BigCommerce Reviews

Pros

BigCommerce has developed a simplistic software that's allowing small and mid size companies to maneuver at scale. We've been able to learn and adapt new strategies as their team continues to open new capabilities to developers and as they push development in their app market. Fast and reliable apps will be key to building and maintaining the next evolution of ecommerce businesses and having that infrastructure in place will be pivotal in the years to come.

Cons

When we teamed up with BigCommerce, they were a newer competitor in the market. Some similar companies were able to offer functionalities that were limiting to our initial growth through ecommerce. Being a brick and mortar based business since 1978, we had a multitude of functionalities needed to keep up with our physical locations. Although they couldn't offer these features out of the gate, they were quick to get them implemented and worked closely with us to resolve our issues.

Pros

Bigcommerce offers some of the most inclusive features in their entry-level product options, making them excellent for small businesses. Their level of customer support and transparency about service issues and new features in development are excellent and perhaps one of the main reasons why we've kept using Bigcommerce instead of switching to a platform that meets other essential features that we are still awaiting from Bigcommerce. The availability of third-party apps (including shipping and logistics integrations) has been great to work with so far.

Cons

Storefront development is currently very lackluster and it can be difficult to get a truly customized website without hiring a developer or investing in web development skills of your own. This is also true of their e-mail features. If you don't have more than a basic understanding of HTML, it will be next to impossible to customize their system e-mails without a third-party solution. Also, while their entry-level features are among the most plentiful in the industry, a few features (such as Google Reviews integrations and Abandoned Cart Recovery) are reserved only for higher-tier plans, which doesn't make sense from a financial standpoint as their costs to support these features should be minimal.

Alternatives Considered

Adobe Commerce, WooCommerce and Shopify

Reasons for Choosing BigCommerce

Note: We switched from Lightspeed's integrated e-commerce offering but still utilize their cloud POS and inventory management software (connected to Bigcommerce via API). We switched because Bigcommerce offered greater scalability than Lightspeed's own solution, especially concerning the ease of managing our inventory across multiple marketplace channels.

Switched From

Lightspeed Retail

Reasons for Switching to BigCommerce

Bigcommerce ultimately offered the greatest financial value in terms of entry-level features and marketplace functionality that were available to us as a growing small business.

Pros

I liked that it was pretty easy to set up and use a free template. It looked clean and basic.

Cons

I had trouble converting customers and having to pay high amount for good template. It looks good until you dive under the hood and then it is not what is expected. The fees are also very high compared to Wordpress or other alternatives.

Alternatives Considered

Wix, WordPress and Squarespace

Reasons for Choosing BigCommerce

I thought it would be better because of lower fees but ultimately I found out that it was not a good option to switch to BigCommerce.

Switched From

Wix, WordPress and Squarespace

Reasons for Switching to BigCommerce

It looked enticing and seemed to be better than the competition. However, upon building a website, I found that the other alternatives were WAY better.

Pros

BigCommerce is a great platform for growing businesses. From the 24/7/365 customer support to the various integrations that can be used. I find BigCommerce to be very beneficial for business growth, enhancement, and continuous support. The website templates are simple yet the platform does have a learning curve as things as not as simple as copy and paste. However, this personalization helps to make your website look unique.

Cons

The learning curve is the biggest challenge; however, BigCommerce has a wonderful customer support that helps you through any challenge you may find.

Pros

Out of the box, BigCommerce has more built in features than other online carts out there. Pretty straightforward setup making it fairly easy to get up and running in little time.

Cons

Not as easy to customize themes/store interface. When you edit the source code you need to make sure you document what was done as the changes don't carry over when you update the theme of your site.

Alternatives Considered

Shopify Plus and Shopify

Reasons for Choosing BigCommerce

We wanted to lessen the time required to update and maintain our ecommerce site so we could spend our time and money on marketing and other efforts.

Reasons for Switching to BigCommerce

Out of the box, Bigcommerce offers more built-in features that I would need an app for in Shopify which adds to the cost and slows down the site.

Pros

In every way, BigCommerce is the ideal platform for my company. This platform's dashboard is fantastic, and I appreciate how simple it makes managing and uploading stock. The quickness and dexterity that has been put into protecting and expanding my product sales has met with my complete satisfaction. To run my online store without any restrictions and in a professional manner is a dream come true.

Cons

Although there are times when certain features do not function properly, such as when I am unable to access the applications within the back end or when newly updated features are not compatible with my configuration since I am still using an earlier version of BigCommerce, I have been using the platform for years.

Pros

the ease of use, from entering all the product data and the website design element was straight forwards and easy to use. Great customer service and some great templates for building

Cons

the apps could do with a better selection, more like shopify ideally

Pros

Very simple setup and easy to maintain my website effectively. Customer service has been very helpful every time I have had a question or concern.

Cons

Linking to Facebook shop has not been successful yet, however I have not particularly focused on that as we would direct it to the website anyway.

Pros

Bigcommerce is very developer and user friendly. I found it to be stand out when developing a custom theme, and was able to easily integrate a clients inventory system and train them to use the system faster than with competing tools.

Cons

I don't have a great deal of trouble with Bigcommerce. I think the main gripe is that abandoned cart recovery requires a more pricey monthly plan. This feature would be great for smaller businesses trying to get started.

Alternatives Considered

Adobe Commerce, WordPress and Shopify

Reasons for Switching to BigCommerce

I work with a few eCommerce platforms, but I chose Bigcommerce as the platform for some clients as it was great to use and develop with during the trial.

Pros

Love the templates available for my store and customization options.

Cons

Price difference between the level of subscriptions can be a little high. Some basic features fall into a higher subscription.

Alternatives Considered

WooCommerce and Shopify

Reasons for Switching to BigCommerce

BigCommerce was visually more appealing to me. I loved the designs available.

Pros

I love the way the interface is set up. It is very easy to manage and everywhere you need to access is easy to find - You can also customize different status' so we can identify every situation quickly. We are just starting to use the Blog feature and we are very excited about how easy this is to manage.

Cons

The blog themes are kind of generic. We had to have our blog template designed so it would stand out and match the overall look we are going for.

Pros

Very easy set up. Once you or your client chooses a theme it is a pretty straight forward process getting your store online.

Cons

I would say the thing I liked least is not having some sort of builder for basic web pages. Too much customization needs to go into creating custom category pages.

Alternatives Considered

WooCommerce and Shopify

Reasons for Switching to BigCommerce

One of the main reasons we choose bigcommerce is they don't have many limitations on they types of products you can sell on their platform.

Pros

BigCommerce Support is not only the best there for an e-commerce platform. It is the single best support compared to every provider I have ever used. They answer the phones quickly. The person who picks up the phone knows what he/she is doing. Calls never have to be escalated and the issue is (almost) always resolved. My issues are normally fixed within 10 minutes of picking up the phone to dial. BC doesn't waste your time.

PCI compliance was a big part of why we moved. BC takes it all on. We no longer have to provide scan reports or do any paperwork.

Consistent conversion rates - there are few ups and downs. I can depend on my site to be functional.

Adding products, categories and landing pages is simple. 2 months after moving to BigCommerce I let my entire development team go. We no longer needed any of them. Training an employee to add products takes just a few minutes.

Cons

Some things seem to take forever to get done. 301 redirects are difficult to manage and a fix has been in and out of the works for years.

Product page load times can exceed 1000ms. Mobile PageSpeed is big in Google's eyes and we are slower than average.

Pros

Order processing has become much simpler at every step of the process since using BigCommerce, maintaining order and increasing customer satisfaction. The reports provided by BigCommerce are extremely detailed and give us a different perspective of all stages of the process, allowing us to maintain greater control and correct possible failures in time. The management of customer profiles allows us to make personalized offers and campaigns based on the products. The tool can be perfectly adapted to any type of company or organization due to its high scalability, the tools it offers help companies to increase the visibility of their products and services achieving a greater reach and generating higher sales revenue, despite its flaws the tool continues to improve and have a customer service quite adequate in our experience.

Cons

We would like to be able to replace orders and quotes automatically to promote the opportunity and save time, allowing greater automation of all our operations. We would love to be able to add search filters according to the requirements of the search to be performed, this could save a lot of time and have greater control of the files. The possibility of viewing the products in alphabetical order seems to us that it should be mandatory in this type of tool.

Pros

Overall, for just only eCommerce, BigCommerce is great, and I have been using it for 10 years now. It is easy to use and customize, and has lots of great features (however you do have to pay for higher end features). No percentage fee is nice for smaller stores, but once you get to a certain scale, others offer no percentage as well with way more features.

Cons

The worst part about BigCommerce is their ability to integrate with outside software. Many small eCommerce stores are based out of a physical retail store, and there is NO easy, cheap, or even good way to integrate your in-store inventory with your BigCommerce inventory. For instance, if you use the popular Square POS in your retail shop, you have to pay an expensive 3rd party software for a janky, somewhat working system to that keeps your online inventory in sync with Square, so when you sell something in the store, it removes that stock online. BigCommerce refuses to take this issue seriously, which is unfortunate because I can't recommend it to anyone that has a physical retail store and wants to keep live inventory online.

Pros

We stated using BigCommerce as the software behind our new website redesign. We like the ease of setting up the products, product customization and the large pool of experienced companies that design BigCommerce storefronts. It was easy to get setup and our new website was running in about 6 months.

Cons

The order management system they have in place is just not good. You cannot edit orders. Which customers expect us to be able to do. If a customer wants to add an item you can add the item, but you cannot charge the customer for the additional item within BigCommerce software. Same goes with removing items from orders. If you remove an item from an order it does not give you an option to refund the difference. You have to do that outside BigCommerce software.

Our website has been live on BigCommerce for about 4 weeks now and we just experienced our fist "outage" in over 5 years. So I am not optimistic about uptime since the site has already gone down once, and it has only been live for 4 weeks.

Using BigCommerce it is hard to search for and find orders, even if you have an order number you are redirected to the "advanced search". Instead of being able to type in an order number and find the order you have to type in the number, wait for the advanced search page to load then type in the order number again. Come...on...guys.

The same with product search. I can copy and paste a product name directly from our storefront, search in BigCommerce, then I get redirected to another "advanced search" page. Where I have to enter the SAME SEARCH again, then I get results.

We are on an "enterprise" plan that in some ways, has less features than a store we run on a "basic" Shopify plan for less than 1/3 the cost.

Inventory tracking is also not great.

Pros

-Very reliable
-Speed Website
-Friendly user
-able to sync to 3rd parties app
-good pricing
-simply to use

Cons

-lack of templates options
-lack of options that other competitors have
-freedom to personalized the website, most of the stuff is better to use the template
-limited on options to add videos or other links options type of fonts styles animations like other competitors

Pros

Bigcommerce is a great platform for small businesses or businesses in general that do not have a great budget to start developing their e-commerce. We have adopted this solution for a couple of our clients. The main features we have encountered so far are:Very easy to set up and to use. The dashboard is very easy to understand so people with little knowledge on the backend can work with it without difficulties.There are no limits on the products you can list on the online store so it works well for business for multiple skus.When building the online store, you have multiple templates to choose from and many options as different payment getaways in order to personalize your online store.The standard plan is ok and comes with nice features as the giftcard options

Cons

The main con is that the plan prices are slightly higher than similar tools. There are some features that might worth the cost but when considering options check if they might be useful for your business, otherwise a cheaper alternative might be a better option
Templates are ok, but just a few ones are for free.

Alternatives Considered

Wix

Pros

Bigcommerce has more features out of the box than most any other shopping cart including Shopify. It's just the little things like being able to put custom messages like "ships in 1-2 days" on each product. Lot of product options that you see on larger big box websites.

Cost is reasonable when compared to other solutions.

Integrates with a ton of 3rd Party applications. Easy to find solutions to help you succeed.

Cons

There is a huge gap from mid tier plan to the enterprise solutions. The Pro and Enterprise Solutions include some features that are only accessible when you pay 3 times as much. Things such as faceted Search, so you can get a more "Amazon" like experience.

We have experienced an overall reduction in site traffic since switching to Big C. We are not sure if this is because of how Google treats these sites in search, or if it's just that more and more people shop through marketplaces only. It's hard to say.

3rd Party App Marketplace is somewhat limited when compared to other solutions.

Pros

The layout is fairly easy to navigate and the support team is helpful when we have issues. We went with Bigcommerce because we were having issues with Shopify with the timing and capturing of payments.

Cons

Bigcommerce is very limited in design options when compared to platforms such as Shopify, Wordpress and Magento. I would recommend going with one of them depending on your business needs.

Pros

BigCommerce is ready for any type of commerce. It is recommended for value-driven companies. Anyone who has a goal and is ready to carry it out will benefit from this strong foundation. BigCommerce is big commerce. And this is what you require to achieve your big business goals. With all the features it has advanced, BigCommerce ensures that the slope of the learning curve is imperceptible. If it is your first time to market through the internet, you need to use an e-commerce platform, which offers a vast and effective range of tools for you to succeed.

Cons

On every occasion when it is necessary to use Rafflecopter for the purpose of a giveaway, it is not possible to start the program in BigCommerce. The context does not allow it. The blog capability is perhaps one of the weakest parts of BigCommerce. It would be wonderful if it could act like WordPress does.

Pros

The platform is easy to use, and non-trained or non-technical users are able to use the platform. Comes in a very good pricing structure which is appealing to small and medium-sized businesses. Great website builder and CMS, perfect for creating products and product categories and managing SKUs. Order management, payment processing, shipping and taxation are very straightforward and useful for users. The platform is highly customizable and is one of the best eCommerce platforms in the market.

Cons

The pricing for the platform is great but every add-on or plugin is paid which adds a huge cost for businesses as they expand, which makes them almost pay the same amount as other eCommerce platforms. Reporting and analytics are very basic, and not customizable as per analyst standards. Changing themes or anything within the backend requires expertise in HTML/CSS.

Pros

This platform is quick and easy to setup, it also has advanced promotion features that many other platforms do not.

Cons

Some of the connected features are harder to manage than expected.

Pros

This software offers a lot more customization than its competitors. For a small shop, other programs may be enough but we personally deal with high order volumes and different tiers of customers at different price groups. Big-commerce allows us to keep these groups separate while still maintaining the same level of customer satisfaction across the board.

Cons

The product still lacks a few customization options. This has limited us to differents sale types. We can understand when dealing with 1000's products and multiple customer groups, this could be difficult, but its something we would like to see in the future.

Pros

Bigcommerce allowed me to develop a simplistic software that allowed us small and medium businesses to operate on a large scale.

Cons

The configuration of the application is not so simple and fast from another platform, because the payment is not slow.