BigCommerce is one of the world’s top website builders and e-commerce platforms. Individual sellers and e-commerce companies use the platform to build and run fast-growing online businesses.
This guide examines the e-commerce platform, what it entails, and some of the costs you should consider before setting up a store.
What is BigCommerce and How Does it Work?
BigCommerce is an e-commerce platform that allows businesses to create online stores. The online store builder powers hundreds of thousands of stores already, with a reach spanning over 150 countries, according to BuiltWith.
BigCommerce offers plans for individual store owners, small businesses, and established e-commerce companies. Sellers can use this platform to design their e-shops and sell products online.
Similar to other e-commerce software, BigCommerce doesn’t require coding skills. What is needed is a creative mind and clear-cut goals on how you would like your platform to look and operate.
BigCommerce Pricing: Breaking It All Down
BigCommerce Features: Available on All Plans
BigCommerce differs from other store builders thanks to the ton of features available for customers irrespective of the plan selected. These include
- Zero transaction fees
- Unlimited staff accounts
- Unlimited products, bandwidth, and storage
BigCommerce Standard Plan
Price: $29.95 per month or annually
Who is it suitable for?
- Individual sellers
- Small to medium-scale e-commerce businesses
The Standard Plan on BigCommerce is a reliable option for anyone who is starting an e-commerce business. It’s the most basic. This plan provides the most critical tools, including high-level functionalities, a checkout page, a payment processor, and more.
BigCommerce Standard Plan provides support for unlimited products and storage capacity. You can accept numerous payment options and access dozens of design themes, while also using the service’s web-based editor to modify your platform’s theme to your desired look.
Here’s a list of features wrapped up in the Standard Plan:
- Shopping connections with Google, eBay, and Amazon
- Responsive web design
- Point-of-sale system
- Single-page checkout
- Facebook and Instagram integration
- Amazon Pay, Google Pay, Apple Pay
- Real-time shipping
- Gift cards, discounts, and coupons
- Blog section
The BigCommerce Plus Plan
Price: $79.95 per month on monthly billing or $71.95 per month on annual billing.
Who is it suitable for?
- Individual sellers
- Growing small and medium-scale companies
The BigCommerce Plus Plan comes with all the features in the Standard Plan and some more.
Some of the extras include advanced customer segmentation—which allows you to narrow down on your target audience. That’s not all. You also get to host your checkout page on your domain, which prevents redirection to third–party payment pages.
The abandoned cart saver is another exciting feature on the Plus plan. With the abandoned cart saver, you can easily send automated emails to customers who add products to their carts but exit the site without completing their purchase.
For business owners running retargeting ads, persistent cart feature on the Plus plan is a must-have. Persistent cart capability saves customers’ shopping carts to their account. This allows customers to continue where they left off even on different devices. The Plus Plan also provides effective wholesale and retail pricing groups, which opens new revenue streams to your business.
Some of the other impressive features of the BigCommerce Plus Plan include:
- Abandoned cart saver
- Stored credit cards
- Customer segmentation and groups
- Stored credit cards
The BigCommerce Pro Plan
Price: $299.95 per month on monthly billing, $269.95 per month on annual billing.
Selecting the annual billing option on the BigCommerce Pro Plan saves you $360.00 per year.
Who is this plan for?
- Growing medium-scale and large-scale e-commerce businesses
The BigCommerce Pro Plan is the logical next step for store owners working on scaling their operations. If you have large budgets and your business is growing, this is where you want to be.
The BigCommerce Pro Plan is loaded with high-performance marketing and optimization features. Think of Google customer reviews, which allows you to collect feedback from customers on their shopping experience. You can also add filters to your product selection, making product searches faster and much easier in your store.
For secure connections, you have the option of a custom SSL feature, which are SSL certificates dedicated to your brand—not shared with multiple customer domains. This affirms your brand identity, satisfies PCI/DSS requirements, and improves customer trust.
The BigCommerce Enterprise Plan
Who is it for?
- Big e-commerce businesses
The Enterprise Plan is for large e-commerce businesses that are looking to unlock their full potential. It is the most advanced plan offered by BigCommerce and it requires a little bit of setup to get started.
The Enterprise Plan is also the most powerful one from BigCommerce, and it comes with the most features. Apart from getting everything that the other pricing plans have, you can also unlock some exciting additional features.
For instance, the pricing plan provides custom product filters. These are more advanced than the filters that you get with the Pro Plan, and they will go a long way in helping your customers to narrow down their search options seamlessly.
The plan also offers custom price lists. This allows you to display different prices to different customer groups – retail pricing, wholesale pricing, etc. Then, there are unlimited API calls, which allow you to send requests to your server whenever you want.
Several other features here include:
- Dedicated API support
- Express routing
- Strategic account management
BigCommerce also offers a free plan that allows business owners to access a full suite of services for free for a limited period. The plan runs for 15 days.
Sales Growth and Upgrades
One of the interesting details about BigCommerce is that each plan has a sales cap. Once you exceed the cap, it upgrades you to another.
Yearly sales cap for each plan:
- Standard: $50k in sales per year
- Plus: $150k in sales per year.
- Pro: $400k per year with an extra $150 per month when you every $200k worth of sales pulled in.
The Enterprise Plan doesn’t have a cap on sales.
Why the sales limitation and upgrade? BigCommerce believes that as your store grows, your needs will increase. For instance, if you start with the Standard plan, once you start making sales over $50k a year, you’ll require advanced tools that are available on higher plans.
It’s in your best interest to upgrade once you surpass your revenue cap. Failure to upgrade would see you missing out on features like product filtering, loyalty programs, and abandoned cart recovery. Not having access to tools like these means you’re leaving money on the table. And should tragedy strike—and your sales dip, you can simply downgrade when you want.
Additional Costs of Running an Online Store on BigCommerce
Domain Name Registration
Your domain name is one of the essential tools for your e-commerce store. It shows your visitors who you are, and lets them know what your website is all about. You can purchase a domain name from BigCommerce for $12.27 per year. The price is quite competitive, especially when you compare it to other services.
Premium Apps
BigCommerce’s selection of premium apps is one of its unique selling points. It comes with a wide array of services built into its platform.
The platform has a dedicated app store, similar to Shopify’s. If you have a feature you want, you can simply head to the store and search for it. The app store features both free and paid apps. Paid apps are billed monthly, ranging from $9 to $50 per month.
Credit Card Processing Fees
This is standard for e-commerce stores. For every credit card transaction carried out on your platform, you’ll incur a transaction fee. This fee differs among payment gateways. BigCommerce has a profitable partnership with most of the gateway providers. The higher your pricing plan on BigCommerce, the lower your fees.
These are the fees for both debit and credit card transactions are as follows:
- Standard Plan – 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction
- Plus Plan – 2.5% + $0.30 per transaction
- Pro Plan – 2.2% + $0.30 per transaction
- Enterprise Plan – 2.2% + $0.30 or lower per transaction
While it’s easy to compare the credit card fees with other e-commerce platforms, keep in mind that you won’t pay transaction fees to BigCommerce. So, the credit card rates are the only fees that you have to worry about with the service.
Store Theme Design
With e-commerce stores, first impression matters. What better way to impress first-time visitors and convert them than with premium theme designs? BigCommerce offers an extensive range of premium themes that starts at $140.
BigCommerce Partners
Primarily, BigCommerce partners are professionals that you hire to work on your store. They’re essential for individuals and companies that would like to boost their stores in various ways – SEO, theme selection, design, and building, etc.
There are over 4,000 agency partners on BigCommerce. You can choose to hire one if you want, and their prices vary based on what you need. You will need to get in touch with an agency to know their quote.
Cancellation Fees
If you select a monthly plan on BigCommerce and you want to cancel your subscription, it’s recommended that you cancel at least two days before the end of your term. If you don’t, the service will assume that you want to keep using the builder and will charge you accordingly.
While there are no custom cancellation fees, you have to make sure not to cancel your subscription at the last minute.
BigCommerce Comparisons
BigCommerce Vs. Shopify
Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms in the world. Over 22% of the world’s online stores run on Shopify. Like BigCommerce, the service allows business owners to design and run their online stores from the platform.
In terms of pricing, there’s no clear winner. It’s easier to get started with Shopify. The Basic Plan costs $29.00 per month, as opposed to the $29.95 monthly fee that you pay with the BigCommerce Standard Plan.
There’s no wrong choice between the two services. They both offer extensive features and are easier to use. However, Shopify is designed for first-time store owners and remains more popular than BigCommerce.
You can check out our full comparison review here.
BigCommerce Vs. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the undisputed leader in the market, covering over 25% of the global e-commerce market. Besides the similarity in names, both function in the e-commerce space and are easy to work with.
However, BigCommerce is a full-fledged website builder. WooCommerce, on the other hand, functions as an e-commerce plug-in for WordPress that transforms websites into online stores.
So, while it takes only a few minutes to set up your store on BigCommerce, WooCommerce requires more time and effort because it’s not a hosted platform like BigCommerce.
BigCommerce Vs. Magento
Both BigCommerce and Magento are great platforms for running an online store, but they differ significantly.
Magento is an open-source platform. It provides business owners with the platform’s source code so they can design and configure their website as they seem fit. This platform offers a lot of customization, but it could be pricey setting up and maintaining such a solution, if you don’t have an IT team in house.
BigCommerce, on the other hand, is an out-of-the-box solution that comes with pre-built and customizable themes that can be set up by anyone without coding knowledge. The platform also fixes bugs in its software and maintains it. With Magento, the business owner is responsible for the infrastructure.
BigCommerce Vs. Wix
Wix and BigCommerce both help users to set up websites. But, Wix is more affordable and easier to use. In terms of templates, Wix blows BigCommerce out of the water.
It offers a wide range of easily customizable templates. BigCommerce offers free templates too, but it has more premium themes than free ones. BigCommerce also requires more investment than you would spend with Wix. It costs double what Wix charges on its cheapest plan.
BigCommerce Vs. Squarespace
Squarespace is another effective service that functions significantly like BigCommerce. However, there are some prominent differences here too.
For instance, BigCommerce doesn’t charge any transaction fees on any plan. For Squarespace, you’ll be slapped with a 3% transaction charge. The only way to escape this is by signing up for its high-end commerce plans.
Conclusion: Is BigCommerce’s Pricing Worth the Costs?
BigCommerce boasts one of the most expansive e-commerce site builder features on the market. The service is easy to use and quite intuitive, and it provides just about every functionality you’ll need to operate your online store effectively.
The service has its drawbacks—notably its propensity to upgrade your plan once your sales exceed a certain threshold.
However, it makes up for that by throwing in some features that work across all pricing plans. These include zero-fee transactions, unlimited storage, unlimited staff account, and no caps on products.
You also get a 15-days trial period to test run the platform. Is BigCommerce’s pricing worth it? We think it does, but it depends on your sales goals and ambitions.
