BigCommerce vs WooCommerce: Which Is Better For Your Business?

Choosing a platform to build your online business has never been an easy task. It becomes extremely difficult when you have to decide between BigCommerce vs WooCommere – two eCommerce giants.

While the competition is fierce, each platform has obvious ins and outs. In today’s article, I’ll point out the differences between them so you can choose the most suitable platform for your business.

Keep scrolling to find out more about:

• BigCommerce and WooCommerce: An overall comparison;
• The differences between the two platforms;
• Which is ideal for your business: BigCommerce or WooCommerce?

Let’s wait no more and get right into it!

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BigCommerce vs WooCommerce: An Overall Comparison

Before delving into the BigCommerce vs WooCommerce comparison, we will take a glance at each platform.

• Being a hosted eCommerce platform, BigCommerce makes it easy for you to create and operate your online store quickly.
• Whereas, WooCommerce is the best eCommerce plugin for WordPress, giving you the capability to transfer every existing WordPress site to a powerful webshop.

What is BigCommerce?

BigCommerce is the leading hosted solution that makes it simple to launch and run an online store. Unquestionably, this is the best start for owners, retailers, and even wholesalers to customize their online store within a hosted environment.

Moreover, BigCommerce has the best built-in features and powerful open APIs that you cannot find elsewhere, despite the fact that it is not an open-source cart. These features make it possible for you to set up, customize, and expand your business easily.

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What is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce was brought to life in 2011 and has worked as an open-source eCommerce plugin for WordPress ever since. With WooCommerce, you can quickly turn any existing WordPress website into a fully functional store. That’s why this BigCommerce competitor has been regarded as a perfect solution for businesses at all levels, from small-scale retailers to large enterprises.

At the time of writing, WooCommerce was rebranded as Woo and provided two primary services: hosting solutions (WooExpress, Pressable, and WordPress VIP) and Woo Developers. Within the scope of our BigCommerce vs WooCommerce comparison, we mainly refer to the open-source version when mentioning WooCommerce.

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BigCommerce vs WooCommerce: What Makes The Difference?

Like facts and figures never tell lies, the popularity of BigCommerce vs WooCommerce is backed by several sets of statistics. As of Dec 2023, BigCommerce powers 44,000+ live websites (Souce: BuiltWith). On the other hand, WooCommerce powers 6,300,000+ live websites (Source: BuiltWith).

However, it’s not always about numbers that people should look up to and make decisions. That’s when you need to refer to critical criteria to which you can decide between BigCommerce vs WooCommerce.

So before jumping into the detailed comparison, let us present to you the overall differences between BigCommerce and WooCommerce that you’ll learn in this article.

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Pricing

BigCommerce vs WooCommerce have different mechanisms for setting prices. The former, as an all-in-one solution, offers tiered pricing plans, while the latter stacks up expenses for separate components.

BigCommerce Pricing

First off, BigCommerce provides you with a 15-day free trial for hands-on experience. After that, you’ll have to choose a package to continue operating your online store.

Of all the 3 essential BigCommerce pricing plans (Standard, Plus, and Pro), the Plus one is most favored by the public. With each upper-tier plan you choose, BigCommerce will grant you access to many more advanced features. As for the Enterprise plan, the ideal option for larger businesses, you’ll have to contact the sales team for customized BigCommerce Enterprise pricing.

The great news is that all BigCommerce plans charge no transaction fees on using leading payment gateways (e.g. PayPal, AmazonPay, Stripe, etc.). Your website will also have unlimited bandwidth, unlimited file storage, product variants, or staff accounts.

Plus, your store will include a fully responsive site, one-page checkout, digital wallets, basic SEO tools, and robust analytics, regardless of the plan you choose. And if you opt for paying annually instead of monthly, you’ll even get a 25% discount.

Please notice that BigCommerce sets a limit on total annual sales on their plans. However, it makes sense, given that this is the only hosted cart that allows you to expand to higher sales with a wealth of premium features.

WooCommerce Pricing

WooCommerce has been long regarded as one of the best WordPress plugins for eCommerce. Thanks to its open-source nature, you don’t have to pay a buck to install WooCommerce and get full customizability. However, in order to operate a complete WooCommerce store, you need to pay separately for the domain name, web hosting service, and SSL certificate, which are estimated to cost as follows:

• Domain name ($12/year);
• WordPress hosting fee (from $3.95/month);
• Security (from $50, ongoing or one-off charge);
• Developer fees (from $50/hr).

Adding to that, if you want to customize and add functionalities to your website, you may have to pay for themes and extensions.

• Paid theme (from $30);
• Plugins ($0 – $1000).

Therefore, total expense adding up may change your initial conception of WooCommerce as a cheap solution for eCommerce. WooCommerce can be a relatively cheap eCommerce solution at the beginning, but later in the future, managing a compilation of monthly bills is not an easy task to handle.

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Ease of Use

BigCommerce Ease of Use

With BigCommerce, it’s easy to start and maintain your eCommerce store. Since BigCommerce is a fully hosted platform, you don’t need to worry about BigCommerce hosting or install any software to get started. However, it is versatile enough for knowledgeable users and programmers to change the code in stores. The same thing happens for security and version upgrades.

Adding to that, BigCommerce provides a straightforward interface with a vertical menu on the left-hand side of the screen. That said, some beginners still find the interface hard to navigate, especially when it comes to adding a product. However, these hassles can be solved quickly with sufficient BigCommerce support, which will be discussed later in this BigCommerce vs WooCommerce comparison.

WooCommerce Ease of Use

On the other hand, things can be a little more complex when running a WooCommerce store. Since it’s an open-source platform, you’ll have to take care of everything, from domain registration and host settings to security maintenance of your web page. Therefore, WooCommerce is preferable for users who have a certain level of technical skills.

In compensation, there’s a setup wizard to walk you through the onboarding process once you’re logged into the WooCommerce dashboard. What’s more, the platform features a user-friendly and easy-to-navigate interface that can satisfy many eCommerce beginners.

Learn how to set up WooCommerce in our thorough beginner’s guide, or watch the video below to skip walls of text.

Themes & design

A good-looking and well-designed storefront plays a vital part in catching customers’ attention. Let’s see how BigCommerce vs WooCommerce competes when it comes to building a beautiful online store.

BigCommerce Themes

Like other hosted solutions, BigCommerce provides its users with numerous options for eCommerce templates. Besides 100+ premium templates (which range from $140 to $399), there are 05 free themes available on the BigCommerce Theme Store so that you can customize your storefront at no cost.

There are 02 options to personalize your online store: using BigCommerce’s built-in visual editor or updating the theme’s files. As for the first option, BigCommerce Page Builder allows you to customize different style elements of your theme or drag content onto pages. Otherwise, advanced users can utilize the platform’s Stencil framework to access the backed files of certain storefront pages, such as category, product, or page.

WooCommerce Themes

On the other hand, WooCommerce works as a plugin for WordPress and benefits from the CMS, so developers have put efforts into making WooCommerce compatible with WordPress themes. Hence, you can get thousands of free and paid themes from both the WooCommerce themes store and the WordPress themes store.

It’s not an exaggeration to say WooCommerce is the most customizable eCommerce platform with themes. The platform allows you to modify code and content entirely to suit your business needs using WooCommerce HTML/CSS editor. Plus, WooCommerce themes mostly cost 79$, a more affordable price than those of BigCommerce.

eCommerce Features

When it comes to eCommerce features, both BigCommerce vs WooCommerce are outfitted with brilliant attributes that you’ll surely need for your online store. However, the features provided by each of these two platforms are different.

BigCommerce eCommerce features

Here are a few key sales features that BigCommerce offers to its users:

• Multi-channel Integration: You can sell your products directly on other channels like Facebook, Amazon, or eBay right from your site.
• Cart abandonment alerts: Email reminders are automatically sent to customers when they leave items in their cart without checking out.
• Analytical Tracking and Reporting Tools: You can monitor your site’s performance through sessions, sales, and email campaigns.
• Setting rates for shipping: You’re free to decide the charges for sending items from one place to another.
• Point-of-sale (POS): enables you to connect with any POS service providers (i.e. ConnectPOS, Hike, Vend, etc.) and consistently sell both online and offline. Additionally, there are no additional costs.

WooCommerce eCommerce Features

Compared to BigCommerce, WooCommerce has a lot fewer on offer. Nevertheless, WooCommerce still comes packed with some innovative features:

• Blogging functions: You can create a blog for WooCommerce by adding a post right from the WordPress Admin dashboard.
• WooCommerce Analytics:  This feature allows you to keep track of your revenue, orders, products, categories, coupons, taxes, downloads, and stock.
• One-click refunds: Customers can get money back for returns immediately.

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Inventory Management

The inventory management system has become critical for every online business. It helps you keep track of your products, create reports, and make data-driven decisions. Hence, we can’t look over this factor when comparing BigCommerce vs WooCommerce.

BigCommerce Inventory Management

Fortunately, BigCommerce comes with a powerful inventory management system with no need for third-party software.

The platform comes with a straightforward, native, and potent inventory management system that ensures seamless control of levels and order trends on both online and offline channels. Moreover, BigCommerce is the only platform that permits the sale of physical, digital, and service-based goods without the use of an app. You can also integrate BigCommerce with third party inventory management apps to further extend functionalities.

WooCommere Inventory Management

With WooCommerce, it’s possible to handle basic tasks like creating inventory reports and making changes to any part of your products.

However, managing WooCommerce inventory is not as easy as it seems, especially in bulk stock management. You’ll have to visit various pages and toggle tons of settings individually just to make a simple change.

On top of that, it’s difficult to handle a large database with WooCommerce if your inventory grows larger each day. As luck would have it, you can solve the problem by adding inventory management plugins available on the WooCommerce store.

Apps & Plugins

Adding apps and plugins can fill up what is missing from a limited set of features in every eCommerce platform. How does BigCommerce vs WooCommerce allow you to enhance capabilities for your online store? Find out right below.

BigCommerce Apps

While being widely known for its powerful built-in features, BigCommerce still provides its users with a plethora of 1000+ apps. BigCommerce plugins are classified into multiple categories (i.e. Accounting & Tax, Checkout, Payment & Security, etc.). so that you can improve certain capabilities based on your needs. Apps in Analytics, Marketing, and Payment as the most popular for purchases.

Although open APIs and 99.99% uptime are features included in all plans, the Enterprise Plan offers a headless solution and unlimited API calls. With this offer from BigCommerce, both developers and sellers can excel in the eCommerce market.

As a hosted solution, Shopify also has a board app store. In case you need some more insights, here’s out BigCommerce vs Shopify comparison for your concern.

WooCommerce Plugins

Compared to BigCommerce, WooCommerce provides even more diverse plugin choices to add functionalities to your store.

Using WooCommerce means that you will benefit greatly from WordPress. It’s straightforward to access 60,000+ free and thousands of premium plugins on the WordPress repository.

WooCommerce plugins are designed to serve in various categories, including Store management, Shipping, WooCommerce Payment, and more.

Payment Gateways

Online stores that apply flexible and multiple payment gateways can sell to a broad range of customers and convert more easily. Keep scrolling down to find out whether BigCommerce vs WooCommerce can fulfill your requirement regarding payment gateway.

BigCommerce Payment Gateways

With BigCommerce, you can choose from over 65 pre-integrated payment gateways. The list includes big names such as PayPal, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, Square, Stripe, etc. It’s even better to know that BigCommerce doesn’t charge any transaction fee on any pricing plan, and the function is fully mobile-optimized and PCI-compliant.

When setting up BigCommerce stores, choose the payment gateways that go along with your business. In case you forget to set up one, BigCommerce will automatically apply payment gateways based on your store country and currency.

WooCommerce Payment Gateways

If you choose to go with WooCommerce, you will get access to 100+ payment gateways, with default options being PayPal and Stripe.

The platform also features WooPayments – a payment gateway designed exclusively for WooCommerce stores. This payment plugin is free to download, with no setup fees or monthly fees. With WooPayments, you’ll be able to accept major credit and debit cards securely right from your dashboard. It can even help you to increase conversions by allowing customers to proceed to checkout without leaving your website.

SEO & Marketing Features

Putting efforts into SEO and marketing is vital if you want to succeed in your online business. You could have the best products in the world, but if you don’t promote or push them up the SERPs, you may not be making the maximum profit.

BigCommerce SEO & marketing

Among top hosted eCommerce platforms, BigCommerce is widely known for its amazing built-in SEO features. With BigCommerce, you’ll be able to perform essential SEO practices, such as editing meta titles/descriptions, customizing URL slugs, adding alt text, and getting keyword support. Adding to that, an SSL certificate is available on all BigCommerce price plans, and the platform automatically creates 301 redirects whenever a URL (product, category, or web page) is changed.

FavSEO, ReloadSEO, and ProSEOTracker are some notable BigCommerce SEO apps that can help improve your SEO performance.

As for marketing features, there’s a built-in blogging function that enables you to upload blog posts easily. Popups, email marketing, and SMS marketing are also available at reasonable charges so that you can promote your products to potential customers.

WooCommerce SEO & marketing

Similar to BigCommerce, WooCommerce allows you to fully customize meta titles, meta descriptions, and URL slugs. It’s also straightforward to add image alt texts for higher rankings. However, you’ll have to pay for the SSL certificate. Yoast SEO, the most popular plugin for WooCommerce and WordPress sites, also charges $89 a year for the premium version.

In compensation, WooCommerce inherits the quality blogging feature from WordPress. You can create a blog with quality content and links to leverage your SEO efforts. Adding to that, there are hundreds of marketing plugins to power your store at WooCommerce Extensions, like abandoned cart recovery features and social media integrations.

Do you know that Magento is also an open-source solution with powerful SEO features? If you’re curious, here is a comprehensive WooCommerce vs Magento comparison for your concerns.

Security

No matter which eCommerce platform you choose between BigCommerce vs WooCommerce, security should be one of the top priorities to take into consideration.

BigCommerce Security

In terms of security, BigCommerce tends to be preferred by the public. As a fully hosted platform, BigCommerce handles security tasks as part of your BigCommerce subscriptions. SSL certificates are also included in every BigCommerce pricing plan to ensure the highest level of website security.

With regards to card transactions, BigCommerce servers are PCI DSS 3.2 certified at level 1, which protects against credit card data breaches. This also helps to eliminate the massive cost and hassle of handling compliance yourself. On top of that, there are several BigCommerce apps to prevent fraudulent purchases and strengthen your security.

WooCommerce Security

Unlike BigCommerce, you’ll have to take care of WooCommerce security tasks on your own.

From the very first steps of building a WooCommerce store, you must choose the hosting provider and domain name deliberately. It’s also your duty to take care of SSL certificates and PCI compliance.

What’s more, when using WooCommerce, you’ll have to keep updating to the newest versions to get security patches and fix glitches. It’s worth noting that you should back up your store before every WooComerce update. By doing that, in case something bad happens to your data, you can go back and restore it to its original state.

It’s good news that WooCommerce allows you to create two-factor authentication. This feature helps reinforce access to your website and is extremely effective when your password accidentally falls into the hands of strangers.

Support

Support is another crucial factor to check before choosing between BigCommerce and WooCommerce.

BigCommerce Support

As a fully hosted platform, BigCommerce provides excellent support via phone, email, and live chat support. You can contact the BigCommerce support team right after signing up for a BigCommerce free trial. There’s also a powerful community where you can discuss any issues or interesting topics and get hands-on advice from active users.

It’s worth noting that BigCommerce offers support 24/7, so you can ask your questions any time you want. What’s more, BigCommerce features Help Center archiving guideline documentation for users at any level, from newbies to seniors, non-tech persons to developers.

WooCommerce Support

On the other hand, WooCommerce provides limited support options and little to no personal support. You can only have official support from developers via tickets or emails.

In compensation, WooCommerce has a huge community of users and developers where you can seek help from them anytime. Other resources such as FAQs, tutorials, and documentation are also available to help them deal with common problems.

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BigCommerce vs WooCommerce: Which Is Ideal for Your Business?

There should be no permanent answer for which is better between BigCommerce vs WooCommerce, since the two platforms are totally different. Therefore, it would be wiser to consider the most suitable platform for your business.

And here’s how we conduct the final recommendation:

• Choose BigCommerce if you want a hosted solution with room to modify the codes of your online store. Though it might be a bit difficult the first time using BigCommerce, the platform turns out to be easy to use and offers amazing built-in features to grow and succeed. You can also browse other BigCommerce alternatives if you still need some more insights.
• Choose WooCommerce if you already have a WordPress site and want to transform it into an online store. The platform provides high customizability, so it’s suitable for those who already have a light set of technical knowledge. Also, WooCommerce is an ideal choice if you have a tight budget at the beginning since it’s completely free to install. You can pay more as you grow and wish to further customize and add functionality to your store.

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WooCommerce vs BigCommerce: FAQs

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Final Verdict

That’s it, we have delivered everything you need to know about BigCommerce vs WooCommerce! Hopefully, we have cleared your doubts about which platform better suits your business. BigCommerce can help you grow quickly with out-of-the-box eCommerce features. However, if you need 100% control of your website, you can rely on WooCommerce to customize your online store.

If you’re considering a move from BigCommerce to WooCommerce or vice versa, LitExtension can outstandingly help you complete the task. With over 10 years of dealing with different platform infrastructures and having completed 280,000+ migrations, we can transfer your store to a more robust place seamlessly, with utmost security. Our enthusiastic support team is available 24/7, so don’t hesitate to request any of your questions at any time!

You can also visit the LitExension Blog and join our Facebook Community to get more eCommerce tips and news!