerce has hosting plans according to service providers and store types.

 For more information on their price plan, visit the official WooCommerce website.

Payment Options: BigCommerce vs. WooCommerce

BigCommerce is a fully hosted platform that provides integrated payment solutions, while WooCommerce is a self-hosted plugin for WordPress and requires third-party payment gateway integration.

BigCommerce offers extensive payment options, including credit and debit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Amazon Pay. It also supports over 79 payment gateways globally, allowing merchants to choose a payment option that suits their business needs and location.

WooCommerce supports payment options like credit and debit cards, PayPal, and Stripe. However, the payment gateway integration is left to the merchant, which requires additional setup and maintenance.

BigCommerce and WooCommerce provide multiple payment options for online stores. Still, BigCommerce has the advantage of offering integrated payment solutions and more payment gateways, making it a more convenient and flexible option for merchants. 

WooCommerce requires additional setup and maintenance to integrate payment gateways.

Ease of Use – BigCommerce vs. WooCommerce

BigCommerce is easy, and registering is simple— enter your email address, shop name, and other personal information requested about your brand. 

The platform offers a 15-day trial, web domain, hosting, and security certificates. Furthermore, designing, setting up, previewing, and adding products to your shop is effortless. Finally, BigCommerce has a comprehensive FAQ page to answer all your questions.

WooCommerce is a bit technical, and users must learn to navigate WordPress to use this e-commerce platform effectively. Additionally, it does not have a robust support system like BigCommerce that can assist you as you build.

BigCommerce vs. WooCommerce: Which Is Ideal for Your Business?

BigCommerce is a website builder with different built-in features to get your store up and running after a few clicks. 

WooCommerce is an open-source platform built on WordPress with extensive plugins and extensions to create highly professional and customizable e-commerce websites. 

If your business is small or medium, WooCommerce may be the right choice as it gives you full control of your website, but if you have a larger business or a corporation, then opt for BigCommerce.

The Verdict: BigCommerce vs. WooCommerce

In a dynamic e-commerce world, sellers need a marketplace that accommodates their needs to drive sales. Regarding online stores, BigCommerce and WooCommerce are exceptional choices for listing and selling products profitably.

However, they both have their pros and cons, as seen in this article and as an entrepreneur, it is ultimately up to you to decide what works best for you.

Your choice between BigCommerce and WooCommerce depends on you and your web design needs.