For store owners, choosing the right eCommerce platform is never easy. This is particularly true for newbies in the online business realm. The big question is always choosing a hosted solution or an open-sourced one. Lately, in any eCommerce development company, there is a surge in the demand for Magento and BigCommerce development services.
Indeed, Magento and BigCommerce are the two popular eCommerce platforms these days. When it comes to developing an eCommerce website, these two have become big names. But which is better?
Magento Vs. BigCommerce—a Comparison
BigCommerce is a hosted eCommerce platform, such as Shopify and Volusion. At present, it’s home to more than 51,000 online stores across the globe. Some of the big brands, such as Sony, and Toyota, to name a few, are using BigCommerce.
Magento is an open-source platform, such as WooCommerce. It offers several outstanding advantages. Presently, there are over 187,000 store owners that use Magento. A lot of renowned brands worldwide are using the platform to shape their websites, including Coca-Cola, Nike, Ford, Hermes, and so on.
When considering the services of an eCommerce development company, which platform should you choose? Let’s find out what these two have to offer.
1. Usage Ease
A Magento store is hard to set up as well as the steps involved. Extensions could be integrated and customized through eCommerce development services. For developers, it is quite easy, but could be challenging and tough for beginners.
On the other hand, BigCommerce is easy for beginners since it provides a clear dashboard. Moreover, users are provided with step-by-step instructions and even facilitate store owners to manage the shop without technical skills. The platform also has in-built features, including payment gateways and marketing tools, and has more than 100 different paid add-ons that are simple to use.
2. Price
There are three Magento editions, namely, Community, Enterprise, and Enterprise Cloud. No license fees are needed with the Commerce and Commerce Cloud editions. However, they require a hosting fee that could range from $4 to $1000.
BigCommerce has different pricing plans ranging from $29 to $299 and offers a 10 percent additional discount when you pay annually. There are also different packages available with different features to effectively run an online store. Pricing plans for Magento and BigCommerce are somewhat similar.
They provide different packages for beginners to store owners, depending on their requirements.
3. Apps and Extensions
There are several built-in features with Magento, including integrated checkout, payment, catalog management, shipping, and so on. They provide different third-party extensions and have over 5000 available extensions. The feature-rich extensions could be easily integrated at the Magento backend and developed based on various factors, like boosting the customer experience, sales, and more.
BigCommerce has a wide array of built-in features that help store owners perform better. Eventually, it helps minimize abandoned carts and helps boost website performance. It also helps expand the different functionalities of the store as well as supports over 600 applications with unique functionalities.
4. Templates and Themes
One of the most critical steps for an online store is to have an attractive design. Designs help build brand identity and could create a good impression among customers. Both platforms are mobile-friendly and with free design templates.
Magento facilitates customization and creates the store design exactly as one imagined. BigCommerce offers free themes as well as a lot of paid options. The themes do not need much customization and could be easily designed.
5. Payment Methods
By default, Magento offers PayPal and Braintree. Others could be added however via Magento Connect. The payment gateway extensions could be easily added to offer customers different payment options and could incur extra charges.
BigCommerce has around 65 payment gateways for users. Some include PayPal, Square, Stripe, and so on. No transaction fees are associated with BigCommerce plans. You only have to pay credit card rates. The higher your plan is, the less you have to pay for credit cards.
The payment process thus is fast than Magento and does not charge transaction fees. Furthermore, adding payment gateways to BigCommerce is easy since there are no apps required that could charge an additional fee.
6. Security
Security is a must for any online business. Every security patch aims at fixing vulnerabilities as well as helping remove possible risks, keeping eCommerce websites secure. A robust platform, Magento offers the most powerful security features.
The security patches help boost the site’s performance. Magento, being PCI compliant, supports advanced technologies as well, including Zend, and so on. BigCommerce is a PCI level 1 certified and ISO certified platform, which ensures that financial transactions are encrypted.
7. SEO Features
For any eCommerce website, SEO optimization is a must. It helps build trust among customers. Magento stay sat the top when it comes to SEO capabilities all the time. It’s a powerful tool equipped with different default functions and helps as well in optimizing visibility on search engine rankings.
BigCommerce has a lot of advanced features, such as Microdata that are helpful in boosting the look of a website on search engines in an informative way. Also, it facilitates users to access SocialShop, a program that helps post promotions on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.
Conclusion
Magento Vs BigCommerce which is the best? Choose BigCommerce if you are tight on budget, looking for an easy setup and a fast go-live solution. Choose Magento if you value customization and want to build a one-of-a-kind web design and functionality.
