Whether you are going to embark on an ecommerce business or planning to migrate from one platform to another, you need to be careful about choosing the right platform. One wrong decision can not only harm your profits but can also ruin your business reputation.
As you are on the board of choosing the right platform, it’s quite common that four major platforms, Shopify, Bigcommerce, Magento, WooCommerce, come to mind. Each has its own pros and cons that make the selection process quite complex.
Shopify vs Magento vs WooCommerce vs Bigcommerce : Which is best for eCommerce?
Whether you are going to embark on an ecommerce business or planning to migrate from one platform to another, you need to be careful about choosing the right platform. One wrong decision can not only harm your profits but can also ruin your business reputation.
As you are on the board of choosing the right platform, it’s quite common that four major platforms, Shopify bigcommerce Magento WooCommerce, come to mind. Each has its own pros and cons that make the selection process quite complex.
But being an entrepreneur, do not forget that your aim should be to kill many birds with one stone. Wondering how? A sound platform can create and streamline the customer base, attract new customers, and also starts engaging a sleeper target audience. So, do not compromise over any of the components that can become a great business asset.
Now, if you are a newbie to all or any of these platforms and are worried about a suitable platform, you are at the right place.
Here we will discuss bigcommerce vs Shopify vs Magento and woocommerce platforms in detail, side by side comparison.
Don’t skip any details and read the article till the end.
Magento Vs Shopify Vs Bigcommerce Vs Woocommerce: Find The Key Differences
An Overview:
Before we get into differentiating the major platforms, let’s look at the basics of Shopify, bigcommerce, Magento, and WooCommerce.
Shopify:
A million users during the first quarter of this year simply define the growing trend of Shopify platforms in the ecommerce industry. Another factor is the rising demand for Shopify plus development companies in 175 countries. Every small to medium-size business is looking for ways to begin with Shopify or migrating business to Shopify.
BigCommerce:
The platform is working as a godsend for companies that are scaling up their operations. Today BigCommerce is used by more than 100 000 all sizes online business merchants who are establishing ecommerce stores. Along with the UK, more than 65 other countries are operating on this platform. Big brands like Toyota and the Harvard Business School are some of the most prominent users of BigCommerce. Also, you cannot deny major software as a service (SaaS) provider from Texas.
WooCommerce:
Nearly one-third of the websites run on WordPress. And among CMS websites alone, 64 million websites are powered by WordPress. But many people may not be aware that WooCommerce is a WordPress product. Like WordPress blogs contain the capabilities of blogging, WooCommerce is a proven solution to build ecommerce websites. Users can buy products or services from this platform.
Magento
Magento is an optimal option for larger enterprises. The platform contains all the enterprise-level features and functions that help businesses and provides what they need in their web solutions. Today, Approximately 170,000 websites built with Magento on the entire world wide web, which is 1.4% of all websites.
This blog will review these major stacks in terms of convenience of usability, functionality, and ecommerce tools and pricing. Let’s have a better look;
Ease of Use:
Let’s begin with bigcommerce vs shopify vs woocommerce vs magento comparison;
Shopify:
Shopify comes with easy-to-use and accessible functions for regular users. The simplicity applies even to the scaled-back and supercharged version of this website builder. The platform is developed for merchants who have zero technical support. They can work through drag and drop features and get the desired results.
BigCommerce:
The BigCommerce page builder is a suitable option for all sizes of businesses. Whether you are running a small business or planning for WooCommerce, Magento, or Shopify to Bigcommerce migration, you must be aware that this platform is not easy to cater to. You may start finding difficulty on the dashboard from the sign-up process. But once you get used to it, the drag-and-drop functionality can complete all your tasks instantly.
Magento
For businesses or merchants who are looking to develop a professional ecommerce site, Magento should be the priority. The open-source allows free and easy to build online professional stores. Its third-party integration tools, including payment gateways, database applications, transportation, shipping, order tracking, etc., make it a more effective website. Also, Magento comes with simple, configurable, grouped, bundled, virtual and digital Products.
WooCommerce:
While bigcommerce, Magento, and Shopify involve online plugins that you just need to plug and play. But WooCommerce is different from these. You need fairly steep learning to understand the functionality. Even users have to install third-party integrations to enjoy full web potential.
Features and Flexibility of Comparision
Shopify:
The online platform allows an array of features with the possibility to offer products from multiple channels. You can use your admin panel and allot a number of staff for inventory management, POS transactions provision, running online marketing campaigns, international shipping, and taxation support from a single dashboard. It is becoming a major reason for bigcommerce to Shopify migration by many major ecommerce players.
BigCommerce:
You can build your site from a control panel that is easy to understand and interact with. The bundle of various ecommerce tools in the bigcommerce platform comes with a drag and drop user interface (UI). Your customers can enjoy vouchers, Quick Search Bar, run marketing campaigns, store management, international shipping, and delivery options.
WooCommerce:
WooCommerce is a freeware platform; therefore, you may find yourself restricted to some options than expected. Some extensions might require payment so your site can operate at optimum capacity. Business Owners may feel it is a hidden cost for the company. Most importantly, the majority of its extensions are subscription-based, which means you have to deal with subscription stress every year.
Magento
Magento erases the boundaries of what is possible or what is not by giving you the power to create bold and unique shopping experiences. Its out-of-the-box functionality, enterprise performance and scale, and powerful business tools keep you ahead of increasingly competitive and complex commerce operations.
Comparision of Themes and Templates:
Shopify’s selection of themes is also what makes it suitable for those who are stepping into the e-commerce world. The customization is easy to understand and use, which leaves room for users to customize the themes to fit their preferences. The availability of free options is beneficial since it gives users a chance to test out different features before putting their money down. If users have an understanding of Shopify website development techniques, it becomes more convenient to customize available themes and templates.
Shopify:
Shopify has a wide range of premium and free themes that ensure to meet your business expectations. You can pick the aesthetics and industry-specific design. The built-in drag and drop page builder options make it easy to use also.
BigCommerce:
BigCommerce platform offers more than 162 templates to build brand image in different themes and schemes. On the darker side, only 12 templates are free, and the rest are paid. You have to pay a hefty amount if you want to enjoy premium or high-quality themes.
WooCommerce:
WooCommerce is an especially advisable option for those who have previous experience with WordPress. Unfortunately, WooCommerce offers only 14 proprietary templates; among these, only two are free, and to use the rest, you have to pay $39 per template.
Tools Customisation Comparision
Shopify:
Shopify is a strong platform but has a weakness that it’s a little hard to customize tools. Either you need sound coding knowledge or hire a Shopify development company to add plus features to your app. Customizing tools helps you to enjoy customized tools and unique features.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce allows minor tools customization to storefront, but you may need to switch from this template for major changes. Even its built-in customization tools suit both appearance and functionality.
WooCommerce
Just as the main WordPress platform, users can incredibly customize WooCommerce. There can be one of many existing child themes that can improve site appearance, functionality, and sales. You can also create your own child theme to further personalize the store’s appearance.
Magento
Magento themes can be highly customized from the storefront from the central customization mechanism. Therefore, merchants can use Magento components to extend and transform the appearance of their storefronts.
3rd Party Integrations Comparision:
Shopify
Shopify offers more than 6000 third-party applications ranging from inventory management to productivity tools. Therefore, 90% of the users download at least one app from this in-platform marketplace, especially those who want online store management.
BigCommerce
The platform offers various third-party tools like currency support, language support, marketing, payment, shipping, and others. But these all come at a price.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce can conveniently sync with any number of third-party apps with the help of the integrator program Zapier. Developers can even create their own bespoke widget from this open-source platform.
Magento
Third-party integration services allow you to quickly add features and tools to your business processes. In Magento, you can involve Accounting, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Product Information Management (PIM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and marketing automation systems.
Hosting Comparision
Shopify:
Shopify is one of the biggest ecommerce platforms that host via content deployment network (CDN), a content site hosted on different servers. Shopify ensures all stores should be loaded as quickly as possible, wherever customers are based.
BigCommerce:
BigCommerce ensures business continuity, security, and online transaction safety. Therefore sites are hosted by Google Cloud. It boosts up 99.99% web time and has rapid page loading speed.
WooCommerce:
WooComnmerce is just a plugin, and it cannot help to build user experience in the case of hosting. Depending on your WordPress subscription-like .com, .in, .org, .au. or others, you can enjoy third-party hosting. It means you have an option to choose the best plan for your business needs.
Magento
If you are looking for a free Magento version, you need to manage your own hosting after licensing the software. In contrast, a paid version of Magento can be hosted on Amazon’s Cloud – AWS.
Backups Comparision:
Shopify:
Shopify does not allow automatic backups, you have to save the information into .csv files. Even the list of backups is only restricted to limited additions in free plans. Further, you can create a backup for financial transactions, customer information, and product details. You can also use third-party apps.
BigCommerce:
Bigcommerce users cannot enjoy native backup facilities. Instead, they have to use third-party tools that ensure system backup.
WooCommerce:
As discussed above, WooCommerce is just a plugin. For backup, you have to rely on a hosting server. To play safe, most users consider manual file saving for the vital backup.
Magento
Magento allows a complete backup of the database and files in the system. During the backup process, you can choose to include the media folder where you are storing files.
Comparision Between Migration of All CMS
Shopify:
You can migrate content such as products, blogs, pages, and customer information from your old platform. While migrating, the term data involves both content and website information. There are platforms like Etsy, Squarespace, and Weebly ecommerce that can help users to migrate data.
BigCommerce:
BigCommerce’s developers need to rely on migration tools if they want bigcommerce to shopify migration. The tools can help to migrate customer and inventory data to the new platform.
WooCommerce:
Cart2Cart feature in WooCommerce enables users to transfer data from one platform to another without stopping transactions flow. It’s also called a real-time migration.
Magento
The migration process in Magento to other platforms is troublesome. One needs adequate skills with a healthy knowledge of tools to migrate websites. Otherwise, the whole process of creating a backup and migrating a website can create a mess!!
SEO and Mobility Comparision
SEO:
Conducting a healthy SEO strategy is not a big problem, especially for businesses that are using BigCommerce, Magento, or Shopify platforms. These platforms work on improved meta-implementation options, contain title tags and great URL structure. Magento even includes analytics for tracking web visitors. On the other hand, WooCommerce is not an adequate choice if SEO is your first choice. You need to depend on third-party tools and features to make the website SEO friendly.
Mobile:
All the platforms such as Shopify bigcommerce Magento WooCommerce can be downloaded on android, iOS, and Windows devices. Hence, you don’t have to think much about this factor for your ecommerce solution.
Pagespeed
Each platform is different from one another for page loading speed, like Shopify’s average loading time is 2.8 seconds, Bogcommerce takes 4.40 seconds, WooCommerce takes 5 seconds, and Magento needs 3 seconds. These are the approximations, whereas original speed can vary depending on your website load and functionality.
Support and Resources Avilibility Comparision
Shopify and BigCommerce both come with dedicated customer service and support. Magneto offers dedicated community-based support composed of experts. These involve certified individuals, frontend and backend developers. Unfortunately, we cannot say the same for WooCommerce, they need to work on customer support systems more to meet desires.
Pricing of Shopify vs Bigcommerce vs Magento vs WooCommerce
Shopify:
To enjoy premium Shopify tools, customers have to set back $29 and up monthly subscription plans. Each subscription varies with features, technical support, and SEO tools. Therefore, the top tiers use the best-in-class plan.
BigCommerce:
Bigcommerce’s basic subscription plan starts from $29.95 and goes beyond. You need to be very careful about what you will be getting in your plan. You should also match features with business requirements. Otherwise, you may need to jump to a higher plan.
WooCommerce:
WooCommerce is available in free and paid plans. Under a free plan, you can only enjoy limited tools and features. Whereas paid plans let you enjoy hosting and numerous functions.
Magento
Again, Magento is an open-source platform. You can go with free or paid any option. Under the free option, you have to pay for add-on features, whereas a paid plan lets you enjoy more responsibility for that extra flexibility.
What did We find in Bigcommerce, Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento comparison?
Considering each and every detail of the bigcommerce, Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento comparison, we found Shopify is the winner. Its easy-to-use features and tools provide a great platform.
Wrapping Up with Recommendation:
All the above-mentioned platforms have amazing features. Let’s wrap up in simple words:
- Shopify is an ideal solution for start-ups and growing businesses. An excellent all-around feature provides maximum ease to users.
- BigCommerce is an excellent choice for mid-scale or large-scale businesses that are ready to spend for a complex platform.
- WooCommerce is a great choice for those who want to move from blogging websites and planning to earn something.
- Magento is a perfect decision for a large-scale business that needs bigger, quicker, and completely customizable online shopping.
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