Is BigCommerce Right for My Business? (Pros & Cons Explained)

Is BigCommerce Right for My Business? (Pros & Cons Explained)

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Choosing the right e-commerce platform is crucial for any online business’s success. With numerous options available, it can be a daunting task. BigCommerce emerges as a popular and powerful contender, particularly suited for specific business models.

This blog post delves into the advantages and disadvantages of BigCommerce, aiming to equip you with the knowledge necessary to determine if it’s the ideal fit for your online venture.

Table of Contents:

BigCommerce: A Comprehensive Overview

BigCommerce is a fully hosted, SaaS (Software as a Service) e-commerce platform designed for building and managing online stores. The “fully hosted” aspect removes the technical complexities of setting up and maintaining servers, installing software, and dealing with other hosting-related issues. This makes BigCommerce an appealing option for businesses of all sizes, particularly those lacking technical expertise.

BigCommerce caters to various business needs, but it excels in empowering businesses focused on international selling and offering a robust set of features even on its basic plans.

Decoding BigCommerce’s Pricing

BigCommerce offers four distinct pricing plans to suit different business needs:

  • Standard: $39 per month
  • Plus: $105 per month
  • Pro: $399 per month
  • Enterprise: Custom pricing

These plans employ a revenue-based pricing model, which means your monthly fee scales with your store’s annual online sales.

One unique selling point of BigCommerce is its multi-storefront feature. This allows you to manage multiple online stores from a single BigCommerce account, making it a cost-effective solution for businesses with several brands or segments.

Revenue-based pricing can be both advantageous and disadvantageous. High-margin businesses, which earn substantial profit per sale, will find this model beneficial. However, low-margin businesses, where profit per sale is smaller, might find the scaling fees challenging as their revenue increases.

Deep Dive into BigCommerce’s Features: The Good and the Not-so-good

Let’s take a closer look at the features that make BigCommerce stand out, both positively and negatively, influencing the platform’s pros and cons:

A. The Pros: Unpacking BigCommerce’s Strengths

  • Comprehensive Feature Set: Even its entry-level ‘Standard’ plan boasts a wide range of features, exceeding the value offered by competitors at a similar price point. This includes unlimited staff accounts, Google Shopping integration, robust reporting tools, and more.
  • No Transaction Fees: BigCommerce sets itself apart by not charging transaction fees on any of its plans. You have the freedom to choose any payment gateway without incurring additional fees, a significant advantage compared to platforms like Shopify, which impose transaction fees if you don’t use their own payment solution.
  • International Selling Powerhouse: BigCommerce provides strong support for international selling with its robust multi-currency features. These features automatically convert prices to local currencies based on customer location and allow checkout in those local currencies, simplifying the buying process for international shoppers.
  • WordPress Integration: This is a major advantage for businesses that value content marketing and SEO. BigCommerce’s seamless WordPress integration allows you to host your blog and online store on the same domain, improving SEO performance and streamlining content management.
  • Superior SEO Capabilities: BigCommerce offers a high degree of control over crucial SEO elements like page titles, meta descriptions, and URL structures. This level of flexibility gives you an edge over platforms like Shopify, which use fixed URLs that can limit SEO performance.
  • Robust Product Variant Engine: If your business deals with products with numerous options, like sizes, colors, or materials, BigCommerce offers a powerful variant engine to handle this complexity. You can create up to 600 variants for a single product, surpassing the limitations of many other platforms.
  • Additional Benefits: Beyond these core strengths, BigCommerce also offers a drag-and-drop page builder for easy site design, mobile-friendly themes, automatic image optimization, detailed reporting, custom field creation, and easy file uploads for personalized products.

B. The Cons: Recognizing BigCommerce’s Limitations

  • Revenue-Based Pricing: The scaling fees tied to your revenue growth can be a major drawback for low-margin businesses. While appealing to businesses with substantial profit margins, this pricing model might not be ideal for those with smaller margins as fees could consume a large portion of their earnings.
  • Limited Free Theme Selection: While BigCommerce offers free themes, the selection is limited compared to competitors like Wix or Squarespace. Additionally, some free themes are quite similar, limiting the design variety available without purchasing a premium theme.
  • Template Inflexibility: Editing themes, especially removing or hiding specific elements, can prove challenging in BigCommerce. This might require coding knowledge, limiting non-technical users’ ability to fully customize their stores.
  • Limited Typeface Options: The range of fonts included in BigCommerce’s free themes is restricted. Further, the drag-and-drop page builder doesn’t currently allow you to use custom fonts, making it difficult to match your brand’s visual identity.
  • Smaller App Marketplace: While BigCommerce offers an app store, it’s significantly smaller compared to Shopify’s vast app ecosystem. This might mean fewer options for integrating third-party tools or delayed availability of cutting-edge apps.
  • Additional Limitations: Other downsides include annual sales limits, the relatively high cost for accessing abandoned cart features, lack of shipping discounts, and no built-in multilingual functionality.

Frequently Asked Questions: Addressing Common Concerns

Here are answers to some of the most common questions about BigCommerce, helping you gain a clearer understanding of the platform:

Can I use a third-party payment processor with BigCommerce, and are there any transaction fees?

Yes, you can use a wide variety of third-party payment gateways with BigCommerce. A key benefit of BigCommerce is that it doesn’t charge any transaction fees, even when using a third-party payment gateway. The only fees you’ll pay are those charged by the payment gateway provider itself.

What happens if my sales exceed the annual limit for my BigCommerce plan?

If your sales exceed the limit for your current plan, BigCommerce will notify you and request an upgrade to a higher-tier plan with a larger sales limit. You will have a grace period to upgrade (around 1,000-2,000 additional orders) during which your store will continue to operate normally. However, if you don’t upgrade, you will eventually be prevented from processing new orders.

Can I dropship with BigCommerce?

Yes, BigCommerce supports dropshipping through integration with various third-party dropshipping apps available in its app marketplace. You can find apps for popular dropshipping services like AliExpress Dropshipping, Spocket, Wholesale2B, and others.

How does BigCommerce support point-of-sale (POS) selling?

BigCommerce allows you to integrate with several third-party POS providers like Square, Clover, Hike, PayPal Zettle, and others. This allows you to manage both online and offline sales from a single platform, syncing inventory levels and consolidating sales data.

Does BigCommerce have built-in email marketing features?

Currently, BigCommerce doesn’t offer built-in email marketing features. However, it integrates with most major email marketing providers, allowing you to connect your BigCommerce store to your preferred email marketing platform.

How do I ensure my BigCommerce store is GDPR compliant?

BigCommerce offers a built-in cookie consent feature that assists you in complying with GDPR requirements. This feature enables you to display a cookie banner, allowing users to consent to various cookie categories before they are dropped. However, you may need to use additional tools or services to ensure full GDPR compliance in all areas of your online store.

What support options are available from BigCommerce?

BigCommerce offers comprehensive customer support, including 24/7 live agent support via phone, email, and chat. This is a significant advantage over platforms that only offer email or chat support. They also provide extensive online resources like video tutorials, help articles, and a community forum to assist you with any questions or issues.

Conclusion: Weighing the Pros and Cons of BigCommerce

This BigCommerce review highlights a platform brimming with advantages for certain businesses. It’s particularly well-suited for ventures with high profit margins, strong international selling needs, a desire for seamless WordPress integration, or those dealing with complex product variants.

However, businesses with low margins or those seeking a simpler, less feature-rich platform might find alternative solutions more suitable. Shopify, with its extensive app ecosystem, or Squarespace, known for its intuitive design and content management capabilities, could be worth considering.

Ultimately, the best way to determine if BigCommerce is right for you is to leverage its 15-day free trial. This will allow you to explore its features firsthand and make an informed decision based on your unique business requirements.