As of early 2017, online shopping was growing at a rate of 15 percent each year. Despite this rapid growth, it still only accounts for eight percent of all retail sales.
But analysts expect to see a huge shift to online shopping this century.
That upcoming shift is precisely why businesses must optimize their online shops now. The first step to optimizing those shops is selecting the best e-commerce platform.
Though there are other options too, we will discuss only hosted solutions here. When it comes to the hosted solution for e-commerce platform, there are only two real options here: Shopify and BigCommerce.
And these options raise an important question about the benefits of choosing Shopify vs BigCommerce. That said, let’s find out which hosted solution comes out on top.
Shopify
Shopify is a popular hosted solution for businesses these days, and for good reason. Let’s have a look at some of the features the platform offers:
Shopify Pricing
Shopify comes out on top if we’re discussing pricing alone. The platform lets customers choose between five pricing plans.
And the cheapest plan (Shopify Lite) costs an astounding nine dollars a month. The next cheapest plan is Shopify Basic, which costs $29 per month.
But Shopify’s plans admittedly become more expensive than BigCommerce’s plans as you get into the more premium plans. Not only that, but Shopify’s basic plan provides less functionality than BigCommerce’s standard plan.
Sales Limits
Some platforms impose sales limits on their customers. BigCommerce, for instance, imposes a sales cap on customers who use its standard plan.
Fortunately, Shopify’s basic plan has no such limit.
Free Themes
Shopify just barely beats BigCommerce in this category. As of May 2018, it offered customers 10 free themes. BigCommerce, on the other hand, only offered seven.
And that’s not all.
Shopify’s themes are also more diverse than what BigCommerce has to offer. This diversity allows you to keep your shop user-friendly and visually appealing.
BigCommerce
Though BigCommerce loses to Shopify on some points, it’s better than Shopify in a few areas. Here are just a few of those areas:
BigCommerce Pricing
Remember when we said that Shopify’s cheapest plan was cheaper than BigCommerce’s cheapest plan? Well, here’s another fun fact:
BigCommerce’s most expensive plan is cheaper than Shopify’s most expensive plan by about $50.
Product Details
If you’re running an online shop and want to describe your products in great detail, BigCommerce is the way to go. The platform gives you the ability to create large lists of product options.
And by “product options,” we mean product features such as color or size.
Shopify, on the other hand, limits customers to three product options. So if you have a product that has more than three defining options and has Shopify, you’re out of luck.
Paid Themes
Though Shopify outclasses BigCommerce when we talk about free themes, BigCommerce has about twice the amount of paid themes as Shopify. Further still, many of its themes are rather inexpensive when compared to Shopify’s.
But there’s a drawback to using these paid themes.
Like BigCommerce’s free themes, these paid themes don’t have much variety. And the rising costs of doing business make it hard to like paying for too much of the same thing.
Shopify Vs BigCommerce: Which Comes Out on Top?
So Shopify vs BigCommerce? Which platform comes out on top here? As it turns out, neither.
Both of these hosted solutions are admittedly great. They just have pros and cons that businesses have to weigh to choose the solution which fits their personal needs.
And if you’re looking for some advice on which platform is right for your business? Please contact us and let us know what we can do to help you with ecommerce development.
Want to Know which e-commerce platform will be best for your business? Contact Us Now!
