BigCommerce vs WooCommerce – Scale Your Business

Thanks to the ever-expanding global e-commerce landscape, online shopping has become one of the fastest-growing businesses worldwide. However, selecting the right platform for your digital store is always challenging yet highly crucial for sales and revenue.

That’s why we’ve developed this BigCommerce vs. WooCommerce blog post. There is no doubt that these two are highly popular e-commerce solutions and offer a unique approach to building a scalable, profitable online store.

This BigCommerce vs WooCommerce blog post will analyze the e-commerce capabilities of BigCommerce and WooCommerce, including pricing, integrations and add-ons, scalability, customer support, user opinion, and other features.

What is BigCommerce?

Before we compare BigCommerce with WooCommerce, let’s understand what BigCommerce is. BigCommerce primarily serves as an e-commerce platform, offering users a range of services, including payments, design, hosting, SEO, marketing, and more.

What is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is a popular, free e-commerce plugin particularly created for WordPress. This top-notch plugin lets you transform your existing WordPress website into an engaging, results-driven e-commerce store.

As you may be aware, updating WordPress to the newest version, such as WordPress 7.0, is a basic prerequisite for using WooCommerce properly and keeping it fully optimized.

BigCommerce vs WooCommerce Comparison Chart

Category	BigCommerce	WooCommerce
Hosting	Incorporated	Self-hosted
Pricing	Annual subscription (Standard, Plus Pro, Enterprise)	Free core plugin, but pay for plugins, themes, hosting, and other functionalities
Set up and Maintenance	Guided and beginner-friendly	WordPress knowledge needed, user-friendly, guided
Built-in features	Offers various features: SEO, promotions, abandoned cart, and multi-currency	Limited built-in features, plugins required for more features
Themes & Design	Over 200 customizable themes, including Catalyst/Makeswift builder	Various free and paid themes are available
Performance	Additional functionality is needed, so performance management is required	It claims to be a managed platform since it handles hosting, security, and other aspects itself
Scalability	Relies on hosting and optimization, but users can benefit from built-in tools and framework enhancements	The platform helps users manage scalability
Security and PCI Compliance	Offered and managed	Users responsibility
Support	24/7 phone, email, and chat	Paid support, live chat, email, and community forums

BigCommerce vs WooCommerce Pricing

BigCommerce Pricing

BigCommerce offers customers tiered pricing plans. These plans include all the features you need to manage your online stores expertly. Moreover, these packages are transparent, with no hidden costs.

BigCommerce categorizes its pricing plans into two main tiers: Enterprise and Small Business. For Enterprise, you will need to complete the designated form to obtain pricing.

Small businesses can use four packages: Standard, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise. The Standard package or plan costs $29 per month. You will need to pay $79 per month to get the Plus plan.

Likewise, you should pay $299 per month to use the Pro plan. Last but not least, the Enterprise plan offers customized terms and pricing; users can request a demo in advance.

WooCommerce Pricing

As discussed earlier, WooCommerce is a free and open-source e-commerce plugin, but that does not give you the freedom to save on variable expenses such as add-ons, hosting, paid features, security, and more. Therefore, you must account for these miscellaneous expenses while creating your dream WooCommerce store. Not to forget that it is not a CMS platform either.

How do BigCommerce and WooCommerce Compare on Cost and Pricing?

WooCommerce is a cost-effective solution since the core plugin is free. Managing a highly optimized WooCommerce store does require premium themes, security tools, paid extensions, hosting, performance optimization, and continuous developer support.

Moreover, you need crucial features, such as subscriptions, advanced shipping rules, and improved checkout functionality, which are available at an annual fee. All these factors increase the total cost of ownership.

On the other hand, BigCommerce’s monthly pricing includes automatic updates, security, hosting, PCI compliance, and numerous built-in features. This means you don’t need to incur additional fees from BigCommerce. 

Consequently, businesses can decrease dependence on paid third-party apps and developer maintenance.

BigCommerce vs WooCommerce – Payment Methods

BigCommerce Payment Methods

With BigCommerce, you can accept payments via multiple payment methods. The platform is compatible with renowned payment services, including Stripe, Square, PayPal, Adyen, Authorize.net, and more.

WooCommerce Payment Methods

WooCommerce offers users some notable payment options, including PayPal and Stripe. The story does not end here, as the famous e-commerce plugin supports various payment gateways and add-ons, such as Authorize.net.

Unsurprisingly, WooCommerce and BigCommerce inspire current and potential customers with numerous payment methods, making it easy for them to accept payments without hassle.

WooCommerce vs BigCommerce – Integrations and Add-ons

WooCommerce Integrations

WooCommerce relies heavily on WordPress because users can access thousands of free and paid plugins through the official WordPress.org plugin repository. Moreover, they can browse the WooCommerce extension store to find the plugins they want.

Fortunately, you can install any plugin of your choice, whether it’s for store optimization, security, speed, SEO, contact forms, or more. Thus, you can easily integrate these plugins into your e-commerce store and improve its performance.

BigCommerce Integrations

BigCommerce offers numerous apps and integrations that let you add impressive features to your online store. Furthermore, you can benefit from free and paid add-ons to improve your e-commerce store’s functionality.

You can browse several categories to find the app you’re looking for, including product sourcing, CRM, analytics and reporting, accounting and tax, AI, mobile, financing, ERP, marketing, and more.

Which is Easier to Set Up, WooCommerce or BigCommerce?

While discussing WooCommerce and BigCommerce, it depends on your expertise with the technical aspects of your store. When setting up WooCommerce, prioritize hosting, security, WordPress installation, WooCommerce configuration, and other key components.

BigCommerce is a comprehensive e-commerce platform that helps users sell products online hassle-free. Hence, hosting, security, PCI compliance, automatic updates, and other crucial features come pre-installed. You don’t need to spend much time or effort managing and maintaining your store.

WooCommerce vs BigCommerce – Scalability

WooCommerce Scalability

WooCommerce delights existing and prospective users with helpful, scalable options to improve the productivity and impact of their online stores. Whether you run a large or small business, WooCommerce offers features and customization options to manage and optimize a wide range of products.

BigCommerce Scalability

Scalability is an area where BigCommerce excels. As a hosted platform, BigCommerce gives you peace of mind because you don’t need to worry about updates, backups, security, storage, or other technical yet crucial facets.

BigCommerce vs WooCommerce – Customer Support

BigCommerce Support

BigCommerce offers users multiple support options, including 24/7 phone, chat, and email. This way, customers can resolve their issues promptly and keep their stores up and running.

In addition, they can explore its helpful help center to find the answers to their queries. It comprises an impressive knowledge base that enables you to manage and optimize your BigCommerce store.

Moreover, the BigCommerce Community is available, too, allowing merchants, partners, and developers to use an official, centralized forum to ask questions and get the right answers, elaborate on best practices, and stay up to date on platform updates.

WooCommerce Support

WooCommerce is an extensive platform that does not leave its users looking for solutions to various issues related to plugins, updates, and more. For instance, they can browse the WooCommerce support forum on WordPress.org to find possible solutions to their queries. Additionally, they can use the official WooCommerce site to resolve plugin-related issues.

Once they visit the official website, they can access additional resources, including tutorials, documentation, guides, and more.

Thoughts on BigCommerce vs WooCommerce Reddit

You can browse Reddit to compare BigCommerce and WooCommerce. This way, you can make an informed decision if your existing or potential e-commerce store needs WooCommerce or BigCommerce.

The above screenshot suggests that plugins not only improve the store’s functionality and performance but also help make WordPress a dependable and impactful content management system. 

According to a Reddit user, WordPress, along with WooCommerce, works amazingly well for them. If they are given the option to choose among BigCommerce and other platforms, they will consider Drupal Commerce or Magento instead of BigCommerce.

Another user noted that BigCommerce is easier to work with, provided your store abides by standard e-commerce practices and setup rules. The platform offers ease of use across updates, security, hosting, checkout, and other facets.  

Likewise, WooCommerce gives you more control, but you need to manage multiple aspects, including plugins, updates, hosting, speed issues, and more. If you have a developer on your team, then it is manageable if your store is in a nascent stage. That said, it becomes challenging as the store grows.

If you are scaling products and traffic and want fewer technical headaches, BigCommerce probably offers a smoother path. If your business needs custom workflows, heavy content, or unusual features, WooCommerce may be a better fit, but it needs more hands-on experience.

In short, BigCommerce is easy to manage, while WooCommerce is more flexible but requires more management skill.

Wrapping Up

We hope you enjoy our analysis of BigCommerce vs WooCommerce. According to our evaluation, BigCommerce is an impressive platform that helps users launch their online stores effectively, while WooCommerce excels at offering extensive customization options through themes and plugins.

​Undoubtedly, BigCommerce has all the right tools to streamline store management, making it result-oriented in terms of conversions, sales, and revenue.

​WooCommerce is a flexible option, thanks to its massive collection of themes, plugins, and premium add-ons, and other exciting features, offering varied customers tailored solutions.

​By our logic, you should consider your business needs and not overlook technical expertise when selecting between BigCommerce and WooCommerce.

FAQs

When was BigCommerce launched?

BigCommerce was launched in 2009 by Eddie Machaalani and Mitchell Harper in Sydney, Australia. The company scaled rapidly after its launch and opened its US headquarters in Austin, Texas, in 2011.

When was WooCommerce launched?

WooThemes officially launched WooCommerce on September 27, 2011. It was created by a team of four, including Magnus Jepson, Mark Forrester, and Adii Pienaar. In 2015, Automattic acquired WooCommerce.

Which platform is good for SEO, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce?

WooCommerce and BigCommerce are reliable options for SEO—the former suits content-driven SEO (blogs) as you can easily integrate it with WordPress. On the other hand, BigCommerce supports technical SEO (smart setup and various features that don’t rely on plugins).

Which platform is more scalable and better for a growing business?

WooCommerce and BigCommerce are both scalable platforms that require ongoing effort and dedication. It depends on you how much effort you put into optimizing your e-commerce store. 

When using WooCommerce, keep in mind caching tools, hosting, security, database management, and other factors that can adversely affect your store’s growth if not handled properly. Luckily, BigCommerce offers many features that let you scale your store appropriately. 

I’m a developer (or working with an agency). Which platform is better for custom development and advanced integrations, WooCommerce or BigCommerce?

WooCommerce is open source, which means you can directly access WordPress architecture and the PHP codebase. If you prefer full freedom, WooCommerce is a suitable option. BigCommerce also assists developers through updates, APIs, hosting, and other integration features.

Do BigCommerce and WooCommerce support Headless Commerce?

Unsurprisingly, BigCommerce and WooCommerce support Headless Commerce. However, they bolster Headless Commerce in distinct ways given their architectures (SaaS vs. Open Source).