When it comes to e-commerce store builders, BigCommerce’s name comes on top of the list. It gives tough competition to Shopify in the e-commerce space. No doubt, both have a lot of similar features and functions. But, once you dig deeper into BigCommerce, the details will surely surprise you to a great extent. It is nothing short of a boon for small businesses due to it’s entry-level features, plans, and functions. This review is going to enlighten you about all the unique features, functions, pros, cons, plans, etc to help you make understand BigCommerce and make the right decision while building an e-commerce store.

About BigCommerce

BigCommerce is touted as the most popular e-commerce store builder in the market. It already powers thousands of online stores online and has processed over $9 billion in online transactions. It’s user-friendly and feature-loaded interface coupled with an exciting standard plan starting at just $29.95 a month without any transaction fees has made it a big hit among starters and e-commerce store aspirants.

The SaaS-hosted platform was started in 2009 in Sydney, Australia by Eddie Machaalani and Mitchell Harper. It has a headquarter in Austin, Texas with over 1300 employees. The platform basically offers online store creation, hosting, SEO, security, and marketing solutions to small, medium, and big businesses.

It’s not just a site builder but a lot more than that. The platform helps online businesses to manage their stores with technology-driven features and functionalities. Along with that, the platform also offers overall security, hosting, and web handling of the store effortlessly.

PROS

• Impressive entry-level plan
• User-friendly drag-and-drop builder
• Multiple product options
• SEO and blogging tools
• Effective reporting functionality
• Enticing management tools
• Multiple apps offered
• Various currencies supported
• Round-the-clock customer support
• Result-proven marketing options
• Incredibly scalable platform
• Greatly customizable
• Sturdy security features
• Multichannel selling feature

CONS

• Yearly sales limit
• Free themes are difficult to modify
• Absence of multilingual support
• No native POS support
• IP addressed can’t be blocked
• Missing abandoned cart feature in the standard plan
• Free themes are limited

BigCommerce Exclusive Features

BigCommerce is a feature-loaded platform. Every plan comes with a set of features. However, there are some basic features that are present in almost every plan, including:

• 12 free templates
• Integration with PayPal
• Unlimited services and products
• Unlimited staff accounts
• SEO and blogging tools
• Reporting functions

However, for more features, one has to buy paid themes or higher plans.

How Can You Build & Manage Your Store With BigCommerce?

Design your store

Once you have taken any of the 3 plans offered by BigCommerce, you can design your store as per your requirements. There are multiple free and paid themes with a great scope of customization. However, free themes have limited customization features. One can build their store right from the scratch with the help of a drag-and-drop store builder. The platform also allows you to add carousels, widgets, etc. The user interface is quite seamless and intuitive.

Add products to your store

One can easily add multiple products to their store. However, the process requires effort and time.

• First of all, one has to fill in the Product Information such as product name, price, brand, SKU, weight, description, videos, and images.
• Secondly, one has to pick the Product Options where one has to add customizations and variations details.
• Thirdly, one has to visit the Storefront option to optimize the listings via search keywords and sorting the order of your products when they appear.
• The fourth step is to add fulfillment details for the product right from the shipping to payment to returns, etc
• The final step is to do SEO and sharing in order to expand the reach of your products. One can easily optimize the page URL, or add a meta description.

Hence, the process of adding a product is quite time-consuming. However, once you become habitual, it will get easier and bring a lot of benefits.

Manage & process orders

BigCommerce offers a centralized order management feature which is nothing short of a boon for users. One can also pick any order management system such as Brightpearl, Order Desk, etc. However, BigCommerce is also capable enough to do it effectively with it’s amazing features.

Apart from that, the platform also helps users to locate orders. All they need to do is to use the Advanced settings right in the search option to retrieve any old order effortlessly.

Moreover, one can also easily create and issue gift vouchers for certain customers right from the Order section. Hence, it helps you to manage and process orders like a pro to scale up your business.

Handle your cart

BigCommerce has amazing cart-handling capabilities. It has two most impressive cart features:

• Abandoned cart saver: It allows to send of over 3 automated emails to customers who have already added products but didn’t checkout to complete the purchase. However, this feature doesn’t come in the Standard Plan.
• Persistent cart: It helps in maintaining the same cart across all devices used by a customer. If you have added products to your cart via a laptop, you can see them via your smartphone as well.

Simple checkout process

Online shoppers need the simplest checkout process else they don’t visit that store. To keep the checkout process simple and seamless, BigCommerce offers a single-page checkout without any clutter.

Unlimited storage

BigCommerce offers unlimited storage across all 3 plans. This feature helps you to store as much data as you want for your product catalogs, videos, inventory, images, and customer data. The best part is that it doesn’t make your website sluggish.

Market your store

BigCommerce offers an enticing and result-proven way of marketing such as:

– Banners

One can create a stunning range of banners and put them all over the store to promote special sales, offers, discounts, etc.

– Discounts & Coupons

One can easily add various discount coupons for regular and first-time customers to amplify sales.

– Gift certificates

One can easily create individual-specific gift certificates depending on their purchasing habits.

Analytics to analyze the performance

To analyze the store’s performance over a time period, one can simply go to the Analytics option to get detailed analytics and charts on:

• Merchandising
• Marketing
• Orders
• Carts
• In-store search
• Sales tax reports

The platform quickly produces reports and updates them from time to time to give store owners a real performance report without beating around the bush. The reports include numbers, visual presentations, charts, and graphs for easy understanding.

Easy and multiple shipping options

BigCommerce offers various shipping options to store owners such as:

• Free shipping
• Shipping by weight
• In-store pickup
• Flat rate per order

Along with that, one can also collaborate with commercial shipping providers such as:

• FedEx
• USPS
• UPS

BigCommerce Plans & Pricing Options

First of all, the brand offers a 15-day free trial to every aspiring store owner to create their store and the hands-on experience. Once they feel it’s good to go then they can start with the basic Standard Plan to take things further.

Broadly, BigCommerce offers 4 plans, including:

– Standard:

It is a basic plan that offers all the free features along with the basic ones to launch and run your store. It starts from $29.95 per month.

– Plus:

It comes with some advanced features along with the Standard ones such as customer segmentation, cross-platform cart, abandoned cart emails, saving of credit card details for returning customers, etc. This plan costs $79.95 a month.

– Pro:

This plan comes with all the features of Plus and also lets store owners get reviews from Google and execute advanced product filtering options. It comes at $299.95 a month.

– Enterprise:

If you are a big store owner with huge traffic and sales then you can pick this customized plan offering various storefronts, customized pricing, dedicated customer support, and many more advanced features.

Hence, BigCommerce offers generous and competitive plans. However, the only drawback is that it has an annual sales limit for every plan resulting in upgrading the plan after exceeding the prescribed annual sales limit.

• The standard plan has an annual sales limit of $50,000 per year.
• The Plus plan comes with a yearly sales limit of $140,000.
• The Pro plan has a $400,000 annual sales limit
• The Enterprise has a custom sales limit.

What Are The Payment Options?

BigCommerce doesn’t charge additional transaction fees. Store owners have to pay the regular credit charges from the payment gateway. One can choose from over 65 payment gateways.

Moreover, it supports mobile payments, multiple currencies, and payment options such as:

• PayPal
• Stripe
• ApplePay
• Square
• Amazon Pay
• Adyen

BigCommerce: Customer Support

Customer support plays an important role in today’s world. BigCommerce leaves no stone unturned to assist it’s store owners with their problems via:

– Phone support:

One can directly get in touch with the phone support team to get instant solutions to their problems.

–  Live Chat Support:

The team is quite responsive and quick to respond to all queries. However, one has to fill out the form to share their concern, store URL, and store PIN to get instant assistance.

–  Email support:

One can also share a detailed email to the team related to the product or billing problems

BigCommerce: Alternatives

No doubt, BigCommerce offers almost everything that helps to build an exciting, productive, and feature-loaded online store. However, one can deny the fact that there are many of it’s competitors in the market with a better learning programs and user-friendly features.

Some of it’s major competitors are:

– Shopify:

If you really want a seamless and user-friendly platform to build an online store then Shopify should be your preference.

– Magento:

Choose Magento if you want keen to apply your coding skills in order to create an online store.

–  Pinnacle Cart:

If you are totally new to the world of eCommerce stores then it’s better to pick Pinnacle Cart to learn and start from scratch.

–  WooCommerce:

If you have multiple products to sell online then WooCommerce is meant for you.

Who Should Use BigCommerce?

Although BigCommerce is meant for almost every aspiring store owner ranging from small to medium to big businesses it’s a boon for the people who want:

• Powerful features, tools, and functionalities to scale their business like anything.
• To start a B2B enterprise-level business as it offers a lot of B2B features and functionalities?

However, if you are a starter and want to get the hang of the e-commerce business then you can start with it’s basic Standard Plan.

BigCommerce Security: How Secure Is It?

It is one of the safest platforms in the world with Level 1 PCI compliance and offers a scope to install SSL certificates for an extra layer of security. Store owners can easily import or buy a new SSL certificate.

Also, the platform offers complete backup so that one doesn’t lose any important data due to malware attacks. The latest security updates are also assured around the clock.

Final Verdict

BigCommerce ticks most of the boxes and offers complete value for money to store owners. In fact, it is one of the best online store builders in the market today. However, it’s highly recommended for large and rising businesses because it offers a lot of amazing features to help them scale their business like never before. And, to newcomers who just want to create their debut online store.

The pricing, customer support, and features are simply amazing. However, when it comes to user-friendliness then the process of creating a store is quite time-consuming. With a 15-day free trial, the platform gives enough freedom to try it out before taking any paid plan.

FAQs

Does BigCommerce Charge Any Transaction fees?

No, it doesn’t. However, it offers 3rd party payment gateway that does charge credit card fees.

Does it allow customization?

Yes, one can easily customize an online store. It offers 12 free templates along with over 100 more paid templates ranging from $150 to $400.

How is it different from Shopify?

Both are quite similar in nature. However, Shopify offers great reach through it’s multilingual selling options and user-friendly interface.

What famous brands use BigCommerce

There are many popular brands that use BigCommerce such as La Perla, Superdry Australia, Skullcandy, etc.

Does BigCommerce take some percentage from sales?

No, it doesn’t ask for any percentage of your sale. However, one has to pay a standard processing fee of 2.9% along with $.30 while paying from a credit or debit card.