Building your own online store – this thing is never easy, but in reality, it can be a really simple process. There are hundreds of platforms out there designed to support you create an eCommerce website.
There are 2 options that you should think about: BigCommerce and WooCommerce come with full stacks of functionalities. But the question here is which one’s better? And how do you know which is fit for your site? We will clarify that in this article.
Defining Woocommerce vs Bigcommerce
Woocommerce: Woocommerce is an open-source WordPress plugin, best suited for WordPress users and business owners who want an approachable open-source solution.
BigCommerce: BigCommerce is an eCommerce platform, Launched in 2009 in the United States. Until now, they have over 150,000 live online stores on their platform and have become the 2nd largest market share behind Shopify.
Woocommerce vs Bigcommerce Comparison
Pricing Comparison
Ease of Use Comparison
WooCommerce
Compared to BigCommerce, WooCommerce is a little more confusing to use because it seems to be a technical platform. For missions like domain registration, setting up web hosts and security certificates you’ll have to handle them all on your own. Therefore, having some good IT skills would help a lot to create and control your online store.
BigCommerce
You can start with BigCommerce by registering for their 15-day free trial. BigCommerce provides a simple interface with a left-hand side vertical menu on the screen. BigCommerce’s features are created in its themes, which makes accessing and using BigCommerce’s tools easier. Moreover, BigCommerce offers users a web domain, hosting platform, and security certificates.
Features and Tools Comparison
WooCommerce
Compared to BigCommerce, WooCommerce has fewer on offer. However, WooCommerce still has some innovative features:
- Blogging: the built-in ability to publish, and share articles.
- One-click repayments: allow you to get money back for returns immediately.
- Unlimited customization: if you have IT knowledge, you can change everything from the storefront to the checkout page without any regulations.
BigCommerce
There are many important functions and in-built features that are useful for your online store.
Below are the main sales features that BigCommerce offers to customers:
- Multi-channel integration: allows you to sell directly on marketplaces such as eBay and social networks like Facebook.
- SSL security: defend your online store by protecting payments, providing you a little padlock symbol next to your URL, so customers will know when to proceed to check out.
- Investigative tracking and reporting tools – check your store’s performance via sessions, advertisement campaigns, sales off, etc.
- Forgotten cart restore: gives your buyers automatic email reminders when they leave their cart behind.
- Voucher codes and discounts: Allow you to offer sales and deals on products by giving customers a code to use when checking out.
App and plugin Comparison
WooCommerce
This open-source platform benefits extremely from WordPress so it gives you access to more than 55.000 free plugins and thousands of premium plugins.
BigCommerce
There are more than 800 BigCommerce apps to help you create a powerful function for your store. It divides apps into multiple necessary categories. Some of them include Analytics, Marketing, and Payment as the most popular categories for purchases.
Inventory Management Comparision
WooCommere
With WooCommerce, it can help you handle basic missions like creating inventory reports and making changes to any part of your products.
But controlling WooCommerce inventory is not easy, especially in bulk stock management. You have to visit plenty of pages and switch tons of settings individually just to make a simple change.
One more thing is that is difficult for WooComerce to manage a large database if your inventory increases every day. And the solution is you can add plugins for managing inventory available on WooCommerce store.
BigCommerce
Luckily, BigCommerce comes with an impressive inventory management system without third-party software support. Some of its functions include controlling your stock by SKU, setting low stock notifications, and changing stock levels individually or in bulk. In addition, you can combine BigCommerce with 3rd party inventory management apps to extend functionalities.
Payment gateway Comparison.
Woocommerce
In case you choose WooCommerce, you will get access to over 100 payment gateways available on the WooCommerce store. WooCommerce integrates by default with major gateways like PayPal and Stripe.
BigCommerce
With BigCommerce, you can choose from over 65 pre-integrated payment gateways. The list includes big names such as PayPal, Amazon Pay, and Apple Pay. And most of that, BigCommerce charges you no transaction fee using third-party payment solutions.
SEO Comparision
Woocommerce
WooCommerce also lets you edit meta titles or descriptions, customize URL slugs and add image alt text as you want. This function same as Bigcommerce
It’s good to know that WooCommerce inherits from WordPress the blogging feature. You can create a blog by adding a post right from the WordPress Admin dashboard very simple.
Bigcommerce
With BigCommerce, you’ll be able to perform essential SEO functions like editing meta titles/description, customizing URL slugs, adding alt text, and setting keyword support. Especially, SSL certificate which helps search engines verify your website security is a default part of BigCommerce.
BigCommerce also has the Microdata feature to help you add more website information appearing on search results and can increase the click-through rate.
Security Comparision
WooCommerce
In Woocommerce, you must take care on your own most of the WooCommerce security works.
First, before starting your business with WooCommerce, you should deliberately choose the hosting provider. Second, you’d better keep upgrading to the latest versions to get security and fix issues. And third, you will also be responsible for PCI compliance, you can study the demands to make your website PCI compliant
BigCommerce
Bigcommerce has SSL certificate and PCI compliance by default. About the SSL certificate, it doesn’t only offer the perks of SEO-friendliness but also make sure the highest level of website security. To secure payment card transactions, BigCommerce servers are PCI DSS 3.2 certified at level 1, which protects against credit card data breaches.
Support Comparision
WooCommerce
WooCommerce provides support mostly in WooCommerce Docs and little-to-no personal support. You can request help from their developers via tickets. Especially, WooCommerce has an extremely community of users and developers, therefore, you can seek help from them at any time.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce offers support 24/7, so you can request any questions and any time. You can simply contact for support right from the dashboard, Bigcommerce shows the phone number, email address, and live chat. They also offer support from their user community where you can discuss any issues or interesting topics.
To wrap up
Using WooCommerce or BigCommerce depends on your familiarity with website building and how much flexibility you need. While WooCommerce needs WordPress knowledge, BigCommerce is more simple website builder from the beginning. You can review the design of your store easily. Even BigCommerce has many templates you can use, you can also tweak them with HTML/CSS.
Through this article, we hope that you can be satisfied and find out your decision. In case you haven’t experienced 2 kinds of platforms or have any confusion, please be nature contact us. With more than 15 years of web development, ONEXT DIGITAL is always willing to support you create your “own crown”.