Shopify Plus vs Bigcommerce enterprise: Key Differences [2023]

Overview

The world of online sales and marketing is developing every day, and there are many platforms out there. If you’re owning a million annual revenue online store, that means you need to upgrade to an enterprise-level eCommerce platform. Today, we’ll be examining about 2 giants: Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise. As with any eCommerce platform, there are pros and cons of using the platform based on its features, functionalities, and client demands. 

Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise: Definition

Shopify Plus was released in 2014, It is the complete enterprise version platform of Shopify stores. It has strong features that are upgrades of the available ones within the traditional version of Shopify. The integrations are more supportive of established online stores. 

BigCommerce Enterprise is a great platform option that’s been populated around for years. This is the platform for high-volume BigCommerce brands, It promises the kind of fantastic experiences that companies need to build at an enterprise level. Absolutely there’s no transaction fee, and you can get a fully-featured store with multiple currencies, and 24/7 tech support.

Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise: Pros and Cons

BigCommerce Enterprise: Pros 

• A complete all-in-one solution that doesn’t require supplements.
• Ease of use for beginners
• You have coding access for admin development and changes.
• Great design with many ways to customize
• No transaction fees
• A lot of sales channels to choose from
• Plenty of great support and guidance from the BigCommerce Team
• Excellent security and reliability

BigCommerce Enterprise: Cons 

• The lightly complicated pricing structure
• Some themes can be more expensive
• No app market for extending your solution with third-party tools
• These editors can be a little inconvenient in places

Shopify Plus: Pros 

• Great flexibility, with unlimited options to enlarge your store
• Scalability to make sure that your business can develop the correct way
• Absolutely reliable uptime for your store
• Great customer service support and account management
• Smooth and fast performance even if you’re using any device
• Various built-in tools and access to APIs
• Easy to use and intuitive interface
• Security and reliability are so good, with built-in SSL
• Many ways to manage your online store

Shopify Plus: Cons

• Some customization issues will happen if you’re looking for code manipulation
• Can be difficult to adjust API performance
• Content management has some limitations if we compared it to other tools
• Self-hosted platform means you can’t easily transfer stores
• Payment gateways won’t be available in all countries 

Comparing in detail: Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise

Pricing

Shopify Plus Pricing

With Shopify Plus, the pricing depends on your sale volume. But there are some points that you should take a look:

Platform fee: Shopify Plus fee starts at $2,000 per month. Once your sales reach $800,000 per month, the pricing method turns to a new level. Then, you will have to pay 0.25% of your monthly revenue. 

Credit card processing fee: The credit card processing fee of Shopify Plus varies by country. If you’re using other payment gateways like PayPal or Skrill, you have to pay an extra 0.15% 

Development cost: If you use a Shopify pre-made theme, the build cost is going to be from zero to $180 and if you want to demand a custom feature, the development is much more expensive than hiring developers or agencies to custom feature.

BigCommerce Enterprise Pricing

Platform fee: BigCommerce Enterprise’s price starts from $1,000 per month and can reach $15,000 per month. BigCommerce decides your pricing based on the sales that you can get.

Credit card processing fee: BigCommerce Enterprise themes cost from $145 to $235. It will cost a development fee if you require more customization also.

Development cost: BigCommerce’s current themes cost from $145 to $235, which is quite high in comparison to Shopify. It will also cost more development fees if you require more customizing.

Ease of Use

Shopify is a little easier to use than BigCommerce because the ambition is to be as user-friendly as possible. BigCommerce may be very extensible, but Shopify ensures that even if you’ve never built your own website before, you are still going ahead. For Shopify, setting up a website can be simple in filling out forms.

BigCommerce is a little higher. There is a drag-and-drop feature with BigCommerce, and this solution is actually a little more flexible than Shopify’s because you can choose exactly where you want each part to go.

Design

Design is always the most important thing when building a website. BigCommerce offers an “advanced customization framework”, for more engaging storefronts. The editor access you to build and change the layout of your online store without writing any code.

As mentioned above, BigCommerce has a fantastic drag-and-drop editor which is absolutely flexible and easy to customize. You can proceed to make your website stand out without having to write any code. Of course, if you know a bit about development, there are some options to access popular code libraries like CSS and HTML also.

There are many paid theme options available with BigCommerce Enterprise solution, but they’re almost double the price of what you’d pay on Shopify. Each theme comes with a few different styles to choose from, also. 

Features

BigCommerce Enterprise gives you a full solution to sell on channels that range from direct POS solutions to eBay and Amazon. With both B2B and B2C capabilities, there’s no limit on what you can manage, and companies can create shopping experiences anywhere through application devices, DXP, and CPS systems. 

Shopify Plus merchants can use Shopify Payments to sell in a higher range of currencies and get paid in their own currency from each store. The storefront is absolutely user-friendly, and checkout experiences make sure that merchants can deliver fascinating outcomes for their customers.

Merchandising

Shopify Plus: Merchandising

This platform does not supply multiple product types (for example simple products, downloadable products, or virtual products…). You can still use product alternatives for configurable products and sell downloadable products with help from additional apps. You can also sell gift cards like any other products in your store online.

Shopify Plus has a little limited in terms of product types. However, it supplies you with various merchandising options. Users can choose from base ordering options and manually reorder products in their collections. The options for base order can be listed: 

• Best selling product 
• Product name: A-Z and Z-A
• Price high-low and low-high price
• The newest and oldest product

BigCommerce Enterprise:  Merchandising

Besides simple and configurable products, downloadable products are allowed you to sell by default BigCommerce Enterprise, also. No matter the downloadable product include how many files are attached. Same with Shopify Plus, buyers can also buy gift cards on your BigCommerce Enterprise store.

Moreover, BigCommerce Enterprise has many built-in features that will help upgrade your conversion rate. For example, for customers who buy larger quantities, you can set up bulk pricing to encourage them.

Besides that, BigCommerce Enterprise also provides a Product Option Filtering built-in feature. You can customize any kind of filter, such as color, size, sale-off, etc., to help your customers find their desired products in seconds.

Another remarkable feature of BigCommerce Enterprise is the Optimized One-Page Checkout, which reduces the number of steps before purchasing to increase sales conversions.

Support and Security

If you’re looking for support, then no worry because Both BigCommerce and Shopify offer 24/7 phone support, live chat support, help center access, a community forum, video tutorials, and email support. This strategy is so comprehensive.

One bonus of Shopify is that you can find reminders and links throughout the dashboard that link you to the related articles in the knowledge base when you’re setting up your eCommerce store.

From a Security view, you also get plenty of customer support. Your stores will immediately feature their own SSL certificates, or even upgrade to a more advanced certificate with BigCommerce.

Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise: Which is Best?

Choosing the right eCommerce store builder for your enterprise company is a complicated, but important process. The solution that is chosen can make a huge difference to your conversion rates, and your ability to connect with customers.

Normally, you should consider BigCommerce in cases:

• You want access to all the features you need
• You have a lot of backlog with different product options.
• You want a simple process and capable creativity
• You love intelligent customer service and support

Rather, you may want to apply Shopify for your store by 

• You want more controllable website features
• You need more variety of choices between third-party apps
• You need a brilliant design, unique theme options
• You’re a fan of an understandable and capable interface

Finishing Thoughts

There’s no wonder that business owners have such a hard time choosing the right website builder. There are various choices out there, and many different package options too. With a Shopify store, you have everything from Shopify Lite to Shopify Plus. With BigCommerce, you can start from small and work your business up to the perfect enterprise environment.

Shopify Plus and BigCommerce Enterprise are both excellent tools but It’s not easy to choose the right one. And ONEXT DIGITAL is here to support you with a thorough understanding and excellent experience. In 15 years of development, we’ve cooperated with various multi-industry companies, with both BigCommerce Enterprise and Shopify Plus. So there is no doubt that we can help you discover the correct answers no matter how your store scale, where you are, and what your products are