BigCommerce Review 2022
The go-to platform for enterprise ecommerce.
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BigCommerce is an all-in-one ecommerce platform
BigCommerce is one of the ecommerce industry’s leading online store builders, comfortably rubbing shoulders with the likes of Shopify (read our Shopify review) and Magento and frequently garnering positive reviews online. It features one of the most intuitive interfaces out there, with an instinctive, professional-looking control panel. It can also support a range of businesses, be they physical, digital, or dropshipping.
Reviews for BigCommerce often praise its pricing plan, which is competitive as far as ecommerce solutions go, and you get a lot of bang for your buck. Their control panel provides online merchants with everything they need for basic ecommerce SEO, and anything they don’t provide in the dashboard can be looked up in the BigCommerce University.
BigCommerce is great for online entrepreneurs and businesses of any level. Newcomers to the field can learn how to build an ecommerce website through the in-dashboard hints and tips and a range of resources and video courses provided. Or, if you’re already familiar with ecommerce platforms and you’re comfortable with HTML and CSS, BigCommerce’s API developer tools make it easy to tweak and amend your store.
BigCommerce has processed more than $13 billion in sales for small businesses, mid-market ventures, and industry-leading brands alike worldwide, a figure that is only set to grow. Want a slice of that? Sign up today to join the ecommerce wave!
Benefits
- Out-of-the-box features including built-in blog and product reviews
- Syncing available across a range of online marketplaces
- SEO support basics built in to your store
BigCommerce prides itself on offering a huge range of out-of-the-box features that let anyone start building their ecommerce website straight away, including coupon codes, order and inventory management, and more. Their intuitive design interface offers great functionality in a single all-in-one dashboard, making ecommerce management easier for you.
BigCommerce is also the only platform that lets merchants sync their inventory across a range of social and digital marketplaces, so you can sell to your customers wherever they are. Finally, BigCommerce also adopts a straightforward approach to your store’s SEO, giving beginners all they need to optimise their ecommerce store.
Pricing
- Competitive pricing plan
- Feature-rich standard plan
Standard | Plus | Pro | Enterprise |
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$29.95pm | $79.95pm | $249.95pm | Custom |
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When it comes to pricing for standard plans, BigCommerce is actually on the higher end of the scale, compared with big names like Shopify or Volusion. However, BigCommerce offers a lot more features and included products with their basic plan than other ecommerce platforms, and it’s worth bearing that in mind before choosing.
As with most ecommerce store builders, BigCommerce comes with a free trial of two weeks, no card details required. This is plenty of time to familiarise yourself with the interface and features, and is highly recommended before making your final choice.
Features
- Plenty of basic features included in any plan
- Integrated blog on same domain
- Product reviews included as standard
As far as features go, BigCommerce offers a very generous amount with their standard plan, even before you consider browsing their app marketplace. The addition of an integrated blog is a big plus, and shows their dedication to ecommerce SEO. Adding and managing products is straightforward and intuitive, although the more general aspects of your store aren’t as obvious. For example, to edit the homepage banner, one has to navigate to the Marketing section of the dashboard, rather than the Storefront section.
That said, novices can quickly learn how to use the features available to them to manage a basic store. However, if you want to grow it through email marketing for example, you would need to download the requisite apps or plugins to do so.
Beginner online merchants could certainly get ahead on BigCommerce, although it does tend to lend itself more towards moderately experienced users.
BigCommerce markets itself as an all-in-one platform with a range of out-of-the-box features, and that’s true. But for growing stores, extra plugins are a must.
Ecommerce Comparison Features
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Buy Now | ||||||
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Price | From $9 | Free to Install | Free to Install | From $29.95 | From $2.99 | From $5.00 |
Themes | 100+ | 1000+ | 1000+ | 120 | 15 | 500+ |
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Our Review |
Dashboard
When it comes to user experience, BigCommerce gets it right — for the most part. The dashboard is easy to use and fairly self-explanatory, although there were times when we struggled to locate certain features. It redeems itself though by offering a handy search function to let you locate products, customers, or orders quickly and easily.
When it comes to user experience, BigCommerce gets it right — for the most part. The dashboard is easy to use and fairly self-explanatory, although there were times when we struggled to locate certain features. It redeems itself though by offering a handy search function to let you locate products, customers, or orders quickly and easily.
Unfortunately, BigCommerce lets itself down by not offering a mobile app. This is surprising given their emphasis on responsive design templates! Given the often nomadic nature of ecommerce, this is quite a let-down.
Themes
BigCommerce offers more than 120 responsive themes for your website, organised by industry (e.g. arts & crafts, animals & pets, etc). This is impressive until you realise that just seven of these themes are free, compared with Shopify’s 10 free themes.
BigCommerce offers more than 120 responsive themes for your website, organised by industry (e.g. arts & crafts, animals & pets, etc). This is impressive until you realise that just seven of these themes are free, compared with Shopify’s 10 free themes.
The free themes are fine, but sometimes feel as though they overlap in style, and can make it feel as though you have a lot less than seven at your disposal. Prices for the paid themes range from $145 upwards, and each theme can be further customised with slight variants to the style.
Free theme options overlap in style.
Luckily, the discerning ecommerce entrepreneur can import themes from elsewhere. BigCommerce has a range of recommended and reviewed designers that can create a bespoke theme for your online store, or you can look to a theme marketplace like Themeforest for cheaper options.
Content Management
- Built-in blog is easy to set up and use
- Easy to add and update products
BigCommerce’s built-in blog is a great feature that does the basics right. While it doesn’t offer the functionality of other blog-centric content management systems (notably missing an RSS feed), it’s a good start for ecommerce beginners to get to grips with the basics. And BigCommerce doesn’t restrict you solely to using its own software: their marketplace offers a range of blogging apps that can easily integrate into your online store. Users are able to integrate Wordpress blogs into their BigCommerce store, although it will appear on a separate subdomain, making your SEO strategy that much harder to do.
Uploading images, both to your landing and your product pages, is simple and straightforward. It might be a little fiddly for beginners at first when it comes to inserting images into banners and blogs, but when you get a basic grasp for pixels and resizing images, it becomes much easier.
As mentioned earlier, adding and updating products is easily done. Experienced online merchants will be familiar with the associated jargon (SKUs, Open Graph tags, etc), but novices will still be able to manage the basic functions of products as well. It features basic SEO functions such as keywords and meta tags and so on, and most fields have explanatory hint bubbles to guide novices. Products can also be imported or exported with a CSV file for bulk edits or uploads.
The page editor itself is very easy to use, featuring a graphical user interface to easily update your pages. This is ideal for beginners who might not feel as comfortable doing hard coding. Tech-savvy users can also use BigCommerce’s dedicated API tool and RESTful architecture to alter their store themselves, although novices might naturally prefer the intuitive interface provided.
Plugins & Extensions
- Good range of plugins and extensions
- Partner Program available for app developers
BigCommerce’s app marketplace offers around 600 apps for your ecommerce pleasure, with a healthy selection of both free and paid options. The ecommerce staples are all available of course (MailChimp, Alibaba, etc), as well as some useful extras. While their marketplace still isn’t the biggest as far as ecommerce platforms go — Shopify offers more than 2000 and counting — there’s more than enough extensions and plugins for you to grow your store without being left wanting.
If you’re a dab hand at developing, you can apply to be part of BigCommerce’s Partner Program, providing apps, integrations or extensions that can be sold on the dedicated app marketplace. All applicants have to pass a vetting check, ensuring that only the best apps make it to the marketplace.
Checkout
- Comprehensive checkout capabilities
- Main payment gateways supported as standard
BigCommerce offers a range of checkout types, whose availability depends on the theme platform chosen (Blueprint for pre-November 2016 stores, Stencil for afterwards). The checkouts include:
| Multilingual Support | Ship to Multiple Addresses | CSS Customization | Access to All Template Files | Access to Order Confirmation Page | Custom Form Fields | Limit Countries/States/Provinces |
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Optimized One-Page Checkout | In Stencil Theme Editor, Stencil CLI, or Edit Stencil Theme Files | With Shipping Manager | |||||
One-Page Checkout | In Stencil CLI, or Edit Stencil Theme Files In Stencil CLI, or Edit Stencil Theme Files | ||||||
Custom one-page Checkout (for developers) | In Template Files | In Template Files | |||||
Klarna Checkout | In Settings | ||||||
Single page express checkout (Blueprint only) | In Template Files | In Template Files | |||||
Multiple page checkout (Blueprint only) | In Template Files | In Template Files |
BigCommerce recently implemented the Optimised One-Page Checkout as their default checkout type. This is a streamlined process that only requires customers to enter information onto a single page. Experienced ecommerce entrepreneurs will know the importance of keeping the checkout process as seamless as possible, so this is a welcome feature. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work with all third party apps (such as abandoned cart savers or address validation), so this might cause problems for some merchants. However, there range of checkouts on offer means the most ecommerce stores can find the one to suit their needs. The checkout UX itself is easy and stress-free, and your customers will have no complaints and reducing abandonment rates.
Most leading payment gateways are supported, and BigCommerce do not charge a transaction fee to do so. The full list of supported payment gateways includes:
For ecommerce businesses wanting to set up a brick-and-mortar or pop-up store, BigCommerce offers dedicated POS integrations with Square, ShopKeep, and Springboard Retail. Alternatively, merchants can connect with third party POS systems to help them bridge the gap between online and offline retail.
BigCommerce includes an SSL certificate for any store using a custom domain. A custom domain does cost extra, but BigCommerce allows for third party SSL providers for Pro users and above if merchants have a preference. Ultimately, that means you need to pay for an SSL in one form or another.
Tax options can be set up in the dashboard, and different zones can be set up depending on the country you are shipping to. The only checkout that includes fraud protection as standard is the Klarna option, and so vendors will need to look for a specified anti-fraud extension. BigCommerce offers options for this, but it’ll come at a price. BigCommerce servers are PCI DSS 3.2 compliant, certified at Level 1, and they provide their vendors with an attestation form for download as standard. This makes BigCommerce a safe and reliable choice for ecommerce store owners anywhere.
Customer refunds can be processed through BigCommerce for some payment gateways. This is a simple process that can be performed in your BigCommerce dashboard, and includes inventory updates and customer order notifications. The payment gateways that support this feature are as follows:
- Adyen
- Amazon Pay
- Authorize.net
- Chase Paymentech
- CyberSource
- First Data Payeezy Gateway
- Global Payments
- Klarna Payments
- NMI
- PayPal Express
- PayPal Payflow Pro
- PayPal powered by Braintree
- Pin Payments
- Quickbooks Payments
- Square
- Stripe
All other refunds can be processed through the integrated payment gateway’s dashboard.
Shipping
- Range of shipping options available from any BigCommerce option
- Integrations available with most leading delivery services
While BigCommerce doesn’t actually handle the shipping and fulfillment of your products, they do provide customers with a number of shipping solutions. These can all be managed from within your store’s dashboard, and include real-time and fixed shipping. They offer integrations with a range of delivery services (Royal Mail, UPS, FedEx, etc), and they recommend using the order fulfillment extension ShipStation to handle shipping.
BigCommerce recommend ShipperHQ for more advanced shipping, for example for products that are shipped from multiple locations, and offer an integration with Endicia for printing your own labels. It’s simple and straightforward to setup, and BigCommerce makes it easy for new store owners to implement shipping for their products. However, there is also a range of shipping and fulfillment apps so you’ll be sure to find the best ecommerce shipping solution for you.
Inventory Management
- Inventory management is simple and straightforward
- Product categories and options provide great customisation
BigCommerce supports physical and digital products, as well as offering integrations for dropshipping, 3PL, and online marketplaces such as Amazon. Users can import or export their products with a CSV file as standard, making bulk edits or migrating from another ecommerce platform easy.
Another great feature of BigCommerce is its power to sync with a wide range of sales channels. As well as the social sites such as Facebook, users can also sell through Amazon, eBay and Etsy. You can also list your products on comparison sites such as Bizrate, Nextag, and PriceGrabber, a nice feature for beginners wanting to grow their store.
Products are organised by categories, and each category has further customisation fields, such as default sorting method, sort order, and so on. Further customisation is available through their Product Options function. These include sizes, colours, and so on, and users can create more custom options depending on their product. It’s a handy feature that makes inventory management more efficient for the user.
BigCommerce lets you manually enter the stock level for your products, and you can arrange for a notification to be sent when it reaches a specified point. Users can also add SKUs to each product and option variant for tracking and integrating with your preferred inventory management tool. Products can be amended or updated in bulk using a CSV file.
Finally, customers can rate goods and leave product reviews using the built-in feature provided by BigCommerce. It’s easy to use, and can boost your store’s sales greatly. They also offer Google customer reviews in the Pro and Enterprise plan, which is useful but not a must for your store.
Customer Management
- Basic customer data captured in each BigCommerce option
- Segmentation available on higher plans or through third party apps
BigCommerce’s default customer management system captures all the basic customer information required for ecommerce. This includes names, email address, phone number, and so on. You can also update their store credit, email settings, and account information, and they can be assigned to specific customer groups if desired.
Marketing
- Basic marketing tools provided out-of-the-box for beginners
- Advanced marketing apps available and easy to integrate
- Social integration with BigCommerce enabled in all plans
- Some sales tools provided in all BigCommerce plans
- Best for novices to learn the ropes of conversion rate optimisation
- Basic ecommerce SEO capabilities provided by BigCommerce
- Built-in blog adds to store’s SEO
For beginners, BigCommerce offers enough out-of-the-box marketing features to be getting on with in the short term. Onsite banners and shopping comparison site visibility are all provided as standard. Be sure to make use of BigCommerce’s built-in product review feature too, which is comprehensive and solid. It makes it easy for customers to leave reviews for your goods or services, and you can moderate, approve, and share them as required.
However, these alone won’t be enough to grow your store in the long run, and as your experience and confidence grows, you will find yourself wanting more functionality. BigCommerce certainly gives novices a foundation to start marketing their store, but they will quickly learn and move on to more advanced, third party tools. For experienced users, you’ll find yourself forsaking BigCommerce’s existing features in favour of your preferred marketing app.
Sales/CRO
During the trial phase, BigCommerce lets users play with the abandoned cart saver. However, this tool doesn’t come with the standard plan, so the carrot is dangled and then taken away unless you upgrade to BigCommerce Pro. But with the MailChimp app free to install and easy to use, it makes their abandoned cart saver somewhat redundant. BigCommerce also offers Google Customer Reviews for Pro and Enterprise users, an issue that those on the standard plan can sidestep by using another plugin, such as YotPo.
The BigCommerce standard plan does come with a coupon codes tool, as well as gift certificates. As with the marketing tools, these are all fairly rudimentary, and as your confidence grows, you’ll find yourself seeking out third party apps to help grow your store further and optimise your conversion rates.
SEO
BigCommerce encourages basic ecommerce SEO, and they make it easy to add keywords and meta tags to your product pages and blog posts. Similarly, their automatic blog integration helps beginners get to grips with content marketing in their SEO strategy. URLs are automatically populated with SEO-friendly links, and they work to avoid duplicate content throughout your store.
Their domain structure is solid, and they offer tutorials on basic SEO practice such as crawling and using Google Search Console. On top of that, their themes are mobile-responsive as a matter of course, and there is a healthy number of online courses and resources for beginners to learn from. Finally, their support team are happy to offer personalised tips and pointers on boosting your store’s SEO, another bonus for inexperienced store owners. Advanced users will know what works best and will largely not need BigCommerce’s resources, but they provide a solid foundation for novices.
PPC
With regards to PPC ads, BigCommerce’s Marketing section lets users create AdWords, ready for exporting to Google. Other integrations with social sites require app installations, but there are a few resources provided by BigCommerce to help beginners do this. It’s not heavily emphasised though, and users might find themselves going off site for advice and assistance on this.
Social
BigCommerce offers some social integration, certainly enough for novices. Product descriptions have set Open Graph fields for Facebook sharing, and there is a designated page for social media links in the Storefront section.
Their Channel Manager also provides built-in integrations for selling on Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram, as well as a Buy Button builder for external sites. These all feature tutorials for use, and as with BigCommerce’s marketing and sales tools, it provides a good base awareness for ecommerce beginners.
When it comes to building a community for your store online, you’ll need to rely on their resources and tutorials to help you. Alternatively, the BigCommerce community are only too eager to help and give you advice in achieving a social media presence.
Email Marketing
As mentioned earlier, BigCommerce doesn’t come with any substantial built-in email marketing features. There is a page for adjusting your newsletter settings but no option to actual create a newsletter. BigCommerce phased out their email service several years ago, and so third party apps are required to start your email marketing. While MailChimp is the obvious choice, there are other options out there that you can take advantage of.
Hosting
- BigCommerce provides unlimited bandwidth with no caps
- SSL provided on higher paid plans or through third party
BigCommerce provide ecommerce hosting with unlimited and uncapped bandwidth. They report 99.99% uptime, compared to 99.5% for ecommerce in general, and other BigCommerce merchants tend to support this claim.
Unfortunately, one way or another you will have to pay for an SSL. It is included on any plan above and including Pro, as well as on stores with a custom domain (which you also have to pay for). They do also offer DNS and domain management, although BigCommerce domains have only basic DNS capabilities. Users can however select third party providers if desired.
BigCommerce can host email, although they do not provide their own email service, having phased it out several years ago. There are further customisations available, depending on how you manage your emails, but this will largely affect experienced or established ecommerce merchants more than novices. They also offer integrations for third party hosting services as well.
Analytics
- Basic analytics provided by BigCommerce including traffic, revenue, and conversion rates
- Third party analytics extensions available for integration with BigCommerce
BigCommerce includes basic analytics monitoring, such as customers, revenue, site visits, conversion rate, and so on. These are all fairly standard and accessible to any newcomer to ecommerce, and can provide a good general idea of your store’s performance. Any further analytical functions can be found by purchasing their Ecommerce Insights plugin, providing detailed reports on a monthly basis.
For those on a budget, their marketplace offers plenty of third party apps to deeper analytical reports, or you can use the Google Analytics integration they have available instead. Your choice will come down to your experience: beginners might appreciate the guidance offered by the app, while those on a budget might decide to use a free option.
Development
- BigCommerce provides API for experienced developers
- Store migration is easy with platform-specific migration apps
Although BigCommerce is certainly novice-friendly, it has plenty of room for experienced users to play around. If you’re tech-savvy and familiar with HTML and CSS, their Stencil API framework lets you tweak and amend your store to your own needs. That said, merchants who lack this knowledge won’t find any use for it, and can instead either stick to the CMS tools provided or seek out a developer for assistance.
If you’re coming to BigCommerce from another ecommerce platform, you’ll find it easy to migrate your store. They have developed platform-specific apps (including Shopify and Magento) to enable easy catalog transfers, and their support team are on hand for any further queries you might have.
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Support
- 24/7 BigCommerce support provided
- Dedicated forum provides users with crowdsourced support
As mentioned throughout this piece, BigCommerce’s support team can provide personal support where needed, either via chat or phone. However, the opinion of the wider BigCommerce community has been mixed, with some users reporting poor or severely delayed responses to issues or complaints. At the same time, others have found the support to be helpful and sufficient, and so it is difficult to gauge their overall quality.
If the support team is lacking however, the dedicated BigCommerce forum is a useful alternative. The ecommerce merchant community is particularly active on here, and are ready to offer solutions and advice where requested. BigCommerce also has dedicated moderators answering questions, and so any query can be resolved fairly swiftly.
The BigCommerce University should be the first port of call for any newcomer to ecommerce. Featuring a comprehensive series of video tutorials on launching, managing, and growing your online store, it’s a great starting point for a beginner. On top of that, there are plenty of articles and guides on more advanced aspects of ecommerce for merchants of ability to learn from.
Courses
The courses available at BigCommerce University include:
Launch Store
- Getting Started
- Stencil Themes
- Carousel & Store Design
- Store Settings
- Product Categories
- Adding a Product
- Product Options
- SKUs & Inventory Tracking
- Product Options: Rules
- Setting up Taxes
- Payment Methods
- Shipping: Zones & Charges
- Shipping: Real Time Quotes
- Domain Names & Email
- Launching Your Store
Manage Store
- Order Management
- Importing & Exporting CSVs
- Ecommerce Analytics & Insights
- Omni-Channel Integrations
- Product Filtering
- SSL Certificates
- Creating Contact & Content Pages
- Managing Customer Accounts
- Return Requests and Order Refunds
- Finding Your Target Market
- Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
- Image Descriptions
- Write a Blog
- Maintaining a Healthy Store
- Creating a Facebook Page
Grow Store
- Getting Started With SEO
- SEO Keywords: Researching
- SEO Keywords: Research Tools
- Design: Website Conversion
- Design: Product Page Conversion
- Shipping and Returns
- Abandoned Cart Saver
- Conversion Tools
- Product Photos that Convert
- Customer Service
- Creating Customer Groups
- Google Analytics: Part 1
- Google Analytics: Part 2
- Google Analytics: Part 3
Experts
BigCommerce has a dedicated forum hub where merchants can connect with a range of industry experts, including designers, successful merchants, wholesalers, developers, and more. They also offer a marketplace for store owners to find certified designers, marketers, and developers, all with consumer ratings to help you choose the right one for you.
It’s also possible to become a certified expert as part of the BigCommerce Partner scheme in design, development, advertising, IT solutions, ecommerce consultants, and so on. You don’t need to have a store to apply, but you will be vetted depending on your experience, so some ecommerce awareness is required.
Communities
While BigCommerce’s dedicated forums have a great community of experienced individuals seeking to help one another, there are plenty of unofficial sites and groups that are useful too. Reddit is among the biggest, but Convergent 7 also has a great ecommerce community. BigCommerce also offers a range of online resources to assist you with any problems
BigCommerce University offers enough courses for novices to familiarise themselves with ecommerce, but YouTube and Udemy also offer free courses for those wishing to learn more. These are generally not as good or concise as the official courses, but can provide useful information to those in need.
Store Examples
Notable online stores that use BigCommerce as their ecommerce platform include:
SKULLCANDY
CARGILL
AVERY DENNISON
CAMELBAK
FUJITSU
TOYOTA
How to set up a BigCommerce store
1. To get started with your free trial, head to the BigCommerce website and click Get Started at the top. Enter your e-mail address, then click Continue To Store Details.
2. Enter your details into the fields provided, then click Create Your Store.
3. You’ll be prompted to offer some extra information on why you’re setting up your store. This is optional, and you can skip it if you like. Click Finish or Ask Me Later to skip.
4. You’ll then be taken to your store’s dashboard. You’ll be prompted to take a tour, which we highly recommend to get a feel for your new online store. This will explore the dashboard and the tools available to you.
5. To begin with, your store is already populated with sample products to help you get a feel for it. We recommend playing around with your store, setting up banners, apps, reviews, and more. It’s the best way to get a feel for the platform without causing any problems. Finally, we absolutely recommend viewing the many courses that BigCommerce offers. These are great for learning more about BigCommerce and everything the platform has to offer.
BigCommerce is a versatile platform that offers something for almost every ecommerce merchant, from the novice to the experienced. Beginners will find their useful tutorials, straightforward setup process, and basic sales and marketing features ideal for finding their footing in the world of ecommerce. Experienced merchants too can benefit from their more advanced Pro plan, with both built-in and third party apps providing functionality for all aspects of managing a store.
Price-wise, BigCommerce ranks as one of the more expensive, although it is certainly more feature-rich than many of its competitors. It is well worth upgrading to their abandoned cart saver, and if your product collection is wide and varied then you’ll love its Product Options feature.