Shopify vs BigCommerce: Which Platform Is Better for Your Store

How These Platforms Compare at a Glance

Shopify and BigCommerce are the two largest hosted ecommerce platforms purpose-built for online selling. They target the same market, charge similar prices, and offer comparable core features. The differences show up in their business models and philosophies. Shopify follows an ecosystem model: a lean core platform supplemented by thousands of third-party apps. BigCommerce follows a feature-rich model: more built-in capabilities that reduce your dependence on add-ons.

This philosophical difference shapes the entire experience. Shopify stores typically run five to fifteen apps, each adding a monthly fee. BigCommerce stores run fewer apps because features like real-time shipping quotes, customer group pricing, and product filtering come standard. Whether you prefer Shopify's approach or BigCommerce's depends on how you feel about managing third-party dependencies versus using a more opinionated, batteries-included platform.

Pricing and Fee Structure

Both platforms offer three main tiers at identical price points. Shopify Basic and BigCommerce Standard both cost $39 per month. Shopify and BigCommerce Plus both cost $105 per month. Shopify Advanced and BigCommerce Pro both cost $399 per month. Enterprise plans start at $2,300 per month for Shopify Plus and are custom-quoted for BigCommerce Enterprise.

The pricing similarity is intentional. BigCommerce has historically matched Shopify's tiers to make direct comparison easy. But the value you get at each tier differs. BigCommerce Standard includes features that require Shopify's mid-tier plan or paid apps on Shopify, such as professional reporting, customer segmentation, and abandoned cart recovery. Shopify reserves abandoned cart emails for the $39 Basic plan now, but several advanced features like custom reports still require the $105 Shopify plan.

Transaction Fee Surcharges

This is the single biggest pricing difference between the two platforms. If you use Shopify Payments (their built-in processor), there is no surcharge. But if you use any external payment gateway, Shopify charges a surcharge on every transaction: 2% on Basic, 1% on Shopify, and 0.6% on Advanced. This surcharge is in addition to whatever your payment gateway charges.

BigCommerce charges zero transaction fee surcharges on any plan, with any payment gateway. If you process payments through PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, or any other supported gateway, the only fees you pay are the gateway's own processing fees. For stores that use or need a specific payment gateway that is not Shopify Payments, this difference can save thousands of dollars per year.

Consider a store processing $300,000 in annual sales through an external gateway. On Shopify Basic, the surcharge would be $6,000. On Shopify Advanced, the surcharge would be $1,800. On any BigCommerce plan, the surcharge would be zero. If you plan to use Shopify Payments and it is available in your country, this difference is irrelevant. But if you need an external gateway for any reason, BigCommerce saves real money.

Annual Revenue Caps

BigCommerce has a feature Shopify does not: annual revenue caps on each plan. BigCommerce Standard caps at $50,000 in annual revenue. Plus caps at $180,000. Pro caps at $400,000. If your store's revenue exceeds the cap, BigCommerce automatically upgrades you to the next plan. Shopify has no revenue caps on any plan. You can process $10 million on the $39 Basic plan if you want to (though you would be overpaying on card processing fees by staying on Basic at that volume).

For fast-growing stores, BigCommerce's revenue caps mean your platform costs increase automatically as you scale. A store that grows from $40,000 to $200,000 in annual revenue would be upgraded from Standard ($39/mo) to Plus ($105/mo) to Pro ($399/mo) within two plan bumps. On Shopify, you would stay on whatever plan you chose unless you voluntarily upgrade.

Built-in Features

BigCommerce includes more features natively than Shopify does at equivalent price points. This is BigCommerce's primary competitive advantage and the main reason stores choose it over Shopify.

Features included in BigCommerce Standard that require apps or higher plans on Shopify include real-time carrier shipping quotes from UPS, USPS, FedEx, and others. On Shopify, real-time carrier-calculated shipping requires the $399 Advanced plan or a $20 per month third-party app. BigCommerce also includes built-in product filtering and faceted search, which lets customers filter product listings by price, brand, size, color, and custom attributes. Shopify's built-in filtering is more basic, and most stores add a search and filtering app for $10 to $40 per month.

BigCommerce includes native support for customer groups, which lets you assign different pricing, payment methods, and catalog visibility to different customer segments. This is essential for B2B stores that offer wholesale pricing to approved accounts while showing retail pricing to the public. On Shopify, customer group pricing requires the $2,300 per month Plus plan or a third-party app.

Other built-in BigCommerce features that typically require Shopify apps include product comparison pages, wishlist functionality, persistent cart across devices, and multi-currency support with automatic conversion based on the shopper's location.

App Ecosystem

Shopify's app ecosystem is significantly larger than BigCommerce's. The Shopify App Store has over 8,000 apps spanning every imaginable function: email marketing, reviews, loyalty programs, SEO tools, subscription management, wholesale, print on demand, dropshipping, translation, currency conversion, and hundreds more. BigCommerce's app marketplace has roughly 1,500 apps and integrations.

The quality of Shopify's app ecosystem is also generally higher. Because Shopify has more merchants, app developers invest more in building and maintaining Shopify apps. Many popular SaaS tools that offer ecommerce integrations build their Shopify integration first and their BigCommerce integration second, if at all. Klaviyo, Yotpo, ReCharge, Judge.me, and PageFly are all examples of apps with mature, feature-rich Shopify versions and smaller or newer BigCommerce equivalents.

The counterargument is that BigCommerce's built-in features reduce the number of apps you need. If your store requires real-time shipping, faceted search, and customer group pricing out of the box, BigCommerce's smaller app store matters less because you are not shopping for those features in a marketplace.

Design and Themes

Shopify offers a wider selection of themes. The Shopify Theme Store has over 180 themes, with about a dozen free options. Shopify's free themes, particularly Dawn and its variants, are fast, well-coded, and designed with conversion in mind. Premium themes cost $180 to $350 and come with direct support from the theme developer.

BigCommerce has roughly 200 themes in its marketplace, with about a dozen free options. BigCommerce themes tend to be feature-rich and come pre-built with things like mega menus, quick view modals, and built-in product comparison grids. Premium themes cost $150 to $400. The design quality is comparable to Shopify, though the selection is narrower.

Both platforms offer theme customization through visual editors. Shopify's Online Store 2.0 theme architecture introduced sections and blocks that let you rearrange page layouts without code. BigCommerce's Page Builder provides similar drag-and-drop functionality. For custom development, Shopify uses Liquid (proprietary), while BigCommerce uses Stencil, which is built on Handlebars.js (a widely used JavaScript templating language). Developers generally find Stencil easier to learn because Handlebars is a standard open-source technology.

SEO

BigCommerce has a slight edge in SEO due to better URL structure and more granular control. BigCommerce lets you set clean, keyword-friendly URLs for products, categories, and pages without adding forced prefixes. Shopify requires /products/ in product URLs and /collections/ in category URLs, and you cannot remove these prefixes.

BigCommerce also supports automatic 301 redirects when you change a product URL, built-in microdata markup for products, and fully customizable robots.txt. Shopify added editable robots.txt support and automatically generates schema markup, but the URL structure limitation remains its most criticized SEO drawback.

Both platforms generate XML sitemaps automatically, support meta tag editing for all pages, and include CDN-hosted assets for fast loading. In practice, both platforms can rank well in search engines, and the URL prefix issue on Shopify has not prevented Shopify stores from achieving strong organic rankings. But for SEO-focused merchants who want maximum control, BigCommerce is the stronger technical foundation.

B2B and Wholesale

BigCommerce is significantly stronger for B2B ecommerce. Its native customer group system lets you create wholesale, VIP, and trade accounts with custom pricing, minimum order quantities, payment terms, and restricted product visibility. You can show different prices to different customer groups without any third-party apps. Purchase order support, quote management, and corporate account hierarchies are available on BigCommerce Enterprise.

Shopify's B2B capabilities are concentrated in Shopify Plus at $2,300 per month. Plus includes a dedicated wholesale channel with custom pricing, net payment terms, and draft orders for phone and email sales. Below the Plus tier, B2B selling on Shopify requires third-party apps like Wholesale Club or Bold Custom Pricing, which add monthly fees and can be clunky to configure.

If your business sells to both consumers and wholesale buyers, BigCommerce's native customer group pricing on its standard plans gives you this capability at a fraction of the cost of Shopify Plus.

Multi-Channel Selling

Shopify leads in multi-channel selling. Native integrations with Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Google Shopping, Amazon, Walmart, and eBay let you list and sell products across multiple channels from a single Shopify admin. Inventory syncs across channels automatically. Shopify's Buy Button embeds products on any website or blog. Shop Pay, Shopify's accelerated checkout, works across all Shopify-powered stores and has over 100 million users.

BigCommerce supports multi-channel selling through its Channel Manager, which includes integrations with Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Instagram, Google Shopping, and Walmart. The integrations work well, but Shopify's channel integrations are generally more polished, updated more frequently, and used by more merchants, which means bugs get caught and fixed faster.

When to Choose Shopify

Choose Shopify if you value ease of use, want the largest app ecosystem, plan to sell across multiple channels (social media, marketplaces), or if Shopify Payments is available in your country and you do not need an external gateway. Shopify is also the better choice for dropshipping due to its deep integrations with supplier apps, and for businesses that plan to use social commerce features like Instagram Shopping and TikTok Shop.

When to Choose BigCommerce

Choose BigCommerce if you need a specific external payment gateway and want to avoid surcharges, if you sell B2B alongside B2C and need native customer group pricing, or if you prefer a platform with more features built in rather than relying on third-party apps. BigCommerce is also the better choice for stores that need advanced product filtering, real-time carrier shipping quotes, or better SEO URL control without paying for higher-tier plans or additional apps.