Great for ecommerce, still waiting on a few updates.
June 17, 2019
Great for ecommerce, still waiting on a few updates.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Plus
Overall Satisfaction with BigCommerce
BigCommerce is used across our whole organization. It is connected with Square and our Square register so we have fluid inventory from online and in store sales. We use it to manage and create our products as well as to manage orders and customers for online sales. This sometimes translates into retail sales and customers as well.
- It has a very small downtime compared to other ecommerce websites we have used.
- The open API can be great for developers to work with your site and company.
- The framework and templates that they offer are really nice and responsive.
- Integration into other apps is easy and works great.
- The customer support is usually great!
- We've been noticing a lag in the response rate to update our inventory when speaking to Square, we've had to de-connect and re-upload our inventory several times. Both companies insist it's the others responsibility. I would love to be able to cross communicate between the two since it's such an intricate and essential part of our business.
- We've found that a handful of times there has been a problem with our site and that it has gone down and we have received 0 communication from BigCommerce, we were the ones that found it and had to notify them. They had insisted it had only been a few minutes, in one case we had proof that it had actually been down for several hours. My team and I do not appreciate being lied to and would rather just have an apology and the truth.
- Recently, I had my only really bad experience with BigCommerce that made me double think whether we would continue with it. Something happened with the free template that they recommend, we had always used it and something where BigCommerce had updated and the template had not eventually caused there to be some pretty bad bugs and then the site completely shut down. While speaking to a representative, I was hung up on (presumably by accident but I'm not really sure) twice, and then had some frustrating conversations. It was discovered that the back end is responsive with the front end so both the rep and I were shut out of the site completely. Eventually I got into it, I was able to quickly switch over to a new random template before being kicked off. This was all while the site was still live and customers were trying to shop it. It was very frustrating as I was putting up all the suggestions on how to fix things and eventually it was I who fixed it while the rep was just on the phone saying sorry and connecting with other "specialists" in her department. Since there was no other template that looked good and was functional with our site, I had to spend $200 on a new template and rebuild our entire site that night. I asked for a reimbursement for this trouble, as I was not intending to ever buy a new template as the free one was amazing and we had customized it quite a bit. I have yet to hear anything and am pretty annoyed by this. Also, the template that I was using the top recommended template to use on their website even while we were having this problems. It was still up the next day as well, even though I had told them they should immediately take it down as it's not fair that this could happen to another person. I have not checked to see if it's still up, but I would suspect it would be.
- We've streamlined operations and now have a team that can easily use and access the site to manage products and brands.
- We've been able to have a larger product library which in return has allowed for a more diverse customer base.
- The site also has a lot more customization and functionality compared to others we have used in the past.
$100,000 to $500,000
We have a developer that we work with who uses the open API. Unfortunately I can not speak to this as much as I would like to. I have a list of customizations and projects, I give it to him and he lets us know when they are done or if they can or can not be implemented. The largest and most frustrating would be trying to code orders to pick up only as I described before.
- Shopify and Squarespace
We used Shopify, Squarespace and storenvy. All were bloated and had a lot of unnecessary and useless features and at a cost that did not seem beneficial to us. In the end, BigCommerce looked like it would work best for our online / brick and mortar model that we run. Also the back end was advanced but still easy to use. Honestly compared to Squarespace or storenvy where the colors and blocks are hard to read and to organize did a lot. I know a little about coding and doing this after years of doing this business, but a lot of our employees don't and can easily get lost in the backend when trying to do something. I don't have enough time to go through and walk each employee through everything on the back site so it's nice that it still has a linear approach and ease with dealing with it.