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
Spryker Cloud Commerce OS
Score 6.0 out of 10
N/A
Spryker Cloud Commerce OS is a modular Commerce System that enables B2B, B2C, and Marketplace business models through any customer interface, touchpoint, and device. Boasting extensibility, best-in-class performance, and fast time-to-market, the vendor states Spryker is trusted by brands such as TOYOTA, HILTI, and TomTailor. The Spryker Cloud Commerce OS NOW version has been specifically developed for manufacturers and brands who want to reach customers directly online.
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.
Spryker is very well suited (B2C and/or B2B) for big companies with complex and individual business models or also if your company needs a certain level of customization. Very good fit, if you need a scalable system. It is rather not the perfect fit for small companies or companies with very basic E-Commerce needs.
Content - content administration is not a strong part of Spryker, although it improved over the years. I still see room for improvement in the world of bigger CMS systems being able to also do "commerce".
Backoffice-usability - for non-technical users the first few days, weeks and month[s] can be full of surprises. An extended documentation, or more intuitive handling on the backoffice could serve every party on Spryker.
Off-the-shelf internationalization - Spryker right now comes with an initial data set in English and German, which is for a German based company already a pretty stable starting point. Extension on the base data for Europe-wide used countries would be very helpful - French, Italian, Polish, Russian, etc.
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!
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.
Spryker's usability depends a lot on custom development. Therefore, I would like not to consider usability as something that comes with Spryker Cloud Commerce OS. Spryker Cloud Commerce OS; however, brings all the tools needed to design a solution with great usability.
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
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.
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!
Support suffered from Spryker Cloud Commerce OS's rapid growth. Contacts, department heads, and support systems changed frequently. Support processes as well as documentation are rather poor. One notices that they are putting more effort into the customers recently, but in the course of growth, there is still a lack of focus here. As a customer, I would like to see growth at a slower pace and a phase of stabilization.
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.
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.
If you compare Spryker with commerce solutions on the market, you will notice that the focus is not on the front end. Spryker assumes that the store is only one of many possible channels through which customers order today and in the future. To understand the differences, one must therefore take a look at Spryker's architecture. This is divided into the Spryker [Cloud] Commerce OS (the backend with all process-related components), the front-end modules for B2C and B2B, as well as the integration modules (middleware) and interfaces (Glue API).
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.
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.
Extending the reach and visibility of the brand through content and commerce.
Increased customer satisfaction through better accessibility (self-service) and easy access to important product information (CAD data, technical documentation, etc.).
Rapid deployment thanks to packaged business capabilities and clear development leads to fast ROI and low TCO.
