BigCommerce vs. Ecwid by Lightspeed

Big Commerce is great for managing our items for sale all while serving as a home base for our customers. - Whether they want to buy PPE, learn about PPE or have any questions or concerns, they know they can come to our site and get the service/product they need!

Incentivized

[Ecwid is] very well suited for small businesses. Extremely flexible and easy to manage from my mobile device. Extremely easy to use. When I finally discovered Ecwid, I was shocked that I hadn't heard more about it or that it had become more popular than Shopify. I think it is far superior to Shopify.

• SEO - fast loading speeds, helps us rank on Google
• Product customization - allows us to customize templates to our needs to fit all viable information
• Integration with other platforms - seamless connection to other properties like Google Ads and Analytics

Incentivized

• Clarity - there has been very little confusion and need to reach out to Customer Support for help
• Consistency - no big, crazy updates or changes have been made to the format of Ecwid during my time using it, so I know when I log in to preform my business tasks I can always locate what I need and accomplish what is at hand easily
• Simplicity - everything is so clear and straightforward. It's like e-commerce for dummies.

• Better and easier localisation for stores outside the US
• Speed - it is not the fastest
• Make sure that third-party theme developers update regularly and use best practice
• Consider EU and country-specific rules and legal obligations and make customers aware of whether BC is actually fully compliant

Incentivized

• In my experience, there is an issue with Ecwid's ability to enable customization of our specific Shipping requirements. In South Africa, we have to be very mindful of the associated costs for online shoppers. We cannot do the required level of customization in Ecwid that we need to offer potential clients the best service and online shopping experience.
• The available store front design templates are very limited.
• I have had to move to another platform that will allow for customization of the shipping process together with our integrated shipping partner company in South Africa. (MDS Collivery).

Incentivized

BigCommerce is a great platform! It does the job and has a very good API set. I would definitely recommend it to others, but I would warn them about the cost associated with BigCommerce. There are lower cost solutions, but definitely not as feature rich as BigCommerce. It's definitely not perfect, and has a few wrinkles to iron, but nothing is ever perfect. It does the job for us and I do enjoy using the platform!!

Incentivized

The value given by Ecwid is unmatched. When combined with the ease of use of the product, it is a no-brainer to continue to use the product. The only thing that could cause us to switch is if some feature we needed which is not available which is unlikely based on the feature list we reviewed when making the decision to go with them.

Incentivized

I think that overall it has a great front end for the customer. On the back end, it takes a little spin-up time, but in just a couple of hours you can really have your head wrapped around everything you're going to need 99% of the time. It takes me about 5 minutes to train a new user on how to interact with customer orders.

Incentivized

So easy to use. Nice aesthetics and very intuitive. This was key to starting up quickly. I could find everything easily and it had enough customization options, but not too many. Was able to use much of the standard offerings to customize to my rental business, instead of having to subscribe to expensive rental management software.

So far in my time with BigCommerce I have not had any down time when it comes to my webstore or accessing it at any time I need to. Knowing that they have such a good uptime, it makes me feel comfortable that my customers can access things anytime, but also keep sales going 24/7

Incentivized

Always available. Very reliable

I have not had any issues with pages loading slow or any real other issues, not that I have encountered so far. Speed of the site and images loading are fantastic and everything just seems to work nicely, which may seem like a simple thing to say about things, but when something just WORKS! Its rather nice vs fighting with things to work right.

Incentivized

Good overall performance both in desktop and mobile

Because they are always there no matter how simple or complex the question is, if they don't know the answer they don't fake it and just make you go away feeling frustrated.. they get you to someone that does know the answer. I always appreciate their help and their honesty!

Incentivized

I have always received the support I need in a timely manner. I enjoy receiving emails every week on trending business topics and new suggestions. They often serve as a reminder for me to include new e-commerce tools into our strategy. And I've always had great experiences with reaching out to the support team with specific questions.

They have a comprehensive online help file system that makes it easy to do almost anything. They cover just about everything you'd want to do with your online store with images, clear descriptions and in some cases video. I will, however, say the videos should be a little more professorially done and not sound like the employees are doing it in their cubical.

A certified BigCommerce design and solution partner will usually comprise a team of highly experienced designers, developers and marketers. It is our view that in the vast majority of cases, this will pay dividends in the long-term - especially for those teams that could use the extra support.

Incentivized

Fast and simple implementation of Ecwid's solutions. Easy to learn and navigate

When you look at the landscape of e-commerce platforms, BigCommerce really sets itself apart by being built for serious growth from day one. While Wix is great for simple drag-and-drop projects and Shopify excels at getting a basic shop live in an hour, they both often hit a "plugin wall" where you have to keep paying for third-party apps just to get standard features. BigCommerce, on the other hand, packs those advanced tools—like faceted search, customer groups, and multi-currency support—directly into the core platform. Compared to WooCommerce, which gives you total freedom but leaves you responsible for all the security patches and server maintenance, BigCommerce offers that "Open SaaS" sweet spot. You get the stability of a hosted platform with the flexibility of open APIs. Plus, the fact that they don’t charge transaction fees regardless of which payment processor you use is a massive win for the bottom line. It’s essentially enterprise-grade power without the usual enterprise headache.

Incentivized

We began our journey using Squarespace and Square exclusively, then ran into complications. A fellow small business owner recommended Ecwid (she had experienced similar issues with Squarespace) and we quickly made the swap/integration and have never regretted it. We've considered transitioning our website from Squarespace to Shopify, but need Ecwid to continue to be operational regardless.

I believe after seeing all of the parts of this platform, one is able to develop the business and keep adding on select features for the business. There are multiple options for purchase with the various platforms once the business grows more. The different features being offered by the platform can lead us to scalability.

Incentivized

Good scalability. I use the second plan and there are 2 more plans that I could use if I needed other features or services

• In my experience, BigCommerce added hours to our work week vs. Volusion due to poor inventory control features we were used to.
• Eventually, as our sales accumulate and we are billed more (tiers), we will be paying $200-$300 more each month on site and app costs vs. Volusion.
• We feel secure in our fears of company going out of business vs. Volusion.
• I just wish we did not have to see Volusion as a risk as it's a much better platform for our business.

• Ecwid has positively impacted our ROI because it provides a very secure platform which allows us to easily certify our PCI Compliance requirements as they are a Tier 1 PCI Certified company so we can be confident they have the right security systems in place which is important to our customers.

Incentivized