BigCommerce is a paid-for,’hosted’ e-commerce alternative which enables business owners to establish an online store and sell their products on the web. ‘Hosted’ means that BigCommerce runs on its own servers — so that you do not need to buy hosting or install anything in your computer to use it. As long as you have access to an internet browser and the world wide web, you can build and manage your shop from anywhere.

It is a’software as a service’ (SaaS) product, which means you don’t own the software, but pay a monthly fee to use it.

The item comes with a variety of customizable templates to assist you design your online shop; you could use it to market either physical or digital products; and additionally, there are some tools supplied to assist you advertise your store.

BigCommerce template

BigCommerce is principally aimed at people without much in the method of web design skills, but it also allows more tech-savvy consumers and programmers to tweak both the HTML and CSS of their online shops also.

As with hosted online shop and website building services (Shopify, Volusion, Squarespace, Jimdo etc.), if BigCommerce were to shut down or change its characteristic set radically, you may find yourself in a position where you had to migrate your shop to another platform (Magento Move users can tell you about that!) .

But unless you are in a place to come up with your own online store from scratch, you are in all likelihood going to wind up using a hosted solution like BigCommerce anyway to run your store, and the fantastic news is that it’s one of the more established products of its type on the market, with a client roster which includes Paypal, Avery, Clarks Shoes and Gillette.

Why Does BigCommerce Make You Upgrade?

BigCommerce pricing is unique since you have to upgrade as you grow. When you reach a certain sales cap each year, BigCommerce will proceed on a more advanced strategy.

Here’s the annual sales limitation for every plan:

Conventional — $50k. Good for smaller ecommerce shops. Good option for medium-sized stores or fast-growing stores.

Guru — $400k; past this limit, you pay an additional $150 per month for every additional $200k in online revenue , up to $1m. Great for flourishing shops producing between $150k and $1m in earnings.

By way of instance, say you’re on BigCommerce’s Standard plan, and your store is creating over $50k in revenue a year. You might find you don’t have a choice: you must upgrade to the Plus plan.

The notion behind BigCommerce’s pricing structure is that as your store grows, the stage will grow with you. It’s a long-term view of expansion , and effectively contrasts your success with BigCommerce.

Key pros and cons of Bigcommerce

Pros of BigCommerce

The overall feature set on entry-level BigCommerce plans is quite comprehensive. Many advanced features that other platforms charge a premium to get are offered at far lower price with BigCommerce.

  • It creates selling in multiple currencies straightforward.
  • Third party real time shipping calculations are available on any plan — this distinguishes BigCommerce from key opponents like Squarespace and Shopify, which need you to be on a premium plan to avail of the operation.
  • There are no transaction fees, even if you use a third-party payment gateway.
  • You get a fantastic set of reporting tools on all programs — again, this is not true with all competing products.
  • It is really easy to make custom fields.
  • Allowing your customers to upload documents during their buy is actually straightforward.
  • It comes with built-in product review performance.
  • It includes drag-and-drop page builder functionality (that requires a little improvement, nevertheless ).
  • Its SEO attributes are great — you can produce short URLs, AMP format can be found on all its templates, and automatic image optimization is contained on all plans.
  • The’abandoned cart saver’ tool is more comprehensive than the similar offering from competitors.
  • You get an infinite number of personnel accounts on any plan.
  • It comes with a built-in blog.
  • You are able to avail of cheaper-than-usual Paypal card transaction fees with BigCommerce, as a result of its preferential arrangement with Braintree.
  • It is a very flexible solution for vendors with a lot of different product versions.
  • The built-in cookie consent feature helps you meet GDPR needs in a way that other similar programs don’t.
  • You can try the product free for 15 days

Cons of Bigcommerce

  • By comparison to a number of its rivals, you need to pay quite a lot to avail of abandoned cart operation.
  • Limits are placed on annual online sales — and if you transcend them, you will want to update to a more expensive monthly plan.
  • The free topics are in most cases too much like one another.
  • The number of typefaces contained in the free topics is quite limited.
  • The webpage builder functionality needs quite a bit of improvement — according to my experience, it could be a bit buggy, and it’s confusingly implemented.
  • The built-in blog doesn’t facilitate RSS feeds.
  • VAT MOSS rates could be better catered for.

Conclusion

In the event you decide on BigCommerce but don’t wish to dedicate the time to design and maintenance, it is possible to leave your ecommerce website in the hands of those experts. Jarvis Cole can help! We are your trusted BigCommerce recruitment partner. We are going to work with you locate, onboard and hire the ideal staff to satisfy your business needs. From designers to job leads, you’ll get the candidates you need to keep the business operating smoothly. To learn more, contact us today!