BigCommerce vs. Optimizely Customized Commerce

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BigCommerce
Score 7.5 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
BigCommerce is a SaaS platform that allows SMBs to develop eCommerce sites. Features include the capabilities to design the storefront, configure products, manage payments, generate traffic, and optimize conversion.
$29.95
per month
Optimizely Customized Commerce
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Optimizely Customized Commerce is a headless PaaS commerce solution built to scale commerce results for enterprise brands.N/A
Pricing
BigCommerceOptimizely Customized Commerce
Editions & Modules
Standard
$29.95
per month
Plus
$79.95
per month*
Pro
$299.95
per month*
Enterprise
Custom
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BigCommerceOptimizely Customized Commerce
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeRequired
Additional Details*if paid annually
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BigCommerceOptimizely Customized Commerce
Considered Both Products
BigCommerce

No answer on this topic

Optimizely Customized Commerce
Chose Optimizely Customized Commerce
We considered Optimizely Commerce Cloud because it is a flexible dot net stack that is highly rated by analysts.
Chose Optimizely Customized Commerce
Episerver was by far the most user friendly content platform allowing our business to easily manage the content with ease resulting in an overall productivity increase and time for the team to spend less time doing content management and more time managing the personalization …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
BigCommerceOptimizely Customized Commerce
Online Storefront
Comparison of Online Storefront features of Product A and Product B
BigCommerce
7.3
417 Ratings
5% below category average
Optimizely Customized Commerce
7.5
26 Ratings
2% below category average
Product catalog & listings7.8413 Ratings8.525 Ratings
Product management6.9410 Ratings4.825 Ratings
Bulk product upload7.4310 Ratings8.721 Ratings
Branding7.1361 Ratings5.223 Ratings
Mobile storefront7.3401 Ratings7.020 Ratings
Product variations7.3387 Ratings7.021 Ratings
Website integration7.6341 Ratings8.724 Ratings
Visual customization7.4403 Ratings8.623 Ratings
CMS7.0296 Ratings8.925 Ratings
Online Shopping Cart
Comparison of Online Shopping Cart features of Product A and Product B
BigCommerce
7.4
403 Ratings
2% below category average
Optimizely Customized Commerce
8.6
19 Ratings
13% above category average
Abandoned cart recovery7.5361 Ratings8.615 Ratings
Checkout user experience7.4398 Ratings8.619 Ratings
Online Payment System
Comparison of Online Payment System features of Product A and Product B
BigCommerce
7.8
399 Ratings
6% below category average
Optimizely Customized Commerce
8.8
17 Ratings
6% above category average
eCommerce security7.8399 Ratings8.817 Ratings
eCommerce Marketing
Comparison of eCommerce Marketing features of Product A and Product B
BigCommerce
7.1
404 Ratings
5% below category average
Optimizely Customized Commerce
7.1
25 Ratings
5% below category average
Promotions & discounts7.3380 Ratings8.421 Ratings
Personalized recommendations6.8316 Ratings8.421 Ratings
SEO7.3375 Ratings4.421 Ratings
eCommerce Business Management
Comparison of eCommerce Business Management features of Product A and Product B
BigCommerce
7.2
409 Ratings
8% below category average
Optimizely Customized Commerce
8.1
25 Ratings
4% above category average
Multi-site management7.6185 Ratings8.620 Ratings
Order processing7.1388 Ratings8.819 Ratings
Inventory management7.1344 Ratings8.815 Ratings
Shipping6.9349 Ratings8.716 Ratings
Custom functionality7.4344 Ratings5.723 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BigCommerceOptimizely Customized Commerce
Small Businesses
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Ecwid by Lightspeed
Score 10.0 out of 10
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BigCommerceOptimizely Customized Commerce
Likelihood to Recommend
7.2
(436 ratings)
8.6
(26 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(53 ratings)
4.6
(2 ratings)
Usability
8.9
(26 ratings)
7.3
(7 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(25 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Online Training
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(13 ratings)
2.7
(1 ratings)
Configurability
9.1
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.1
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.7
(342 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BigCommerceOptimizely Customized Commerce
Likelihood to Recommend
BigCommerce
The ONLY reason we left Volusion was fear that Volusion was going to go out of business and our website/data would all be lost. I feel BigCommerce is lightyears behind Volusion in website/inventory control. In our experience, BigCommerce customer service severely lacks knowledge, at least compared to what we had in our 7-1/2 years with Volusion. There were times Volusion even helped us with stuff BigCommerce could not understand. I just feel sick about moving and that should not be the case. In my opinion, I downgraded heavily for the feeling BigCommerce would not be going out of business. I just feel sick.
Read full review
Optimizely
Our experience may be unique because we opted for an Epi core team to implement our website/console set-up and connection to our PIM and ERP. The experience may have been different with a 3rd party or it may not have. That said, we have been live with our primary website for almost 2 years and I still do not consider it was ever "done". We have been going back and forth on functionality issues and bugs since launch. I have low confidence that changes made the previous day will 100% be online the next - so my team rechecks the work they did the previous day to ensure everything is online. The addition of a second channel and enhancement requests have compounded the issues. I feel this product would work fine with singular or less complex market SKU offerings.
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Pros
BigCommerce
  • 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
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Optimizely
  • Episerver has a robust discount engine. This engine, combined with "visitor groups" allow our marketing department to categorize customers and offer a variety of discounts to targeted customers at specific times.
  • Episerver has a full-featured, storefront experience that can handle everything you might want for an e-commerce website.
  • Episerver offers A/B testing that can be helpful for trying out new content ideas and tracking the results.
Read full review
Cons
BigCommerce
  • 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
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Optimizely
  • Support. Episerver used to have direct support and access to the tech team to discuss and resolve issues. The new support portal is not enough for developer needs.
  • Quality Assurance. We find issues in the Episerver code that should have been resolved in QA before release.
  • Sales. Episervers sells the framework as a solution while showing Alloy. While it helps Episerver sell more, it puts the implementation partner into trouble as the client thinks they bought the solution. Episerver does not provide a solution. It provides a framework that you can build a solution on.
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Likelihood to Renew
BigCommerce
I personally would not even consider another e-commerce website platform.
Bigcommerce may have the same (or close to the same) functionality and integrations as other SaaS platforms but they excel at customer service and tech support. At the end of the day you need a company that will answer the phone in less than a minute especially if you're having a 5 alarm issue. That said, we hardly ever have any issues. The site was down for a few minutes one time 5 years ago. Sometimes we have issues with coding or apps and they help me with that too. They even walked me through installing our new theme when the contracted developers told me that wasn't included in the development of our new website.
Bigcommerce comes out with new innovations every year, not including apps that other people write for the platform, and there are a lot of those and new ones all the time. And there are a LOT of awesome themes to choose from (Halothemes are the best).
And the price is reasonable!
I'd give Bigcommerce my business any time and recommend them to anyone looking to run an e-commerce website. You could even use them for a non-shopping site, we have one of those too!
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Optimizely
Really want to be able to spend more time and resources on rolling out new things with Episerver but at the moment we seem to be fixing alot of issues and pain points with the way our system was setup.
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Usability
BigCommerce
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.
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Optimizely
The administrative interface is largely intuitive and relatively easy to use. The complexity of business needs and ability to customize can affect this (i.e. you have to set up and develop with the user in mind), but the basic structure is largely solid. There are some areas of redundancy (such as Commerce Manager overlapping with other administrative areas) that can sometimes cause confusion or offer some functions in one place, whereas other related functions are managed on a completely different page.
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Reliability and Availability
BigCommerce
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
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Optimizely
No answers on this topic
Performance
BigCommerce
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.
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Optimizely
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
BigCommerce
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!
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Optimizely
We had an incredible team at Episerver Supporting us with the go live, reviewing our integration, and pushing our integration partner to deliver a quality product
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Online Training
BigCommerce
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.
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Optimizely
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
BigCommerce
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.
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Optimizely
Fully understand what is OOTB feature of the platform before proceeding to develop. Then implement a customization of key features once you can prove they are working as OOTB to make them more user friendly and productive for the business. Eg pre order and e gift card
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Alternatives Considered
BigCommerce
We switched from Shopify due to the restrictions they implemented on our industry. While we spent tens of thousands of dollars investing in our Shopify store, we can't have them cutting us off anytime they want. We reviewed WooCommerce, but didn't like the storefront or backend. Plus it seems like Wordpress/WooCommerce runs into tons of hacking issues and bugs.
Read full review
Optimizely
Optimizely Commerce Cloud offers a very wide range of features for admin users. There is less a need for an IT specialist or programmer to be involved when changes need to be made.
Read full review
Scalability
BigCommerce
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.
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Optimizely
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
BigCommerce
  • Provides a robust platform to sell a high-risk product.
  • Page Builder saves you time and money by negating the need to buy a template.
  • Includes robust promotion settings that allow for codes and automatic discounts, bulk discounts, and customer groups (i.e. military discount), all native options.
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Optimizely
  • Positive: We have a usable website - better than what we had before and we are seeing a constant increase in adoption.
  • Positive: Counter associates are using the website to help customers.
  • Negative: Too much time being spent QCing previous work.
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ScreenShots

BigCommerce Screenshots

Screenshot of Enterprise ecommerce for high-volume brands like Skullcandy.Screenshot of Our industry-leading integration will let you list your products on Amazon directly from the BigCommerce control panel, with centralized inventory and order processing and fulfillment.Screenshot of Easily customize the look and feel of your storefront.

Optimizely Customized Commerce Screenshots

Screenshot of Customizable checkout workflow to tailor customers checkout experience and increase conversions.Screenshot of Catalogs, custom attributes, UOM, catalog restrictions, and multiple sites are managed at once.Screenshot of Personalized promotions based on user web activity to drive conversion and increase average order value.Screenshot of Customized Recommendations ReportingScreenshot of Personalization