Magento vs Bigcommerce: Which One Is Better For An Ecommerce Site?

• By Aria Johns
• 20-12-2021
• E-commerce

BigCommerce vs Magento is a competition between two leaders in the e-commerce market. Why Leaders?

Stats says that there are more than 250,000 Magento stores on the Internet. It is used in 12% of every online retail store. Around 11,000 Magento stores are running on Magento 2. Almost 0.4% of websites are created with BigCommerce. Assuredly, these mentioned figures confirm that both of these eCommerce platforms are highly used by large amounts of users.

While thinking of creating an eCommerce store, choosing the one platform between becomes a challenging task. So, we are here to make this task easy for you. This article aims to draw a difference between Magento and BigCommerce so that you can pick the one for an eCommerce site.

Table of Contents

What is the main purpose of these eCommerce platforms? 2
Magento versus Bigcommerce: What's the difference? 2
Comparison of the BigCommerce and Magento features 3
Installation and interface 3
Ease of use 3
Specifications 4
SEO functionality 5
Other nuances related 5
Safety 5
Server load 5
Multisite / multi-store 6
Which eCommerce platform should you choose? 6

What is the main purpose of these eCommerce platforms?

Both platforms are large players in the e-commerce market. SMEs are considered here exclusively from the standpoint of potential growth and transition to the category of full-fledged clients. For example, the name of the BigCommerce platform clearly indicates this.

In fact, these are products created specifically for large companies with a full-fledged sales department that conduct business both on the territory of their country (in this case, the United States) and abroad (first of all, these are: the countries of Europe, Latin America, Canada and etc.).

BigCommerce moved away from the model of hosted solutions. In return, it offered the business an always up-to-date product and ready-made infrastructure. It turns out that the owners of online stores do not need to worry about the security of the software, about its completion or about testing the compatibility of add-ons/templates, etc.

All technical issues are resolved on the platform side. At the same time, BigCommerce flexibly adjusts to the assortment and needs of any type of customer and copes with different loads. Therefore, there will be no problems with this platform due to the active growth in sales and attendance. At the same time, there are clear and affordable tariffs for small businesses.

Magento versus Bigcommerce: What's the difference?

Magento has grown out of a hosted solution. The open-source CMS of the same name is still actively developing and is available for download by anyone. It is possible to build a complex and highly loaded project on it. But the main product, as in the case of BigCommerce, is a cloud-based commerce platform. All customers who have purchased a commercial version of the "boxed" CMS are now actively moving to the "clouds" with all the ensuing advantages: special technical capabilities of the platform, flexible configuration and guaranteed work under any load. All related issues are resolved by the service provider, the business owner is left to focus on the most important thing - on sales.

It turns out that both platforms have the same target audience, but Magento has a potentially larger reach due to the presence of a "boxed" content management system. All who use this CMS are potential developers, testers and customers of a commercial product. On the other hand, BigCommerce doesn’t “spray” its forces into supporting related products, which means it can better support the main platform. BigCommerce also pays more attention to small businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs.

Comparison of the BigCommerce and Magento features
Installation and interface

Magento can be deployed in the cloud. This CMS requires a lot of customization work, even if it is installed automatically (from a ready-made package). New clients can request demo access to a test engine instance. But even despite the presence of a block-based visual page editor, it will most likely not work here to launch a full-fledged store without the participation of specialized specialists.

It's much easier with BigCommerce. You get a working store right after creating an account. During the trial period (2 weeks), you won't even need your bank card details. To speed up the launch, you can purchase ready-made themes in the catalog or create your own design from scratch (in a graphic editor).

Accordingly, in both BigCommerce and Magento Commerce, you can access an online page builder. But in the latter case, it will be much more difficult to master, especially when building specific pages with advanced product filtering and visual merchandising.

You can also use a dedicated WordPress plugin that will add BigCommerce functionality to your website.

Ease of use

Setting up a BigCommerce website is much easier than Magento. The BigCommerce dashboard requires only minimal coding knowledge and has an intuitive dashboard that makes it easy for store owners to get their website up and running.

With Bigcommerce, you have access to step-by-step instructions, helpful guides and tips that simplify the website development process. As a paid plan, BigCommerce provides great customer service. In addition, the eCommerce solution comes with a website builder that allows merchants to create and manage a website without the technical knowledge of the internet.

Building an e-commerce store in Magento requires technical knowledge of the platform. So, you need to hire a certified Magento eCommerce development company that has an experienced development team with deep knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP, Java and JavaScript programming languages.

Magento is written in PHP, so you can customize your store the way you want and have access to unlimited sales opportunities. On the other hand, BigCommerce also allows you to set up your store on an eCommerce site, but with many restrictions, and this setup can cost a lot of money.

Specifications

Both Magento and BigCommerce come with advanced out-of-the-box features and can be easily integrated with multiple extensions and third-party systems.

Magento is by far the most robust in terms of features. A general list of Magento 2 features:

Marketing, promotion and conversion tool
Site management
Search engine optimization
Directory management
View Products
Browse catalog
Calculation, payment and delivery
Order management
Customer accounts
Customer service
International support
Analytics and reporting
Mobile commerce

BigCommerce also offers great ready-made functions for quick setup and efficient management of your website e-commerce. A general list of BigCommerce features:

Website builder
Payment and Inventory Management
SEO and analytics optimization
Catalog
Marketing tools
Social media marketing
Products and merchandising
Product variants and packaging
A mobile-optimized store
Multi Currency support
Custom fields
Search in store
Google AMP on product and category pages
Selling on eBay, Instagram and more

SEO functionality

It is difficult to single out a leader here. The basic SEO capabilities in both platforms are well implemented. But in the case of Magento, you can implement non-standard functions if you use add-ons from the catalog or the services of programmers (they can write a special module for your requirements).

In BigCommerce, you only get stock functionality. Although it will be enough for the vast majority of cases.

Other nuances related

Safety

In the case of BigCommerce, all security issues are the responsibility of the service provider. It guarantees 99.99% service availability.

In the case of Magento, security is guaranteed only when the engine is hosted in the "cloud" of the service. If you chose your hosting, and not the Adobe "cloud", then all security and availability issues are entirely your responsibility and in the competence of your hosting provider (if it has an SLA - Service Level Agreement).

Server load

BigCommerce does not set technical limits on its hosting. But there are limits on the number of sales per year for sellers, in accordance with the active plan. If you exceed the indicators, you will be transferred to a higher tariff or to an individual calculation.

With boxed versions of Magento (in Commerce editions and Open-Source), everything depends only on the capabilities of your hosting. The engine itself does not set any limits and is designed to work with high loads. In the case of cloud hosting on Adobe servers, the load is balanced on the fly, but this will automatically be reflected in the cost.

Multisite / multi-store

Both BigCommerce and Magento allow you to run multiple stores at once. Moreover, they can work simultaneously in different languages.

Which eCommerce platform should you choose?

When choosing between Magento 2 and Bigcommerce, you must make a decision based on your business requirements, features, design, budget and expected growth. Both are exceptional platforms, picking any of the ones for your online store will definitely be a beneficial deal! Make the right choice!

Let us know your thoughts. If there is anything related you would like to share with us, comment below. Thanks for reading!