BigCommerce markets itself as a highly customizable SaaS ecommerce platform, positioning its solutions as ideal for businesses with unique needs or niche requirements. Other key benefits that BigCommerce touts are its open approach and potential for cost savings.
But providers that claim openness, flexibility, and low platform fees often do so by pushing development responsibilities onto their customers. The more features and capabilities a business needs to add, the more work they must hire developers to perform. Over time, their website and tech stack becomes both complex and fragile, filled with costly technical debt. Operations get bloated, time to market slows, shoppers get frustrated, outages and errors start happening, and bottom lines are impacted.
This has been the experience for many BigCommerce customers, especially as their businesses scale. As new features and integrations get added, complexity multiplies, and development costs and timelines can increase rapidly. For example, laboratory supply company Filtrous took an entire year to launch their website with BigCommerce—and after launch, even simple changes “broke” their website.
In this article, we’ll take a look at the challenges customers on BigCommerce can face, especially at scale. We will also explore how platforms like Shopify have evolved to support greater freedom and flexibility, as well as more out-of-the-box features for a range of business needs.
Challenge #1: Scalability and innovation become limited
Customers on BigCommerce often face issues as their businesses scale. When a platform highlights its openness and flexibility, it’s very important to consider what that truly means in terms of development costs and time to market. For BigCommerce, this means a platform that can be heavily customized—but only with extensive developer support
When an initial build relies on custom integrations and code, scaling adds technical debt, which in turn leads to costly delays and more demand on IT. Here’s a common scenario:
- A highly specialized storefront is built on a platform that is flexible, but relies on developers to create the integrations and make extensive code customizations.
- As more features get added and integrations are built, the more code is written, and the more complex the overall solution gets.
- IT spends more time maintaining, updating, and fixing existing capabilities, taking time away from new feature development.
- Business users get locked out of even the most simple tasks as complexities increase, creating IT bottlenecks.
- In a worstcase scenario, the build becomes fragile, and even small updates can lead to slowdowns, outages, and ultimately, lost revenue.
Much of this happened to former BigCommerce customer 4ocean, a nonprofit with both an online store and memberships. They built their first store on Shopify, but experienced rapid growth and migrated to BigCommerce, thinking it would be a better fit for their new, larger size. However, it proved to be a very costly mistake.
“We ended up migrating off of Shopify and our business plummeted. Nothing felt right from the get go. The migration process was a nightmare. Not only did it take an incredible amount of time and money, but we lost a ton of organic traffic, about 80%,” reflected Alex Schulze, cofounder and CEO of 4ocean.
Some of the impacts were:
- Small changes, such as updating a product SKU or website updates, could no longer be done by business users.
- Table-stakes functionality like showing that a product was sold out, letting shoppers swipe left or right on product photos, or enlarging a product photo, now required custom development.
- Tens of thousands of dollars had to be spent on development for features that used to come out of the box with Shopify.
Realizing this wasn’t sustainable, 4ocean replatformed back to Shopify. After a swift, painless migration back, their new initiatives were back on the table. Their technical team launched an innovative trash tracker instead of wasting time on core ecommerce functionality. Their marketing team now creates and runs campaigns without any IT involvement. All of this has positioned 4ocean to focus more on their mission of cleaning the world’s oceans, instead of navigating unnecessary technical complexity.
4ocean’s experience highlights the impact available out-of-the-box capabilities can have on a bottom line. Shopify invests heavily in innovating and improving on core ecommerce capabilities, taking the burden off of its customers. Since 2020, Shopify has released more than 800 significant features and improvements, and in just the past two years, invested more than $1.7 billion in research and development. When you compare that to BigCommerce’s investment of just $83 million, it becomes clear which platform will provide more and better features for its users.
Challenge #2: A much higher total cost of ownership (TCO)
When comparing certain types of costs and pricing models, BigCommerce can initially appear like an affordable ecommerce choice. However, direct developer costs are often left out of the equation because they are often paid separately. BigCommerce also has a complex pricing structure that merchants find challenging to get clarity on.
When deciding on the right platform provider for your business, it’s critical to compare more than just platform fees or licensing costs. Calculating and comparing TCO means evaluating every related cost, including:
- Implementation and setup costs
- Platform fees and ecommerce stack costs
- Operational and support costs
- Conversion rates and revenue uplift
A recent study* compared the average TCO on BigCommerce to stores built on Shopify. The results were significant: overall costs are 45% higher on BigCommerce. This isn’t all that surprising, given that BigCommerce's pricing is based on how many API calls are made, average order value, and order volume. When thresholds are exceeded—often from business going well—additional fees get tacked on.
Nutritional supplement supplier BPI Sport is just one of many merchants that have saved significantly on TCO after migrating to Shopify. With BigCommerce, there were endless technical headaches that they kept having to hire developers to fix. They ended up with a pile of messy code and incomprehensible customer data. Error codes on the website were frustrating customers. Small feature improvements took forever to implement.
“You pull your hair. You hear your team just complaining 24/7 anytime you mention, ‘Hey can you do this?’ That’s kind of the way discussions went, where we really didn’t want to improve or do anything to the site because it was such an endeavor to do anything simple,” remembered Oliver Haroun, director of technology for BPI Sports.
Worst of all, they were spending more than $6,000 per month in direct development costs in addition to platform and other fees. After a smooth and seamless migration to Shopify, BPI Sport saved $4,000 a month in direct costs.
“Our team had a lot of things we wanted to do before migrating—things like better testing, being able to replace things on the fly. Before Shopify Plus it was, ‘Eh, let’s see if we can figure something else out.’ Now it’s, ‘Okay. We know we can do it,” said Oliver.
Challenge #3: Lower checkout conversion rates
There is no part of ecommerce more critical than a fast, seamless checkout. Yet BigCommerce’s checkout functionality isn’t as optimized for conversions as platforms like Shopify, and mattress retailer Lull experienced this firsthand.
Lull started out on a fully custom platform, managed by an in-house team. As they scaled, their build became complicated and costly to manage. When they decided to move to an ecommerce platform, they first chose BigCommerce.
“Initially we tried to do a headless integration with BigCommerce. That project failed quite miserably, quite honestly. We had to abandon ship,” recalled Matt Walker, president of Lull.
During their yearlong slow rollout on BigCommerce, they could see right away that their bottom line would take a hit. There were big drops in sales, and they lost hundreds of thousands of dollars on developers and platform fees. BigCommerce’s checkout was particularly problematic: conversions plummeted by 15% compared to Lull’s legacy custom website.
A study completed in April 2023 in partnership with a Big Three global management consulting company found that Shopify’s checkout converts 12% better on average than BigCommerce. After taking advantage of the world’s best-converting checkout and integrating Shop Pay, Lull saw a 14% conversion lift during the 2023 Black Friday and Cyber Monday, with 80% of express checkouts being driven by Shop Pay purchases.
Businesses that build on Shopify not only get a secure checkout that is optimized for conversions, they also get faster stores overall. On average, Shopify stores are up to 1.4x faster than BigCommerce stores. And it’s a well-known fact that site speed is a key factor in ecommerce success. In the competitive world of ecommerce, every conversion matters, and Shopify invests in delivering a robust, future-ready foundation for its customers.
Challenge #4: Limited out-of-the-box features and app ecosystem
Ecommerce websites must be able to scale and adapt to meet evolving market changes. When a platform has a lot of native features, and a large ecosystem of partners, businesses can activate new functionality much faster. But when compared to platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce offers fewer capabilities out of the box, and a much smaller ecosystem. This slows their customers down, forcing them to rely more on IT and developers.
This lack of agility impacted shoe retailer Rollie Nation. They built an ecommerce site on BigCommerce, but it was complex and inflexible. Just creating a new page or small automation required contacting and waiting for developers. Customers were unhappy, and sales were dropping. They had a vision for a better and more intuitive user experience, but knew BigCommerce couldn’t get them there.
“At the time, there was complacency around the business and our technology. At that point, we had to stop and reboot, because we quickly realized what worked for us in those initial phases wouldn’t carry us forward in the exciting direction we had planned,” said Vince Lebon, founder, designer, and CEO of Rollie Nation.
Rollie Nation ultimately moved to Shopify, and made the transition in just a few weeks thanks to Shopify Plus Solutions Partner Disco Labs. Today, Shopify’s ecosystem helps Rollie Nation deliver on their vision for a better buying experience, as well as drive revenue and operational efficiency. With little to no IT support, they can use a number of Shopify solutions, including:
- Shopify Flow for ecommerce automation
- Gorgias for customer service
- Smile for loyalty programs
- Klaviyo for growth marketing
- Okendo for user experience and reviews
“It's one of those things where we look back and wish we’d done it sooner. We feel limitless now, as there's just so much you can do with the Shopify Plus platform,” said Vince.
Shopify’s app ecosystem is more than 10,000 strong, enabling their customers to rapidly add and configure new functionality, speeding time to market. Customers on BigCommerce only have access to an ecosystem of about 1,300 apps, making it far more likely that something will have to be custom built.
That said, 1,300 apps may still seem like a good number of options. But the quality and depth of integration are also factors in how much burden is taken off of developers.
Shopify’s unique approach to unified commerce also gives customers with both physical and online stores an advantage. Unlike BigCommerce, Shopify offers an in-house POS solution that doesn’t rely on pricey middleware.
A lack of native functionality also impacts the operational efficiency of customers on BigCommerce. For instance, Shopify customers gain access to automation tools like Flow and Launchpad, enabling them to modernize their operations and streamline buying without the need for additional technical resources. On BigCommerce, enabling this functionality would likely take far more time, effort, and resources.
Challenge #5: Difficulty empowering business users
The faster their ecommerce website can be modified, the more competitive and responsive to market opportunities a business is. But customers on BigCommerce often struggle to even navigate the platform. The platform may also require significant back-end development, which means business users must go through IT teams for every change and update.
Online clothing retailer Grace & Lace launched their initial ecommerce site with BigCommerce. It wasn’t long before they felt stifled by how hard it was to make changes. Even the most basic features, like upselling and cross-selling, were difficult to properly execute. During peak traffic times, they even experienced outages, impacting their bottom line.
“It was not what we needed. Nothing ever felt like a great fit. We just knew that we needed to get off the platform,” says Chris Cowden, Grace & Lace’s director of operations.
Once they moved to Shopify, Chris could tailor the website on demand, without any outside developer help. The Shopify app store provided ready access to the tools needed to enable upsells and cross-sells. Chris is thrilled by his newfound agility, powered by the thousands of apps and third-party sources he can access at any time.
“I don’t have an IT staff, and I want to keep it that way,” said Chris.
Empowering a business user also means ready access to analytics and reporting. This allows them to quickly launch personalized campaigns, understand customer behavior, and make better, more strategic decisions. However, customers on BigCommerce only have access to basic data analytics and reporting, especially compared to the readily available data on Shopify’s intuitive dashboard.
Business users on Shopify also gain access to powerful integrated management tools like Shopify Flow and Fulfillment Network to automate tasks and processes like returns, order management, email notifications, product storage, and more. All of this can be built and managed with a low-code editor that users across the business can leverage.
Challenge #6: Slow time to market
Whenever a solution requires a lot of custom development, timelines for everything get slower. Whether it is the overall implementation of a new ecommerce website, or just a new feature or capability, the more complex a solution is, the longer it takes.
Customers on BigCommerce often find themselves facing delays and slow implementation times. We mentioned Filtrous earlier, highlighting their glacial timeline to launch on BigCommerce: an entire year.
"We did a full year of custom development for our site, but walked away unhappy with the way the site looked and performed. BigCommerce lacked the flexibility for us to fully control our site, and managing the customer experience was time-consuming,” reflected Yin Fu, director of ecommerce at Filtrous.
After that long year, the site launched, but the team quickly grew frustrated by the lack of new B2B features and slow innovation. Their ecommerce website was so complex that it broke whenever they tried to make a simple change. Customers found the site hard to use, so they just directly contacted customer service to place orders. The team at Filtrous realized this was unsustainable.
That’s when they reached out to Shopify. A robust ecosystem combined with many more native capabilities helped them launch a fully integrated B2B website in just 63 days. They took full advantage of Shopify’s suite of core B2B features, like Shopify Flow and vaulted credit cards. This allowed them to automate more of their back-office operations, including the emailing and payment of invoices—all without developer support.
When a business migrates to Shopify, our experts do their best to make a launch as fast and hassle-free as possible. Shopify's data migration tools such as templated CSV files, the Shopify API, and third-party data migration apps ensure migrations are low-risk and highly streamlined. This also makes it very easy for Shopify customers to stand up new websites for testing products and entering new markets.
Exploring BigCommerce alternatives: How do they stack up?
In this section, we’ll look at how Shopify compares to BigCommerce, as well as the other major ecommerce players in the market. We look at three major areas: total cost of ownership, checkout conversion, and overall site speed. You can learn more about our research methodology in our article comparing ecommerce platforms.
Comparing the total cost of ownership (TCO) of ecommerce platforms
According to research commissioned by Shopify and conducted November 2023 to February 2024 by a leading independent consulting firm to study TCO across major platforms in North America.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC)
When averaged over five years, SFCC’s TCO is 54% higher than Shopify on average. On average, SFCC customers experience 16% higher implementation costs, 14% higher platform costs, and 6% higher operating costs than Shopify customers.
View the full Shopify versus Salesforce Commerce Cloud TCO comparison report
Adobe Commerce (Magento)
Over five years, Adobe Commerce (Magento’s) TCO is 41% higher than Shopify on average. On average, Adobe Commerce customers experience 42% higher implementation costs, 42% higher platform costs, and 24% higher operating costs than Shopify customers.
View the full Shopify versus Adobe Commerce TCO comparison report
WooCommerce
Over five years, WooCommerce’s TCO is 57% higher than Shopify on average. On average, WooCommerce customers experience 49% higher implementation costs, 41% higher platform costs, and 32% higher operating costs than Shopify customers.
View the full Shopify versus WooCommerce TCO comparison report
BigCommerce
Over five years, BigCommerce’s TCO is 45% higher than Shopify on average. On average, BigCommerce customers experience 88% higher implementation costs, 32% higher platform costs, and 21% higher operating costs than Shopify customers.
View the full Shopify versus BigCommerce TCO comparison report
Comparing the checkout conversion of ecommerce platforms
Based on a study completed in April 2023 in partnership with a Big Three global management consulting company.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud
Assuming a 10% margin on goods sold, Shopify's checkout converts 36% better than Salesforce on average.
View the checkout conversion blog post on Shopify versus Salesforce Commerce Cloud
Adobe Commerce
Assuming a 10% margin on goods sold, Shopify's checkout converts 5% better than Adobe Commerce on average.
View the checkout conversion blog post on Shopify versus Adobe Commerce
WooCommerce
Assuming a 10% margin on goods sold, Shopify's checkout converts 17% better than WooCommerce on average.
View the checkout conversion blog post on Shopify versus WooCommerce
BigCommerce
Assuming a 10% margin on goods sold, Shopify's checkout converts 12% better than BigCommerce on average.
View the checkout conversion blog post on Shopify versus BigCommerce
Comparing the site speed of ecommerce platforms
Statistics are based on data according to Google’s Core Web Vitals (CWV), collected for a representative sample of sites on Shopify and its competitors—covering 200,000 sites across a sampling of all revenue bands and all major commerce platforms.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud
Ninety-three percent of Shopify stores are fast2 versus only 65% of Salesforce stores, and Shopify stores render 1.5x faster than Salesforce stores on average. Shopify’s server speed is 2.2x faster on average than Salesforce.
View the full Shopify versus Salesforce Commerce Cloud site speed comparison report
Adobe Commerce
Ninety-three percent of Shopify stores are fast versus only 53% of Adobe Commerce stores, and Shopify stores render 2x faster than Adobe stores on average. Shopify’s server speed is 3.4x faster on average than Adobe Commerce.
View the full Shopify versus Adobe Commerce site speed comparison report
WooCommerce
Ninety-three percent of Shopify stores are fast versus only 34% of WooCommerce stores, and Shopify stores render 2.4x faster than WooCommerce stores on average. Shopify’s server speed is 3.9x faster on average than WooCommerce.
View the full Shopify versus WooCommerce site speed comparison report
BigCommerce
Ninety-three percent of Shopify stores are fast versus only 80% of BigCommerce stores, and Shopify stores render 1.4x faster than BigCommerce stores on average. Shopify’s server speed is 1.9x faster on average than BigCommerce.
View the full Shopify versus BigCommerce site speed comparison report
Shopify is a strategic alternative BigCommerce for businesses at scale
The complexity of the BigCommerce platform can drag down innovative, growing businesses looking to stay competitive in today's marketplace. As a business grows, the initial draw of BigCommerce's flexibility and cost savings can quickly be replaced by frustration over complex code bases, fragile integrations, and development bottlenecks.
Consumer electronics retailer SkullCandy struggled to innovate on the brittle ecommerce website they had built on BigCommerce. As a brand, they wanted to experiment and move fast to respond to market opportunities, but technical debt slowed them down.
“We noticed some vulnerabilities and an aging code base that was starting to hold us back,” said Jenny Buchar, director of digital strategy and product at Skullcandy.
When they decided to move to Shopify, Skullcandy needed to meet an aggressive deadline of launching in 90 days. Shopify experts helped them move fast, and implementation was a breeze. Shopify’s platform enabled seamless integration with tech partners, reducing the company’s technical overhead and speeding time to launch.
Today, Shopify has enabled the SkullCandy team to focus on enhancing consumer experiences. It now takes them just 30 minutes to launch a new product—down significantly from the day and a half it took on BigCommerce.
“We now have a testing strategy that allows us to iterate, learn, and improve in a highly agile way, whether through Shopify's native tools or by integrating third-party apps. Even with unique or edge cases, designing tests is straightforward. We can easily say, ‘I want to try this, I want to test that,’ and the ecosystem provides the flexibility to make it happen,” said Evin Catlett, vice president of global ecommerce and growth marketing.
Shopify customers today have a clear advantage over those with stores still on BigCommerce. The numbers tell the story: Shopify has a 12% higher checkout conversion rates on average3 and a $1.7 billion in R&D investment (compared to $83 million by BigCommerce) in 2023. Over five years, BigCommerce’s total cost of ownership was 45% higher on average than Shopify. Merchants on Shopify can access an ever-increasing ecosystem of more than 10,000 apps to build sophisticated functionality without developer support. Powerful, easy-to-use native tools like Shopify Flow and LaunchPad drive operational efficiency and revenue growth, giving businesses the power to spend less time on technical overhead and more on driving their brand vision.
To learn how Shopify’s TCO compares to your current platform, you can use our free tool to see your potential savings. You can also request a free site speed audit to see how fast your site currently is, and how it could be optimized on Shopify.
FAQ on BigCommerce alternatives
Why are brands looking for alternatives to BigCommerce?
Many brands find BigCommerce costly and complex, requiring heavy reliance on developers for customization. Shopify offers a more user-friendly platform with lower overall costs, faster storefronts, and a robust app ecosystem that enables innovation without heavy IT involvement.
What are the main technical challenges of BigCommerce?
BigCommerce customers often struggle with slower performance and limited flexibility, making scaling a challenge. Former BigCommerce customers have also experienced long implementation timelines, slow time to market for new features, and poor checkout conversions. Shopify’s modern infrastructure and robust native capabilities offer a strategic alternative to BigCommerce, providing customers with faster stores, seamless integrations, thousands of pre-integrated apps, and more out-of-the-box features. Shopify is also deeply committed to continuous innovation to support agility and long-term success.
How does Shopify reduce reliance on developers compared to BigCommerce?
BigCommerce often requires custom coding for advanced features, leading to higher costs and slower timelines for changes. Shopify’s intuitive back end, app ecosystem, and native automation tools empower business users to make updates without technical or developer support.
Is Shopify more cost-effective than BigCommerce?
Yes, Shopify has lower total ownership costs on average due to flexible pricing, a marketplace of more than 10,000 apps, and fewer direct developer costs. Businesses can launch new websites and features faster, adapt more easily, and scale efficiently, all while lowering their technical overhead.
* According to research commissioned by Shopify and conducted November 2023 to February 2024 by a leading independent consulting firm to study TCO across major platforms in North America.
** Google’s benchmark for a good FCP score is 1.8 seconds or less. For your store to get a good FCP score, the first piece of recognizable content needs to load in less than 1.8 seconds for at least 75% of your site users.
*** Based on a study completed in April 2023 in partnership with a Big Three global management consulting company.
