Quick answer: BigCommerce is a hosted e-commerce platform built for mid-market and enterprise retailers that features no transaction fees and advanced native capabilities. It is designed for established businesses with complex catalog requirements rather than beginner merchants.
Choosing the right e-commerce platform requires understanding a tool's underlying architecture, pricing tiers, and operational limitations. This guide breaks down what bigcommerce offers, how its plans are structured, and who should—or should not—consider adopting it for their online business.
Understanding BigCommerce and Its Core Features
bigcommerce is a hosted e-commerce solution that delivers an array of built-in functionalities right out of the box. Key features across its offerings include unlimited products and bandwidth on all plans, native multi-channel selling across marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Facebook, and Instagram, and B2B capabilities such as customer groups, price lists, and corporate accounts.
The platform supports headless commerce deployments via GraphQL and REST APIs, along with native multi-currency and multi-language support, advanced faceted search and filtering, an abandoned cart recovery tool, a promotions engine, and PCI DSS Level 1 compliance.
Pricing Plans and Structure
bigcommerce operates on a subscription pricing model with annual billing options. The platform provides a free trial for evaluation, but does not offer a permanent free plan. The available subscription tiers are:
- Core: Available at $29/month when billed annually.
- Growth: Available at $79/month when billed annually.
- Scale: Available at $299/month when billed annually.
- Performance: Starting from $1,499/month when billed annually.
It is important to note that the platform utilizes annual sales limits across its tiers, meaning exceeding these sales thresholds triggers forced plan upgrades.
Advantages and Strengths
Merchants evaluating bigcommerce benefit from several standout advantages:
- No transaction fees on any plan, allowing businesses to keep more revenue per sale.
- Advanced native features including multi-currency transactions, faceted search, and B2B pricing.
- Robust headless commerce support via the GraphQL Storefront API.
- Better out-of-the-box SEO capabilities compared to competing solutions like Shopify.
- Scalability to enterprise volumes without forcing a complete platform migration.
Limitations and Drawbacks
Every platform has trade-offs. The drawbacks associated with bigcommerce include:
- Annual sales limits that force merchants into higher plan tiers as their revenue grows.
- A theme ecosystem that is smaller and less polished than Shopify's.
- An app marketplace that is less rich compared to alternatives with 8,000+ available apps.
- A steeper learning curve for non-technical merchants.
Who Is BigCommerce For and Not For
bigcommerce is best for mid-market e-commerce businesses with complex catalog needs, multi-channel ambitions, or high transaction volumes that want to avoid paying per-sale fees. Its GMV-based pricing ensures businesses always know when an upgrade is required.
Conversely, the platform is not for small online stores just starting out. Shopify's beginner-friendly interface and extensive app ecosystem make it a better starting point for stores under the $30K/year threshold, whereas bigcommerce becomes compelling for businesses operating above that level.
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Photo by Mark König on Unsplash
