As a business owner, you are constantly looking for ways to grow your company. One way of doing this is by starting an online store. But what platform should you use? There are many options out there, but two major ones are WooCommerce and BigCommerce. In this blog post, we will compare these two platforms based on ease of use, marketing tools, site customization features, transaction fees, and more!
- WooCommerce powers 4.15% of the top 10,000 websites. WooCommerce boasts more than 4.4 million active installations.
- BigCommerce is much smaller, with only 22 websites in the top 10,000 and a little over 50,000 installations in total.
Yet these two are both major players in the ecommerce space.
Which one is best for your online store?
Let’s get started by looking at some things your store needs to be successful.
What to Look for in a Platform for Your Ecommerce Business?
Your options are much bigger in 2021. You can choose between BigCommerce, Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce on WordPress. All of them are similar, but the differences might be crucial for your company.
Here are the things you need to look at before choosing one.
What’s the Real Cost?
How much will each platform cost you in the long run with transaction fees, SEO tools, and customer support?
For example, BigCommerce offers a free trial that brings with it transaction fees and an annual fee. You have to do some math before deciding which one is best for your budget.
Do You Need Integrations for Your Business? These almost always cost extra.
Ecommerce Features & Ease of Use
Which built in features come with the platform?
Is it easy to use or customize? If you’re not tech savvy, then this might be a big factor for how long your store will take to get up and running.
If you’re expanding and adding staff, how easy will it be for them to get up to speed on the platform and use it?
To learn more read our How Much Does WooCommerce Cost guide.
Adding Products
How easy is it to add products to your store?
Do you have a lot of products to add or will it just be one item at the time? Is there any limit on what can be added? How easy is it to get an image for each product?
All these things might sound simple but they’re not always as straightforward in reality. Adding and managing products is a key part of running an online store, so this needs to be easy and quick.
Managing Your Store
Managing your store starts with the website builder, carries on through adding products, and then changes into the regular work of keeping your website running and moving forward.
Store owners need their platform to give them solid reports, SEO features to complement paid marketing, and the ability to add more people to their team as the business grows.
Security
Who provides the web hosting services? Will the web hosting provider issue an SSL certificate? Which person, company, or provider is responsible for security?
These are all important questions that need to be answered in order to assess the security of a site or platform.
Payment Methods
Online stores, and brick-and-mortar stores, need to accept more forms of payment than ever before.
This is why it’s important to know what forms of payment a platform or site can accept and how well the support team handles this process on their behalf.
Quick Intro to WooCommerce vs BigCommerce
Let’s introduce these two platforms quickly before we compare their features.
What is BigCommerce?
BigCommerce is a fully managed ecommerce platform that allows you to build your store, manage product inventory and orders from a single system.
BigCommerce gives business owners the power of working with one software provider for all their online needs; allowing them more time and energy to focus on running the day-to-day operations of their businesses.
What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is a self-hosted plugin for WordPress, which is a free open-source content management system. WooCommerce is open-source and the basic philosophy is for users to be able to do as much or as little customization of the platform without being required to pay a monthly fee.
Ease of Use – BigCommerce vs WooCommerce
Platforms that are easy to use have many benefits. For instance, when issues arise you can quickly fix them so you have plenty of time to grow your business.
If you’re new to e-commerce, a solution that is both user-friendly and scalable makes the most sense for you. An ecommerce website builder will help you get started faster.
Which platform is easier to get up and running on?
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is easy to use and get started on. You don’t have any concerns about the technical aspects of your BigCommerce store, because BigCommerce customer support takes care of these during the setup phase.
BigCommerce handles:
- Your domain registration
- Security
- and whatever other needs you might have.
Some customers may find BigCommerce to be too simple, as they are more accustomed to ecommerce solutions that offer a lot of customization options and plugins.
However, if you’re looking for something easy to get started on with an established company in the space, then Bigcommerce is definitely for you.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce runs on your WordPress site, so you can take advantage of all the great features and plugins that a WordPress site has to offer.
Setting up WooCommerce is easier than it seems, because you’ll only need to install extensions from either the official plugin directory or by using one of the trusted setup partners (a list is available here).
You may have some challenges when setting up your site, but there is a large community of users eager to help.
WooCommerce also has a helpful page with tutorials and FAQs for merchants, which is really useful when you’re getting started.
Customization and Themes
One of the greatest things about ecommerce platforms is that they are all customizable to your specific needs. Both WooCommerce and BigCommerce offer free and paid themes with many built-in features, so there’s something for everyone. You can even customize the code in either platform using third-party plugins.
However, WooCommerce has the edge vs BigCommerce because of the huge number of themes you can buy and use. There are so many WordPress themes available it’s difficult to know where to start but fortunately, there are lots of helpful guides.
To learn more about addons, read our Best WooCommerce Plugins guide.
Cost Comparison: BigCommerce vs WooCommerce
Many platforms claim to be the cheapest or the best value. How much does it cost to start an online store?
WooCommerce and BigCommerce are both affordable, but when you compare the two it’s hard not to go with WooCommerce.
What Is the True Cost of Using BigCommerce?
BigCommerce costs as little as $29.99/month to launch a store. This is an attractive price point, but could be increased if you have to purchase your own domain name or need to use specialist payment gateways.
Add-ons such as themes and templates can be used to personalize your site and make it more usable. The cheapest paid theme available currently from the BigCommerce official store is $150.
So your first year with a paid theme and the lowest price plan could be as high as $510. That doesn’t include any payment fees, domain name charges, or plugin charges.
There are different pricing plans, though. BigCommerce automatically moves you up to one of the more expensive pricing plans when your sales grow. The larger plans come with more features, but this is a point against the scalability of BigCommerce.
What Is the True Cost of Using WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is free. The challenge is finding the right WordPress plugin to do what you need, choosing between a free and paid theme, getting your own SSL certificate, and all the other details that go into setting up an ecommerce store.
WooCommerce can be cheaper than BigCommerce, with many free plugins and themes available.
It’s worth the time investment to set up your store in WooCommerce if you want a powerful site for less than one year of BigCommerce costs.
For a full guide on WooCommerce costs, you can read
How Much Does WooCommerce Cost? 13 Components that Affect the Real WooCommerce Price You Pay. guide.
Conclusion: BigCommerce vs WooCommerce – Which is the better ecommerce platform?
WooCommerce and BigCommerce compete with each other in all these areas, but you’re the real winner. You can choose the best option for your business. Here’s a simple recap:
- WooCommerce is the best platform if you want to manage your own store, control your spending, and scale up on a gradual curve.
- BigCommerce is the best platform if you want a packaged solution that will handle all the admin and technical details for you.
For us, the best choice is WooCommerce. It’s cheaper, has loads of features through plugins, and you can always hire a developer to get you through the initial setup.
To learn more about WooCommerce, and view a video setup guide, read our What is WooCommerce guide.
Are you launching your ecommerce business? Looking for a better way to scale and grow your website?
If you are looking for a dedicated web design agency to help with your ecommerce store, please call us at 919-336-1790 or click here to schedule a consultation with one of our web design experts.
About The Author:
Dave Sweeney
Dave’s role at TheeDigital is to help our clients meet their goals by creating websites that outperform their competition. Dave is a student of life and strives to continue learning the latest trends in the industry. Having spent many years in the digital media world working in the television and newspaper industry as a graphic designer & design manager, these skills definitely benefit our TheeDigital clients.
