This blog will explore the differences between Magento Commerce and BigCommerce platforms in the following areas

1. Magento Vs BigCommerce: Detailed Comparison Guide
Published: 10 Dec 2021
|
Magento
There’s a lot to consider when selecting an eCommerce platform. Whether it’s a new eCommerce store
development (https://www.ziffity.com/magento-development-services/) or migrating to a better alternative,
the process often begins with evaluating the top five platforms in the market to determine which will best
serve you business today and into the future.

2. Magento Commerce, Shopify, WooCommerce, OpenCart, and BigCommerce are the leading platform based
on number of sites they power. We have compared these top platforms in our previous blogs Magento vs
Shopify (https://www.ziffity.com/blog/magento-vs-shopify/), Magento vs OpenCart
(https://www.ziffity.com/blog/magento-vs-opencart/), Magento vs WooCommerce
(https://www.ziffity.com/blog/magento-vs-woocommerce/) and so on.
This blog will explore the differences between Magento Commerce and
BigCommerce platforms in the following areas:
Magento Commerce vs BigCommerce Comparison – Pricing
BigCommerce Pricing
Pricing
Scalability
Security
Omnichannel support
Marketing / SEO
Extensions and built-in tools
Customization and flexibility
Questions to ask yourself before deciding

3. BigCommerce Plan Cost Per Month Sales Threshold
Standard $29.95 $50K
Plus $79.95 $180K
Pro $299.95 $400K
Enterprise Must call for a quote Call for Info
Standard Plan: BigCommerce’ basic plan, ‘Standard,’ starts at $29.95 per month. It has all the basic
commerce and administrative features required for a brand to go to market quickly and start selling.
Although the starting price seems nominal, there’s a catch: all of the BigCommerce pricing plans have a
sales threshold for your annual revenue. If your annual revenue exceeds your current plan’s threshold, you’ll
automatically move up. The whole point of building a new site is to increase sales, but the reality is that
BigCommerce penalizes you for your success.
Plus Plan – In addition to the features of Standard plan, the Plus plan includes limited marketing features to
improve conversions. The annual revenue threshold for this plan is $180,000.
Pro Plan – The Pro includes all the features in the Plus plan and offers additional capabilities such as
scalability, user reviews, product filters, and so on. The annual revenue limit is $400,000. However, the
pricing works differently here if you exceed the threshold. For every additional $200,000 sales revenue you
earn above the threshold will cost you an additional $150 each month.

4. Enterprise plan – There’s no mention of pricing for BigCommerce’s Enterprise plan on its site. You have to
contact the sales team to get a custom quote, which will be provided based on your sales revenue and
other requirements. The most important features you’ll need (e.g. a development environment, custom
filters for large catalogs, and dedicated support to help you grow and resolve issues faster) are available
only in the Enterprise plan.
Magento Pricing
Magento is available in three versions: Magento Open Source, Magento Commerce (now Adobe Commerce),
and Magento Commerce Cloud (Adobe Commerce Cloud).
Magento Open Source doesn’t cost you a penny. However, to customize Magento to suit your business
requirements you’ll need to hire a development firm that understands eCommerce and can customize the
platform to your customers and market. You will also need to include hosting ($10–50/month) and domain
($10–400/year) to your costs.
Now, let’s look at the premium versions of Magento – Magento Commerce and Magento Commerce Cloud.

5. The table above shows the annual revenue-based license fee of Magento Commerce
(https://magento.com/products/magento-commerce) and Magento Commerce Cloud (the latter of which
includes AWS hosting).
Note: As per Magento, the license fee is negotiable for merchants who prefer the hosted Enterprise version.
As a result, your Magento store setup cost will differ based on your requirements.
As mentioned earlier, areas such as customization, extensions development, custom themes (if you prefer)
will add to your overall costs.
Source: Magento 2 migration – How much does it cost to migrate your store to Magento 2? (https://www.ziffity.com/blog/magento-2-
migration-how-much-does-it-cost-to-migrate-your-store-to-magento-2/)

6. BigCommerce can be a quick launchpad for small businesses looking to go live faster within a low budget.
Although Magento’s costs seem higher, the platform’s omnichannel capabilities, scalability, high security,
and a long list of out-of-the-box features justify it.
Magento vs BigCommerce Comparison – Scalability
BigCommerce – Scalability
BigCommerce offers enough scalability, but options are limited with the basic plan. If you are planning for
aggressive growth, you’ll have to pay more for scalability or opt for the ‘Enterprise’ plan.
The platform’s Open API enables you to build unique customer experiences. The Storefront API can be used
to manage cart and checkout using JavaScript. Order API allows you to add shipping quotes, taxes and
more.
However, you need technical knowledge to get it done, or you’ll have to spend on developers to do the job
for you.
Magento – Scalability
As we’ll see in a bit, Magento provides robust scalability, enabling you to cater to your site to your existing
and future needs. For instance, if you plan to expand your product portfolio, sell across borders, or add
differentiated Magento will handle your needs seamless.

7. Magento has improved its scalability further in its 2.x version. Magento 2 can process 117% more orders and
accommodate 2.1 million page views per hour. On the operations front, Magento can accommodate more
simultaneous admin users than Magento 1.
However, this limitless scalability doesn’t come at the expense of performance, as Adobe including
numerous performance improvements of Magento 2 over Magento 1:
Additionally, it provides ElasticSearch (https://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.4/install-
gde/prereq/elasticsearch.html), a fully integrated search engine that can be customized to provide accurate
search results faster.
With more scalability and better performance, your customers can enjoy a seamless site experience, and
you’ll enjoy a better conversion rate.
Magento vs BigCommerce Comparison – Security
BigCommerce Security
BigCommerce comes with powerful security against hacking. Being a hosted platform, BigCommerce
provides PCI compliance and is ISO/IEC 27001 certified, the gold standard for protecting customer data.
Additionally, BigCommerce provides security features such as firewalls software to detect intrusion and
38% faster checkout for customers
51% faster checkout for guests
66% faster add-to-cart response time

8. much more.
Magento Security
Magento is PHP 7 compliant and comes with a suite of robust security options. Magento provides SHA-256
(Secure Hash Algorithm 256) for passwords that fortify your store against dictionary attacks
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_attack). Other security options include Signifyd (fraud protection
system), Composer, Zend Framework, and SSL Certification.
Magento to update its security features and releases security patches for older versions. This helps the
entire user base of Magento to stay secure.
Another significant feature of Magento is its built-in Security Scan Tool (https://magento.com/security).
Advantages of Magento’s Security Scan tool include:
Magento vs BigCommerce – Customization and flexibility
BigCommerce – Customization and flexibility
Security status check-in real-time
Security fixes for resolving issues faster
Track historical reports and monitor progress
Merchants can run over 21,000 security tests
Report on failed tests along with recommended actions

9. As a hosted platform, BigCommerce offers less opportunity to customize your store to meet unique needs.
Tweaking the core code to accommodate your specific business functionalities is difficult. Although
BigCommerce offers essential integration like marketplaces and POS, the number of third-party apps it’s
compatible with is limited compared to Magento.
Magento – Customization and flexibility
Magento’s customization and flexibility are second to none in the market. The platform is 100%
customizable, which helps you build additional features and tune the core code to suit your business logic,
admin requirements, as well as create bespoke customer experiences.
Integrating third-party systems is a breeze with Magento. ERP, CRM, payment gateways, custom-built
extensions, PIM systems, marketing automation systems – everything integrates seamlessly with the
Magento backend. This enables the store owners to enjoy the capabilities of both Magento and their
preferred third-party system to the fullest.
Magento vs BigCommerce – SEO and Marketing
BigCommerce – SEO and Marketing
BigCommerce offers enough marketing features to steer visitors to your online store. Some of the
capabilities include in-built SEO tools, social sharing, customer loyalty programs, customer segmentation,
and more. You can also plan for branding and conversion-focused email campaigns.

10. Magento – SEO and Marketing
Magento offers several SEO features out of the box (https://www.ziffity.com/blog/top-7-seo-features-and-
benefits-of-magento/). Magento enables you to customize page titles for home, category, and cart pages.
You can also customize anchor text for navigation links and use the canonical URLs feature to avoid content
duplication.
Magento Page Builder is an interesting feature that allows developers to build custom-made pages to
attract customers. Features such as rich snippets and XML sitemap enable store owners to earn zero
position in search engine results pages (SERPs) and inform search engines about the site’s contents.
You can easily integrate key Google marketing and tracking systems with your Magento store, including
Google Analytics, Privacy Setting, Content Experiments, and Tag Manager with Magento admin.
Magento’s PWA Studio (https://magento.com/products/magento-commerce/pwa) allows for the
development of mobile web applications that load in less than 3 seconds, thereby increasing your search
engine rankings for mobile.
Product recommendations, customer segmentation, ability to create, manage and improvise email, digital,
social media, and SMS campaigns – all add to the marketing capabilities of Magento.
If you are a B2B merchant, you can leverage marketing automation tools such Marketo, a technology partner
of Magento.
Magento vs BigCommerce – Extensions and built-in tools

11. BigCommerce – Extensions and built-in tools
BigCommerce provides free and premium extensions in its marketplace to extend your store’s capabilities on
the technical, management, and customer experience front. You can choose from 600 apps available in its
marketplace (https://www.bigcommerce.com/apps/).
Magento – Extensions and built-in tools
Magento beats BigCommerce hands down in terms of the number of extensions it provides. Magento
provides over 5,800+ free and paid extensions in its marketplace
(https://marketplace.magento.com/extensions.html) for marketing, checkout, fulfillment, inventory, and
order management, PIM, and so on. Magento also provides clear technical documentation
(https://docs.magento.com/user-guide/getting-started.html) to install and configure these extensions.
Now, let’s take a look at the built-in tools that Magento provides to Open Source sites:
OMS (https://magento.com/products/order-management) – Order Management system to manage and
track inventory.
MBI (Magento Business Intelligence) (https://magento.com/resources/magento-business-intelligence-
essentials-open-source) – Advanced analytics tool to extract insightful data from digital interactions to
devise well-targeted marketing plans.
ElasticSearch (https://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.4/install-gde/prereq/elasticsearch.html) –
Built-in search engine that can be customized based on your products for accuracy and faster search
results.

12. Magento vs BigCommerce – Omnichannel
Both Magento and BigCommerce provide omnichannel support. From POS (offline) to marketplace support,
both platforms offer built-in integration capabilities for other digital sales channels.
With Magento, you can integrate your eCommerce store with marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay. For
brands focusing on mobile as a digital sales channel, Magento offers easy integration of native mobile apps
with the Magento backend.
Magento goes a step further in improving your mobile experience. Magento’s in-house developed PWA
(Progressive Web App) SDK, ‘PWA Studio’ (https://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.4/pwa/), helps you build
mobile websites with native-app-like interface and experience (check out our blog advantages of PWA for
eCommerce brands (https://www.ziffity.com/blog/6-reasons-why-you-should-build-a-pwa-for-
ecommerce/) for more discussion).
Business Considerations
Multi-source Inventory (https://www.ziffity.com/blog/magento-multi-source-inventory-features/) –
Multi-warehouse management system.
Adobe Payment Services (https://www.ziffity.com/blog/top-5-benefits-of-using-adobe-payment-
solutions/) – Integrated payment gateway for Magento users (available with the latest version of
Magento, 2.4.3 (https://www.ziffity.com/blog/magento-2-4-3-release-and-updates/)).

13. We have discussed the key factors that every business looks for while comparing platforms, such as
Magento and BigCommerce. We want to part with one last point that’s crucial in your decision-making –
business considerations.
By saying business considerations, we mean your market segment (B2C/B2B), maturity level, growth plans,
etc. Here’s a table that segments various business considerations to look keenly into while choosing your
platform.
Question to Ask Yourself Why It’s Important
What is your eCommerce maturity level? BigCommerce is an all-in-one package that allows
you to go live quickly. The flip side is that you
won’t get a highly customized “dream” site.
Magento Commerce is a robust, highly
customizable platform more suitable to companies
with a mature eCommerce practice.
Are you a pure B2B player? BigCommerce has a more limited B2B feature set
than Magento Commerce 2, although third-party
developers have built extensions to enable more
features.

14. Do you anticipate substantial growth in sales? BigCommerce charges by sales thresholds: $50k,
$150k, and $400k in yearly sales. Once reached,
the company automatically bumps you up into the
next tier. You’ll need to accommodate the higher
cost of success as you plan your eCommerce
expenses.
Table stake features BigCommerce’s popular Standard plan lacks
features many eCommerce teams deem table
stakes: product filtering, customer segmentation,
and abandoned cart recovery.
Open Source vs Out of Box Magento is an open-source platform, which means
you’ll have endless creative freedom when
designing and configuring your website.
BigCommerce is an out-of-the-box solution. They
take care of setting up and hosting your website,
but you must choose from a pre-built theme.
Do you have a large product catalog? If you have a vast product catalog, Magento 2 is
your best choice. The platform can easily handle
200k SKUs.

15. We hope you found this brief comparison useful. If you need further assistance in evaluating the two
platforms or making the final decision.
Talk To Our Experts