5 things to know about BigCommerce before creating your website

Creating a website for your business is not a quick and easy task, especially if you want to create an online store. In addition to all the normal website building and hosting factors, you also need to consider how a particular provider’s terms of service will affect your business.

Press for time, you might be itching to settle for the first best option you come across, and BigCommerce certainly seems like the part. It has a fantastic reputation as one of the leading ecommerce platforms, directly competing with giants like Shopify. Proudly displaying its clients’ success stories, Forbes has been identify by Forbes as one of the 100 Fastest Growing Companies ..

However, especially when it comes to ecommerce-centric platforms, you need to pay close attention. In BigCommerce, there are certain considerations that can directly affect the bottom line of your business.

BigCommerce template library emphasizes quality over quantity

For those who can’t wait to use professionally design, mobile-friendly templates to build their website, this is great news. For specific ecommerce topics, I think BigCommerce is one of the best platforms, period. Check all the boxes, including the large number of themes available, the variety of niches cover, and the quality of each template.

The only disappointment is that only seven of the templates are available for free, while the average cost of the other 117 is around a couple hundred dollars. If you look at just the online store templates on Wix, there are about 70 templates, and all of them are free.

BigCommerce templates are also generally more visually interesting. There are some exceptionally unique templates, such as the “Bright Capacity” template for children’s toys and the “22 Savile Road Contrast” template for a bakery or cupcake shop. If you consider that most templates have up to four different styles, the possibilities expand dramatically.

You will not have to pay transaction fees

This should already catch the eye of anyone who wants to run a profitable online ecommerce business. There are very few eCommerce platforms that are as generous as BigCommerce when it comes to transaction fees. It charges 0% transaction fees with all of its plans and has negotiate special rates with PayPal for credit cards.

By contrast, BigCommerce’s biggest competitor, Shopify, charges transaction fees of 2.0%, 1.0%, or 0.5% through any payment method except Shopify Payments, which is free. This is in addition to any fees the payment processor may charge. Wix also doesn’t charge any transaction fees, but you will need either of its two most expensive plans, VIP or eCommerce, to sell. Squarespace charges a 3% transaction fee on its business website plan.

But  you will have a sales limit

Probably one of the biggest concerns when joining BigCommerce is that it places a limit on how much you can make in sales per year, depending on your plan. The baseline limits for each plan are currently $ 50,000 for Standard, $ 150,000 for Plus, and $ 400,000 for Pro with a custom limit for an enterprise plan. Keep in mind that these figures are calculate before expenses, which means that your profit limit is effectively much lower.

Your total sales are calculate from all of your BigCommerce integrate channels, such as your actual store, as well as your Facebook, Amazon, and other sales. If you exceed this number, you will be automatically upgrade to the next higher plan. If you are already on the Pro plan, you will be charge an additional $ 150 per month for every $ 200,000 in additional sales you make.

This translates to $ 4,166; $ 12,500; and $ 33,000 in sales per month, respectively. Now, this is not a small amount of money, and for most people who individually operate an online store, the Standard or Plus plan should be sufficient. However, it is obvious that any large company or business will need to sign up with the Enterprise plan and set a custom limit, as they can reach figures far beyond that.

BigCommerce allows you to extensively customize your product listings

One aspect of BigCommerce that rarely gets the attention it deserves is how outstanding its product creation and management tools are. This is especially true when it comes to making product variants or adding additional options to them. This functionality is also natively integrate into the platform: no plugins, applications, or custom code are need .

With regards to product variations, it’s helpful to compare BigCommerce to its biggest competitor, Shopify. BigCommerce supports up to 650 variants per product; conversely, Shopify only supports 100. These variants can be display to customers on your product web pages using multiple controls such as drop-down menus, checkboxes, sample options, date fields, and other product picklists. . To get the same kind of power and freedom with Shopify, you will need to find a solution using some of the apps on your market.

A wide selection of applications is available

Probably the best thing about the BigCommerce platform is that it has a lot more functionality built in natively when it comes to the most important aspects of e-commerce. , like the example of product listings above. However, the applications are there to plug any gaps that may arise from the particular situations and needs of customers.

BigCommerce has one of the best app marketplaces for eCommerce relate apps that serve a wide range of purposes. These apps may allow you to use or extend the built-in functionality when it comes to B2B / Wholesale (for example Quote Ninja and MinMax), Accounting and Tax (for example TaxJar), ​​SEO (for example ReloadSEO and FavSEO ), shipping (for example, Shipstation and ShipperHQ), and much more.

BigCommerce falls short of the heights of Shopify in terms of its integrations with popular tools like Oberlo and point of sale (POS) capabilities, but it comes close and possibly has more native features in terms of SEO and product management.

Many of the apps on the market are free, but their prices can vary drastically. You may pay an initial fee, or a recurring fee, or both, or a percentage of your sales. While you still have to budget for apps, you can probably get away with using Shopify.

Is it bigger, really better with BigCommerce?

As you can see from the list above, there is definitely more good than bad when deciding whether to hedge your bets with BigCommerce. It simply provides one of the most comprehensive ecommerce website building and hosting experiences, with very little desire for anything else.

However, if you are looking for a website builder and host to create a high-income online store, then you might be a bit concern regarding BigCommerce’s limits on annual sales. Another concern is that you are not given complete freedom to edit your web pages using custom encoding, which could be another requirement for an enterprise-level business.