BigCommerce Review: Pros and Cons

There are numerous ecommerce platforms available, but only a handful of them are exceptional. Among the top choices is BigCommerce, which has gained significant popularity and positive feedback from users. In this comprehensive review, we will thoroughly examine the features, design, ease of use, and pricing of BigCommerce to determine if it truly deserves its reputation as one of the best eCommerce platforms out there.

What is BigCommerce?

With a comprehensive set of tools for hosting and managing an online store, BigCommerce has emerged as one of the most widely used ecommerce platforms. This fully-hosted front-end solution simplifies the process of setting up an ecommerce store, making it an excellent choice for businesses of all sizes.

Small businesses looking to expand will find BigCommerce’s exceptional scalability particularly appealing, while large businesses can take advantage of its advanced features. Also, the platform goes beyond mere hosting, offering integrated SEO tools to ensure that your website is optimized for high search engine rankings.

Pros and Cons of BigCommerce

Pricing Plans

Plan	Price per month (Billed annually)	Price per month (Billed monthly)
Standard	$29/month	$39/month
Plus	$79/month	$105/month
Pro	$299/month	$399/month
Enterprise	Custom	Custom

BigCommerce Features

With a general understanding of what BigCommerce has to offer, it’s time to look deeper into the platform’s full range of features and capabilities. Let’s explore all that BigCommerce has to offer and how it can benefit your online business.

1. Store Design

BigCommerce provides a wide range of both paid and free themes, as well as extensive customization options for your storefront. Utilizing the user-friendly drag-and-drop editor, you can easily build a store from scratch, add widgets, carousels, and more. The platform’s interface is intuitive and straightforward to navigate.

With BigCommerce’s basic customization tools, you can easily create a store tailored to your preferences. However, if you possess coding skills, the platform offers limitless possibilities for designing your store. Regardless of your proficiency, BigCommerce enables you to unleash your creativity and bring your eCommerce vision to life.

2. Product Additions

When it comes to adding a new product to your online store on BigCommerce, the process is straightforward and streamlined. First, you’ll need to complete the Product Information tab, where you can enter essential details such as the product name, type, SKU, price, brand, weight, and an SEO-friendly product description. You can also upload images and videos to enhance the listing.

Next, you can add any relevant Product Options, including customization and variation details. Once this is done, you can move on to the Storefront section, where you can optimize your listings by inserting search keywords and determining the order in which products appear.

Afterward, you’ll need to curate your fulfillment details, including shipping, payment, returns, and exchanges. The final step is to optimize your product page for search engines and social media by using SEO and Sharing features to adjust the URL, add a meta description, and enable open graph sharing.

While adding products one-by-one may seem like a lot of work, it pays off in the long run. Plus, BigCommerce makes it easy to manage your inventory with features like bulk editing for products in the same category, listing your products on eBay, and importing or exporting inventory with just a few clicks. Overall, product management on BigCommerce is convenient and simple.

3. Order Management and Processing

One of the most significant benefits of using BigCommerce for your online store is its centralized order management system.

In addition to the basics of order management, BigCommerce has a helpful search feature that allows you to locate any order placed on any of your selling channels quickly. You can use the “Advanced” settings in the search tab to retrieve details of past orders efficiently.

Also, from the “Order” tab in your BigCommerce account, you can create and issue gift vouchers to specific customers, providing a useful tool for marketing campaigns.

With BigCommerce, you can manage and process your orders with ease, from start to finish, making it an ideal one-stop solution for businesses that sell on a large scale.

4. Marketing

BigCommerce offers a range of marketing features to help you promote your online store, although not all are available in the Standard Plan. Nevertheless, there are several features you can take advantage of, including:

1. Coupons and Discounts: BigCommerce allows you to add discount coupons for first-time and returning customers, among other options, making it easier to attract new customers and retain existing ones.
2. Banners: You can create and display banners throughout your store to promote sales, discounts, limited-time offers, and other marketing campaigns.
3. Gift Certificates: One standout feature is the ability to create personalized gift certificates for individual customers based on their purchase history. This feature can be an excellent tool for customer loyalty and retention.

3. Checkout Handling

BigCommerce provides a reliable cart and checkout handling system that can greatly impact the success of your e-commerce business. One key feature is the abandoned cart saver that sends automated emails to customers who haven’t completed their purchase. However, this feature is only available on some plans.

Despite this limitation, the Persistent Cart feature ensures a seamless experience for your customers as their cart contents remain consistent across all devices. Additionally, BigCommerce’s optimized, single-page checkout process is visually appealing and easy to use.

To further optimize your checkout process, BigCommerce offers various customization options to create a seamless and efficient checkout experience. With these features, BigCommerce is an excellent choice for businesses looking to enhance their customers’ shopping experience.

4. Performance Analysis

Getting insights from data is crucial to identify your e-commerce store’s strengths and weaknesses. Without understanding what’s going wrong, it’s difficult to fix it.

BigCommerce provides a comprehensive Analytics feature that enables you to analyze your;

1. Merchandising
2. Marketing
3. Customers, orders
4. Purchase funnel
5. Carts
6. In-store search
7. Sales tax reports, and more

The platform generates real-time reports, giving you an accurate understanding of your store’s performance. Even if you’re not a numbers person, BigCommerce’s charts and graphs help you visualize the essential metrics easily

Unlike Shopify, BigCommerce’s Analytics feature is available across all plans. This detailed reporting feature is incredibly useful for businesses looking to grow and improve their performance.

5. Limitless Storage

BigCommerce’s name lives up to its promise by providing unlimited storage, regardless of the pricing plan you choose. This is a significant advantage over its competitors who impose storage limits on their users.

With BigCommerce, you can store an abundance of data, including product catalogs, images, inventory, videos, and customer data. Storing large amounts of data will not slow down your website’s loading time or affect its front-end operations. BigCommerce is a cloud-based SaaS platform that can easily handle significant amounts of data.

As your business expands, having access to unlimited storage will be a powerful tool in achieving your goals.

6. Shipping

BigCommerce, just like its primary rival Shopify, offers various shipping options, including free shipping, flat rates per order/item for a specific region, shipping by weight, and in-store pickup. Based on your business’s size and scope, you can select the most appropriate option. For instance, shipping by weight might be more practical if your customers are overseas.

Additionally, you can collaborate with commercial shipping partners such as FedEx, U.S. Postal Service (USPS), and United Parcel Service (UPS) for order delivery fulfillment. If you choose USPS as your shipping partner, BigCommerce has a clever feature that allows you to print shipping labels at the back end, making it a valuable and practical tool for your business.

7. Support

Round-the-clock multi-channel support is available on BigCommerce, making it stand out from other e-commerce platforms. Additionally, it boasts the most responsive user community. If you need assistance, you can contact the BigCommerce customer support team through several options, including live chat, email, and phone. The wait time for both live chat and phone support is under one minute, so you won’t have to wait long. However, you will need to provide personal details, store URL, and a unique “Support PIN” (an identification number unique to your account) to get started with live chat.

If you’re open to discussion or looking for more advice, you can also post your questions in the BigCommerce Community or submit a feature request. This can be especially helpful for newcomers who may encounter multiple solutions to one problem, providing a valuable learning experience.

BigCommerce also offers extensive tutorials and lessons under BigCommerce University, providing you with the guidance you need to get started. Overall, you can get all the support you need in multiple ways, although some methods may take longer than others.

Wrap Up

BigCommerce is an excellent platform for businesses of all sizes looking to set up an online store. It offers a wide range of features, including unlimited storage, multi-channel support, and data-driven insights, making it a robust platform for scaling up your business.

BigCommerce also provides several shipping options and integration with major shipping partners. However, the cost of its plans, particularly the more advanced ones, can be a drawback for small businesses. Also, some features, such as abandoned cart recovery, are not available in the Standard Plan, making it less attractive to budget-conscious users.

With all this being said, BigCommerce’s strengths outweigh its weaknesses, making it one of the best eCommerce Platforms on the market today.