Shopify Plus vs. BigCommerce Enterprise – Which Platform is Right for You?
When it comes to online store creators, there is stiff competition in the market. Shopify and BigCommerce and two big names in the eCommerce industry that power several online stores out there.
To cater to even bigger online stores, both solutions come with dedicated enterprise plans. Therefore, in this post, I will perform an in-depth Shopify Plus vs. BigCommerce Enterprise comparison to help you pick an ideal platform to level up your store.
What Is Shopify Plus: The Basics
Before we draw a detailed Shopify Plus vs. BigCommerce Enterprise comparison, let’s cover some basics. Ideally, Shopify Plus is the enterprise-level plan of the platform that is mostly used by large-scale online store managers.
With Shopify Plus, you can have more than 10K checkouts per minute and sell your products across 20 different platforms. You will get access to more than 5 thousand different apps and dedicated 24/7 support. It also provides premium features like customization of back-end coding, extensive analytics, custom checkouts, and tons of automation tools.
- Extensive customization and flexibility support
- Access to various inbuilt tools and third-party APIs
- Extremely easy to use
- Secure and reliable (backed by SSL-level protection)
- Can be tough to integrate third-party APIs at times
- Its payment gateway is not supported in every nation
- It can be tedious to migrate your Shopify store elsewhere
What Is BigCommerce Enterprise: The Basics
Just like Shopify, BigCommerce also offers dedicated services to its premium clients via its Enterprise solution. In nutshell, BigCommerce Enterprise is mostly used as a SaaS solution by high-volume brands.
It supports dedicated integration with its native and third-party APIs. Also, BigCommerce boasts an uptime of 99.99% which can be a gamechanger for big store owners. You will get access to features like real-time discounts, fully customizable checkouts, and in-depth analytics.
- Seamless integration with tons of third-party APIs
- Customizing of back-end processing via coding is supported
- Extremely secure with inbuilt SEO features
- Can be tough to understand as it needs to be more user friendly
- Development costs can get a bit expensive
- The theme editor is a bit outdated and difficult to use
Shopify Plus vs. BigCommerce Enterprise: Detailed Comparison
Now when we have covered the basics, let’s perform a detailed Shopify Plus vs. BigCommerce Enterprise comparison.
Pricing
Let’s be honest, this is one of the most important factors that we consider while picking any eCommerce solution. Shopify Plus has transparent pricing of $2,000 per month, but it can be higher if your store has a higher volume. Apart from that, there is also a credit card fee of 2.15% + $0.3 for each transaction and 1% extra for American Express. The additional development cost can range up to $180.
On the other hand, BigCommerce’s pricing can range from $1,000 to $15,000 per month. The credit card fee in BigCommerce is 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction while the development cost can be up to $250, which is higher than Shopify. Overall, the exact pricing would depend on the kind of services you are taking from these platforms.
Multi-store Management
If you are dealing in large volume, then you might wish to manage multiple stores simultaneously. Shopify Plus provides a dedicated “Expansion Store” feature that would let you add 9 more strong fronts and manage them from one dashboard. Apart from that, you can manage 20 different warehouses and can also use its inbuilt currency conversion feature for payments across different channels.
BigCommerce has an excellent Stencil Framework feature that would allow you to have localized content for different stores. Apart from multiple store management, you can also enjoy multi-currency payments via 250 local methods. You can also provide international shipping by integrating with numerous shipping fulfillment services.
SEO & Marketing
Our Shopify Plus vs. BigCommerce Enterprise comparison would be incomplete without weighing their marketing features.
Shopify Plus has made it extremely easy for us to share products on social platforms like Facebook and Instagram. There are also tons of SEO-related features that you can access like customizable URLs, creating sub-directories, automatic sitemaps, and so on. Most of these features are super-easy to use and won’t need prior experience. You can also integrate several SEO apps (like SEO Yoast) to your Shopify dashboard to get added assistance.
While BigCommerce also has SEO and marketing features, they are a bit restricted compared to the seamless power of Shopify. You can perform hreflang implementation, structured data, and URL customization via BigCommerce as well. There are also additional features to sell your products directly on social media and make data-driven decisions with its analytics.
Merchandizing
Merchandizing can play a crucial role in the success of your store. Thankfully, when we compare Shopify Plus vs. BigCommerce Enterprise, we find powerful merchandizing features in both platforms.
Shopify Plus gives us the freedom to map up to 100 variants for a single product. To create a personalized experience for your shoppers, you can use its Script Editor feature. You can configure products into different types and even sell gift cards for your store. Users can also filter and sort products in the store based on different options.
BigCommerce also has tons of merchandizing features with support of up to 600 variants. Overall, BigCommerce has a slight edge over Shopify in this with better options to configure different types of products (including downloadable services). You can allow customers to filter products based on numerous parameters and even let them link their existing accounts.
Support
Shopify Plus markets itself not just as a platform, but as a partner instead. All Shopify Plus users are aligned with a dedicated Merchant Success Manager to provide one-on-one assistance. You can access Shopify support via multiple channels to resolve your queries and discuss business partnerships and strategies.
BigCommerce Enterprise also provides dedicated support to its users. You will be aligned with a Senior Technical Support agent to resolve all kinds of technical queries related to your store. Apart from that, BigCommerce also provides additional support to migrate your services from other platforms.
Other Features
Before we conclude our Shopify Plus vs. BigCommerce Enterprise comparison, let’s quickly discuss some other leading features offered by these giant platforms.
With Shopify Plus, you can access a unique Website Wholesale feature that will let you implement B2B services in your store. You can even come up with your own Shopify store with customized themes for selective customers. Shopify has one of the most extensive app stores out there, with 6000+ apps listed in dedicated categories like marketing, store management, checkout, store design, conversion, order fulfillment, and so on.
BigCommerce has a unique customer-specific pricing option to get personalized results. There are tons of advanced quick order fulfillment features and customer segmentation outputs. You can integrate several checkout APIs to provide a smoother checkout experience to your customers as well. Presently, you can access 600+ apps in the BigCommerce Store, but they are far less compared to Shopify.
Verdict
From our Shopify Plus vs. BigCommerce Enterprise comparison, you can see that both platforms are extremely powerful. If you are a fan of simple and clean interfaces and would like to access tons of third-party services, then Shopify Plus would be a clear winner. On the other hand, you can choose BigCommerce Enterprise to have more control over your store and to manage a huge inventory in one place.
Empower Your Dropshipping Store with DSers
While Shopify and BigCommerce can help you with the front-end management of your online store, you need to have a strong backbone to get profitable results. For this, you can simply take the assistance of DSers, which is the official AliExpress dropshipping solution.
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- DSers offers free and premium plans to manage small and large-scale online stores on platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and Wix.
- You can explore an extensive range of products from thousands of trusted suppliers in one place via DSers.
- The platform also offers a smart feature of Supplier Optimizer to handpick the best supplier for any product in seconds.
- With its advanced features like automatic updating of order statuses or syncing of tracking numbers, you can keep your customers informed about their orders.
- Some other resourceful features in DSers are bundled products, bulk purchasing, variant mapping, multiple store management, product division, and more.
Final Words
I’m sure this Shopify Plus vs. BigCommerce Enterprise comparison must have helped you clear your doubts regarding these dedicated platforms. Just make sure you consider the pros and cons of these platforms to make sure the preferred option matches your overall requirements.
Besides that, you can also take the assistance of DSers to find the perfect products to sell in your store and manage everything like a pro without any added hassle.