Overview
What is BigCommerce?
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.
Great Platform for the Price.
Perfect or international shipping options
BigCommerce is a well rounded great e-commerce platform
BigCommerce delivers
Helped Take My Small Company to the Next Level
BigCommerce is worth it!
Big Commerce has helped me affordably grow my online business
BigCommerce Success!!
BigCommerce is there for my company.
BigCommerce Added a Second Income Stream To Our Business
BigCommerce, Big Results!
BigCommerce: a strong-hosted eCommerce platform
BigCommerce Enterprise Edition. Ticks most of the boxes but improvements needed.
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Popular Features
- Product catalog & listings (413)7.878%
- Visual customization (403)7.474%
- Mobile storefront (401)7.373%
- Product management (410)6.868%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Video Reviews
3 videos
Pricing
Standard
$29.95
Plus
$79.95
Pro
$299.95
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Starting price (does not include set up fee)
- $29.95 per month
Features
Online Storefront
Features for creating an online storefront with a browse-able product catalog.
- 7.8Product catalog & listings(413) Ratings
Products are easy to browse; listings include descriptions, photos, 360-degree views, and/or videos.
- 6.8Product management(410) Ratings
Product catalog can be easily updated.
- 7.4Bulk product upload(310) Ratings
Admins can upload products in bulk using spreadsheets.
- 7Branding(361) Ratings
Storefront is part of a unified customer experience of the brand across channels (social media, physical store, website, etc.)
- 7.3Mobile storefront(401) Ratings
Customers can easily shop on mobile devices; storefront is responsive or mobile optimized.
- 7.3Product variations(387) Ratings
Products with variations or configurable options are easy to list and easy to browse.
- 7.6Website integration(341) Ratings
Integrates with an existing company website or blog.
- 7.4Visual customization(403) Ratings
Users can customize the look & feel of the storefront; storefront is visually attractive.
- 7CMS(296) Ratings
Beyond product catalog, includes basic content creation and management features such as blogging capabilities.
Online Shopping Cart
Features that facilitate the collection of items so that customers can purchase them as a group.
- 7.5Abandoned cart recovery(361) Ratings
Saves contents of abandoned carts and allows customers to purchase on a future visit; may send a reminder email to the customer and/or a report to the merchant to help convert abandoned carts into sales.
- 7.4Checkout user experience(398) Ratings
Easy for customers to view shopping cart and checkout; maintains a consistent, trusted look & feel.
Online Payment System
Features related to processing online payment for eCommerce purchases.
- 7.7eCommerce security(399) Ratings
Security measures are in place to prevent a breach of sensitive payment information.
eCommerce Marketing
Features related to marketing for eCommerce websites
- 7.2Promotions & discounts(380) Ratings
Includes tools for offering and redeeming coupons, promotional codes, and time-based discounts.
- 6.8Personalized recommendations(316) Ratings
Display or recommend certain products depending on the customer’s identity or shopping/browsing history.
- 7.3SEO(375) Ratings
The platform & templates help users create the right website infrastructure (pagination, page headers, titles, meta tags, url structure, etc.) to increase the site’s visibility in search engine results.
eCommerce Business Management
Features related to business management and administration of eCommerce operations
- 7.5Multi-site management(185) Ratings
Administrators can manage multiple storefronts or websites under one umbrella.
- 7.1Order processing(388) Ratings
Includes tools or integrations for order processing.
- 7.1Inventory management(344) Ratings
Includes tools or integrations for managing inventory.
- 6.9Shipping(349) Ratings
Includes tools or integrations for order fulfillment of physical products.
- 7.4Custom functionality(344) Ratings
Users are able to customize the functionality of their eCommerce operation with custom code or add-ons.
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- Downloadables
- FAQs
What is BigCommerce?
The vendor says that the product provides the following benefits to customers:
Build in HTML, CSS, and Javascript
96% of brands relaunch in 2-4 months
Test and push changes without downtime in a local environment
Focus on generating sales, less on monitoring security & performance
PCI DSS 3.2 certified at Level 1
99.99% median uptime
Multiple layers of security through the Google Cloud Platform
Leverage your existing tech stack with flexible APIs
90% of platform data is exposed to APIs
400+ API calls per second
Headless commerce out-of-the-box, across any front-end
Solve your toughest challenges with SaaS
B2B, Wholesale
Headless Commerce, Wordpress
Multi-channel
International
BigCommerce Features
Online Storefront Features
- Supported: Product catalog & listings
- Supported: Product management
- Supported: Bulk product upload
- Supported: Branding
- Supported: Search & filter
- Supported: Mobile storefront
- Supported: Product variations
- Supported: Subscriptions & downloads
- Supported: Website integration
- Supported: Visual customization
- Supported: CMS
- Supported: Customer service tools
Online Shopping Cart Features
- Supported: Abandoned cart recovery
- Supported: Tax calculator
- Supported: Shipping calculator
- Supported: Integration with Amazon
- Supported: Integration with eBay
- Supported: Checkout user experience
Online Payment System Features
- Supported: PayPal integration
- Supported: Returns & refunds
- Supported: Single-click checkout
- Supported: eCommerce security
- Supported: B2B features
eCommerce Marketing Features
- Supported: Promotions & discounts
- Supported: Personalized recommendations
- Supported: SEO
- Supported: Product reviews
- Supported: Social commerce integration
- Supported: Customer registration
eCommerce Business Management Features
- Supported: Multi-site management
- Supported: Order processing
- Supported: Inventory management
- Supported: Accounting
- Supported: Shipping
- Supported: Custom functionality
Additional Features
- Supported: High Availability (HA) infrastructure that allows us to deliver 99.99% uptime
- Supported: Open Platform: 90% of the BigCommerce platform data is exposed to the API
- Supported: Server-to-server API functions enable a headless commerce on WordPress and more
- Supported: Develop, test and push changes without downtime in a local environment using the Stencil CLI tool.
- Supported: Omnichannel management (Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, Instagram, POS)
- Supported: Global CDN, localized payments and multi-language support
BigCommerce Screenshots
BigCommerce Videos
BigCommerce Integrations
BigCommerce Competitors
BigCommerce Technical Details
Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Mobile Web |
BigCommerce Downloadables
Frequently Asked Questions
BigCommerce Customer Size Distribution
Consumers | 0% |
---|---|
Small Businesses (1-50 employees) | 60% |
Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees) | 30% |
Enterprises (more than 500 employees) | 10% |
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(662)Attribute Ratings
- 9.1Likelihood to Renew53 ratings
- 9.1Availability5 ratings
- 9.1Performance5 ratings
- 8.9Usability26 ratings
- 9.1Support Rating25 ratings
- 9.1Online Training2 ratings
- 9.1Implementation Rating13 ratings
- 9.1Configurability3 ratings
- 7.7Product Scalability342 ratings
- 9.1Ease of integration3 ratings
- 9.1Vendor pre-sale2 ratings
- 9.1Vendor post-sale2 ratings
Reviews
(301-325 of 436)BigCommerce: the only choice for bricks and mortar?
- The loading speeds and server response times improved since they switched to Google's data network (used to be Amazon)
- There are no limits to customer support or bandwidth (both included in the plans)
- BigCommerce has a decent ecosystem of apps that connect with other major platforms like ConstantContact, Klaviyo, and more. You will need to watch your spending on apps that add (arguably basic) features, as three apps can cost more than Bigcommerce's monthly bill alone. To get our website to the point it's at today, we're currently running 6 apps.
- For what it is, BigCommerce is easy to set up and maintain, and you don't have to worry about security since it's all cloud-based
- Compared to Shopify, BigCommerce's themes don't seem to be as attractive and they are difficult for non-programmers to modify
- BigCommerce uses handlebars for its markup, not regular HTML, for what it's worth
- It seems like BigCommerce is slightly behind Shopify in terms of adapting to new platforms or technology
- You used to be able to edit your product images quickly using BigCommerce's built-in image editor which was powered by another company called Pixlr. One day it stopped working and BigCommerce left the link there to the non-working Pixlr app. It's still there and support said they are debating whether to create their own image editor, or remove it altogether. Seems like a bad decision to leave it up there with no alternative in place.
- Ease of use
- Timely customer support
- Updates for themes and other issues
- Analytics
BigCommerce Review
- Easy to use.
- Large product catalogs supported very well.
- Up time is very important to us.
- Faceting and filtering should be easier and offer more options for facets.
- Themes are generally very expensive.
- Apps should be available to Admins, at least for testing.
BigCommerce is our platform of choice!
- 24-hour customer service.
- Getting into areas of the backend is easy to find and easy to use.
- I love that BigCommerce stays in touch with us, and as we have meetings, we find out other apps to use on the site that have been super helpful.
- The App marketplace is useful and easy to find the category we might have questions about.
- Drop down choices should be able to be sold separately on the site and be on a dropdown choice. Currently, that cannot happen.
- I do not like the "Stay on the line for 3 questions" at the end of each call.
- Bundling products should be easier and they should accept different products in a bundle, and not just the same kind of product.
The reason I Succeeded.
- Product Options are numerous and complete
- Order organization.
- Customer contact.
- I am not a web guy, I just tell ours what I want to be done. He does not seem to have a problem changing anything I want.
- I would like to see more customization available in the Order Notifications. My products are built to order and may take up to 3 weeks or more to ship. The ability to continuously send status updates to the customer would be great.
BigCommerce - Great customer support, nice platform.
- Excellent, responsive customer service
- Integration with merchant account
- Integration of basic SEO principals
- Checkout layout and function has had significant upgrades, making it easier for customers to complete checkout
- Better support for those of us who accept a purchase order (heck, it's not even a payment method!) Need to be able to search by PO#, too.
- No in store catalog integration.
- Integration of more SEO features, cross selling, coupons added directly to cart, etc.
- Inventory management/accounting software integration (i.e., QuickBooks).
- Product returns system is awful. Can't keep up with when items were returned, status of processing returns, etc.
- No mobile app to easily manage store on tablet, smartphone. REALLY needed.
- Better bulk product modification abilities.
- Product options are awkward to configure.
- Lack of blogging features.
- Lack of ability to produce and disseminate newsletters.
- Searching for info in back end can be difficult sometimes.
- No way to notify customers when products return to stock unless you have someone add code or pay for an add-on. Should be standard.
- When you move up to higher levels within their pricing tier, there is a significant jump in price with no added benefits or features.
BC in a nutshell!
- BC has many options for order statuses that we are also able to change. It helps us a lot with managing the different levels of production each order is going through.
- BC offers many option sets for each item that is very helpful since all of our products are fully customized and require many available options.
- BC reports are very clear and enable us to view numbers and stats very easily.
- Customer support - it takes BC a very long time to fix issues with our backend that usually require manual coding on their part.
- BC pricing plan - that is a very big downfall - as we process more orders, we are being charged a lot more every month - something that other platforms like Shopify don't do.
- Some small limitations such as not being able to copy option rules which would save us a lot of time.
Great experience with e-commerce
- Customer service is exceptional. You call them, you get a person. No talking to automated robots.
- Platform is very intuitive and simple to use.
- No down time. In four years our website has never gone down or been unavailable to customers.
- Complex/advanced tweaks may require web designers.
- More frequent malware scans.
- More reasonable pricing for Enterprise tier.
- Great support & status updates with tech issues.
- Very professional looking e-commerce stores.
- The platform provides pretty much everything needed to run a store without having to purchase extra apps.
- Very good and useful built-in analytics.
- Not quite as easy to use for the layperson as other platforms such as Shopify.
- Need to purchase a higher costing plan to get abandoned cart saver.
- Could have a wider selection of templates to choose from.
- Gift certificate function does not allow for customizing the gift card numbers. We can't use their built-in system do to the alphanumeric characters and our physical store's post system.
- Priced right
- Excellent eCommerce platform
- Strong user community involvement
- Include a refund API (not if this is currently in active development).
- Include a returns API (not if this is currently in active development).
I love Bigcommerce!
- Customer support is great.
- Up-time is very good.
- It's very user-friendly.
- Better plugins.
- More robust discounting/coupons set up.
- Dropshipping inventory options.
A Great E-Commerce Solution
- Easy to customize
- Quickly go live
- Great customer support
- More free templates
- Some customization requires a developer
- Expensive
Big Commerce - Great online store experience
- Customer Service - They are always willing to help and go the extra step to solve the issues you are having.
- Uptime - Very little downtime if any at all, if there is an outage it is usually back up within 15 minutes.
- Digital download options - easy to setup and add your products for download after purchase.
- Coupon codes could be expanded giving more options and better management.
- Blogging options could be expanded a little more.
- Product reviews and management could be a little more detailed and better managed.
Happy with BigCommerce
- The features of the platform are very intuitive.
- A novice can do most daily updates with some assistance from outside partners.
- The platform seems very responsive to internet searches.
- I would love BigCommerce to make it so you can have both physical and digital delivery available on one product page.
- It would help our business if there was a protected method of digital delivery for things like PDFs.
- Ease of use. You don't have to be a pro at any coding, designing, or even e-commerce to start your store.
- Without API we simply wouldn't be able to offer the same level of service online that our customers have to know, trust, and rely on offline.
- We haven't had to implement many changes to the default BigCommerce to see huge performance increases in organic and local search.
- Checkout customization. Our products are BIG, and moving them around the country is logistically challenging. Being able to offer the customer options for shipping, as well as payments, is critical to our success.
- Speed. Since the platform moved to the Google Cloud Platform, as well as the additional of Akamai, the speed has helped customers browse, check out, and purchase quicker. This is one of the top 3 things customers said they loved about our site.
- Theme customization. Unless you're comfortable reading code documentation or have a digital agency partner, you're going to struggle to really make your BigCommerce your own. This isn't such a big problem -- it's great out of the box!
- A lot of useful B2B integrations (such as quoting and purchase orders) are outsourced to third-party app/service providers. This means sales colleagues have to get used to multiple platforms in their day-to-day activity, when in reality, BigCommerce could do it with just a couple of tweaks in the backend control panel.
- Analytics. BigCommerce offers Insights, which help reveal poorly and well-performing products, to help optimizations -- but this comes at a huge additional cost for really not a lot of gain. For the same price of Enterprise Insights, you can have third-party business intelligence software that has the features of Insights, and then a whole load more.
It is really quick to get a store up and running, and cost-effective against other platforms, such as Shopify or Magento. In our project, we moved 2,500 SKUs into a custom-built storefront (with the help of an agency) in three weeks -- at 25% of the cost of an equivalent Magento system. It is well scalable and should easily manage tens of thousands of SKUs.
If you have many product customizations, the API of BigCommerce isn't easily suited to importing these. I'd be wary if you had anything more complicated than size/color product options, but I don't think any SaaS e-commerce platform does this well.
- Integration with Instagram: Very easy to enable purchasing through an Instagram post.
- Integration with eBay: Set up 100 test products in a couple of hours and had sales immediately the following morning.
- Integration with Google Merchant Center: once categories are set up, this takes all the sting out of handling Merchant center. Set it and forget it.
- Product views: If I am doing a search for a specific group of products, Let's say one category that I need to make price changes (MSRP, Cost, and Default Price) there is no easy way to do it short of export-import (not always easy to do). I should be able to pull up the category, select the first product, make changes, then click on a next button to move to the next product in the category. As it stands, I have to hit the back button in the browser to make sure I get to the next item.
- Sorting on the main Product page: I cannot sort by SKU or price - should be simple things.
- Hide when out of stock for a product: I should be able to set on the product level a "Hide when out of stock". Let's say I have a limited release product, only 50 pieces available then it is gone forever. I should be able to set it so when the last one is sold, the product no longer appears on the category page for people to find.
- The hidden product should be searchable by Google, but not by someone using the search function on the site. As it is a Hidden (not visible) product returns a 404 error, but is searchable on the site. Neither one of those options are helpful. I want Google to know we had hot-product-123 so people come to our site, but don't need customers to find it if they do a search for it.
- Back in stock notifications for products should be built into the platform. Other platforms do this and the only real option is a monthly add on app. It works but doesn't have functionality like Volusion's integrated in-stock notification system.
- Control Panel Search needs help. I should be able to search by any field whether it be customers, orders or products. it is silly what we have to go through to find information sometimes.
- Ease of use.
- Support is very helpful.
- Template options are extensive.
- Supplement companies such as ourselves need to have more options in the cart level discounts and coupon areas to provide better options for customers.
- Pre-order area should also be called "backorder" and have a few more options so customers can choose to be charged now or when the item is back in stock.
- Shipping: wish there were more variations to choose from so we could offer more options & price structures for our customers.
BigCommerce is a Big Deal
- Extremely dedicate customer service
- Category-level filtering with no app required
- A robust API that allows us to build even more features
- Clean, simple dashboard UI
- Great selection of payment options
- Email templates look old and lack customization.
- Product bundles aren't complex enough and don't work with existing product SKUs.
- Needs more coupon options and rules.
BigCommerce Super Fan!
- SEO
- Real time shipping quotes
- Organized, easy-to-use back-end
- Ability to customize
- Reporting
- Customizable blog
- A mobile app
- Flexible platform which is easy to integrate with existing systems
- Intuitive layout which is easy to navigate
- Superior customer service ready to help however possible to keep your store up and running
- Constantly innovating to keep up with a changing industry
- Extensive knowledgebase full of useful information to help get your store up and running fast
- No way to provide customers with order shipping estimates based on current queue when some items take longer to manufacturer than others
- Analytics features are useful but limited in capabilities. You'll want to use an external system for deeper data analysis of visitor and sales trends
- Default inventory management system is very basic and contains no method for reviewing history of inventory adjustments/changes for auditing purposes
Conversely, I would not advise BigCommerce for artisans crafting custom products for people which take time to manufacture. If inventory is not ready to ship, it can be difficult to relay shipping estimates to customers.
Favorite E-Commerce Platform
We use the Pro account for Southington the Athletic Shop which sells team apparel, uniforms and fan gear that is customizable. We use the Plus account for our girls clothing line called JANT girl. We are a small business with less than 10 employees. BigCommerce allows our customers to place online orders with ease and gives us the ability to recap those orders and ship them out through shipping easy. I handle any issues that do not involve our day to day operations (theme changes and updates, payment processing, shipping integrations etc). I have trained one employee that does the daily tasks, adding products, hiding them and creating categories.
- The platform is dynamic and can be manipulated very easily to fit all of our needs, even the needs that are not "standard".
- The support is fantastic. I don't think I have ever had to escalate anything to a supervisor because the staff is so knowledgeable.
- The partners they choose to integrate with (API) are some of the best in the business. BigCommerce sticks to what they are good at and allows you to use other partners so you are not forced to set up new systems with them if what you are currently using isn't broken.
- The BigCommerce community is helpful and I love that BigCommerce values their customers' opinions. The up-votes on suggested features and BC's follow through is inspiring.
- Our order exports could be organized better for our production teams. Order My Gear and some other sites that specialize in team sales and customization have a better grasp on that.
- The other day I imported products into the wrong store by mistake.. it took less than 10 seconds to upload and it's going to take me weeks of work to fix.
- I wish we could split up the invoice so that each company could have their own invoice directly from BC. Right now we have both on one account and have to split the payment up after the fact.
BigCommerce Review
- Customer support is great, available 24/7
- Easy to use their built in templates
- Offer lots of other apps to add on
- They need a mobile app that allows you to do everything as the desktop
- Offer design staff that can help with small things for enterprise users, rather than having to pay extra to hire it out
BigCommerce: The good and the bad
- Easy to use.
- Minimal bugs.
- A lot of good templates available.
- Updates software with no problems.
- Good support.
- No point-of-sale functionality.
- Scalability is low outside an e-commerce environment.
- More control over restrictions of users required.
- More stock control functionality and reporting would help a lot.
- Sales tax management
- Product/information hosting for customers to find what they need
- Connectivity to allow many shipping methods (UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL, in-store-pickup, etc)
- Store/hold order information for both customer and product sales
- Product options that could be built-in rather than needing to add manually (ie. New and Used)
- Could use a system that could be used to rent products, not just purchase
- Reports could use some help to narrow down what clients are trying to find, rather than a mass report
- Mass re-pricing tool could use some help to make more user-friendly
- Inventory reporting could use some help to narrow down the information
- Total Package
- Integrates with ShipStation for Fulfillment
- Is Easy to Maintain and Change
- Stellar Customer Support
- We've had fixes break my shop that needed engineers to fix, it would be good to not move backward by trying to move forward
- We have also had glitches on our homepage during some peak traffic times that took over a week to resolve. This needs to be faster, within 24 hours to be acceptable.
- Giving timeframes on issue resolutions and sticking to them.