Building an ecommerce business can be a hugely daunting task. You need to deal with lots of important things, like choosing your niche, finding your winning products, selecting suppliers, and creating an effective marketing strategy. Then, there’s the big challenge of selecting the right ecommerce platform for your ecommerce business. And that’s where BigCommerce and Magento come in.
Both have the fearsome reputation of being powerful eCommerce solutions that will help you set up your online store, find and add products, and make more money. Let’s dig into some of the key differences between the two market-leading eCommerce platforms.
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For those new about BigCommerce’s service, BigCommerce is a privately-held US-based technology company that provides market-leading SaaS eCommerce solutions, which allows entrepreneurs and companies to create their own online stores.
Currently, BigCommerce is the only SaaS eCommerce platform on the market which allows businesses to sell physical, digital, and service-based products without having to use any third-party app. This means a better experience and reduced costs for the users.
BigCommerce’s clients include fast-growing businesses and established brands like Toyota, Kodak, and Ben & Jerry. Recently, it made a big headline and created tons of buzz in the eCommerce market. The eCommerce platform was named a Strong Performer by Forrester Research, one of the leading research firms in the world. The highly influential research firm evaluates the most significant B2B and B2C commerce suites and scores on how each eCommerce solution measures up.
In a recently conducted Forrester’s two industry reports, BigCommerce earned the highest score in six total criteria. These are the A/B and Multivariate Testing, Delivery Model, Expanded Sales Channels, Platform Architecture, Platform Integration, and finally, the Technology Partners, and Marketplace.
As for Magento, the open-source eCommerce platform is taking a drastic shift, moving into the SaaS (Software as a Service) business model. The goal is simple, to keep up with the fast-changing eCommerce landscape. The latest addition is a new cloud offering that will provide merchants the option of having a single vendor of both software and hosting services.
Magento, now Adobe Commerce, is not the only vendor that provides an open-source eCommerce platform in the market. BigCommerce is also on the hunt and it’s moving fast. The SaaS platform has already established itself as an open SaaS eCommerce platform, providing additional features, such as customizations and integrations, to its users.
And there’s even more about BigCommerce’s open-source adventure, the SaaS eCommerce platform is now offering 4 months free for Magento users who are looking to shift from Magento to BigCommerce. The timing is good for those Magento users that facing the end of life of Magento V1. For Magento users who are looking to migrate to other platforms, the BigCommerce platform might offer a great option for them, a life-saver for those Magento V1 users.
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And if you are still not sure which one is right for your eCommerce business. Let’s dig deep into the two competing eCommerce platforms and find out what they really got. Let’s start first with BigCommerce, the 800 pounds gorilla of the eCommerce business.
BigCommerce
1. BigCommerce boasts the largest amount of built-in features of any eCommerce solution in the market today. This includes the money-saver abandoned cart recovery feature, a brand new visual merchandising tool, data reporting tools, and the next-level shipping tools BigCommerce Shipping App.
2. All BigCommerce’s updates and patches are automatic so users ensure that they are always on the latest version of the eCommerce platform. This means a better experience and less downtime. The automatic update also reduces costs, because there’s no need to worry about ongoing maintenance costs. This allows users to focus more on growing their online business.
3. When an update or new feature is released, BigCommerce ensures that users will have immediate access to the new feature.
4. All four BigCommerce plans (the Standard, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise plans) include a Drag-and-Drop Page Builder and phone support, which is not something users would get on the competing Magento eCommerce platform.
5. And finally, the eCommerce platform includes hosting service without any bandwidth caps, a big plus for high-volume eCommerce businesses.
Now, let’s take a close look at Magento, the open-source platform that was acquired by Adobe in 2018.
Magento
1. Magento’s security patches and version updates are time-consuming and don’t make much improvement to the platform. Instead, it adds to the complexity of the Magento platform. This has a huge impact on the users because it makes them more reliant on developer support. Magento is also an expensive eCommerce platform. Users have to deal with lots of things, like paying for hosting, maintenance, and infrastructure costs.
2. Then, there’s an issue with the learning curve from Magento 1 to Magento 2. The two versions use different architecture and technologies.
Here is some important view from Wayne Ainsworth, Ecommerce Manager, from Awesome GTI, a UK-based auto parts specialist.
“We’d been on Magento for several years, but there came a point when we realized that the platform wasn’t optimized for what we were trying to do anymore. Plus, we were never sure if the data from that system was 100% correct. We needed a hosted platform that allowed us to focus more on the marketing and selling of products rather than always being tied up with system maintenance. That’s why BigCommerce stood out as a big opportunity for us. We were expanding into B2B markets and fundamentally changing the way we do things online, and BigCommerce helped us accomplish that. It’s helped us get to where we are today.”
In the end, BigCommerce comes out as the clear winner in the BigCommerce vs. Magento shootout. BigCommerce is the eCommerce platform that will help you sell on multiple sales channels, integrates with a much wider range of business apps, and facilities multi-currency selling at a very affordable price.
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