Are you struggling to pick between BigCommerce vs WooCommerce vs Shopify to get your e-commerce business started?
Well, all three are powerful platforms that let you set up your online store without any complexities. All three of them are well-known e-commerce platforms famous for their flexibility and excellent features, so picking one is challenging.
To avoid wasting your time and give you an ultimate solution, we’ve produced an extended comparison between the three top e-commerce platforms based on some crucial parameters such as ease of use, functionality, pricing, support, designing options, and more.
We have laid out all the differences between Shopify vs. WooCommerce vs. BigCommerce so that you have a clear idea of which platform is the best for you.
By the end of this post, we’ve also added our recommendations so you can get started and build your store right away!
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Now that you know what we will cover in this WooCommerce vs. Shopify vs. BigCommerce article, let’s dig into the details and find the right platform for your store.
BigCommerce vs Shopify vs WooCommerce: The Key Takeaway
Before we dive into our in-depth review of BigCommerce versus Shopify versus WooCommerce, let’s go through a brief overview of each platform.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a well-known e-commerce platform that provides maximum ease of use to various users worldwide to build their online stores. Ever since its launch, it has over a whopping one million users in over 65 plus countries worldwide.
The platform comes with all the essential features necessary to create your online store. You can easily add products, accept payments, and market your store using its SEO features.
BigCommere offers a free trial, as well as easy to use paid options to suit your needs.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a robust WordPress plugin that comes with excellent features that allow you to create your online store quickly.
WooCommerce stands out from other plugins because you can set up your store without any significant investment. It works with many WooCommerce plugins and WooCommerce themes, and you can get started immediately.
It’s so easy to use, anyone can do it. You can add and manage your products right from your WordPress dashboard. With millions of satisfied users globally, WooCommerce is our top-recommended WordPress plugin.
Related Reading: Best Multipurpose WooCommerce Themes
Shopify
With more than one million users globally, Shopify has emerged as one of the leading e-commerce platforms for small businesses. Unlike WooCommerce, Shopify provides its users with pre-made plans.
With excellent built-in features, you do not have to worry about adding each feature separately. It is a solid plugin with advanced features to ensure that your site runs smoothly and maintains its flexibility.
All you have to do is pick the plan that suits your needs, and you are all set to create the best online store on the internet.
The Key Features Comparison
We have short-listed what we think are the best features of BigCommerce vs. Shopify vs. WooCommerce.
BigCommerce
- The stores you create through BigCommerce are SEO-friendly and mobile-responsive, which means your users can enjoy your site across devices.
- BigCommerce offers excellent in-built marketing features to brand your online store.
- The platform also offers integrations with various popular marketing, accounting, and managing systems to enhance your site’s flexibility.
- You can study your audience in-depth using the customer database feature. The customer database comes with all the necessary information about your clients.
- The BigCommerce interface is exceptionally user-friendly. It comes with a drag and drop builder, which lets you set up your store with ease.
WooCommerce
- WooCommerce WordPress plugin comes with various popular payment gateways to provide your store with easy to use payment methods, including PayPal, Stripe, Cash on delivery, and more.
- WooCommerce was built as a WordPress plugin, which means all you have to do is install it, and it will automatically appear in your WP admin area.
- WooCommerce comes with reviews and rating features. So your users can rate and review your products on your site.
- The plugin provides carefully examined reports filtered by categories such as coupons by date, sales by date, category, products, and so on.
- The WooCommerce WordPress plugin is powerful and provides limitless customization. You can build a store with precision, just the way you want.
Related Reading: How to Install and Setup a WooCommerce Plugin
Shopify
- Shopify lets you create your dream store with the utmost flexibility and comes with over 100 professional-looking and beautiful themes.
- Shopify lets you create stores that are SEO and marketing optimized, so you can have a store that ranks well on the internet and continues to attract a broad audience.
- No matter which plans you pick, Shopify offers unlimited bandwidth on all its plans. While others charge you for additional bandwidth, Shopify does not.
- Shopify offers excellent customer support through 24/7 live chat and phone lines. It also comes with an extensive documentation section to help you solve any issues.
- Shopify allows you to hook up your domain name and lets you edit CSS and HTML directly through its dashboard.
Ease of Use & Getting Started
Even the most experienced users look for the platform that provides the maximum ease of use when getting started so they can spend less time managing the site and more time focused on growth.
With that, let’s look at the ease of use of BigCommerce vs. Shopify vs. WooCommerce.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a powerful e-commerce platform, but with a power comes a slight learning curve. You may encounter technical language when creating a store through BigCommerce.
However, since it does most of the work for you, most people should be able to figure it out. We think it could be challenging for a beginner and pretty simple for an experienced user or developer.
The BigCommerce interface is clean and intuitive. You can manage and run your store quickly. It comes with a drag and drop builder for set up, and a setup guide. So you can follow along step by step when get started.
Once you’ve build your store, managing your store is no big deal. With its excellent features and integrations, you can manage and track your site from the admin area.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is pretty straightforward once you get started. All you have to do is install the plugin, and then you can manage everything from your WordPress dashboard.
What’s more, WooCommerce gives you the flexibility to get started with dedicated WooCommerce hosting. From there, you can customize your store, see your daily reports, test and make changes, and more.
However, you must be familiar with using the WordPress dashboard, and have a little technical knowledge if you choose to go with Woocommerce.
You’ll end up doing most of the work yourself, with the trade-off is that you can customize your store exactly the way you want.
The plugin comes with a Setup Wizard that guides you through all the steps. The wizard helps you create pages, set up payment options, choose shipping options, etc.
Additionally, the plugin works smoothly and comes with a clear interface, along with an excellent support community and tutorials for a quick setup process.
Related Reading: How to Setup WooCommerce Properly
Shopify
Undoubtedly, getting started with Shopify is not rocket science. To create your store with Shopify, all you have to do is select the right plan, select the theme you want, and you’re ready to set up your store.
Shopify gives you all the instructions for getting started as soon as you begin the setup process. From there you can add products, descriptions, and details, and there you have your store.
You do not need any previous experience or coding background to get started. Shopify comes with one of the most user-friendly yet intuitive dashboards. The dashboard comes with a clean and modern interface.
You will be able to see all the daily tasks, recent activities, and the next steps for your store. You will easily navigate options on the sidebar to help you reach various parts of your site and give you an in-depth look at your store.
From reports to sales information and your product details, you can access everything from your Shopify dashboard.
Designing and Customization Flexibility
Design is an important element of any online store or website. Although your store’ss primary goal remains to sell products, design plays a crucial role in increasing your sales.
If your store lacks curb appeal and doesn’t look good, users will automatically be turned off and shop somewhere else.
On the other hand, if your site has an eye-catching look, users will stay longer and end up buying something they like. Let’s look at the designing capabilities of Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce offers excellent free templates that can be used to create eye-catching store designs. Additionally, it comes with over 100s of paid templates for better designing options.
You can customize these templates further as per your requirements. The templates can be sorted by price range and niche, so you know what you are getting before paying for these themes.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce WordPress plugin leaves BigCommerce and Shopify behind when it comes to designing and customization. You can customize your themes with ease and even create your own theme if you have the right coding skills.
If you are a beginner, you can use the few free themes available. You can also pay for and gain access to all the premium themes with attractive designs. Even still, you can opt for third-party designs to get a better option for your store.
Furthermore, you can use the built-in WordPress customizer to customize various areas of your store. Another benefit of WooCommerce is that if you use a strong hosting provider, you can use specialized fully-responsive designs for your store.
Shopify
Shopify comes with excellent designing options, including access to ten free themes and over fifty paid themes. The themes are attractive and come with exceptional designs that attract customers.
These themes are mobile-responsive, and you can edit and customize using the drag and drop builder or HTML or CSS directly.
If you opt for templates, you can have even better designs, but that comes at the cost of reformatting your entire site.
Integrations & Plugins Supported
Integrations are crucial to making your store function with maximum flexibility. Plugins and add-ons enhance the functionality of your store.
From affiliate marketing to live chat for your customers, you can add everything to your store with plugins and add-ons. Let’s look at the integrations and plugins that Shopify and WooCommerce, and BigCommerce support.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce offers a massive app store that is home to hundreds of free and paid plugins, where you can manually search for the plugins you require.
With all the popular integrations, you will find various add-ons available for your e-commerce store. The collection of the plugins is less when compared to Shopify, but as long as you see the plugin you want, you are good to go.
WooCommerce
Since WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, it’s already designed to add all the e-commerce features to your WordPress store.
WooCommerce offers thousands of plugins and extensions that you can add to your store to enhance its functionality. Woocommerce boasts an impressive number beating BigCommerce and Shopify.
Shopify
Shopify App store offers over 500 plugins made by in-house developers and third-parties. In the Shopify marketplace, you will find plugins from social media integration, tracking orders, and currency converter.
You can easily search for the plugin you need and install it on your store. Some of the plugins are free an some are paid, so make sure to consider price while picking the plugins that suit your needs.
What Are the Payments Options Available?
If you own an e-commerce site, you’re accepting payments. But if you’re not using an easy and popular payment gateway, you might end up in trouble.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce does not disappoint when it comes to payment options. You get access to various popular payment methods like ApplePay, PayPal, Stripe, and more. It also supports other payment gateways as well, but less when compared to WooCommerce.
Since you’re likely not going to use all the 100 payment gateways, selecting a popular payment gateway that BigCommerce supports will work just fine.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce comes with PayPal and Stripe as its default payment gateway. However, you can add more than 100+ payment methods through add-ons and extensions without imposing any transaction fees.
WooCommerce also supports various rare payment methods, so that you can accept payments globally.
Shopify
Shopify also supports various popular payment gateways, including PayPal, ApplePay, Stripe, Autherize.net, and more.
Like WooCommerce, it gives you the option to choose multiple payment methods and it supports various payment gateways, for a smooth transaction.
Shopify does charge transaction fees on all payment gateways except the Shopify Payments, an important factor to take in to consideration before choosing a platform.
Support & Documentation
No matter which e commerce platform you pick, you should ensure it comes with plenty of support and documentation. It’d nice to know the platform is there anytime you need help.
Even if the CMS comes with an easy to use interface, there are always situations where you get stuck and need support. Let’s look at the support and documentation of all three platforms.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce comes with an in-depth knowledgebase of essential articles and in-depth guides to solve various issues quickly.
Additionally, you can ask your questions within the community and get help from the technical or experienced users of BigCommerce.
On BigCommerce’s homepage, you will get the contact information for customer service that will help you to pick the right solution and guide you through the various obstacles.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce takes support seriously. They have thier own in-house team that assist whenever you need help through the ticketing system.
It also comes with an extensive library of guides and blogs that help you solve all the common issues and provide various helpful tutorials.
The WooCommerce community is massive which makes it easy to get help from experienced WooCommerce users, and even have meetups take place to provide more knowledge of WooCommerce.
Shopify
Shopify comes with 24/7 customer support through live chat and phone. You can also contact the customer support team through an email address.
One of the major reasons why we love Shopify is their excellent customer support. You can also find various guides and tutorials about Shopify related questions in their help center.
The Pricing Battle
We’ve finally made it to the all important price. How much are you willing to invest in an e-commerce platform?
BigCommerce
BigCommerce has a clear pricing structure. It comes with a 15 days free trial before you upgrade to their premium plans starting at $29 per month and up to $249 per month, just pick the plan that suits your needs.
All the plan come with no transaction fees and unlimited bandwidth. Of couse, the premium plan comes with additional features and perks.
WooCommerce
Unlike BigCommerce and Shopify, WooCommerce does not charge you anything. This means the plugin is free to install and is open source.
However, you will have to pay for additional services like hosting providers and security certificates (SSL). You can save money by choosing the right hosting provider.
There are plenty of hosting providers that provide dedicated WooCommerce hosting solutions. If you want a reliable hosting provider we recommend Bluehost or SiteGround, to name a few.
Shopify
Shopify comes with a transparent pricing structure. You can get started with the Shopify 14 days free trial, and once the trial period is over, you will have to upgrade to the plans starting at $29 per month.
All the plans let you sell unlimited products and excellent features. The highest-paid plan comes with advanced features such as lower credit card rates and more.
Which One Should You Pick?
Pick BigCommerce if:
- You are okay with complicated setups and have technical knowledge.
- You want great marketing tools.
- You want to scale your business.
Pick WooCommerce if:
- You want unlimited customization options and like an open-source plugin.
- You can set up your e-commerce store on your own.
- You want plenty of integrations and plugins.
Pick Shopify if:
- You want the simplest ways to set up your eCommerce store.
- You are okay with the transaction fees.
- You need excellent sales tools.
Final Thoughts: BigCommerce vs Shopify vs WooCommerce
And that ends our comparison between BigCommerce vs. Shopify vs. WooCommerce. All three platforms have their pros and cons.
And all three can help you set up your ecommerce business or store quickly. Now, it all comes down wo what works best for you.
We recommend going with WooCommerce if you need an open-source plugin with excellent integrations that allows you to do it yourself.
If you want the most simple solution and you’re ok with paying transaction fees Shopifiy is probably your best bet. Either way, we’re sure that after you analyze your needs you’ll be able to pick the platform that fits perfectly for your store.
We hope our comparison helped you understand the differences between BigCommerce vs. WooCommerce vs. Shopify. If you have any questions, you can drop them below in the comment section.
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