Magento2 Vs. BigCommerce Vs. Shopify - Whether your business is a startup looking for growth or a vast enterprise, the decision of choosing the Best eCommerce Platform for your business must not be taken lightly, as it can be an aspect responsible for the success or failure of your brand. Besides, it is exceptionally important while choosing the best eCommerce platform for small businesses as they have to manage and maintain the online eCommerce store under limited resources and budgets.

There are some big bosses in the eCommerce industry which always rank on top of the list, such as BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento, Shopify, and others. Due to the most advanced technology available on all platforms sometimes it becomes difficult to choose the best eCommerce platform among them and you start questioning yourself that, 

  • Which functions and features are required? 
  • Which platform will suit my budget estimations?
  • Which platform is more secure for my business?

Meanwhile, here we MageSpark, have prepared some sort of relaxation for you by comparing the most popular eCommerce platforms Magento, BigCommerce & Shopify, based on their pricing, features, functionality, usability, and most importantly security. So let’s begin on How to Choose the best eCommerce platform.

Summary: Magento Vs. BigCommerce Vs. Shopify

Magento started its journey as an open-source platform. It has consistently been used by large enterprises because the degree of development required to tackle its real functionality involves a big budget.

Magento offers on-premise and cloud-hosted options, and many businesses are now looking for SaaS(Software-as-a-service) models due to their continuous renovations, so for them, BigCommerce and Shopify could be the best option.

It isn’t wrong to say that, BigCommerce & Shopify are the leaders in SaaS eCommerce. Both platforms have a range of themes/templates available, are easy to use, and for years they are proving themselves as one of the best eCommerce platforms. BigCommerce and Shopify have made it easy to start an online eCommerce store quickly and without any technical knowledge. 

Businesses that are new to eCommerce choose Shopify and those who are trying to grow often choose BigCommerce. Both the platforms are well-known for their extensibility & flexibility.

Keep reading to distinguish between each option available which may help you on how to choose the best eCommerce platform as per your business needs.


 Magento

BigCommerce 

Shopify

Pricing

Costly

Budget-friendly

Budget-friendly

Ease Of Use

Complex

Convenient

Highly Convenient

Available Themes

Hundreds

Hundreds

Hundreds

Security

Highly secured

Secured

Secured

Features

Feature-rich

Feature-rich

Some native features & third party apps

Hosting

On-site, Third Party & Cloud-based

Cloud-based

Cloud-based

Best for

Large enterprises with huge resources

Small & large businesses both

Small businesses looking for establishing an online presence

The following will help you understand the main topics from the above brief points in detail:


(1) Pricing:

Even though pricing may never be the number one factor while choosing the best eCommerce platform, let’s discuss it first.

Magento vs. BigCommerce vs. Shopify-Pricing Comparison

Magento: Costly

While talking about Magento one must think that if Magento is free to use, you’ll not require any investment. Well, that’s wrong. however, Magento is free to use, it doesn’t include the Hosting, Design, and development charges. If you’re looking for extensive choices to make your eCommerce store stand out as best, Magento Commerce would be the best to pursue. And If you choose Magento, it would be great to go through this pricing breakdown for your Magento store development, Which is as follows,


Magento Open SourceMagento CommerceMagento Commerce Cloud
Magento license cost0$22000-1,25,000/year$40,000-1,90,000/year

Hosting

$100-500/year

$500-6500/year

0

Domain Name

$10-400/year

$10-400/year

$10-400/year

SSL Certificate

$50-300/year

$50-300/year

$50-300/year

Design

$0-5000+

$0-5000+

$0-5000+

Development

$1800-10000+

$10000+

$10000+

Extensions

$60-600/extension

$60-600/extension

$60-600/extension

Payment Provider fees

2.9% + $0.30 per transaction

2.9% + $0.30 per transaction

2.9% + $0.30 per transaction

SEO & Digital Promotion

$10,000-40000/year

$10,000-40000/year

$10,000-40000/year

The above table shows the estimated expenses, which may incur during the development of your Magento eCommerce store

BigCommerce: Budget-friendly

Bigcommerce’s pricing range depends on the services you want to include in your eCommerce store, you can reach your actual cost by determining the complexity and range of services you want for your business, Pricing may vary. BigCommerce has a total of 4 plans. 

  • The Standard Plan which starts from $29
  • The Plus Plan costs around $79
  • The Pro Plan costs around $299 
  • The Enterprise Plan is customizable and costs on basis of your online sale.

All the plans have some common features accessible on any pricing model such as Single-page checkout, unlimited products, responsive website, free transaction options, and more. Some of the outstanding features are available with the expensive plans. In addition, with Plus Plan and Pro Plan, you can easily save up to 10% by paying fees annually. There are many more reasons which make Bigcommerce the best eCommerce platform.

Shopify: Budget-friendly

With the basket full of features & such budget-friendly prices, Shopify is the best suit for small businesses, as Shopify enables them to set up and run their business on fewer resources. Shopify has 5 plans available with it. Which are as follows:

  • Shopify Lite Plan –  Costs around $9 per month
  • Basic Shopify Plan –  Costs around $29 per month
  • Shopify Plan – Costs around $79 per month
  • Advanced Shopify Plan – Costs around $299 per month
  • Shopify Plus Plan – Customizable, but usually costs around $2000 per month.

(2) Ease of Use: 

It is an important factor that how your selected platform is for your team. You and your team have to build up knowledge of it for easy understanding and exercising the system’s features. It depends upon your business size and structure, which is the best eCommerce platform for solving backend issues, and for the marketing team too, to make quick changes in the front-end.

Magento vs. BigCommerce vs. Shopify-Ease of Use

Magento: Highly Complex

Magento can be characterized as the highest complex platform, Also, Magento does not provide on-site developers to help you setting-up your store. So, if you’re looking to set up an eCommerce store on Magento(without any technical knowledge) you either need to hire a Magento developer or a Team of Magento developers to build your site, as Magento has an elevated learning curve. In the case of hiring a certified Magento developer, user-friendliness will never be an issue.

Bigcommerce: Convenient 

BigCommerce has a great user experience, which makes it easy to build a website without having any prior experience in it. Once you are done setting up your store BigCommerce is easy to add simple shop pages to add products/services and to manage orders. 

An additional potential advantage of BigCommerce is that it has an immense offering for backend user experience. Bigcommerce provides several pre-built plug-ins to frontend CMS(Content Management System) and DXP systems like wordpress, bloomreach, Drupal, and much more. And if you’re using any of these options to run your site, you can easily connect BigCommerce on the backend and keep continue with the system you already knew broadly on the frontend. Additionally, if you’re looking to make a huge and successful eCommerce store you would better Hire dedicated BigCommerce developers who may help you get a top-notch eCommerce store.

Shopify: Highly Convenient

Shopify is built to satisfy the needs of those who were always in search of a platform with training wheels, as it is user-friendly and has made it fairly easy to set up an eCommerce store without having experience in development. With Shopify, It will be the easiest task to get your website up and running quickly. But a little technical knowledge will require on-time attaching advanced features, through additional apps or employing custom coding. if you’re looking at, How to choose the right development agency to set up your Shopify store, then here it is! It will surely turn out as a great result.

(3) Security:

Since customers exchange some sensitive data with an online store, security becomes a central concern to look at while comparing Magento Vs. BigCommerce Vs. Shopify. Below are the points which may clear your doubts on how to choose the best eCommerce platform in terms of security.

Magento vs. BigCommerce vs. Shopify-Security Comparison

Magento: Depends upon you

Owning a Magento store is like being in a driver's seat. As the security of your Magento store/website is totally in your hands. You can make your Magento store as secure as your developer can make it. Magento merchants need to update their backend for ensuring customers’ security. You have security patches available to incorporate your website’s security development. As your store’s security is in your hand, make sure you hire a highly experienced and certified Magento developer to help you create robust security.

BigCommerce: Well Secured

As per its SaaS(Software as a system) offering, BigCommerce provides several layers of security to all sites hosted by them. BigCommerce has wide SSL security, DDOS protection, flaming fast speed, 99.9% uptime, and it also has level PCI-1 compliant. This allows business owners to focus more on innovative ideas to grow their business instead of security and performance.

Shopify: Secured

Even though Shopify is considered as the most “Basic” service provider with an advantage of the SaaS solution, the feature of security is great with Shopify. Your Shopify store can have 6 categories of PCI standards and Shopify also includes SSL security on their hosted sites. Which is enough to have an online site/store.

(4) Which eCommerce platform is best for who?

There is no one-sized platform that can suit all businesses, some fit best for businesses with larger resources and budgets, while some suit best to small enterprises looking for growth. It is required to choose the best amongst them all In terms of budget & your business needs. You’ll have to find the one platform which is best for your business now and in the future as well. as you don’t want it to end up limiting your growth. So make sure you choose the platform that continues with your growth.

Magento vs. BigCommerce vs. Shopify-Which eCommerce is best for whom?

Magento: Business with large resources

If you own a vast enterprise that has large resources to devote to eCommerce and have a highly experienced team of Magento developers for setting up and maintaining your site then Magento can turn out to be the best eCommerce platform for your business. Magento provides opportunities to customize and secure your site in your specific ways, with a highly experienced development team it becomes easy to establish your online presence with Magento. Keep in mind that there is a limited number of qualified Magento developers, so make sure you hire a Magento developer who has immense knowledge to complete your project.

BigCommerce: Small and large businesses

BigCommerce can be said a great fit for every size of business, particularly those looking for growth. BigCommerce offers impressive eCommerce solutions, best in uptime, good at customer service, and robust security too. BigCommerce is a good option for large and fast-growing businesses. Attaching it to the right business can give blastful results.

Shopify: Small businesses want to make an online presence

Those businesses who are new to eCommerce, or looking for experience in building an online business. Shopify would be a good fit for them, as they just want their business online to get up and running. Additionally, Shopify has many features to make an outstanding website and great user experience. If you have a limited number of products or services you can go for the Shopify Basic Plan, later while expanding your business you can make advancements by choosing any other plan with more features. If you’re looking to migrate your store to Shopify, I would suggest MageSpark.

Conclusion: (Magento Vs. BigCommerce vs. Shopify)

After a comparison between Magento vs. BigCommerce vs. Shopify with all-important criteria which matter the most, it can conclude that Magento is best suited for businesses with large resources and have a professional team of developers. 

On the other hand, BigCommerce is a great choice for those with a little technical knowledge as it can kick start your online business with essential features and decent support. And is a leading platform used by both small and large businesses.

Shopify is widely chosen by startup level or small level businesses as it is feature-rich, flexible, requires no technical knowledge to set up a successful online store, and can be considered as the best eCommerce platform for small businesses trying to make an online presence.

& If you know the technology you can take a little more advantage from Magento, as it is free to use and you can have limitless customizations. Magento helps you control and power your store.

Meanwhile, with all the platforms amongst all, you’ll require the ways to promote your eCommerce store to drive sales, here’s which can help you grow faster. 

If you’re looking to Shopify Migration, BigCommerce Store Migration, Magento2 Migration, or any guidance regarding eCommerce, the MageSpark team is always here to help you best with our highly experienced team.

Hope this Blog helped you with How to choose the best eCommerce platform for your business.

If any queries, do comment below! we are happy to guide you with the best.

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