BigCommerce is a noteworthy website builder aimed to help businesses grow quickly and effectively. Packed with brilliant features and offering good value for money, BigCommerce is yet not for everyone. In fact, it’s rather tricky to use. Due to the complicated language it uses, the learning curve is rather steep compared to most modern site-building solutions.
So, for those, who struggle with BigCommerce because of their limited tech knowledge, or simply want to switch to another platform for any other reason, we have come up with a list of the most worthwhile BigCommerce alternatives for you. Find my accurate and unbiased list of the best options along with their short yet comprehensive reviews.
[Spoiler] Here’s a List of the Best BigCommerce Alternatives:
- Shopify – For All-Round Use
- Square Online – For Point of Sale Merchants
- Ecwid – For Existing Website Owners
- Squarespace – For Superior Website Designs
- Shift4Shop – For Better Value at the Cost
- WooCommerce – For Enterprise-Level Businesses
- Big Cartel – For Businesses on Budget
- IM Creator – Great Option for NonProfits
- SITE123 – For Building a Simple Personal Site
- Hostinger Website Builder – For Using Premium AI Tools
Shopify – For All-Round Use
| Product Name: | Shopify |
| Official Website: | https://shopify.com |
| Founded: | 2004 |
| Number of Websites: | 1,597,099 |
| Complexity: | Medium |
| Free plan: | No, free 14-day trial |
| Paid plan: | From $9/mo |
The comprehensiveness of Shopify makes it a leader in the eCommerce platform space nowadays and a strong alternative to BigCommerce. It allows you to create fabulous virtual store experiences quickly and easily, completing them with multiple customizable elements and having a standout brand in the end.
Why Shopify Can Be a Good BigCommerce Alternative
Perhaps the primary difference between Shopify and BigCommerce is the ease of use of the former. Shopify doesn’t demand a user to be an expert. It’s targeted toward novices with absolutely no coding knowledge or tech skills.
Shopify also introduces a bigger app market with over 6,000 applications to enhance your brand performance and functionality, whereas BigCommerce only has around 1,000 options. The difference is stunning!
Shopify features broader support of multimedia on product pages than BigCommerce. For instance, if BigCommerce allows integrating only images, video, and GIFs to introduce your product line, Shopify also supports 3D models and augmented reality – something really crucial for a 21st-century online seller. Furthermore, it offers its users a point-of-sale solution to combine their land-based and virtual stores, which you can’t get with BigCommerce.
Aside from these key differences, Shopify offers around 100 secure payment gateways compared to 65 of BigCommerce. If you plan to send email campaigns with BigCommerce, you will have to incorporate a third-party app, while Shopify has its own Shopify Email. Furthermore, Shopify has a fully-featured mobile app and international customer support in 21 languages – features missing in BigCommerce.
Shopify appeals to a broad array of people and niches; hence, if you are searching for a customizable and adaptable service that evolves to meet your brand’s requirements, you can’t go wrong with Shopify.
Priced at par with the industry average, Shopify offers services starting at $26 per month with its Basic plan. This plan includes everything necessary for creating an online store, shipping products, and processing payments. More powerful plans Shopify and Advanced, are priced at $71/mo and $266/mo, respectively.
Square Online – For Point of Sale Merchants
| Product Name: | Square Online |
| Official Website: | https://squareup.com |
| Founded: | 2009 |
| Number of Websites: | 88,822 |
| Complexity: | Complex |
| Free plan: | Yes |
| Paid plan: | From $29/mo |
Mostly known for its point of sale and payment processing solutions, Square Online also introduces quite a powerful store builder. In addition, it offers a feature-rich eCommerce platform with a free plan and an all-in-one setup.
Why Square Online Can Be a Good BigCommerce Alternative
Square Online is a decent BigCommerce alternative for several reasons. Perhaps the primary feature, however, is how easy it is to sync an inventory with offline equipment. It allows users to keep track of everything they sell offline and online without being obliged to upgrade the introductory plan.
Additionally, Square Online provides users with some wonderful bonus features for specific industries, such as tools for managing a team they have multiple people to work with, bookings for a restaurant, etc. Square Online also offers multi-channel marketing capabilities, which a BigCommerce user shouldn’t expect.
Another great thing about this BigCommerce alternative is the free plan. If BigCommerce offers only a free trial, while all other plans are not affordable, Square Online users get a lifetime free plan. Surely, it’s limited, but a startup or a small business can get along with it quite well.
Other than these, Square Online won’t surprise a BigCommerce user since the latter prevails over it in many aspects. Anyway, the fact that Square Online offers to get started for free already speaks for itself. The pricing plans are Plus at $29/mo and Premium at a custom price based on which tools you want to include.
Ecwid – For Existing Website Owners
| Product Name: | Ecwid |
| Official Website: | https://www.ecwid.com/ |
| Founded: | 2009 |
| Number of Websites: | 949,571 |
| Complexity: | Medium |
| Free plan: | Yes |
| Paid plan: | From $15/mo |
Ecwid has acquired the right to be called one of the simplest products in the eCommerce site-building market. If you are searching for a highly flexible sales solution, Ecwid can be great for scalable growth. It’s especially great for existing website owners and small businesses.
Why Ecwid Can Be a Good BigCommerce Alternative
Ecwid is actually a simple yet effective open-source plugin to be attached to an existing site on Drupal, WP, or another platform of the type. Accordingly, with this site-building tool, you simply embed eCommerce in your existing site and do not build it from scratch. This is an advantage not only over BigCommerce but also over most other website-building software.
Setting up and running an online store with Ecwid is nothing like BigCommerce. In fact, it offers some of the easiest ways of starting selling online. With BigCommerce, the ease of use can be experienced only when creating a basic online store, while customizing anything becomes tedious and complicated. Meanwhile, with Ecwid, novice users and non-programmers can use the full functionality seamlessly.
Another feature with which Ecwid prevails over BigCommerce is the list of available integrations. Ecwid offers way better options via Stripe Payments, LiveChat, LiveAgent, PayPal, Freshbooks, and many others. BigCommerce appears somewhat limited in this, introducing most of the tools their users need via the in-built form.
And last but not least, the advantage of this popular BigCommerce alternative is the availability of a free plan. Creating and running a small online store with basic functionality is entirely free. More advanced plans, Venture, Business, and Unlimited, are priced at $14.08/mo, $29.08/mo, and $82.50/mo, respectively.
Squarespace – For Superior Website Designs
| Product Name: | Squarespace |
| Official Website: | https://squarespace.com |
| Founded: | 2003 |
| Number of Websites: | 2,536,744 |
| Complexity: | Medium |
| Free plan: | No, free 14-day trial |
| Paid plan: | From $12/mo |
Squarespace is the leader in the website-building software market in terms of design. This is the service that can make your online store shine with style. Moreover, Squarespace carries probably the lowest prices in the industry, and yet, one won’t find it cutting any corners in terms of features.
Why Squarespace Can Be a Good BigCommerce Alternative
Squarespace provides some specialized extras for professionals like bloggers, musicians, artists, etc., thus, making it a worthwhile alternative to BigCommerce. It’s a great option for those users who focus on the aesthetic appeal of their website, not less than the eCommerce functionality. And this is the primary advantage of Squarespace over BigCommerce. The superior designs, gorgeous templates, and website customization are unmatched.
Another feature making Squarespace a good BigCommerce alternative is the provision of a free custom domain upon registering for an annual plan, even if you choose the starting Personal plan. BigCommerce has no such offer.
And finally, Squarespace differs from BigCommerce in its pricing. When BigCommerce is available starting at $29.95/mo, Squarespace offers services at only $16/mo. The difference is more than avid. The cheapest Personal plan includes a free custom domain for a year, templates to fit any niche, SEO tools, 30-minute video storage, custom merch, basic site metrics, audience management, and much more. Pricier Squarespace plans are Business at $23/mo, Commerce Basic at $27/mo, and Commerce Advanced at $49/mo.
Shift4Shop – For Better Value at the Cost
| Product Name: | Shift4Shop |
| Official Website: | shift4shop.com |
| Founded: | 1997 |
| Number of Websites: | 23,235 |
| Complexity: | Average |
| Free plan: | Yes |
| Paid plan: | From $29/mo |
Shift4Shop is another booming name in the website-building industry. Despite its contradicting fame (some users call it all doom and gloom while others find it highly functional), this eCommerce site-building solution has acquired the right to compete with BigCommerce thanks to its impressive backend.
Why Shift4Shop Can Be a Good BigCommerce Alternative
Shift4Shop is a wonderful option for budding business owners due to some features ranging from store optimization and drop shipping support to comprehensive admin capabilities and rare features like affiliate marketing.
Although BigCommerce and Shift4Shop both come richly packed with in-built features (even more than other giants like Volusion or Shopify have), the in-built functionality of Shift4Shop is even larger. For instance, the company includes daily data backups of the whole store. At the same time, BigCommerce leaves making backups to users (though paid third-party plugins are also available) – if you have no technical knowledge on how to do that, you will be on the losing side.
Furthermore, Shift4Shop features more than 160 payment providers vs. BigCommerce’s 60. This plays for Shift4Shop when an online merchant plans to sell internationally.
Another Shift4Shop advantage is the control you get over the pricing availability on a per-customer basis with Customer Group rules. Retail customers will buy individual products at regular costs, while wholesale consumers get bulk discounts. With BigCommerce, you wouldn’t be able to hide bulk pricing from non-wholesale consumers – you would have to create a different product.
When looking at plan pricing, everything else is put into context, especially when small businesses on a budget face the BigCommerce vs. Shift4Shop dilemma. Shift4Shop offers its users a lifetime free End-to-End plan with full functionality and not just a free trial in its recently revamped eCommerce pricing model. So if you manage to process a minimum of $500 per month with your Shift4Shop store, the monthly eCommerce platform is free.
The highest pricing plan here is more affordable on a similar tier compared to BigCommerce. Shift4Shop plans are Basic Store at $29/mo, Plus Store at $79/mo, and Pro Store at $229/mo.
WooCommerce – For Enterprise-Level Businesses
| Product Name: | WooCommerce |
| Official Website: | https://woocommerce.com |
| Founded: | 2011 |
| Number of Websites: | 37,447 |
| Complexity: | Complex |
| Free plan: | Free plugin |
| Paid plan: | Hosting - from $2.95/mo |
WooCommerce is an open-source WP plugin that enables WordPress users to sell online. Therefore, if you already have a WP website and want monetization, integrating WooCommerce is the best decision.
Why WooCommerce Can Be a Good BigCommerce Alternative
The primary difference between these two solutions lies in the core – WooCommerce is a WP plugin that needs to be installed, while BigCommerce is a hosted SaaS eCommerce solution. With WooCommerce, you are the only owner of the platform from your customers’ sensitive data to order details. You can choose whichever eCommerce hosting provider you like, and the platform won’t tie you to any obligations or third-party rules.
BigCommerce is self-hosted, meaning you aren’t the only owner of the hosted space: you share it with other BigCommerce stores.
Another distinct feature that makes WooCommerce a worthy alternative to BigCommerce is that it is a great choice for both small to medium-sized eCommerce Stores and enterprise-level virtual stores to handle thousands of transactions and around 100,000+ products per minute. Meanwhile, BigCommerce is good only for start-ups and small businesses. If you plan to scale up your store, consider an open-source variant, such as WooCommerce.
The quantity of payment options of WooCommerce rises above 100 while BigCommerce has around 60 to 65.
And finally, the biggest perk of WooCommerce is its free nature. WooCommerce and its CMSWordPress, are both completely free and have no pricing plans. There are also no hidden fees. The only payments you have to make are hosting (which costs several dollars a month) and plugins (if you find them necessary).
Big Cartel – For Businesses on Budget
| Product Name: | Big Cartel |
| Official Website: | bigcartel.com |
| Founded: | 2005 |
| Number of Websites: | 80,219 |
| Complexity: | Complex |
| Free plan: | Yes |
| Paid plan: | From $12/mo |
Big Cartel is another widely used eCommerce solution for all businesses, regardless of their size or niche. It’s been designed to provide its users with everything necessary in a simple package so that a user spends little time on store management and more time getting customer payments.
Why Big Cartel Can Be a Good BigCommerce Alternative
The comparison of Big Carter and BigCommerce is generally in favor of BigCommerce. However, there are a couple of points that make Big Cartel not a bad alternative to BigCommerce.
Perhaps the only major advantage of Big Cartel as a BigCommerce alternative is the affordable pricing. In fact, for “modest” purposes that involve selling only up to five products, Big Cartel offers a free Gold plan. The latter offers such capabilities as selling online & in person, offering discounts & running promos for consumers, shipment tracking, as well as sales tax autopilot, free customizable themes, real-time statistics, etc.
Other than this, there are three advanced plans – Platinum, priced at $9.99/mo (to sell up to 50 products), Diamond at $19.99/mo (to sell up to 250 products), and Titan, priced at $29.99/mo (to sell up to 500 products).
IM Creator – Great Option for NonProfits
| Product Name: | IM Creator |
| Official Website: | https://imcreator.com |
| Founded: | 2011 |
| Number of Websites: | 8,080 |
| Complexity: | Easy |
| Free plan: | Yes |
| Paid plan: | From $8/mo |
IM Creator is one of the newest website-building platforms in the market. And yet, it has gained some serious traction by offering ease of use, decent functionality, robust SEO tools, and a lifetime free plan.
Why IM Creator Can Be a Good BigCommerce Alternative
IM Creator is a good BigCommerce alternative as long as you don’t have sky-high expectations from an affordable website builder. Making a side-by-side comparison of IM Creator and BigCommerce, we have to pinpoint the perfect mobile application that’s great for building a website irrespective of the industry. This is a feature that BigCommerce developers have overlooked.
What IM Creator can boast of vs. BigCommerce is the premium built-in SEO features package. Thanks to this functionality, users will find your site or online store easier. There is also an option to hide the site from all search engines to keep it private.
Both BigCommerce and IM Creator support a large number of languages, yet they have only English in common. IM Creator also supports Dutch, Swedish, Turkish, and Polish – all missed by BigCommerce.
BigCommerce is web-based and supports iPhone/iPad, Android, Mac, Windows Mobile, and Windows devices. IM Creator also covers Linux.
And the biggest IM Creator perk is its free plan, geared to students, artists, and nonprofits (in comparison, BigCommerce offers three months of free use for nonprofits). The paid Premium Account and Unlimited Licensed & Whitelabel are priced at $8/mo and $350/mo, respectively.
SITE123 – For Building a Simple Personal Site
| Product Name: | SITE123 |
| Official Website: | https://site123.com |
| Founded: | 2015 |
| Number of Websites: | 27,209 |
| Complexity: | Easy |
| Free plan: | Yes |
| Paid plan: | From $10.80/mo |
SITE123 can be an ideal solution for individuals and businesses searching for a basic site that will run lightning-fast with minimum fuss and expense. It offers pretty great value for money and doesn’t require coding knowledge or experience – something every second website owner looks for. Whether SITE123 is a good alternative to BigCommerce, we shall reveal it immediately.
Why SITE123 Can Be a Good BigCommerce Alternative
Most certainly, SITE123 has better templates and website customization options. All templates are mobile-responsive and look elegant, though not flashy. They are especially convenient for personal sites and small businesses.
When it comes to getting the best value for money, SITE123 clearly surpasses BigCommerce. It features the pricing part figured out better with service quality and features taken into account. Furthermore, it has a free plan that allows you to build and publish as many sites as you need and provides 1GB bandwidth and 500MB storage. This is perhaps the only clear advantage of SITE123 over BigCommerce.
Other than this, SITE123 introduces four pricing plans – Basic, Advanced, Professional, and Gold. The cheapest one is Basic, priced at $12.80/mo. It includes a free domain for one year, 10GB storage, and 5GB bandwidth.
Hostinger Website Builder (ex.Zyro) – For Using Premium AI Tools
| Product Name: | Hostinger Website Builder |
| Official Website: | hostinger.com |
| Founded: | 2019 |
| Number of Websites: | 53,643 |
| Complexity: | Average |
| Free plan: | Unlimited |
| Paid plan: | From $2.79/mo |
Hostinger Website Builder (ex.Zyro) is a cloud-based site-building and eCommerce platform that stands as a robust BigCommerce alternative. It has attracted thousands of users with its superior functionality and reasonable pricing. With all this and ease of use, Hostinger is definitely worth considering.
Why Hostinger Can Be a Good BigCommerce Alternative
Hostinger can be chosen as a BigCommerce alternative thanks to its unique Artificial Intelligence tools. They provide analytics and task automation, which you can’t get with BigCommerce or other website-building platforms. For instance, with the Artificial Writer, you can instantly get topical texts for your site, while the Artificial Heatmap tool can predict which parts of your page will catch your site visitor’s attention. With BigCommerce, meanwhile, you will need to integrate a third-party plugin.
Furthermore, sites built with Hostinger stand out for impressive speed and availability since they are all powered by the advanced server infrastructure of Hostinger. This is the largest web hosting provider in the world.
Another feature in favor of Hostinger is the built-in Google Analytics 360 that ensures accurate data on the number of page visitors, the average time consumers spend on the site, etc. A BigCommerce user will have to integrate this feature.
And finally, the simplified Hostinger pricing system makes it clear for every user to distinguish which plan fits their requirements and website goals the better. Both Hostinger plans have unrivaled cheap prices, with the Website plan costing $2.59/mo and the Business plan costing $3.59/mo. In both cases, you get a 30-day full refund in case of cancellation of a subscription.
Verdict
BigCommerce has tons of alternatives, whether you are looking for an open-source eCommerce platform, a simple WP site, or simply a solution to add selling options to your already operating website. Depending on your budget and requirements, those were the ten most noteworthy and worthwhile options. When choosing your BigCommerce alternative, consider the ease of use (if you are not a coding expert, of course), quality and quantity of features, design flexibility, number of available extensions, and pricing. Be aware that all the reviewed solutions offer free trials to test their functionality yourself.
