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)6.969%
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.
- 6.9Product management(410) Ratings
Product catalog can be easily updated.
- 7.4Bulk product upload(310) Ratings
Admins can upload products in bulk using spreadsheets.
- 7.1Branding(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.
- 7.8eCommerce 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
- 7.3Promotions & 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
- 7.6Multi-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
(660)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
(351-375 of 436)Easy as 1, 2, 3!
- Very easy to use
- Simple and not complicated
- Organized data
- More flexibilty in terms of status of orders.
- Wish they had a loyalty system that keeps track of customers' purchases
- Option to list number of items bought on the invoice
Big Commerce is great for online stores
- Easy to set up
- Compatible with Square
- Variety of themes to choose from
- Setting up and using email accounts can be frustrating
- Inventory for items with options difficult to understand
- More control over placement of products
BigCommerce- The Best Online Store Marketing Tool
- Impressive built-in features that enable the sales team to update the product list with ease
- Top-notch SEO tools that enable the filtering of product information for the consumers and the sales team
- Allows selling across multiple platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and products
- A non-complex interface that helps the sales team navigate through the products when making updates
- It allows multiple products to appear in the interface which is crucial when the list of products is long
- The product description can be modified to on the website to make it appealing and capture the attention of the consumers
- The terminology used may not be favorable for amateur users and the developer can improve this by using standard language
- There is also no mobile feature to manage a store on the go
The real BIG Commerce
- Offer various template for the websites
- Payment to use them
- User friendly
- able to provide assistance
- like to have more option for free templates
- have a big commerce email
- have tutorials on how to use the advance options
Increase Product Sales In Record Time With BigCommerce
- Customer orders and information. Our customer service team is able to easily and quickly assists customers that call in with questions or errors regarding their purchase (ex: address change, quantity change, etc). With the color tabs we can tell how many orders are awaiting fulfillment, completed, pending, or refunded.
- Full access o my product pages. I enjoy being able to use BigCommerce to quickly access my product pages and make any necessary information changes without having to to send requests to a web developer. I have full control of what my store pages look like.
- BigCommerce provides various Analytics reports that are helpful. Although we mainly use Google Analytics for our reporting, we also some of BigCommerce's reports such as: Purchase Funnel, Abandoned Cart, and Marketing Reports to see which avenue our customers are reaching our website.
- We have had issues with the link/ connection between BigCommerce and our email marketing platform. We cannot get our product images to load properly on abandon cart, thank-you emails, etc. This makes our emails look sloppy!
- I do not like that some (back end) product information pulls over to the product page. On the product page, under "information", the product SKU# is showing. I cannot seem to fix or hide this information and it is aesthetically pretty annoying.
- If you want the fancy stuff, you'll have to pay more.
I do not have anything else to compare BigCommerce to, but it has filled the purpose we expected it to do.
8/10 would recommend for your small or medium sized business!
- Client Support: their support team is fully English speaking and based out of Austin. I've never had to wait more than 3 minutes to speak with somebody, and every single rep I've interacted with has been upbeat and ready to go above and beyond to solve the problem. They also aren't afraid to bring in more, "expensive" resources like engineers to solve a problem.
- Robust API: Plug and Play! They integrate nicely with hundred of marketing, shipping, payment, and customer service solutions, all at the click of a button.
- Ongoing Improvements: the team holds monthly town hall meetings on new improvements for everything from new integrations to new UI buildouts. The platform is constantly improving.
- Intuitive UI: easy setting interfaces and WYSIWYG editors. Even somebody without any e-commerce experience can pick up this software and build out their store.
- Analytics: the standard set isn't very robust, and they try to charge you for basic things like Sales by Item Category reporting.
- Checkout Page Customization: currently you need to know HTML/CSS to modify these, which isn't that user-friendly.
- Standard followup email customization: currently, you need to know HTML/CSS to modify these, which isn't that user-friendly.
BigCommerce a great hosted e-commerce solution.
- Excellent customer service, I was very pleased at how helpful and responsive they are.
- Fairly easy and straight-forward setup.
- Bulk edit feature is awesome (not all ecommerce solutions offer this).
- Customization limitations, but that's an issue with any hosted solution.
- Updates can sometimes be slow in coming.
- Fewer free themes since last big update which with the limitations on customization means you're spending more out of pocket besides the slightly high monthly fees for a theme that still will need to be customized to properly fit a client's branding.
BigCommerce - great shopping cart solution for SMB
- Easy to set up and get running
- Manage products, orders and customers.
- Growing third party apps to help customization
- More dynamic themes
- Faster site load speed from the core
- 100% server up time
BigCommerce Exceptional Option for Medium to Large Businesses
- Usability -- The interface is easy to use, so if you've never used a web management tool before BigCommerce isn't overwhelming to learn
- Editing -- Using BigCommerce is essentially a CMS tool, so little web development experience is needed
- Multi-Site Management -- It is easy to set up multiple web pages and manage all from a single sign-on
- Not a mobile option -- so cannot manage pages except from a desktop
- Spend a lot of time looking up some of the terms used within the program to understand what you're doing
BigCommerce from a marketing agency's perspective.
- Product management for large catalogs
- Variable pricing rules
- It would be nice to have the ability to attached specific digital products to individual configurations of a variable product.
BigCommerce is however well suited for most all e-commerce businesses. The base platform is very robust and covers most needs however when the base functionality doesn't meet the client's needs the platform can be extended through the BigCommerceAPIi to meet almost any need to include custom ERP integrations if necessary.
BigCommerce is favorite offering to my clients
- Large selection of attractive/modern responsive templates that are very easy to customize to your brand.
- Very easy to update site software with latest version without affecting existing look & feel.
- Very responsive template designers. Company that created template I customized answered design queries and offered tech assistance all within 24 hours.
- Customer support at BigCommerce is terrific. Never had a bad experience.
- Large knowledge base of support documents and online community. Rarely did not find answer I needed in documentation.
- Blog needs major upgrade. Customization is limited. Would also be good to have plugins to expand functionality. Blog used to be a big feature on old site but not on BC.
- Add ability to offer product without any price on retail site. Right now have to finagle then it shows up as zero - need to just turn off price for some products. Ex product sample "call to inquire"
- Better more expansive email support. They have great sync with MailChimp & coupon sites. Would be better if they offered some auto sync functionality with Google Mail or Microsoft. Right now we contracted mail separate then linked and manage off BC. Not great.
BigCommerce - Growing my Business One Day at a Time
- BigCommerce excels at making customer service available around the clock. Very few places offer 24/7 customer support and it is always FREE.
- BigCommerce support staff is friendly, helpful and knowledgeable.
- There is ongoing effort to enhance the platform and to introduce new features.
- BigCommerce townhall meetings are helpful and are a great opportunity to learn more and get ideas about running your store.
- Previously BigCommerce had a feature when an order was being marked shipped, there was the ability to add a shipping note that could be read by the customer. This feature no longer exists. It was a handy feature to be able to make a note to the customer re: some pertinent information regarding the order.
There are some areas in BigCommerce such as the order status that I wished there was flexibility to add a custom status that is unique to my operations. At present, the order statuses are defined by BigCommerce and no customize status can be added.
BigCommerce is excellent value.
- Easy to implement.
- Good customer service
- Several templates available.
- Allow check out to be modified to add y/n questions for customer.
Ultra Pro Looking Platform - Best Choice for Apparel/Retail
- BigCommerce has all of your decisions sitting right in front of you so that you don't forget anything! All of the options for entering sizing/inventory availability/customization are right there so you can be up and out of the gates quickly.
- 24/7 tech support. I found the support people to be fantastic. This was a huge deal for me in picking an e-commerce platform. I'm no coder and I didn't want to spend hours (or weeks) learning - having a 24/7 tech support on hand, not just by a chat, but a real person you can speak to on the phone - this is awesome!
- The interface itself educates you. The tabs for marketing offer an array of options for putting banners or coupons. They are quite intuitive and straightforward to configure. This coupon element (I offered free shipping over £50 purchase) have really helped drive people to up the value of the shopping carts.
- I find templates lacking - there should be more current designs, like one page parallax type templates.
- I liked the older interface and am still not fully used to the new interface.
- It should be more clear that you can pre-pay a year for a discount!
- Perhaps video tutorials in addition to the online blog support?
HOC Hoots About BigCommerce
- Creating new product postings is easier in BigCommerce than it is in Etsy. BigCommerce has an easier interface to select product categories and the like, while adding metadata, tags and other SEO necessary items is more intuitive than Etsy in our experience.
- Having a wide variety of free templates is a big bonus, as is the ability to edit them. Although we have dug deeper into the HTML code in the past to modify our site's appearance, the upgraded storefront editor is very useful. Changing colors in any part of the website is a breeze now and the two newest free templates are well designed, pleasing to the eye, and appropriately modern.
- The storefront integration with Facebook is quite useful. Being able to add the shopping feature to our company page at the click of a button was incredibly convenient.
- Having a blog built into the store has been beneficial in terms of driving visitors to our site. Sharing the links on social media brings people back to the Hoot Owl Creations page and, ideally, inspires them to at least look at the items we have for sale. Also, the blog allows our site to have more personality because we can express ourselves in the same area where we display our product, which gives visitors a better idea of who we are and what we do.
- The help section could use additional visual aides to help navigate users through the various menus and sub-menus when they are trying to figure out where something is or how to make a change to the storefront. Sometimes it can be difficult to find things because the user interface has changed since some of the articles were written and it's organized differently.
- Each template needs a guide for how large the thumbnail photos are on the front page and product pages. Twice now, with different templates, I have uploaded photos only to see there are white bars on the sides or tops of my product photos with the thumbnail images. It takes some experimenting with cropping to determine what is the correct ratio. Having an easy to find pixel measurement, such as what exists for the carousel, would be a major improvement.
- Transparency with billing could be improved; specifically in terms of where a store falls within the sales spectrum to determine if you're in the higher or lower category. When the tier simplification was announced, we were automatically placed in the higher tier even though our sales for the previous year did not exceed even 20 items. Although we got it resolved after emailing a representative, it was concerning for us as we could not afford the higher monthly payment.
Ease of use good support!
- Ease of use for loading new provisos and content.
- Informative changes that are being made with the platform.
- The support help center is always good at answering and addressing my questions.
- More personal feed back for what could be done to help my site with rankings
BigCommerce allows you to go Big in eCommerce
- Ease of use and easy to learn.
- Fantastic interface, and very customer friendly.
- We made our first sale within hours of setting up the store.
- Functionality increases every day.
- Has recently become more expensive for high volume sellers like ourselves.
- That being said, it is worth it.
- Nothing else bad!
Small online store loves BigCommerce
- Email notification when an item is purchased - this can go to multiple email addresses - it gives us a check and balance for order fulfillment. It also allows us to have some orders (merchandise) filled from one department and other orders (gift certificates) filled from another department.
- Easy set up and tutorials. I wasn't sure how to go about setting up our on-line store, however BigCommerce has video tutorials and a vast amount of information on how to do what you need to do. It's easy to follow and get the results you are looking for.
- Transactions are really seamless for us - credit cards are processed on line and deposited into our account.
- It may just be because we don't use the feature very often, but it seems like we always have to spend a little time "looking for" how to process a return/refund. Once we find it, it's easy, it's just that initial feeling of "where do I find that again?"
Brilliant
- Tracking all info
- Helpful with problems
- Helpful with new ideas
- SEO for beginners
- Shipping
- Inventory
BigCommerce is an invaluable tool to our business
- Setting up products for sale is quite intuitive and straightforward.
- Integrates well with other social media and sales platforms.
- The dashboard landing page is very user-friendly and provides easy access to assorted analytics, marketing resources and product pages.
- Having some more video tutorials available might help with more technical or challenging aspects of store set-up, especially when dealing with more complex pieces of information like shipping and tax.
- There are many features available in BigCommerce that sometimes it can feel overwhelming, even as they are features that you naturally WANT to be able to learn more about and implement. Short video tutorials that outline some of these tools and their benefits could be of great help.
- It would be useful useful to customize the dashboard or have access to 'hot links' so the site can be tailored to a particular user's preferred layout/preferences so that, for instance, a tool they use more than others is not so buried within sub-menus.
Why we wouldn't move from BigCommerce
- Great in assisting with problem solving and quick turnaround of escalating an issue if it has to be taken further
- Ongoing development of themes and SEO practices
- Handy analytics to assist in targeting advertising spend and updating products
- I'm happy with all of the current functionality at the moment - costing is always something I see brought up in many comparative discussions though here in Austalia, especially with the USD strength against the AUD and I know many people that moved away from BigCommerc due to the new costing plans last year.
Big Commerce for Really Really Small E-Commerce Businesses
- Innovation: BigCommerce is always striving to better its product and product line. We believe that they are consistently going back to the drawing board looking for ways to improve its product, which ultimately improves our bottom line.
- Customer Service: BigCommerce has exceptional customer service! I have been with BigCommerce for about 5 years now, and have seen them grow over the years, but the one thing that is consistent is BigCommerce's dedication to its customers and their customer's success.
- Seamless Platform: We are not kidding.... We were able to build a store and an online presence in less than 1 day with no technical background in HTML. The platform truly meets you where you are and gives everyone access to the American Dream.
- The number one thing I would like to see integrated is a way in which we can be notified when a client has left a message through their client portal on our store's message board. This would aid in response time to those clients seeking our assistance.
BigCommerce is great to start with for non-techies!
I joke that my business is as niche as it gets, with the largest selection of kaleidoscopes in New England. In both my brick and mortar store on Cape Cod and on my site (www.CapeKaleidoscopes.com), I carry and sell all types of kaleidoscopes, from toys up to large, sculptural, one-of-a-kind, collectible styles, in wood, metal, glass, and mixed media. My worldwide customers are people looking for unique gifts and kaleidoscope collectors. Because most are distinctly unique in color/pattern, virtually each kaleidoscope is rephotographed, including the interior photos and videos, each time I receive one from my artists so that my site is always current. Although it's a huge undertaking on my part to keep up with that, since I wear all the hats in my business, I'm proud to say that I often feature almost 1,500 distinct products.
Since I'm most definitely not a techie, I appreciate that BigCommerce is so easy to use. My only regret is that I don't have someone who can work on background, coding (metatags, etc.) to boost my number of orders, especially since my store is located in such a seasonal area.
- The design of the dashboard and other sections are very clear and intuitive.
- I had a very short learning curve with the steps involved with adding or editing a product's description, etc., and I'm not a techie!
- The customer service department is *by far* the best I've ever dealt with in almost 30 years of being self-employed. (A suggestion for a potentially lucrative side business would be for them to train their counterparts at other web-based companies!!)
- I'm frustrated that I still don't understand the whole concept of the new (or old) themes. I'm guessing I should have a different one at this point (??), but I've yet to be guided as to which one would be best for my particular (and quite unique) business. It would be wonderful if there was a basic primer for people like me. Specifically, I'm overwhelmed by the choices, but I don't dare choose a new theme, for fear that I couldn't go back to my current one if I don't like it. I'm petrified that I might lose several years worth of text and images! On the flip side, I wonder if my site's not as productive as it could be because I've been frozen on this entire issue of themes. I'd also VERY much appreciate the ability to narrow down those options by entering one's business info (industry, # of products, etc.) which could drastically reduce the number of theme options.
Superior Service, Pricing & Features: BigCommerce Is A Perfect Fit For Your E-Commerce Business
- Superior Customer Service that I can access at all hours. Being a small biz designer, I'm often working on my site late at night, so love to still have access to really knowledgeable tech assistance at any time of that day, so I can get things fixed or figured out and continue my work.
- The ability to customize most of the templates to a high degree makes my artistic eye happy and is a big plus for me, as it gives the look of a customized website without the large expense of one. Loads of apps and plug-ins to extend custom functionality and features that suit your business. And if I want to customize my coding, I can do that too. Like that they have partner sites that know the BigCommerce coding and architecture, which saves them time, and thereby saves me money.
- Keeping my overhead low is very important to a small indie business, so I love the great plan levels and pricing of BigCommerce. Also love the fact that unlike some other popular template site competitors, BigCommerce gives you all the features for your monthly price, inclusive, without the practice of charging lots of "nickel & dime" extra and feature charges (as other business owners have told me they've experienced on other platforms).
- After working with Big Commerce teams, themes and changes for over 5 years, I'd honestly say that they are pretty responsive to any of the issues that might arise or exist. They have always been upfront and honest about the timing of how long a fix might take, and have always worked quickly to address the most important ones.
- The only issues I've had are small ones that I can usually get them to either address in a number of hours or a few days. Some that were a bit more unusual, I had been able to have a tech help me find an immediate workaround to address some issue. If it is a true technical issue, bug or glitch, they always issue a ticket immediately, and I've seen most every issue get taken care of quickly.
- I feel overall very happy with BigCommerce. For me, it does just what I want. And considering that technical issues are an inevitable part of having a site, for me - having a technically-savvy customer service team that is so responsive means the world to me. It makes the difference to feel I've always been taken care of when things don't go quite right or when issues arise. Truly appreciate that they don't have just a 'cookie-cutter' or call-center type of customer service department.
- The only exception I feel I could cite for improvement was the more recent roll-out of the new STENCIL theme from Pixel Union, which took a few months longer than I had hoped, and was confusing to both customer service reps and to customers. Also wanted to not have such a long wait to for the ability of customizations and more flexibility. Better planning for the beta-testing, various designs and final roll-outs might be in order for future theme upgrades.
BigCommerce was a game changer for my online sales
- Very user-friendly
- Lots of ready to use themes or you can program things yourself if you know how
- Lots of options so you can tailor it to suit your needs
- Honestly I have not come across any issues or instances where I wasn't able to do something I wanted to do