Magento vs BigCommerce: The Platform Comparisons

With so many options available for eCommerce platforms, it might be tough to choose the right one for your business. Magento vs BigCommerce are the leading names in this field. They are a matchup between two gladiators of eCommerce. In this article today, we have done our research to compare the two in all critical areas for constructing your online store. 

Magento vs BigCommerce: Overall Description

Magento was founded in 2008. The platform is famous for its flexibility and customization. Adobe. Inc acquired Magento in 2018 for $1.68 billion. Although it offers functions to help amateurs develop their brand, Magento is more suitable for users who possess coding skills. For large corporations or enterprises, this platform is highly recommended as it requires self-hosting, installation, and setup. 

There are currently 250,000 online stores powered by Magento. It is an open-source platform meaning anyone can use it for free but only if users have proper coding knowledge.

BigCommerce was founded in Austin, Texas in 2009. The company provides a SaaS (Software as a Service) eCommerce platform with 600+ employees. BigCommerce is famous for its advanced features including customer grouping and segmentation, search engine optimization, and web hosting. 

BigCommerce has helped 100,000 people start selling online, offering the most built-in features compared to the big four eCommerce software. This platform has some big-name clients under its roofs, such as Toyota, Kodak, and Ben & Jerry’s. Overall, this is designed for big businesses looking to grow fast. 

Magento vs BigCommerce: On The Front End

Magento vs BigCommerce: Ease of Use

To run a business, there are countless things to consider. Users want to spend time focusing on their customers, products, and brands – not on the building, customizing, and editing the website. At the end of the day, the website is just a bridge between retailers and consumers, helping sellers to showcase their products and services easily. Therefore, the web experience needs to be smooth and it should be easy for users to navigate. 

As mentioned above, Magento is more favored for techy users. Even with the Magento Open Source (the free version for beginners), users need to know some coding, at least PHP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as there are a lot of jargon merchants should acknowledge to maximize the platform potentials. Store setup will be complicated even if there are plenty of guides and tutorials provided when you don’t have any coding experience. 

In Magento, the editing interface is split between two areas: the storefront (what your customers can see) and inventory (the backend). It also uses complex terminology like SKU levels and CSV files, so it is definitely not the platform for beginners.

Nonetheless, it does offer keyboard shortcuts, like typing ‘AP’ to start adding products. It also recently introduced ‘Store Design’, which lets you track the effects of your edits as you go. 

On the other hand, BigCommerce doesn’t ask for coding experience to set up. Even though it requires some learning curves, users who are willing to put in the effort to learn will eventually appreciate the categorizations BigCommerce offers. Besides, the platform recently added the drag-and-drop builder into its system which significantly improves its ease of use. 

Magento vs BigCommerce: Help & Support

Magento’s sales team can be reached via phone, or users can submit a tech support ticket. However, Magento’s finest support offering is its forum. You will find answers to everything you need from other Magento users, and there are some handy tutorials.

Magento doesn’t provide 24/7 support, so you are most likely completely relying on the FAQs – which might not be enough and on time to answer your questions. It should be kept in mind that Magento’s open-source community edition, which is the free version of the platform, does not come with any professional support. 

BigCommerce provides 24/7 phone and lives chat support, which means users can get a quick fix, whatever the hour. Nonetheless, users are encouraged to fill a form and review potential solutions suggested by the BigCommerce website before directly contacting the support team. 

In terms of Help & Support, Magento is a better choice, as long as you are willing to put the time and effort into exploring all its support options, sometimes it does cost some money. Its help center is extensive, and you will find FAQs, developer documentation, tech resources, and forums to help answer your questions. 

Magento vs BigCommerce: On The Back End

Magento vs BigCommerce: Product Management

Magento offers advanced product management functions with high prices, such as full support for simple, configurable, grouped, bundle, and virtual product management. It is easy to create, edit, remove or assign categories to multiple products at once. Magento has a category tree with multi-layers subcategories for comprehension purposes, within which we can assign goods to them in bulk by using the drag-and-drop or import function. 

Merchants should keep in mind that even though Magento allows users to add unlimited products to their stores, the Magento server performance and speed might turn out to be serious issues if there are too many products uploaded. 

BigCommerce offers dropshipping apps, unlimited product uploading, product categories, etc. it pays close attention to what’s going on in the market and does whatever it can to integrate new features that are introduced by the competition. 

Furthermore, BigCommerce syncs your inventory to streamline omnichannel sales through marketplaces platforms like eBay and Amazon, or on social media platforms. It helps merchants to keep an eye on stock levels by product or SKU so you know exactly how much inventory you have on hand. 

BigCommerce can help keep merchants and their shoppers up-to-date by setting low-stock notifications. The platform will inform you when you are about to run out of stock. Enabling stock levels and out-of-stock on the storefront will keep your shoppers just as informed. 

Magento vs BigCommerce: Abandoned Cart Recovery

After putting the items in their cart, customers can leave the sites right before making payment. The abandoned cart recovery function will automatically send out emails with incentives or call-to-action to convince shoppers to complete their orders. 

One of every three recipients of abandoned cart emails clicks on a link in those emails, with 28% of them finishing purchasing. Therefore, an abandoned cart campaign is an extremely important function to have. 

In Magento, it doesn’t require coding for abandoned cart recovery. The system will ask users to manually input several basic information. Magento needs to know the length of payment delay for a cart to be listed abandoned. Then, merchants tell the platform when to send the first email campaign to buyers. Lastly, users determine what type of campaign they want to send to the cart owners, maybe an encouraging email with or without a coupon/discount code. 

BigCommerce claims that their abandoned cart recovery function helps revive 15% of lost sales. It allows users to schedule up to three automated follow-up emails. When sending multiple cart-reviving emails, merchants should be careful, because their buyers may see these emails as spam or annoyed. 

Magento is not built-in with this function. Nonetheless, in its Marketplace, many extensions can be installed into your online store to help you send the recovery emails for free or with a cost. As for BigCommerce, this feature is only available in the expensive version ($79.95/month). Based on the plan and extensions you choose, the abandoned cart recovery price will vary greatly. 

Magento vs BigCommerce: Security

In 2020, the financial services industry was hit with tens of millions of attacks per day, which raises a warning for eCommerce platforms where we also work with customers’ sensitive information such as credit card number, address, or phone number. Hence, the security offered by eCommerce platforms should be put into consideration when choosing which software works best for your store. 

In Magento, the security level entirely depends on yourself to set it up, which gives users the flexibility to adjust it in whatever way you are able to. Magento’s security is very tight and robust, where you are required to be hands-on and follow PCI compliance by yourself. 

To make it easier for merchants. Magento usually sends patches to keep you up-to-date with new security features on the market. 

BigCommerce offers free SSL certificates on all of its plans. Users can upgrade more to a more advanced SSL version (equipped with site seals and warranties) if they can afford it. PCI DSS compliant is built-in on BigCommerce, which makes the platform meet the requirements of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard to protect against credit card fraud. 

Magento enables merchants to have a better security system but it requires professional coding skills. For amateurs and beginners, BigCommerce might be more favorable. 

Magento vs BigCommerce: Apps And Add-ons

To better manage your store, users are recommended to look out for new features to integrate. There are many free and paid options on both platforms that can bring your store operation to a whole new level. Therefore, it is such a waste not to utilize these apps and extensions offered on Magento and BigCommerce. 

Among over 5000 extensions and apps to select from Magento, 1970 of them are free. 10% of the paid apps cost around $30 per month while other extensions can cost up to $2000 per month. The price varies greatly depending on the development agency that creates them. 

Magento offers advanced apps but they lack the basic built-in functions. A typical example is Facebook. It costs around $188 to integrate an online store with Facebook. Moreover, apps on Magento require coding knowledge to install, which is more suitable for large corporations with developer teams. 

There are a few hundred apps available on the BigCommerce App Store. The overview of the BigCommerce App Store is very similar to Magento’s in terms of categories, both have free and paid apps but it is slightly less rich. However, from a functionality standpoint, finding an app on Magento that users couldn’t find an equivalent on BigCommerce is hard-pressed. 

Magento vs BigCommerce: Payment Processors and Transaction Fees

The chosen eCommerce platform for your online store should offer a lot of payment gateways as your users can only earn profits after the transactions happen smoothly. Both Magento and BigCommerce have plenty of payment options for merchants to choose from. 

Magento supports payment via five methods (along with regular online card payment): 

• Check/Money Order
• Cash on Delivery
• Bank Transfer
• Purchase Order
• Zero Subtotal Checkout (when an offer code takes the price to zero, but tax still needs t to be calculated)

Magento comes built-in with PayPal and Authorize.net. Other choices are available but they are mostly large business solutions, such as Worldpay. There are over 150 other payment processors on Magento. It asks a bit of work to set up because users need to do it themselves. You will need different sets of skills, including coding, to integrate the payment processors.

Payment apps on Magento give users access to many payment options in different languages and countries. Hence, it is easier to expand your business internationally. 

Unlike Magento, BigCommerce doesn’t have that many payment integrations to choose from. They only have around 30 apps, which are designed to support over 100 countries and more than 250 local payment methods. This platform also provides a one-click setup for its payment processors, which means users can constantly accept all the major credit cards and payment choices. 

All the payment tools are mobile-optimized on BigCommerce, to ensure mobile shoppers get the same level of service as any desktop users. Merchants are supported with multiple currencies on BigCommerce, which makes it easier to collect sales around the world. 

In regards to payment options, BigCommerce seems to be the better option where it is quicker and easier to get paid. Adding payment gateways can be done within a couple of clicks from the dashboard, whereas in Magento, it requires coding and integrating apps, which is much more complicated. 

Magento vs BigCommerce: Point-of-sale System (POS System)

Neither Magento nor BigCommerce have their own POs system, only the extensions are available on their App Store which offers great features. 

Magento extensions for POS systems offer click-and-collect, real-time synchronization of inventories, customer orders, or buy online pick up in-store. The price of Magento POS varies from $49 per month to $1299 per month. 

For BigCommerce, their App Store also has outstanding POS apps which all provide must-have advanced POS attributes. Most of the third-party extensions support mobile devices for your online store, including receipt printers, barcode scanners, or label printers. 

ConnectPOS offers both BigCommerce POS and Magento POS systems which have basic to advanced features such as tax rates synchronization, various payment methods, or AI facial recognition. 

Magento vs BigCommerce: Pricing

Magento is an open-source platform, which means it is free to download and use. Nonetheless, to have a proper store, the platform comes with a selection of extra costs, mainly coming from the apps and integrations. Some of them are necessary for your online store, others are just nice to have. 

Magento has two plans: 

• Magento Open Source, which is completely free to use
• Magento Commerce is a customized plan where users need to work directly with Magento to come up with the exact price

The Magento Open Source is not built-in with many hands-on features. Users will need to install a good amount of apps for your online store. Therefore, the true cost of a Magento store varies greatly, which could be up to several thousand dollars per year. 

For BigCommerce, it has four payment plan:

• BigCommerce Standard – this is the cheapest option on this platform. It has enough features for users to build an online store ($29.95 per month)
• BigCommerce Plus – this is the most popular plan in which some premium options are available, such as abandoned cart saver, customer segmentation, etc ($79.95 per month)
• BigCommerce Pro – it provides even more scalable features ($299.95 per month)
• BigCommerce Enterprise – this is for big companies with a custom price

Magento vs BigCommerce: Discussion

It is hard to say which platform is better when comparing Magento and BigCommerce. Both of them have some of the most hands-on and innovative features. The point here is to see which one best meets your needs.

While BigCommerce is not the easiest software in the world to use, it is more simple than Magento. It doesn’t require coding knowledge, and all the tools are in one place. This platform is best for those who need a large, fast-growing business up and running online quickly. It is fairly simple to use which provides all the tools required to build an eCommerce empire. 

With its limitless customization, Magento gives users loads of design flexibility. It works brilliantly when being installed by specialist developers. Their extensions are quite impressive and hands-on. Magento is designed for uses who possess thousands of products in their catalog, have developers in-house, and have a global, enterprise-level business. 

Final Words

After this article, we hope to give you an overview of what these platforms offer when comparing with one another. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions!