Disclosure: WP Mayor is a professional review site that sometimes receives compensation from companies to promote their products. Each product is tested and our honest opinions are shared publicly. We are independently owned and the opinions expressed below are our own.
In the old days, WordPress was primarily a platform for bloggers. Now, the platform has grown robust and flexible enough to handle just about any type of website – including eCommerce stores. However, it still doesn’t provide many of the features you’ll need to run an online shop.
As usual, the vast and talented WordPress community is here to help. Many developers have created plugins that add eCommerce functionality to your website, making it simple to display, promote, and sell products online. To get your store off the ground, all you need to do is select the right solution.
In this article, we’re going to talk a little about why it’s so important to choose your eCommerce tool carefully. Then we’ll introduce BigCommerce – a top solution for WordPress users – and discuss how it compares to other popular options such as WooCommerce. Let’s jump right in!
Why You Need an eCommerce Solution for WordPress (And Why Your Choice Matters)
As a website building platform, WordPress has a lot going for it. This Content Management System (CMS) is flexible, secure, and powerful – yet remains very accessible to beginners. These factors alone make it an excellent choice for your eCommerce site.
At the same time, WordPress is a very streamlined platform. Since it’s used to create so many different types of websites, the developers keep its default functionality limited. If you want to create a site with a very specific feature set – such as an online store – you’ll use themes and plugins to add in the functionality you need.
This means that one of your first steps should be to look for a plugin that will make it possible for you to sell online through WordPress. You’ll find that there’s no shortage of options available. Still, you don’t want to simply opt for the first solution you run across. Your eCommerce plugin will form the foundation for your entire store, so it’s vital to choose carefully.
This means looking for an eCommerce plugin that:
- Provides all the features you’ll need to display your products and/or services, and sell them to visitors.
- Helps you design a shop that encourages potential customers to buy.
- Includes lots of customization options, so you can set up your store however you like.
- Offers quality-of-life functionality to make running your store quicker and easier.
- Is able to effectively keep up with your site’s needs as it grows.
This may seem like an extensive wish list, but it isn’t that hard to find a tool that does all of the above and more. To illustrate the point, let’s look at one option you’ll definitely want to consider.
An Introduction to BigCommerce: A Fully-Featured eCommerce Plugin
BigCommerce is designed to be a complete eCommerce solution. While the base service works with multiple platforms, there’s a dedicated plugin that enables you to add BigCommerce seamlessly to your WordPress website.
The primary benefit of BigCommerce is that it’s an all-in-one solution. In other words, this single plugin is all you’ll need to turn your site into a fully-functioning storefront with tons of features and options. This makes it a more efficient choice than many other eCommerce plugins (more on this later).
So, what exactly can BigCommerce do? Naturally, it handles all the basics needed to run an online store. It enables you to display products, include a checkout process for customers, configure pricing, shipping, and tax options, and so on.
However, this particular plugin offers quite a bit more as well. Some of its key features include:
- You can manage all your orders, shipping, and catalog updates from a single user-friendly control panel.
- The checkout process is streamlined and customizable, so you can offer a quality customer experience and increase sales.
- BigCommerce is a very ‘scalable’ solution, which means that it can handle both small shops and large stores with complex catalogs and high order volumes.
- You’ll get access to various options for keeping your store safe, including PCI-compliance features and tight security for the checkout process, customer accounts, and payment data.
- While this plugin is simple for beginners to pick up and use effectively, it’s also built with developers in mind, making it highly modifiable.
BigCommerce can be used to set up a brand-new WordPress store, or to seamlessly add a shop to your existing website (using any theme you like). Of course, this isn’t the only eCommerce option out there. With that in mind, let’s talk specifically about how it compares to one of the other big boys on the block.
What BigCommerce Offers Over Competing eCommerce Solutions
When it comes to WordPress eCommerce, there’s a good chance you’ve heard about WooCommerce:
This is a popular eCommerce solution, and it does have a lot to offer. It quickly adds a storefront to your WordPress site, complete with a number of handy features, and it’s very accessible and easy to use.
However, it’s worth noting that WooCommerce has some significant limitations. This is especially relevant if you’re looking to build a highly-customized store and grow it into an eCommerce powerhouse.
Here are a few of the features BigCommerce offers that give it an edge over WooCommerce and similar plugins:
- WooCommerce only provides a few payment gateway options out of the box, while BigCommerce includes access to over 60+ choices.
- You have to manually set shipping rates in WooCommerce, while in BigCommerce you can enable real-time shipping updates to keep your rates current.
- With WooCommerce, you get a few basic choices for setting up coupons. In BigCommerce, you’ll be able to choose from 70+ options for discounting your products and services.
- As a traditional plugin, you run the risk of having custom modifications to WooCommerce get wiped out by new updates. BigCommerce takes advantage of WordPress functionality to enable you to customize product cards, lists, and cart features without worry.
- While WooCommerce offers limited support through email and tickets, BigCommerce users get 24/7 access to phone, ticket, and live chat support options.
Most importantly, WooCommerce’s default feature set is fairly restricted. That means you’ll have to install a lot of additional extensions if you want more functionality and payment gateways. BigCommerce includes most of those features right out of the box, so you don’t need any extra tools.
Conclusion
eCommerce is a big business, so you’ll need to work hard in order to stand out and attract customers. Fortunately, the right combination of platform and eCommerce solution can set you up for success.
While a plugin like WooCommerce can be sufficient for smaller, simpler stores, you’ll want a more robust tool if you’d really like your store to grow. BigCommerce can provide just about all the features and options you’ll ever need, without requiring you to go looking for other plugins or extensions.
Keep in mind that BigCommerce integrates directly with WordPress too, so you can run both alongside each other.
Do you have any questions about how to get started with BigCommerce? Let us know in the comments section below!
Image credit: Flickr.
27 Responses
Hey Mehrab, any thoughts on the actual offerings from BigCommerce?
Hi Murali, this post was written by our team to promote BigCommerce’s introduction to WordPress, yes. We’ve added a disclosure at the top as it was missed upon publishing.
What are your thoughts on BigCommerce nonetheless?
Nice article, filled with useful points and tons of real world examples. Thank you so much for taking the time to put it out into the world!
I really like this line the best: “While a plugin like WooCommerce can be sufficient for smaller, simpler stores, you’ll want a more robust tool if you’d really like your store to grow.”
If you want to use a shopping cart that is lacking features that WP/Woo had in 2007, then Bigcommerce is the way to go.
Could you share those features that are lacking here? I’m sure it would help other readers to get a better comparison and also help the BigCommerce team to understand their users’ frustrations at the moment.
Comparing features is a tricky game. BC4WP has some features that Woo doesn’t. Woo got a Gutenberg feature just the other day that BC4WP has had for 6 months, and Matt pointed out how cool it was in the State of the Word at WCUS.
Sure, there are tons of things Woo can do through third party addons that BC4WP doesn’t have yet. But BC has tons of things that Woo can’t do yet either. And EDD does things that neither of them ever will.
The trick is to look at your needs and figure out which one you need.
At this time, BigCommerce cannot track Adwords conversions. If you look at the feedback on their plugin on the WP plugins page, you will see that they responded with:
“This is on our radar, and we want to support Adwords in the future. There’s no timeline on this yet”
I don’t know about you, but that would pretty much rule out any ecommerce system for us.
One of my clients recently decided to go with BigCom, and working with it is like WP from 2008 or something. There’s no widgets, no sidebars, no menu management, still using tinymce editor for everything. Themes are way more expensive and there is a much smaller ecosystem of apps (plugins) than in WP. On the other hand, they have very friendly 24×7 support.
Another commenter thought that it was closed source, and I don’t think that’s really true. It’s a node application and the theme files are quite hackable if you know how. It can connect to ERP systems so I imagine you could do pretty much whatever you wanted.
Hey circuit_rider, thank you for your comment. BigCommerce are still very new to the WordPress space so I’m sure there are plenty of improvements to come, such as supporting Adwords and the widgets, sidebars, etc.
I’m glad to hear about the good experiences with support too, that’s always important.
circuit_rider, you’re exactly right about the Adwords, as much as it pains me. That said, we’re building it in. It’ll get there. And if BC isn’t right for you for now because of that, that’s totally fine. Someday we’ll get there. Remember the headaches iOS 1.0 had? It still changed the world.
So let me get this right. You want me to abandon Woocommerce which is free for this, pay them a minimum of $30/month to have access to my data, not only my products data, but my customers info, credit cards etc… And what will I do, if they start selling my customers data to my competitors, or after adding 3,000 product items, which will take a lot of work to do, they decide to triple their prices, or even worse, go out of business?
I guess, it takes a “comedian” to recommend this type of a solution over a self hosted solution, where I, and only I own and fully control my data !
Other than that, good luck to them !
Thanks for taking the time to comment, Nick. Owning your data is a very good point to bring up. WooCommerce does give you that and it is free to start out, which are great selling points. It does come with more work for the store owner in most cases though, and having to manage most aspects in-house. That isn’t always an option for all store owners, which I believe is where solutions like BigCommerce come in.
Price increases are always possible. It’s a case of trusting the platform on that matter, which isn’t always easy. The same could happen with WooCommerce paid extensions too, as we’ve seen in some cases in the past.
Mark, you avoided to disclose what happens to the data… does it get sold to third party, or even worse, does the data gets sold to the store owners competitors? How is the data protected from Bigcommerce’s disgruntled employees who would/could sell customers credit card info. on the dark web?
And nobody is buying your explanation that using Woocommerce comes with more work… what more work? Backing up the data and optimizing the database? You should be doing that anyways… This is very expensive for small companies, extremely risky for large companies, where they can afford to not only hire IT staff to handle large volumes of data, but even have their own data centers. And 95% ofthe smaller stores can manage with free plugins and zero budget for Woo. plugins.
You guys are just looking for suckers, and looking very desperate by making ads disguised as normal blog posts, and this is ONE more reason you guys look shady – I’m not saying you are, but you give that impression by your actions, and empty statements !
That said, if I had to use such a risky project, I would chose you over ecwid. Neither would never ever happen !
Nick, we don’t run BigCommerce so I can’t tell you how the data is handled. I have reached out to their team so they can address it directly themselves. So far, they haven’t yet commented with any feedback.
I’m not recommending one solution over another. You’ll find many, many posts on our site recommending WooCommerce. We’re making our readers aware of other possible solutions that may work for them. We’ve come across many people who are frustrated with Woo for some reason or another. Granted, it may not be for you, but that’s not to say that it doesn’t offer something which others might want or need.
We’re not here to sucker anyone into anything, nor to disguise any of our actions. The top of the post includes a disclosure which we are adding recently to make it more clear when a post is promotional in some way or another. There’s nothing to hide there.
We write about the various solutions available in the WordPress space, then it’s up to the reader to determine which one works best for them. Hopefully, our content will help people do that.
Thanks Mark,
The way you were replying to various posts, gave me the impression that you were part of the Bigcommerce team. Now you have cleared the air, you are not from that company, you are a hired gun by them just to promote them… which is little bit creepy and dishonest to begin with… We don’t really know your opinion about Bigcommerce, because you are getting paid to write nice things about them. So your opinions and recommendations are “dirty”, some can be really good, and some not so good. By getting bribed to recommend some plugin or service makes you not trustworthy, I hope you understand that.
Also, by saying that “you don’t recommend one solution over another”, is a total lie and misrepresentation of the truth at best… Your title indicates the exact opposite of your claim – “Why BigCommerce Is a Top Choice for Your WordPress Store” – So what’s your definition of “top choice”, because it can’t be the same definition for the rest of the world…?
It will be interesting to see if they ever reply to my concerns over data security and data privacy. I highly doubt that…
Nick, there’s a reason the title says “a” top choice, and not “the” top choice. It’s a good solution for those who’s needs are met by it.
As we state in the disclaimer above “WP Mayor is a professional review site that sometimes receives compensation from companies to promote their products. Each product is tested and our honest opinions are shared publicly. We are independently owned and the opinions expressed below are our own.”
Neither I or anyone else on the WP Mayor team are a “hired gun” just to promote anyone. If we don’t believe a product is worth sharing at the time, we won’t. BigCommerce is worth sharing. It’s a new competitor in a market that WooCommerce dominates, so it will be interesting to see how it developers. Now whether it means it’s a good fit for you personally is your personal choice. It is lacking in various areas where other solutions like WooCommerce excel. I just hope you understand that it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not a good fit for others.
I’ll be reaching out to them again to try and get a clear answer about your data security and privacy concerns.
Wow, there’s a lot to unpack in this thread.
Let’s talk about price first. It’s true you can get WooCommerce for free and run a store for almost free, but if you compare apples to apples then BigCommerce is quite a bit cheaper. The Woo site says an average store is about $1000/yr: while a comparable BC store is about $375/yr.
Now let’s talk about sharing private data. First off, we simply don’t. It would be suicidal as a company. We don’t do anything at all with it. That data belongs to the merchant. They can leave it on our servers and manipulate it there, or download it all and do whatever they want with it.
As for data security, we have to comply with all regulatory laws related to PCI compliance and we have regular inspections as well as an entire security team inside the company. That team specifically watches US, inside the company, to make sure we maintain the highest possible levels of security. I would find it far more likely that a WooCommerce site would get hacked and pillaged than BC.
As for going out of business, that’s extremely unlikely. Our growth has been… excellent lately.
As for more work, that’s pretty relative. Setting up and properly configuring a Woo store is WAY more work than a BC store, but that’s a one-time deal, and may be worth it to you. On an ongoing basis, all stores need maintenance. With Woo it’s on you (or your host if you’re with LiquidWeb or something). With BC it’s on us. Choosing whether to have a full time store staff or hire it out to a SaaS like BC is very much a business decision, without one right answer.
As for WP Mayor’s credibility, BC didn’t buy an opinion. They bought time. The writers at WP Mayor are busy people and they need to make a living. We bought some time for them to write their own, honest opinion of the plugin. If they had hated it then that would have been our tough luck (and benefit, bug researching is expensive).
If you’re not fond of the concept of people taking contracts to speak their mind about software that’s totally fine. It doesn’t mean they were bribed in any way, or that their opinion is dirty.
I think I covered everything. If you’d like to chat more feel free to ping me.
My first look at this and I agree with the commercial comments. Poor. Weak.
Hi Randy, this post was written by our team to promote BigCommerce’s introduction to WordPress, yes. We’ve added a disclosure at the top as it was missed upon publishing.
What are your thoughts on BigCommerce nonetheless?
I have to agree this comes off as mostly a commercial — not even an infomercial!
It doesn’t clearly state that BigCommerce appears to be a closed-source for-profit SaaS like Magento rather than an actual WordPress-based solution like WooCommerce.
It also doesn’t mention prices, which is annoying since the BigCommerce website doesn’t say anything about pricing either — always a big red flag!
An apples-to-apples post comparing BigCommerce to other SaaS ecommerce solutions would actually be pretty useful. But I’d expect that to compare integration with WordPress, pricing, and ease of use of the underlying platform. This post compares apples to oranges without mentioning the fact.
Don’t get me wrong — WooCommerce drives me crazy and I’d love to find a less fractured, less nickel-and-dime-you-to-death-with-plugins ecommerce solution. But this post actually made me sympathize with WooCommerce! Not what I wanted! 🙂
Finally, it’s not as though WooCommerce doesn’t appear to be turning itself into a SaaS solution. A post comparing WooCommerce’s tiptoe steps into the already-mature SaaS ecommerce market, with comparisons to established players and not just BigCommerce, would be interesting and useful. I look forward to such a post in the future!
But this one was a little weak.
There is a pricing page on the BigCommerce website and it’s not free. As a SASS solution, it feels more like a Shopify competitor than a WooCommerce one.
Sebastien is mostly right, BigCommerce traditionally is more of a Shopify competitor than Magento. Where it becomes a WooCommerce competitor is with the WordPress plugin. Then you have your products in your WordPress site just like WooCommerce. The difference is that with BC only the presentation layer is in WordPress. The heavy lifting is done on the BC servers.
@realbasics if you’re looking for something simpler than WooCommerce that still has plenty of power, check out BC4WP, it’s pretty slick.
Thanks for your review, but how well does Bigcommerce handle different kinds of commerce, like car or house rental sites with booking calendars etc?
Hey Kjetil, I’ll try get someone from the BigCommerce team to make sure you get the right answer.
Hi Kjetil, BigCommerce has decent subscription support built in, but we also integrate with several third party apps to handle more advanced subscriptions.
Let me know if you have other questions. 🙂
Really, that’s more of an ad for BigCommerce than a proper comparison.
>> WooCommerce only provides a few payment gateway options out of the box, while BigCommerce includes access to over 60+ choices.
I believe there are way more than 60 payment gateway plugins available for WooCommerce. BigCommerce has none for Brazil (where I’m located).
>> You have to manually set shipping rates in WooCommerce, while in BigCommerce you can enable real-time shipping updates to keep your rates current.
Can’t speak for other countries but again, in Brazil there are shipping plugins that calculate costs in realtime.
>> With WooCommerce, you get a few basic choices for setting up coupons.
Lots of discounting plugins available. Of course not everyone is knowledgeable enough to do this on their own, but… the idea of the article is to compare platforms, right?
>> As a traditional plugin, you run the risk of having custom modifications to WooCommerce get wiped out by new updates.
Not if the store developer did such modifications the right way. Also, most stores could be configured by only installing plugins and without touching a single line of code.
Whereas BigCommerce is a SaaS product, which means that it is *impossible* to implement custom modifications as the source code is not available.
Hey Denis, thanks for chiming in with your comment.
WooCommerce does offer many payment gateways, but most are paid extensions as far as I know. Perhaps that was the reference being made there.
The fact that Brazil doesn’t yet have the support it needs is something the BigCommerce team will need to address. I’ll see if someone from their team can get back to you on that.
There are many extensions and customisation agencies around for WooCommerce. That flexibility is something you would probably miss with solutions like BigCommerce. Then again, not everyone needs that level of flexibility, and not everyone may have the time to set up and maintain a store the way WooCommerce requires.
The post is not a fully fledged comparison between WooCommerce and BigCommerce, that would entail a lot more detail 😀 Would you be interested in seeing something like that, perhaps including other e-commerce solutions for WordPress too?
Hey Denis, thanks for the feedback. I’m the WordPress Developer Evangelist at BigCommerce, and Mark asked me to chip in.
First off, I appreciate the pushback. We consistently need that to make both our product and reporting better.
I’d like to respond to a couple of your points. BigCommerce supports Stripe, which claims to have full support in Brazil. Stripe is really excellent, so it’s not merely a bandaid, it’s really good support.
You’re right that BigCommerce is a SaaS, but the article is specifically about the WordPress plugin for it. That allows a great deal of flexibility on the presentation side of things.
You’re right about just about everything else though.