Choosing the right e-commerce platform that will cover all your needs is the biggest challenge . There are several popular options available, and two of those are WooCommerce and BigCommerce. BigCommerce will give you the tools to build your online store out of the box, while a WooCommerce store will have to be built on top of your WordPress website and customized using 3rd party plugins and extensions to maximize its functionality.
If you’ve never had an online store before, the debate between these two is often a confusing one for business owners. Your time is valuable so you don’t want to spend your time (and money) building a store with one of them, and then later on realize that you need to switch to the other solution.
Here, we will discuss them side by side and show you their key differences so you can make a more informed decision for your business. we’ll lay out the important differences and which e-commerce solution you should pick based on your individual needs.
WOOCOMMERCE – A BRIEF OVERVIEW
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that is used by millions of users around the globe to build their online stores. It is free, easy to use, safe, powerful, and highly customizable with numerous feature extensions in the form of plugins and add-ons. You have the flexibility to scale as your business grows in size. It’s freely downloadable and open source. So, choosing it is a sensible financial decision at the teething stages of your business.
BIGCOMMERCE – A BRIEF OVERVIEW
BigCommerce is an eCommerce platform that helps entrepreneurs to create and begin their online business.
You can easily create an online store using this platform. All this is because of its in-built features that are very beneficial for large businesses. Some of the big brands like Kodak, Toyota, etc. have used BigCommerce.
WOOCOMMERCE VS BIGCOMMERCE – DESIGN
Having a clean, professional, and inviting online store is the most important first step and the perfect way of welcoming your new customers so you have the best chance of making a sale. Even if you have great products displayed in your store, no one will buy them if your store is not looking good. Leaving a good first impression is very important!
WOOCOMMERCE DESIGN
Choose from around 52 themes in the WooCommerce library. A handful of them are free, but you can expect to pay at least $39 for the premium options.
Themes are of high quality, with more customization options than Bigcommerce. However, they aren’t as easy to use, since you must customize them yourself by going through the WordPress dashboard or implementing your own code.
The plugin is open source, so thousands of other themes are available across the internet. In short, the amount of themes is much greater, but you may need some development experience.
BIGCOMMERCE DESIGN
With BigCommerce, you have a selection of both free and paid themes. They offer about 16 free themes, but usually, most users go for a paid theme eventually. There are 42 paid themes available, and the prices for them range from around $120 to $250, but you also have the option to get one designed for you for substantially more money.
They try to make it as easy as possible for a user to perform simple everyday tasks like adding products, but at the same time, they make it a slightly more cumbersome process because they expose some additional options to users who want to deal with some finer details of product customization.
Overall, the choice of themes might be heavy on the WooCommerce side, but in terms of quality, the themes on BigCommerce are not lagging behind.
WINNER <> BIGCOMMERCE
WOOCOMMERCE VS BIGCOMMERCE – PRICING & FEES
Everyone is sensitive to pricing and wants to save as much as possible. However, when making decisions that will grow your business, you need to steer away from making the decision purely based on price per month. You need to pick the solution that will give you the visibility and conversions you need over your competitors while also being able to save you time, but also money in the long run. Luckily, as you’re going to see below, WooCommerce delivers on all fronts, saving you time and money, while also being the high-end choice.
WOOCOMMERCE PRICING
Free
No fees are incurred when you download WooCommerce, since it’s a WordPress plugin that is completely free of charge.
With the download you receive an open source tool with support from people all over the world, along with features like mobile responsiveness, five pre-installed payment gateways (with the option to include more,) integration tools for compatible WordPress themes, default currency controls, automatic taxes, geo-location support, unlimited products, shipping calculations and customer relationship management tools such as customer accounts and product variables.
WooCommerce stands alone as a WordPress plugin, while Bigcommerce is a commercial package, where you pay a monthly fee for a pre-built site.
BIGCOMMERCE PRICING
BigCommerce has three fixed monthly pricing plans to choose from:
– The Standard Plan: at $29.95 per month, it includes hundreds of built-in features like unlimited storage, bandwidth, and sales. You can upload an unlimited amount of products, accept payments through credit cards and PayPal, use coupons, and other great features. In this plan, BigCommerce has transaction fees that you need to pay for each sale.
– The Plus Plan: this is the most popular plan and it will cost you $79.95 per month. When you choose this plan, you won’t have any transaction fees. All of the features from the standard plan are included as well. You can also post listings on eBay, and the checkout is actually hosted on your website which is not the case in the standard plan.
– The Pro Plan: this plan will set you back $249.95 per month, it includes everything above, plus fraud monitoring, high volume security, and product filtering.
Custom Pricing for Enterprise Plan
Receive support for unlimited products, along with zero transaction fees. Everything from the previous plans is provided, and you get integration with Google trusted stores, site wide HTTPS, priority support and a dedicated account manager on your team.
All plans offer responsive designs, 24/7 support, coupon codes, discounting, a 15 day trial, unlimited products, reporting, credit card and PayPal support and time-limited promotions. Keep in mind that you save about 10% when opting for a yearly plan.
WINNER <> WOOCOMMERCE
WOOCOMMERCE VS BIGCOMMERCE – EASE OF USE
Choosing an easy to use platform has many benefits. For example, you can quickly make changes or fix issues, so you have plenty of time to spend on growing your business.
Let’s compare BigCommerce vs WooCommerce to see which is easier to use.
WooCommerce – Ease of Use
If you have experience with WordPress, then managing the backend will be easy for you. The WooCommerce settings are placed in the left sidebar of the WordPress under a WooCommerce tab and there you can find your products, orders, blogs, settings, reports, etc.
You can change a theme to improve design and use WooCommerce plugins and extensions to add more eCommerce features.
Also, you need to take care of the security, backups, caching, and performance aspects yourself.
BigCommerce – Ease of Use
BigCommerce is ready to use pretty much out of the box. This is definitely a good thing, but you also have to keep in mind that most online stores are different and require a certain level of customization to fit their needs.
The dashboard is clean, with tours and videos to get you started. Tools are well organized and it is easy to move around. You can find all tools and settings in tabs to the left, providing options for marketing, products, customers, and analytics. In the dashboard, you’ll also find a list of steps that you should take when setting up your store.
It is very easy to add products and the interface is intuitive and it’s very clear what and where you need to enter.
WINNER <> WOOCOMMERCE
Support: BigCommerce vs WooCommerce
Support is another critical factor you need to check out while selecting your eCommerce platform. You need instant and quality support.
Let’s see how you can get support on BigCommerce and WooCommerce platforms.
WooCommerce – Support
When you have WooCommerce, you will not only have the WooCommerce community available, but also the entire huge WordPress community that can help you with any problem that you may have. They have extensive documentation available and also a ticket system where you can submit your questions. Their documentation is very good and you’re very likely to find an answer to your problem there.
Plugin developers are always available to contact and usually get back to you in 1-2 days. This makes a multifunctional site very easy to manage, no matter what sort of errors you run into.
BIGCommerce – Support
BigCommerce offers 24/7 support via email, phone, and live chat that WooCommerce doesn’t provide. They also provide guides, forums, and support tickets like WooCommerce does. They’ve moved to 24/7 support after a while because it was the feature that most of their users requested. It was also because there’s a lot of people who work in their stores during the night time as well, so it made sense to offer support outside normal business hours.
WINNER <> BIGCOMMERCE
WRAPPING UP
WooCommerce is highly recommended for people who are familiar with WordPress and are slightly more technically competent. WooCommerce is perfect if you are building a large store that expects a lot of traffic as the platform is very scalable.
It is a self-hosted platform that gives you full control over your website. Users are free to compare pricing for different services and start with the best-priced plan. The disadvantage here is that WooCommerce requires some learning curves for beginners, and there will be some scalability challenges that users face as their store grows.
BigCommerce is for those who want to quickly build an online store. It is easy to use, well-designed, and has all the features you need to be successful and grow. The platform also manages everything for you, from backups, security, and scalability. BigCommerce is a great idea for beginners with little to no coding experience.
After this article, we hope to give you an overview of what these platforms offer when comparing with one another. Please feel free to Contact us if you have any further questions!
