Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise: The Battle of Two Giants

If you own an online store with million-dollar annual sales, you will likely need to migrate to an enterprise-level eCommerce platform. A SaaS-based platform will save you a great deal since you don’t have to worry about the cost of ownership, platform maintenance, and management overheads. Two of the most trusted SaaS-based platforms for enterprises are Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise.

In this article, LitExtension – #1 Shopping Cart Migration Expert will help you determine which to use by diving further into:

• Shopify Plus overview
• BigCommerce Enterprise overview
• Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise comparison
• Real case studies on platform switch between Shopify Plus and BigCommerce
• Which one is worth the cost: Shopify Plus or BigCommerce Enterprise?

Let’s delve into it!

---

What Is Shopify Plus?

Shopify Plus is the enterprise platform of Shopify, giving access to much more powerful features and integrations, underlying code, as well as dedicated and comprehensive support than other Shopify plans.

Big brands using Shopify Plus: Allbirds, al.ive body, AMR Hair & Beauty, Murad Skincare, Active Truth, 100% Pure, and many more.

Now, let’s have a brief of Shopify Plus’s advantages and disadvantages.

Shopify Plus advantages:

• Ease of use and intuitive interface.
• Massive app store (huge number of integrations for nearly any functionality).
• Well-suited for rapid scaling and handling high traffic surges.
• Excellent omnichannel features for selling across multiple channels.
• Strong brand recognition.

Shopify Plus disadvantages:

• Some advanced customization may require using Shopify’s proprietary Liquid templating language.
• Lack of control over SEO.
• Can become more expensive with many third-party apps and transaction fees.

 

 

---

What Is BigCommerce Enterprise?

BigCommerce Enterprise is the platform for high-volume BigCommerce brands. It offers out-of-the-box functionalities and integrations, allows 99.99% uptime, and seamlessly handles huge traffic to ensure the highest conversion rate for your store.

Big brands using BigCommerce Enterprise / B2B solutions: United Aqua Group, UPLIFT Desk, One Kings Lane, Cutter & Buck, and many more.

Let’s take a moment to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using BigCommerce Enterprise.

BigCommerce Enterprise advantages:

• Robust built-in features, possibly reducing the need for some third-party apps.
• Strong B2B capabilities like negotiated pricing, quote management, and customer groups.
• Open API for extensive customization.
• Can often be slightly more affordable than Shopify Plus at similar scales.

BigCommerce Enterprise disadvantages:

• The user interface may be slightly less intuitive than Shopify for some.
• While extensive, the app marketplace can be a bit smaller than Shopify’s.

---

Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise Comparison

Both Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise are heavyweights in SaaS-based eCommerce solutions for enterprises.

But if you’re in a rush, you can take a look at our Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise infographic for a thorough comparison between the two.

#1 Pricing

Moving to the first part of the Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce comparison, let’s discover how much money you need to invest in each platform.

Shopify Plus Pricing

Shopify Plus’s detailed pricing is not public on its website and is based on your sales volume. You need to contact them to get the exact range. Normally, the price will start at $2,500 USD/month for a one-year term or $2,300/month for a three-year term. 

The other costs that you might have to pay to run your store on Shopify Plus include:

• Credit card processing fee: The credit card processing fee of Shopify Plus varies by country. For example, in the U.S., you will have to pay 2.15% + $0.3 for each domestic transaction on domestic Visa and MasterCard and an extra 1% on AMEX and international cards. If you are not using Shopify Payments but other payment gateways like PayPal or Skrill, you have to pay an extra 0.15% on top of whatever your current credit card processing fees are.
• Development cost: If you use a Shopify pre-made theme, the build cost will be between $0 and $380. Nevertheless, if you demand custom features for your store, the development fee will be much higher since you have to pay developers or an agency to customize the code.

♦ Pro tip: If you are using other platforms and want to compare their costs with Shopify, you can visit this page and calculate the total cost of ownership by providing the following information:

• Your online revenue
• Your current platform
• Platform cost (optional)
• Operating and support costs (optional)
• Your business URL

Once you have filled in this information, you will receive the result of your calculation.

BigCommerce Enterprise Pricing

Similar to Shopify Plus, there is no detailed pricing displayed on the BigCommerce website. They also require you to contact them to get custom BigCommerce pricing. It is worth noting that BigCommerce proudly states that its custom pricing is lower than both Magento and Shopify Plus.

Normally, these below are the cost you may encounter:

• Platform fee: BigCommerce Enterprise’s price starts at $1,000 per month and can range up to $15,000 per month. BigCommerce determines your pricing based on the sales that you can make. The same as Shopify Plus, the pricing of BigCommerce Enterprise is negotiable.
• Credit card processing fee: The processing fee for debit and credit cards begins at 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction for all BigCommerce plans if you use the default payment option, Paypal powered by Braintree.
• Development cost: BigCommerce pre-made themes cost from $145 to $235, which is pretty high in comparison to Shopify. It will also cost more development fees if you require more customization.

✧ You may also visit BigCommerce Enterprise or read our BigCommerce pricing to know the cost of building a BigCommerce Enterprise business.

#2. Performance & Core Features

Shopify Plus

Shopify Plus is popular for its ability to seamlessly handle massive traffic surges and sudden spikes in sales volume. This is crucial for businesses anticipating flash sales, seasonal demand, or rapid growth.

Beyond scalability, it offers an extensive set of features designed to support the complex needs of enterprise businesses. This includes:

• Advanced inventory management,
• Customizable workflows,
• and Powerful analytics tools.

BigCommerce Enterprise

BigCommerce Enterprise is an eCommerce platform that offers a comprehensive set of features to build and scale enterprise-level online stores. It has a proven track record of providing excellent uptime, ensuring that your store stays up and running even during high-traffic periods.

While BigCommerce Enterprise has slightly fewer pre-built features compared to Shopify Plus, its core feature set is still highly capable and can be extended through its open API.

#3. Security

Shopify Plus Security

Shopify Plus understands that security is non-negotiable for enterprise businesses. It provides top-notch security protocols, rigorous adherence to PCI DSS compliance standards, and the convenience of vendor-managed updates. These measures significantly reduce your own security management overhead.

Shopify Plus security allows you to concentrate on growing your business with the confidence that your platform proactively safeguards sensitive customer and financial data.

BigCommerce Enterprise Security

BigCommerce Enterprise offers strong security standards, regular updates to address potential exposures and compliance with PCI DSS standards. This provides a reliable foundation for protecting your store and customer information.

#4. Multi-store Management & Globalization

In this round, let’s discover the difference between Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise in terms of multi-store management.

It is important to consider different languages, products, and payment options when creating a website for different regions. If your company operates multiple brands, it is more efficient to use a platform that allows you to manage all websites centrally rather than managing them separately.

Shopify Plus Multi-store Management

Shopify Plus offers 3 features that allow multi-store management:

• Expansion store
• Currency converter
• Tax/regulatory support
• Multi-warehouse

Let’s go into detail!

Shopify Plus enables you to add 9 more storefronts for shoppers from various locations besides the main one. You can manage your store performance, employee accounts, user permission, and tools of all of your stores from only 1 dashboard. Each additional store will be charged based on your Gross Merchandising Value.

*Note: Additional stores cost $250/month each or a revenue share across all stores. A separate Shopify Plus contract is needed per brand.

However, this Shopify Plus function has a few limitations. You cannot set individual product IDs per store or install apps independent of each store. You also cannot manage attributes at the global and local levels separately.

The currency converter feature is only accessible for Shopify Payment users. When using this feature, the conversion fee is added to the final price and automatically converted based on the foreign exchange rate. It is important to note that you cannot set different prices for different locations when using this feature.

With Shopify Plus, you can access automatic tax calculations. Built-in tax engines calculate sales taxes for numerous countries and regions, including the US, Canada, EU, Australia, and more.

Finally, Shopify Plus lets you set up multiple locations to manage inventory and fulfill orders more efficiently. The maximum number of locations you can set for a Shopify Plus plan is 20.

BigCommerce Enterprise Multi-store Management

BigCommerce Enterprise also offers some features that allow multi-store management:

• Multiple websites
• Multi-currency and localized payment options
• Localized catalog and pricing
• International shipping

BigCommerce Enterprise plan is an exceptional solution for businesses that manage multiple storefronts. With this plan, you can easily launch various websites on BigCommerce and utilize a BigCommerce partner product information management system to keep track of all your product and marketing data while updating your global storefronts. This plan also offers the remarkable capability of the BigCommerce Stencil framework to set up localized content for each geographic location.

Furthermore, BigCommerce Enterprise gives you complete control over your storefront and allows you to create unique storefronts with distinct branding, URLs, and product catalogs. This feature is especially useful for targeting different customer segments, markets, or brands. You also have the flexibility to customize product catalogs, pricing, and promotions for your target regions.

Overall, BigCommerce Enterprise is truly an exceptional platform for businesses that need to manage multiple storefronts with ease.

#5. Wholesale & B2B Functionality

If you are a large company, you are likely to have customers who buy in bulk to resell, and selecting the right eCommerce solution for B2B is fundamental to your enterprise’s success. Let’s compare Shopify Plus vs. BigCommerce Enterprise B2B functionality below.

Shopify Plus B2B Functionality

On Shopify Plus, there are 2 main options for managing a B2B storefront:

• Shopify Wholesale Channel
• Customizing the theme for different groups of tagged customers

Shopify Wholesale Channel is an ideal tool for expanding your business and catering to the wholesale market. It allows you to utilize the same data as your main store and invite your customers to the wholesale channel while assigning them to different groups. You can easily manage pricing, product visibility, and order limits separately in the wholesale channel area to cater to the specific needs of your wholesale customers.

However, it’s important to note that the customization of the front-end template of the Shopify Wholesale Channel is limited. Yet, there’s a workaround for this – you can use customer tags in Shopify to create different customer groups and offer them different pricing, availability, discounting for different products, and more. This way, you can tailor your offerings to cater to the specific needs of each customer group and provide them with a personalized experience.

BigCommerce Enterprise B2B Functionality

BigCommerce is a remarkable SaaS platform specializing in B2B. It is a powerful tool that offers you great control over managing vast catalogs with a customer and pricing segmentation that goes down to the SKU level. BigCommerce Enterprise comes with several built-in features that cater to B2B businesses.

Some of the default B2B features that this eCommerce solution offers you include:

• Customer-specific pricing through price-lists
• Quote/CPQ management
• Volume/tiered pricing that can also be set at the customer level
• Management of purchase orders and credit terms
• Customized catalogs, shipping options, availability, payment methods, content, and more for different customers
• Customer segmentation features
• Advanced shipping capabilities, such as customized shipping rates through ShipperHQ
• Advanced product management features, including attribute sets, custom fields, variant handling, etc.

#6. Customization & Flexibility

In terms of storefront flexibility, Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise have storefront API, which allows a headless approach that brings more front-end flexibility.

Shopify Plus Customization

Large-scale stores usually require an enormous number of product variants such as colors, sizes, and styles,… However, Shopify Plus has some limitations in terms of the number of product types it provides, such as simple products, downloadable products, and virtual products.

However, you can still use product variants for configurable products, sell downloadable products with additional apps, and sell gift cards like any other products in your store. But it’s essential to keep in mind that Shopify Plus limits specific configurable products to 100 variants and 3 options.

Despite these limitations, Shopify Plus offers many merchandising options. Users can choose from base ordering options and manually reorder products in their collections. The available base order options are:

• Best selling
• Product name: A-Z and Z-A
• Price high-low and low-high
• Newest and oldest

To overcome this limitation, Shopify offers a Script Editor function called Shopify Scripts which allows you to personalize your customers’ shopping experience by modifying small pieces of code. This feature can be used to create custom experiences in the shopping cart and at checkout.

In addition, Shopify provides its proprietary language, Liquid, which can be used to customize storefront elements and themes. Although Liquid can be challenging for some developers to learn, it offers the flexibility to create unique and engaging storefronts.

Finally, Shopify’s API grants developers access to almost all platform data points, allowing them to integrate and customize the platform deeply. This makes Shopify an ideal platform for large-scale stores that require customized experiences for their customers.

BigCommerce Enterprise Customization

BigCommerce Enterprise is an exceptional platform offering businesses with intricate or highly customizable product lines a highly flexible and versatile solution. With over 600 product options available, it provides a wide range of possibilities for tailoring your online store.

The platform also offers a built-in feature called Product Option Filtering, which enables you to create and install filter options to help your customers find the products they are looking for in no time. This feature enhances customer experience and satisfaction, leading to increased sales and revenue.

Moreover, BigCommerce Enterprise’s Optimized One-Page Checkout feature streamlines the checkout process and minimizes the steps required before purchasing, making it more efficient and user-friendly. The platform’s checkout API and storefront API provide additional customization options.

At the same time, its integration with WordPress and Acquia empowers users to create a content-led online store with a fully customizable front-end design.

Finally, BigCommerce Enterprise’s Open API Architecture allows for extensive customization and integrations, making it a highly flexible and adaptable platform. This feature is widely considered to be more open and flexible than Shopify’s, which is why many businesses prefer BigCommerce Enterprise to create a unique and personalized online store.

#7. Support

The bigger your business is, the more problems you may have while running and maintaining it. Hence, it’s a pity if we don’t mention the support aspect in this head-to-head comparison between Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise.

Shopify Plus Support

With a Shopify Plus plan, a dedicated Merchant Success Manager will support you 24/7 via various channels such as email, phone, and live chat. Besides, Shopify Plus offers priority response times, ensuring that issues are addressed swiftly. This is critical for minimizing downtime.

Besides technical problems, you can also ask for their help with other matters like brand strategy, conversion, and business management.

BigCommerce Enterprise Support

BigCommerce Enterprise offers 24/7 technical support. This platform provides you with support regarding Account Management, Solution Architecting, Technical Account Management, Implementation Project Management, and in-house Catalog Transfer Services.

As a larger merchant, your request will benefit from priority support, which means a Senior Technical Support agent will answer your call in under 30 seconds. BigCommerce Enterprise also provides support beyond technical matters, as the Premium Account Services team will offer business recommendations and advice to help you succeed.

#8. Integration Capabilities

Shopify Plus Integration Capabilities

While Shopify’s extensive app marketplace is a major advantage, enterprise businesses often have specialized or unique needs that pre-built apps simply can’t address. This is where Shopify Plus’s robust API truly shines with:

• ERP integration
• Custom workflows

With ERP integration, you can seamlessly connect your Shopify store with your Enterprise Resource Planning system to synchronize inventory, orders, customer data, and financial information. This eliminates manual updates and creates a streamlined backend operation.

With custom workflow, Shopify Plus lets you automate complex business processes unique to your enterprise. Examples include tiered pricing logic based on customer-specific agreements, specialized shipping rules, or bulk order fulfillment processes tailored to your warehouse.

BigCommerce Enterprise Integration Capabilities

BigCommerce Enterprise offers extensive APIs that allow unrestricted access to all platform data, making it easy to integrate with any frontend framework, technology stack, or CMS of your choice. This approach offers unparalleled flexibility to create highly innovative, cross-channel customer experiences for enterprises seeking to stay ahead of the curve in omnichannel commerce.

#9. Headless Commerce

A headless architecture is a design that separates the front end (the part of a website or app that customers see and interact with) from the back end (the part that manages order processing, inventory, etc.). This approach gives you complete control over the customer experience, using any frontend technology you prefer.

Shopify Plus Headless Commerce

Shopify Plus offers robust Storefront APIs and developer toolkits to build customized storefronts entirely. The Shopify’s Hydrogen framework, designed explicitly for React developers, streamlines the creation of fast and performant headless storefronts.

While Shopify Plus’s architecture was traditionally linked to its own storefront technology, these advancements offer greater front-end flexibility.

However, implementing true headless solutions on Shopify Plus can still require significant development expertise. This approach is best suited for businesses seeking the robust backend features and reliability of Shopify Plus while prioritizing a fully customizable and innovative front-end customer experience.

BigCommerce Enterprise Headless Commerce

The architecture of BigCommerce Enterprise is specifically designed to support headless commerce. It clearly separates the front-end presentation layer from the powerful back-end functionality.

With its extensive APIs, the platform offers unrestricted access to all platform data, allowing for seamless integration with any frontend framework, technology stack, or CMS of your choice. This approach provides unmatched flexibility for enterprises looking to create highly innovative and cross-channel customer experiences.

#10. Extensions & Apps

The next part of our break-into-piece comparison between Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise is Extensions/Apps.

Shopify Plus Apps

Shopify Plus offers merchants a wide range of applications, with over 8,000 to choose from. Additionally, they have a Shopify Plus Certified App list, which includes 100 apps that have met high standards of innovation, reliability, quality, and support. This feature helps merchants find the best apps for their business, making the platform a valuable resource for them.

Some advanced Shopify Plus apps for high-growth merchants are:

• Privy includes conversion, email marketing, & SMS tools. This app provides store owners with the possibility to generate coupon codes, display popups, spin-to-win wheels, announcement bars, and many other marketing tools to optimize their store sales.
• Smile allows you to build a powerful loyalty program. A Smile loyalty program gives your customers access to exclusive perks, attractive discounts, and a fun way to engage with your brand every time they log in to your store. This application allows you to set up three types of programs: a loyalty points program, a Referral program, and a VIP program.

BigCommerce Enterprise Extensions

BigCommerce provides a wide range of applications of over 1200 apps in different categories, such as Marketing, Analytic & Reporting, Payment & Security and Accounting, etc, on its marketplace.

There are no specific sections for enterprise apps in BigCommerce. However, you can refer to apps built by Elite, Verified, or Preferred PARTNER TIERS to find the most qualified apps for enterprise commerce.

There are a couple of advanced apps that can be of great use to BigCommerce enterprises:

• ShipStation is designed to simplify the process of fulfilling orders and shipping products for businesses that have high order volumes or that require advanced shipping options for international selling.
• Eye4Fraud is a tool specifically designed to protect eCommerce businesses from fraud. It utilizes machine learning to analyze different data points, such as IP location, order history, and billing details, to identify potentially fraudulent orders.

#11. SEO Features

As a matter of fact, a high ranking on search engines like Google is an excellent way to help you approach more customers. Also, this contributes to your brand reputation and customer trust.

Hence, in this section, we’d love to analyze SEO features between Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise for your consideration.

Shopify Plus SEO

Shopify Plus has a basic set of SEO options. You can make any configuration at the server level. Shopify Plus allows you to edit meta tags and optimize your inventory and product pages.

The platform also generates redirects for you if you change the name of a page’s URL. However, you cannot make some technical SEO changes easily, modify your URL structure and hierarchy, and cache headers. It is also impossible to build a Shopify Plus store on a sub-directory. Indeed, Shopify Plus is not very flexible regarding SEO.

BigCommerce Enterprise SEO

On the other hand, the SEO functionality of BigCommerce Enterprise is a big plus. This platform allows many more possibilities to optimize your store’s SEO. You have full control over URLs with BigCommerce, as you can change URL structure for different pages and no forced directories. You can also edit the robots.txt page and use directories in URLs.

In addition, it’s also straightforward to handle things like canonical URL logic, hreflang implementation, structured data, etc. BigCommerce also supports accelerated mobile page management and redirect management.

---

Real Case Studies on Platform Switch Between Shopify Plus and BigCommerce

A BigCommerce to Shopify Plus Migration

Lull faced rapid scaling needs as they experienced a significant surge in demand. However, their previous BigCommerce setup was not equipped to handle the explosive growth seamlessly.

Why Shopify Plus?

They decided to switch to Shopify Plus as it is known for handling sudden, massive traffic spikes (think flash sales). This suggests that Lull needed a platform that could handle peak moments without buckling under pressure.

A Shopify to BigCommerce Enterprise Migration

Designerie encountered challenges while managing its large and complex product catalog with numerous attributes and variations on Shopify. They found it cumbersome. They needed more robust B2B features, such as the ability to offer bespoke pricing and create a wholesale portal for its interior design trade clientele.

To address their concerns, Designerie decided to switch to BigCommerce’s flexible product management system.

Why BigCommerce Enterprise?

Instead of upgrading their Shopify plan to Shopify Plus, they opted for BigCommerce because it allowed them to efficiently handle their extensive catalog, complex product relationships, and custom attributes.

By switching to BigCommerce, Designerie was able to take advantage of native B2B features like customer groups, price lists, and the ability to create separate wholesale experiences. These features streamlined their B2B operations and made it easier for them to manage their business.

---

Which One Is Worth The Cost: Shopify Plus or BigCommerce Enterprise?

Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise are both powerful platforms. Even though Shopify is undoubtedly a market leader among SaaS-based eCommerce platforms, BigCommerce is building up its position with its extensibility and various features.

Shopify Plus is great for businesses that:

• Prioritize rapid scaling;
• Need a user-friendly platform;
• Need moderate customization;
• Focus on both B2B and B2C.

BigCommerce Enterprise is great for businesses that:

• Focus on strong native B2B features;
• Want deep frontend and backend control;
• Need more complex product catalogs;
• Have in-house developers or an agency partner comfortable with BigCommerce’s tech stack.

Therefore, it is up to you to determine which criteria are more important to your business before deciding whether to go with Shopify Plus or BigCommerce Enterprise.

---

FAQs about Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise

[sp_easyaccordion id=”72689″]

---

Bottom Line

Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise both have many powerful functions as well as limitations, especially around multi-store management. But it seems like the latter allows more complex options while the former aims at focus and simplification for merchants. Hopefully, this article has contributed to your decision.

We hope that our insightful analysis of key features between Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise will help you decide which one is the cream of the crop.

If you are planning to migrate to BigCommerce, migrate to Shopify, between these two platforms, or any other platforms, LitExtension is willing to help! As the world-leading shopping cart migration solution with 200,000+ successful migrations for 100,000+ worldwide customers in the last 13 years, LitExtension can transfer all your data, including products, customers, and orders, automatically, quickly, and accurately, especially with no technical skills required.

You can find the list of LitExtension supported carts here. If your platform is not on the list, contact our team via live chat to make a request. For any further information about LitExtension, please feel free to contact us!

Don’t forget that we have an all-inclusive eCommerce blog section and a dynamic community for all eCommerce fellows!