WooCommerce and BigCommerce are two of the most popular e-commerce platforms available in the market today. Each has its own pros and cons. In this article, we’ll compare BigCommerce and WooCommerce so you can pick the best platform.
Review – WooCommerce vs BigCommerce
According to statistics from BuiltWith, WooCommerce is the most popular platform, covering 21% of the total e-commerce market. In the same report, BigCommerce was named the fifth most popular platform. It is used by 3% of commercial resources.
If you compare the search terms “BigCommerce” and “WooCommerce” on Google Trends, you see a similar rise in popularity for both platforms.
What is BigCommerce?
The downside to using BigCommerce is the lack of customization options. On the platform, you will be limited to the tools available within BigCommerce.
BigCommerce for WordPress
What is WooCommerce?
Ease of Use – BigCommerce vs WooCommerce
Let’s compare BigCommerce and WooCommerce to see which platform is easier to use.
BigCommerce Ease of Use
Setting up an online store built with BigCommerce takes a few minutes. You will get access to a dashboard with tools for adding products and other options.
If you need to change the design of an online store, then change the theme or customize the current one. After that, you can add products.
If you’re starting a new business, BigCommerce will provide a subdomain for free. It looks something like this: https://mystore.mybigcommerce.com.
BigCommerce for WordPress
You will be able to use the BigCommerce platform functionality to manage your sales, and WordPress to manage the site’s content.
Ease of use WooCommerce
WooCommerce
After the WooCommerce plugin is installed, the setup wizard will launch. It will help you quickly set up the shopping functionality of an online store: pages, payments, currency, shipping, taxes and much more.
After that, you can add products to your online store. But in the future, you will have to do additional work to launch a commercial resource.
You can change the theme to improve the design. And also use WooCommerce plugins to expand the capabilities of your online store. You also need to take care of the security, backup, caching and performance of the site yourself.
Working with WooCommerce requires additional training. Hence BigCommerce is easier to use.
Winner: BigCommerce
Let’s compare the cost of WooCommerce and BigCommerce.
What’s the true cost of BigCommerce?
The basic plan costs $ 29.95 per month. It includes everything you need to run an online store on a BigCommerce subdomain. You can buy your own domain name from BigCommerce for about $ 12 per year or any other registrar.
All tariff plans include no restrictions on the number of products, stored files, the number of accounts, etc. But BigCommerce does have thresholds for total sales. For example, for the “Standard” tariff plan it is $ 50,000 per year.
If you sell a lot of items, BigCommerce will automatically upgrade to a higher priced plan. Plus, paid BigCommerce themes cost at least $ 170.
Cost of using WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an open-source WordPress plugin that you can download and use for free on unlimited sites. But in addition, you need a domain name, hosting, and SSL certificate. A domain costs $ 14.99 per year, hosting is about $ 7.99 per month, and an SSL certificate is about $ 69.99 per year.
When using paid themes or extensions for WooCommerce, your costs will increase. Luckily, there are tons of free WooCommerce plugins and themes out there.
All in all, WooCommerce is a more cost-effective solution than BigCommerce.
Winner: WooCommerce
Payment Options: BigCommerce vs WooCommerce
An online store requires a platform that supports the maximum number of payment gateways.
Accepting payments in BigCommerce
This platform has built-in integration with the most popular payment gateways: Braintree, Square, Adyen, Stripe, Authorize.net, and CyberSource.
At the same time, the commission for accepting payments from bank cards is 2.9% plus $ 0.30 from each transaction. But it decreases as the volume of sales in the online store grows.
In addition, this platform has built-in integration with popular e-wallets, including PayPal, Amazon Pay, Masterpass, and Apple Pay.
Payment options in WooCommerce
WooCommerce supports PayPal and Stripe payments by default. As well as all major payment gateways through extensions and add-ons.
WooCommerce is an open-source project. Therefore, many regional and less popular payment services have also implemented solutions to integrate with this platform.
Winner: Draw
Integrations and add-ons: BigCommerce vs WooCommerce
The most requested integrations for e-commerce sites are email marketing, customer generation and analytics tools. What tools BigCommerce and WooCommerce can offer for this.
Extensions and integrations for BigCommerce
BigCommerce comes with hundreds of third-party apps and integrations to help you add powerful features to your store. Both free and paid add-ons are available for the platform.
BigCommerce has several collections of featured apps that can be categorized as must-haves. There are also dozens of apps available from categories such as accounting and tax, analytics and reporting, CRM and customer service, product finder, and more.
Extensions and integrations for WooCommerce
There are over 55,000 free and paid WordPress plugins available for WooCommerce. You can find them on WordPress.org and the WooCommerce official site.
Most of the popular third-party services have created their own add-ons to integrate with an online store powered by WooCommerce.
Winner: WooCommerce
Scalability: WooCommerce vs BigCommerce
Let’s evaluate how scalable the WooCommerce and BigCommerce platforms are.
Scalability in BigCommerce
Because BigCommerce is a complete hosting solution. As your business grows, you will have to change your pricing plan and BigCommerce will take care of the rest.
Scalable on WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a self-hosting platform that puts you fully in charge of hosting, managing resources, backups, updates, and site security.
However, BigCommerce is the best choice for companies looking for simpler solutions.
Winner: BigCommerce
Support
It is another important factor to consider when choosing an e-commerce platform.
Support options in BigCommerce
In BigCommerce, you have access to multiple support channels directly from your dashboard: phone, email, chat. Plus community support and more.
BigCommerce Support is available 24/7. The platform’s help center includes a rich knowledge base that will help you use its functionality correctly.
Support options in WooCommerce
For questions related to working with the WooCommerce plugin, you can refer to the WooCommerce forum thread at WordPress.org or the plugin’s official website. It has a help section providing extensive documentation, tutorials, and guides.
You can also find many WooCommerce tutorials on various WordPress blogs.
Winner: BigCommerce
Conclusion: BigCommerce vs. WooCommerce. Which platform is the best?
BigCommerce and WooCommerce are powerful platforms that you can use to launch an online store. But which one should you choose?
The BigCommerce platform is much easier because it is a complete solution. There is nothing to configure in it, and you can quickly get started.
The downside to BigCommerce is the limited control over the online store. It has tariff plans, a limited number of themes and applications for integration are available, as well as strictly defined ways to expand your business.
WooCommerce is a platform that gives you complete control over your store. And you can open a WooCommerce-based online store with much less investment (compared to BigCommerce).
The downside to using WooCommerce is the experience and scalability issues that you will face as your business grows.
We hope this article helped you understand the pros and cons of BigCommerce and WooCommerce.
