WooCommerce vs. BigCommerce: Best Tool to Choose for Your Online Store
Over the last few years, eCommerce platforms became a vital feature for businesses due to rapid changes in consumer preferences.
With the unavoidable rise of digitalization, consumers around the globe now shop online more than ever. We even see eCommerce sites taking the throne of traditional retailing. According to the statistics given by online research, 95% of purchases will be made online by 2040. As such, different eCommerce systems and technologies are involved in our lives day by day from companies and entrepreneurs.
Almost every business has learned how to sell more in their physical stores through years of experience. In the case of online stores, it is important to determine which eCommerce platform to use in websites rather than experience.
The platform should be easy to use so you can quickly resolve issues, budget-friendly if you are starting with a limited budget and have the ability to carry out all the retail transactions.
Creating a functional, user-friendly online store frontend that is suitable for consumers’ preferences could be demanding, costly and time-consuming. In such cases, businesses turn towards the method of setting up their eCommerce sites more affordably and easily. This is where Woocommerce and Bigcommerce come to the aid of businesses.
When it comes to deciding which platform is best to use for your online business, there are some criteria to choose from:
- Ease of Use
- Pricing
- Integrations
If we have made up the key criteria while choosing an eCommerce solution, then we can start digging into the most comprehensive WooCommerce vs. BigCommerce comparison guide!
WooCommerce vs. BigCommerce: Ease of Use
Choosing an easy-to-use platform has benefits such as making quick changes or fixing problems. So, you have plenty of time to grow your business. On top of that, if you are a non-technical user, you may want a solution that allows you to run your online store without hiring developers.
It’s easy to start and maintain an eCommerce store with BigCommerce. Since it is a fully hosted platform, you don’t need to set up hosting or install any additional software. You also don’t need to worry about security, backups, and performance issues as well as getting started. Enter your email, contact address, your store name and a few details about your store, and you are good to go.
All the settings and options can be found in the admin panel on the right. BigCommerce offers options to manage orders, quick options to preview, add products, customization, customers, marketing, analytics, apps and more.
WooCommerce is an eCommerce plugin so to work, you need to install it on your WordPress website. If you use a hosting service like Bluehost, WooCommerce is beginner-friendly to inaugurate with.
Escorted by its setup wizard, WooCommerce offers a quick setup for your online store and helps you build essential things like pages, payments, currency, shipping, taxes and more in minutes. However, to make your website more efficient, you need to set up all the technical aspects of your store, such as security, backups and caching.
Its infrastructure is constantly improving so it can easily be said that WooCommerce has a learning curve but a need to have any coding knowledge to use the admin panel.
WooCommerce Dashboard
WooCommerce vs. BigCommerce: Pricing
The cost of starting and maintaining your online store is an important factor to consider. So let’s compare WooCommerce vs. BigCommerce for their pricing.
Subscription-based eCommerce platform BigCommerce offers four different price plans which three of them are for small enterprises and one for big ventures. If you had to choose an Enterprise plan according to your business scale you had to get in touch with Bigcommerce directly.
All plans include unlimited bandwidth, file storage, personal staff accounts and no transaction fees. However, with the Standard plan, you won’t be getting cart abandonment features and customer segmentation which are crucial features to many businesses.
It’s also necessary to mention that the more you sell, the more you will be paying to BigCommerce as you need to upgrade your plan according to your online sales. For example, the most popular Plus plan allows you to sell up to $180k per year, exceeding this number will be an extra cost.
Before deciding which plan you should choose, you can try BigCommerce free for 15 days.
BigCommerce pricing plans
An open-source WordPress plugin, WooCommerce is free to download and use; however, it is a bit more complicated than BigCommerce as it needs other paid services to build an online store. You should pay for hosting, SSL certificate and the domain. Your hosting costs will escalate depending on your website performance and no transaction fees charged by WooCommerce like BigCommerce.
One thing worth considering about WooCommerce is that you can purchase the extensions as you need them and there are also tons of free, affordable, effective and helpful tools to help you grow and cut back on your budget.
WooCommerce vs. BigCommerce: Integrations
Integration is the most intense part of this WooCommerce vs. BigCommerce guide. No matter how effective an eCommerce platform is, the core software will always have a limited number of features. This is when integrations come in handy.
BigCommerce fuels your website with over 200 paid and free marketing tools that include content management, accounting, shipping, design, payment and email marketing tools.
It also provides the option of integrating BigCommerce with your WordPress site. This gives you the option to take care of your content with WordPress while running your store.
As we mentioned before, WooCommerce is not a built-in but an open-source WordPress plug-in, so it does not come with many tools but add-on plug-ins.
You can find these plugins on WordPress.org, WooCommerce websites, and other plugin websites. WooCommerce extension store offers more than 250 free and paid add-ons to enlarge and power your eCommerce store features.
All of the above integrations aside, WooCommerce overpowers BigCommerce by offering over 60 different payment extensions because it is important to have different payment options when selling varying customers.
How about the Customer Support & Help provided by eCommerce platforms?
BigCommerce provides 24/7 support via phone, e-mail and live chat. It also has a help center and a user forum in order to provide helpful user insights.
If you are moving forward with the enterprise plan, you will get your consultant and account manager to guide you through your problems.
On the other side, when you choose Bluehost as your web hosting provider with WooCommerce, you will have a free two-hour setup call with an expert. But don’t forget to note that your support options are dependent on your web hosting selection.
What are the best alternative eCommerce platforms?
On account of the competitive eCommerce industry and developing technology, you won’t be limited to BigCommerce and WooCommerce. Building an online company mainly relies on your eCommerce platform, it is best to know and keep your options open.
Like BigCommerce, Shopify is another top-of-the-range eCommerce website builder and works in a very similar way. This easily accessible, cloud-based SaaS tool can be reached from all devices and internet browsers in return for a monthly fee. With great sales features and over 2000 apps, you will get your money’s worth and run your business simply.
There is only one suitable eCommerce platform for you and at the end, which one you choose all comes to your business’ preferences and needs. When determining, you should keep in mind that the platform should provide you the necessary tools and flexibility to enlarge your business.
If you are a large business, both BigCommerce and WooCommerce have strong features and scalability to assist your business along the way. For a small-scale business, you might want to consider other eCommerce platforms which offer relatively low prices to keep your business going.
If you need any eCommerce marketing tools for your online store, you can find out the best ones at Digital Agency Network.
Ultimately, what distinguishes one eCommerce platform from another is additional features and their support system. So, save your time and focus on your long-term needs. When it comes to making your ultimate selection, be sure that you have done your research right and planned well.
