The word eCommerce is no longer just a buzzword, as the matter of fact it has become a sure-shot norm to succeed irrespective of any industry vertical out there. Today, almost every business is striving hard to jump into the eCommerce bandwagon and make the most out of this lucrative field. However, since everyone is trending towards the same, you have to be a bit more smart in order to gain a competitive edge over others. Well, in other words, you need to pick the right eCommerce platform and that will be cost effective for your ecommerce business. The following post emphasizes on exploring a detailed comparison between Magento and BigCommerce.

Now of course before we jump directly comparing the two prominent eCommerce platforms, it’s time to focus on each one of them on an individual basis.

Introducing Magento

The numbers never lie! As per different stats, more than 250,000 eCommerce shops are developed using Magento. So yes, definitely, it turns out to be one of the leading online store building platforms across the globe. Of course, there are several other options such as BigCommerce, Shopify, WooCommerce but here in this segment we will explore why Magento should be your go-to option especially when you want to gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing eCommerce realm.

Now we all know that Magento is one of the leading eCommerce platforms that is vouched for by a plethora of small, medium and large-scale organizations for selling a wide range of products online. Some of the most amazing and mesmerizing features offered by Magento is:

  • Integrated Checkout, payment, Shipping
  • Mobile Optimized Shopping
  • Global Selling
  • Product Management Category
  • Client Account
  • Instant purchase
  • Site Search
  • BI Dashboards
  • Customer Service
  • Seamless Payments
  • Advanced Marketing Tools
  • Content staging and preview
  • Order Management
  • Customer Loyalty Tools
  • Visual Merchandising
  • Business Intelligence Dashboard
  • B2B functionality
  • Analyze and quick reporting

Now, here comes the fun part! Why must one be using Magento? Further below I would like to mention what are the benefits offered by Magento.

Benefits of Using Magento

  • OpenSource – One of the most obvious yet crucial benefits of using Magento is that it is an open source platform. Yes, the platform is available for free and you can even pay for using more advanced features and functionalities. However, being open source certainly doesn’t mean that it is not flexible, scalable enough to deliver high-end solutions. On the contrary, the platform has the ability to adapt quickly and seamlessly to any kind of change. And of course, it can be modified to meet different requirements of shop owners as well as end users.
  • Mobile-friendly Website – When you are developing an eCommerce store using Magento get ensured that you are all set to receive a mobile-friendly website that certainly has the power to enhance your ranking to a great extent. No wonder, some eCommerce websites tend to load quickly on mobile devices and some simply don’t. And since these websites are mobile-friendly, they aren’t just loved by Google but also by the end users.
  • Easy Integration – Of course, you are developing an eCommerce website that will expand eventually and for that you need seamless third-party integration, add-ons and modules to your existing store. This is done so that any modification can be done without any restrictions and hurdles. In fact, it may quite interest you to know that Magento enables business owners to add or integrate well with Google analytics and other relevant third-party integrations such as eBay, Paypal, Mail Chimp and so more for generating quick and relevant data. All you have to do is find the right gadget for your store and sit back and relax.
  • SEO-friendly – Another major advantage offered by Magento is SEO-friendliness. Basically, this one is quite an SEO-friendly content management system that comprises a wide range of features such as Search friendly URLs, Sitemaps, Layered navigation, keywords, meta tags, meta descriptions and a lot more! Now I am sure you are not creating a website or an eCommerce store just for the sake of it! You want it to be seen by Google as well as your end users. With great URL structure and Meta-implementation options, Magento turns out to be the best possible option around when you are willing to up your SEO game! 
  • Highly flexible – Another interesting benefit offered by Magento is that it is highly flexible and offers a wide scope of experimentation and innovation. From the developer’s perspective, Magento provides them complete authority over several functions in regards to enhancing the eCommerce store. From the end users point of view, Magento tends to offer nothing less than unique experiences.

Some of the top brands that have become advocates of Magento include Classmate, VolksWagon, Nissan, Lenovo, Hp, Nike, Samsung, Canon, Coca Cola, Land Rover, Pepperfry, and so forth. Not to mention, apart from these benefits Magento turns out to be the best option in regards to security. In fact, the platform keeps on releasing upgraded versions every now and then. Also, there is a large Magento community around ready to assist.

Enough being said about Magento, now it’s time to focus on our next contender; Big Commerce.

Introducing BigCommerce

Big Commerce is a paid-for, hosted eCommerce platform enabling more and more business owners to set up an online store and sell a wide range of products with the help of the web. Big Commerce is more like a Software as a service (SaaS). In other words, you are not owning the software but paying a monthly fee for using it. The platform comes with a wide range of customizable templates for assisting you in designing your online store seamlessly. Whether you want to sell physical products or digital products, BigCommerce is the best solution to consider. Some of its big clients include Gillette, Fujitsu, Ben and Jerry’s, Skull Candy, Carolina Panthers, Ted Baker, Tucker Blair, Clarks and Harvard University.

Earlier there was a time when BigCommerce was considered as an important alternative to Shopify. Fortunately, that’s no longer the case! The eCommerce platform seems to have made its way into the mainstream world and why not since this one is a full-hosted platform that requires less to no technical knowledge for setting things up. If you see from the outside, you won’t find any difference between BigCommerce and Shopify but the inner details are something that makes a huge difference. Some of the crucial aspects that make BigCommerce worth considering include:

  • Fully-hosted platform
  • User-friendly Interface
  • You can sell an unlimited range of products
  • A wide Range of Themes and Drag and Drop Page Builder
  • No Transaction fees
  • Multiple payment Methods
  • Seamless Third-party Integration
  • Blogging
  • Robust Management Tools
  • Leverage to use features that are even out of the box such as product review, discount coupon, analysis and reporting

Further, I would like to mention some of the most crucial benefits of using BigCommerce for your upcoming eCommerce development project.

Benefits of using BigCommerce

  1. High Customization and Functionality – Big Commerce’s platform is designed in such a way that when you use it, it ends up enhancing every aspect of your online store in a pretty short span of time. One of the best advantages offered by the eCommerce platform is that it offers customization to a great extent. Since not every business and its needs are not the same, you need to tweak your website according to your personal preferences every now and then. Apart from high-end customization, BigCommerce comprises a unique bunch of features that drive immense amounts of traffic and revenue. Yes, whether you are in B2B or B2C business, it doesn’t matter, the features incorporated in the eCommerce platform are more than enough to drive your sales. As from the end user’s point of view, here you will find a wide range of templates and customizable features that offer nothing less than a streamlined and an amazing user experience. No wonder why more and more companies have started vouching for BigCommerce as well.
  2. SEO-friendly – Much like Magento even BigCommerce turns out to be SEO-friendly. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is pretty much at the peak these days and why not since it offers a lot in regards to driving an insane amount of traffic and increasing visitors. Optimizing your site means, there is a possibility your site gets ranked on search results in a pretty short span of time and more and more people will end up finding your product quickly. Right from ratings to pricing, brand, stock level everything is well taken care of here. In fact, once you optimize URLs here, it becomes very easy to make your website rank without risking 404 errors. Apart from being SEO-friendly, Big Commerce websites are often capable of handling higher volume of traffic.
  3. Security – The next amazing benefit offered by BigCommerce is high-end security. With so many security breaches happening around, it has become extremely important to choose an eCommerce platform that comes with an exciting range of security features and functionalities. Well, it may quite interest you to know that BigCommerce comprises unlimited bandwidth, fast content delivery, various domain names, and a shared SSL certificate. Here you get multi-layered security, which means your store is seamlessly protected. Perimeter and server-specific firewalls, file integrity scanners, intrusion detection software, and 24/7 human monitoring are some of the core aspects here that makes BigCommerce a cut above. Apart from all this, you can even add HTTPS:// just to make sure that your entire site is protected from unknown and unwanted sources.

And now comes the final Showdown!

Magento Vs BigCommerce – The Best eCommerce Platform to Consider 

BigCommerceMagento
Amazing AffordabilityHigh Customization
Easy to learn and usePretty feature and functionality rich
Highly ScalableFull-fledged Security

Now it’s time for a detailed comparison!

1. Popularity

One of the most crucial aspects or factors to take into consideration is high-end popularity. And Magento and BigCommerce are pretty much popular as well as effective. Now even if you check some of the top million eCommerce sites, you will see that around 14% of them are successfully run on Magento whereas when it comes to BigCommerce it’s 4%. So if we see in regards to popularity, Magento is way more popular than BigCommerce.

2. Easy to use

Another crucial aspect that must be taken into consideration is easy to use. Well to be precise, BigCommerce is way more easy in terms of use then Magento. Yes, here you require no knowledge of programming or any other kind of technical aspects. Now here you will find that the admin dashboard is successfully split between the two – storefront and inventory. So you don’t need to edit the whole, two areas can be edited on a separate basis.

Whereas speaking of a Magento based store, building a Magento store is quite tricky and it requires ample technical knowledge and expertise. So you need to hire the best Magento developers who have gained experience in dealing with HTML, CSS, PHP, Java, and JavaScript programming languages. Whereas, speaking of Magento, the admin dashboard here is pretty complex and complicated. However, once you are well acquainted with the terminology, there is no looking-back. Everything here from SEO settings to product page view, order analytics is well-taken care of and this makes website management an amazing adventure.

3. Features and Functionalities

Magento and BigCommerce come with a wide range of features and functionalities. Some of the most exciting, payment and inventory management, SEO and analytics optimization, product catalog, social media marketing, products and merchandising, mobile-optimization, in-store search, Google AMP, Selling seamlessly on eBay and so forth. Whereas speaking about Magento, we have different marketing, promotions, conversion tools, site management, Search Engine Optimization, Catalog Management, Order Management, Amazing customer Service, Analytics and reporting, mobile commerce and a lot more!

And we are done!

I hope the following post turned out to be helpful. There is no winner here! The answer is it depends on overall needs and requirements. For example, if you are on a tight budget and do not need to hire a development team then you can definitely consider BigCommerce whereas if you want one-of-a-kind web design & functionality, where you have thousands of products to display then look for Magento. 

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