Shopping Cart Showdown: WooCommerce vs BigCommerce - Which Platform is Best for Your Online Business?

Selling online comes with many challenges, especially if you're carving out your own way by selling on a webstore rather than on a ecommerce marketplace with an established customer base. Of the many choices you'll make that will shape the way your ecommerce store will look, the shopping cart platform you choose is arguably your biggest one. There is no shortage of options available, but in this guide we'll set our sights on two of the more popular shopping cart platforms: WooCommerce and BigCommerce. This article will pit WooCommerce vs BigCommerce and compare them on everything from costs to customizability, user-friendliness to SEO capabilities, so you can make a more informed decision about which platform is right for your ecommerce store and selling needs.

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Overview: WooCommerce vs BigCommerce

While both WooCommerce and BigCommerce are shopping cart platforms, there are some key differences that matter when choosing the right platform for your store. Before we dive into a point-by-point comparison of WooCommerce vs BigCommerce, we'll take a moment to understand exactly what each platform is, how it came to be, and what makes it unique. In this section, we'll give you a brief overview of WooCommerce and BigCommerce, and compare and contrast some key features that make each of these platforms stand out.

- What is WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is an open-source shopping cart addon for sites built on WordPress. Essentially, WooCommerce provides ecommerce functionality to WordPress websites, providing a platform for listing products and accepting payments. This makes WooCommerce unique among the shopping cart giants – WooCommerce itself is free to install, as is WordPress. That's not to say that there are no associated costs with running a WooCommerce store, of course, but WooCommerce as a platform is 100% free.

- What is BigCommerce?

As opposed to WooCommerce, BigCommerce is an all-in-one shopping cart solution, similar to Shopify. With BigCommerce, you build your entire site from start to finish as an ecommerce website, and you do it all on BigCommerce. As a complete shopping cart product, BigCommerce works on a subscription model, with pricing starting at $29 per month.

- Comparison of Key Features

As two fundamentally different solutions for building and managing a webstore, WooCommerce and BigCommerce have some key differences that are important to consider when deciding on the right platform for your webstore. Below, we'll go over a few general yet important differences between the two platforms, and discuss how they will affect your overall selling experience. Keep in mind that this is a more cursory comparison; we'll cover many of these more in-depth further down.

• Pricing and fees. When you use WooCommerce, you'll need to source your own hosting and do much of your own maintenance. This makes for far less predictable cost of setting up and running your webstore. With BigCommerce, you know in advance how much you'll need to pay for your subscription, and any additional costs are for addons that are also predictably priced.
• Ease of use. While neither platform is particularly difficult to use, getting the most out of WooCommerce does require more technical know-how than BigCommerce. You'd benefit from a cursory understanding of coding on both platforms, but BigCommerce makes it a little easier to set up and run an ecommerce store even if your tech-savviness is limited.
• Seller community. A thriving seller community can be a valuable source of tips and solutions for common and shopping-cart-platform-specific selling problems, and WooCommerce has a far larger user base than BigCommerce. WooCommerce is an open source solution, making it inherently community-focused. That said, BigCommerce has its own (albeit far smaller) established forum and community, with seller forums, Q&As, updates, and more.
• Scalability. Depending on your goals for future growth, the question of ease and cost of scalability is one you should consider before deciding on a shopping cart platform. Both BigCommerce and WooCommerce have the ability to scale, but with BigCommerce you get a more predictable path as you grow. BigCommerce's pricing plan lays it out simply, so you already know what you can expect to pay as your business grows. With WooCommerce, since there are so many moving parts, it's not as easy to predict what costs you can expect as your business grows. As a rule, however, WooCommerce will have more flexibility in pricing, since you can shop around on everything from hosting to store themes.
• Marketing and SEO. As we mentioned above, BigCommerce aims to give you the whole ecommerce package, and as such, it's already got an impressive array of built-in SEO features right out the box. WooCommerce also has an impressively SEO-friendly structure, and while you can likely get similar (or better) results with than you would on BigCommerce, you'll need to download addons for several important SEO upgrades.
• Themes and design. We all want our store to have a unique look and feel, to stand out from the competition and be memorable to shoppers, but many of the themes you'll find on both WooCommerce and BigCommerce are strikingly similar. Both platforms will give you the option to customize themes with a simple, code-free editor, but WooCommerce takes the cake for more extensive customizability without resorting to editing code. With BigCommerce, your ability to customize existing themes will be slightly more limited if you don't want to get into the nitty gritty of HTML.
• Plugins and addons. While plugins and addons are technically optional, there's no way to run a successful ecommerce store without at least a few of them installed. In terms of sheer number of available plugins and addons, WooCommerce stands at the top unchallenged. Most sellers will likely have no trouble finding what they need on BigCommerce's app marketplace, but for highly specific functionality or unique needs, the available BigCommerce plugins and addons may not provide the perfect solution for every problem.
• Multichannel integrations. Like with all things on WooCommerce, multichannel selling requires an addon. There are many addons to choose from, but the most common one only offers integration with a handful of ecommerce marketplaces: Amazon, Etsy, eBay, and Walmart. BigCommerce, on the other hand, offers Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Facebook, and Instagram integration right out of the box. Neither one, however, offers extensive multichannel support for a variety of ecommerce channels like ExportYourStore, which currently supports integration for Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Etsy, Google Shopping, eBid, Poshmark, Depop, Mercari, Shopify, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.

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Pricing and Costs

The costs of setting up and running your store is one of the most important factors to consider when choosing a shopping cart platform. After all, they'll have a direct effect on your bottom line, as well as on your ability to grow your business in the future. Below, we'll examine the different costs of setting up and running a webstore on WooCommerce vs BigCommerce. We'll dive into what you can expect the monthly fees and setup costs look like on each platform, what you can expect to pay in payment processing and transaction fees, what kinds of addons you might need to run your business, and what integrations you can expect from each platform.

1. Setup and Monthly Fees

Setup fees are what it costs to get your store up and running, while monthly fees are the costs of "keeping the lights on," so to speak. As fundamentally different solutions for ecommerce sellers, what makes up these costs will be radically different on WooCommerce vs BigCommerce, and how much you can expect them to be will depend heavily on your selling needs.

- Setup and Monthly Fees: WooCommerce

As mentioned above, WooCommerce is a free plugin for WordPress, which itself is a free CMS (content management system) platform for building websites. While both platforms are free, a domain name and hosting for websites are not. As with all things WooCommerce, costs for both domain name and hosting can vary wildly, from under $20 a month to several thousand. You can purchase a domain directly from a domain registrar or, less commonly, from a private seller. For hosting, your options and costs will vary, and depending on the hosting provider you choose and traffic needs of your site, you could be looking at anything from approximately $10 per month to several hundred. Regardless of what you choose, we recommend taking the following into consideration when sourcing hosting for your site:

• Avoid shared hosting – shared hosting may be cheaper, but it can slow your site and cause connectivity issues with third-party tools. In our experience, opting for a VPS (virtual private server) is the better option.
• Solid customer service – if problems arise, you need to know that your provider can offer you service 24/7.
• Find a hosting provider that's optimized for WooCommerce – many service providers provide hosting plans specifically for WooCommerce stores.
• Ensure that your hosting is secure – your hosting should provide you with necessary security and safety features, like site backups, malware protection, and SSL certificates.

If all this is sounds too technical, we recommend opting for a hosting service known as "managed VPS." This is a fully managed hosting service that neatly squares away all the technical side of hosting for you, so all you need to do is pay a monthly hosting fee. For most newly launched WooCommerce stores, the costs of a managed VPS range between $10 per month to several hundred, depending on their size.

Once you've got your domain and hosting set up, you'll have to design your actual store. Unless you want to design a theme from scratch (or hire a developer to design a theme for you), you'll need to purchase a theme for your store. And while you could opt for a free theme, we recommend against simply because these themes are very bare-bones, offering little in the way of customization and features. In addition to a theme, you will likely need to purchase at least a few optional plugins and addons, including shipping integrations, payment gateways (more on those below), marketing plugins, SEO extensions, and more.

- Setup and Monthly Fees: BigCommerce

Unlike WooCommerce, BigCommerce is designed as a product that offers an all-in-one solution for sellers who want to launch their independent webstore. The hosting and security are covered as part of your subscription plan, and you can opt to keep the default BigCommerce domain name for your store if you prefer not to purchase your own (though we don't recommend it). BigCommerce subscriptions start at $29 per month, with subscription costs increasing based on several factors, including annual revenue and number of required storefronts (for international stores).

Like WooCommerce, BigCommerce offers a selection of free themes and plugins, and while you'll likely need to install a few paid services as your business grows. You'll probably need fewer of these addons and plugins to achieve the same result as you would on WooCommerce, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll end up costing you less!

2. Payment Methods

Once your store is set up and all your products imported, you'll need to set up a way to accept payments from customers who place orders through your store. In order to accept payments, you'll need to set up what's known as a payment gateway. Payment gateways for ecommerce webstores are usually third-party solutions that allow you to safely and securely accept customer payments, and do so in a way that complies with data privacy and other safety regulations. In this section, we'll discuss the default payment gateways on WooCommerce and BigCommerce, understand how much they cost to set up, and discuss additional payment gateway solutions available to you on each platform.

- Payment Methods: WooCommerce

WooCommerce has its own payment gateway plugin, known as WooPayments. WooPayments is free to install, and unlike some shopping cart solutions, WooCommerce doesn't charge a fee for the privilege of not using WooPayments if you prefer not to. While installation (or opting out) is free, you will still need to pay a transaction processing fee every time you receive a payment from a buyer, which we'll cover in the next section.

In addition to WooPayments, WooCommerce has plugins for integration with practically all major payment processing services, digital wallets, and accelerated checkout solutions (along with its very own WooPay). You're not limited to just one, so you can add more payment gateways to cover more payment methods, regions, and currencies as needed. In our experience, however, it's best to aim for the lowest number of payment gateway plugins that provide ample payment options for your buyers, instead of juggling a million payment gateway plugins.

- Payment Methods: BigCommerce

Unlike WooCommerce, BigCommerce doesn't have its own payment gateway, so it doesn't charge a fee for utilizing third-party payment gateways. BigCommerce has over 65 payment gateway plugins at time of writing, with integrations for all major payment gateways, digital wallets, and accelerated checkout solutions. The overwhelming majority of payment gateway integrations are free to install, and incur varying transaction fees based on factors such as the customer's location and payment method, among others.

3. Transaction Fees

As their name implies, transaction fees are charged on a per-transaction basis. Both on WooCommerce and BigCommerce, these fees are paid to the payment processor of a given transaction. Below, we'll go over what these transaction fees typically look like on WooCommerce and on BigCommerce, and help you better gauge how much you can expect to pay in payment processing fees on each one.

- Transaction Fees: WooCommerce

WooPayments is among the most popular payment gateways for WooCommerce stores, and that's because if offers perfect integration with WooCommerce as well as largely competitive rates. If you're based in the United States, you can expect to pay a fee of 2.90% + $0.30 on a credit card transaction in USD, which is equal to Stripe's fees for the same transaction and lower than PayPal's 2.99% + $0.49. This means that, for a $100 payment for example, you can expect to pay $3.20 in fees with WooPayments or Stripe, and $3.48 with PayPal. While WooPayments fees are competitive in the US market, we suggest doing a bit more in-depth research if you're based outside of the US or plan to sell internationally.

- Transaction Fees: BigCommerce

As mentioned in the previous section, BigCommerce doesn't have its own payment gateway plugin. The closest thing it has to a default payment gateway is the PayPal – Powered by Braintree integration, which offers discounted rates for BigCommerce transactions. Instead of the standard PayPal transaction rates of 2.99% + $0.49 for a domestic US credit card transaction in USD, BigCommerce sellers who use the PayPal – Powered by Braintree integration will pay a discounted rate of 2.59% + $0.49. In practice, that comes out to a fee of $3.08 on a $100 payment, rather than $3.48. Thanks to this partnership between BigCommerce and PayPal, this will be the easiest payment gateway to install, but it won't necessarily be the best one for your needs. Like with WooCommerce, we recommend doing your research on the available payment gateway plugins available, and find the one that best meets your specific selling needs.

4. Add-Ons and Integrations

Addons, extensions, plugins, and integrations are crucial components of a successful webstore. Both BigCommerce and (especially) WooCommerce have a wide selection of addons, extensions, and plugins to choose from, so you can add as many functionalities to your store as you need. Integrations for additional sales channels, however, are a slightly different story, with limited options for multichannel growth offered by both WooCommerce and BigCommerce. While it's impossible to go over all possible plugins, extensions, addons, and integrations each platform has, we'll use this section to give you a cursory overview of the available addon options you'll have on WooCommerce vs BigCommerce, and take a moment to understand the multichannel integration options that are available to you by default with each platform.

- Add-Ons and Integrations: WooCommerce

Of all the shopping cart solutions, WooCommerce has the largest selection of plugins, extensions, and addons by far. This is because it's an open source platform, meaning that virtually anyone can develop plugins that work with WooCommerce. Quantity, however, does not equal quantity, and any plugins, themes, and extensions found off the WooCommerce marketplace should be approached with caution. Some popular WooCommerce addon categories include shipping integrations, POD (print-on-demand) tools, SEO and marketing plugins, and more.

In terms of multichannel integration, WooCommerce doesn't come with any by default. Instead, you'll need to download plugins in order to integrate your WooCommerce store with additional selling channels. While there are several extensions for integrating WooCommerce with additional selling channels, few offer as many integrations through such a simple process as ExportYourStore. ExportYourStore's WordPress plugin for WooCommerce stores is simple to install, and offers seamless and instant integration with 10+ marketplaces, social media platforms, and shopping carts.

- Add-Ons and Integrations: BigCommerce

As a proprietary shopping cart product, BigCommerce's selection of plugins, integrations, and addons is more limited than WooCommerce's. But while the selection of BigCommerce addons is considerably more limited, you're not likely to have any trouble finding the perfect extension, plugin, or addon with the functionality you need for your BigCommerce store.

In terms of integrations, BigCommerce comes with more out of the box than WooCommerce. All BigCommerce subscriptions come ready for integration with eBay, Walmart, and Amazon, as well as Facebook and Instagram. In order to integrate with other sales channels – including major ones like TikTok and Google Shopping – you'll need to download, subscribe to, and install an additional integration app for each one. ExportYourStore's BigCommerce integration will be available soon, giving you instant access to 10+ additional sales channels with one simple app that does it all.

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Ease of Use and Customization

Another major consideration when choosing a shopping cart platform to host your webstore is how practical day-to-day store management will be, and how adaptable the platform can be to your needs. After all, daily store management is a make or break for many sellers, as is adaptability to your selling needs, both now and in the future. In this section, we'll explore the ease of use on WooCommerce and BigCommerce, and compare them on several key customization points like design and theme availability, user friendliness, and general customization options.

1. Design and Themes

A webstore's design is about more than just selecting a color palette; it's a way to establish the look and feel of a brand, stand out from the crowd, and give buyers a unique shopping experience they'll love. All this begins with the overall availability of themes, and ends with the ability to tailor and customize those themes and their elements.

- Design and Themes: WooCommerce

As an open source shopping cart solution, WooCommerce has an unbeatable and ever-growing selection of store themes to choose from, both on and off the WooCommerce Marketplace.  There is an endless array of off-marketplace developers offering WooCommerce themes at all price ranges and for all uses, and it's easy to find them with a simple search, but a word of caution – downloading themes (or any plugins) from off-marketplace sources comes with risks. While the majority of reputable themes will be responsive and optimized, it's important to do your research and download only from reputable developers and secure sources.

In terms of tailoring these themes to your needs, WooCommerce enables sellers to customize themes in two ways: with a simple listing designer or by making changes to the code. Furthermore, you'll also have the option to design your own theme from scratch with WooCommerce's store designer.

- Design and Themes: BigCommerce

Like with WooCommerce, you'll find a selection of themes for BigCommerce stores on the official BigCommerce marketplace. That's where the similarities end, however. BigCommerce has a far smaller selection of themes in comparison to the number available for WooCommerce. Just like with WooCommerce Marketplace themes, you can be relatively confident that the themes you find for BigCommerce are responsive and optimized, but it's always a good idea to conduct your own speed and responsiveness check before committing to a theme.

In terms of theme customizability, BigCommerce enables sellers to customize themes in two ways: with a WYSIWYG editor and editable code for developer-level edits. This gives you flexibility in theme customization, just like WooCommerce, but you'll need developer-level tech know-how in order to create your own theme from scratch.  

2. User-Friendliness and Ease of Navigation

For every online store, day-to-day store management will involve directly interacting with your shopping cart platform of choice regularly to do anything from updating product listings to running promotions and sales. For this reason, a platform's user-friendliness and ease of navigation are often major considerations for online sellers. Below, we'll take a step back and examine the ease-of-use of WooCommerce vs BigCommerce, and help you gain a better understanding of which one might be better for your level of technological aptitude and selling needs.

- User-Friendliness and Ease of Navigation: WooCommerce

As discussed earlier, WooCommerce is an ecommerce plugin for WordPress, a CMS tool designed for people who want to create websites from scratch. This makes WooCommerce itself only a partial solution for selling online – you still need to buy hosting, purchase a domain name, download WordPress, and install WooCommerce just to get started. All this to say, WooCommerce – at least in its low-cost, DIY version – is generally aimed at more tech-savvy users who don't need look up what a domain name is and what it means to purchase hosting. As such, users with more in-depth tech knowledge (or those who can hire it) will get more out of WooCommerce than those with limited tech-savviness.

In line with this target audience, WooCommerce has a slightly more "techy" look and feel to it in comparison to BigCommerce. This can take some time to get used to, and might be intimidating to new users who've never used WordPress before. Compared to BigCommerce, WooCommerce's interface is slightly more convoluted and a little less intuitive. In short, while you absolutely don't need to know how to code in HTML and CSS to use WooCommerce, having or hiring that knowledge can definitely help you get more out of the platform.

- User-Friendliness and Ease of Navigation: BigCommerce

As a paid shopping cart solution for sellers with all levels of technical aptitude, BigCommerce puts specific emphasis on user experience. Its interface is meant to be simple to navigate and intuitive, making it easy to work with for all kinds of sellers. Things are generally easy to find and the interface uncluttered, including only necessary notifications and omitting anything that isn't essential. And while it generally offers a product that is less coding-focused, BigCommerce still makes the option available for sellers who wish to develop their own themes, apps, and plugins.

3. Customization Options

The ability to customize your webstore is key to making it stand out from the crowd and work exactly how you need it to. Ecommerce stores have many moving parts, so customizing an ecommerce store can mean something a little different for each individual store. Each seller will value certain customizations over others, in line with the needs of their store. In this section, we'll review the main store customization options available on WooCommerce vs BigCommerce, and highlight which customizations each platform is lacking.

- Customization Options: WooCommerce

When it comes to customization, WooCommerce is unmatched among the major shopping cart platforms. Virtually every aspect of a WooCommerce store is essentially endlessly customizable – the look and feel of your theme and storefront, the speed of your site, popups and notifications, and even the way you list your products, down to minute details and custom attributes. WooCommerce can also support a theoretically unlimited number of store fronts, making it easier to scale your business and expand to new locations as you grow. But while everything is customizable in theory, in practice you'll need the help of a WooCommerce developer for more extensive or complex customizations.

- Customization Options: BigCommerce

BigCommerce is decidedly less customizable than WooCommerce, but still significantly more customizable than the third major shopping cart platform, Shopify. BigCommerce allows you to customize things like themes, pages, and overall store appearance, but functionality customizations – like changing how your checkout looks and functions – are more limited. Specialized customizations, however, like integrations for more niche sales channels, can be far more challenging due to API rates and other limitations. Furthermore, managing multiple storefronts on BigCommerce is tied directly to the plan tier you choose, and you may find yourself unable to expand to new markets due to unjustifiable scaling costs.

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Marketing and SEO Capabilities

Marketing and SEO capabilities are integral to your webstore's selling success. They enable you to reach your customers, get seen by interested shoppers, increase your sales, and ultimately grow your business. Both marketing and SEO on each respective platform warrant their own article, but in this section we'll take a generalized look at the built-in SEO features and marketing capabilities of WooCommerce and BigCommerce.

1. Built-In SEO Features

SEO is all about visibility, both for your products and for your store, and it's a multifaceted process that spans almost every aspect of building and managing a webstore. When you invest in your store's SEO, you increase the chances of shoppers finding it when they're looking to make a purchase. Below, we'll go over the built-in SEO features included in WooCommerce and BigCommerce. Note that additional and more specific SEO features can be added on with plugins and extensions to both platforms, and which ones you choose will depend on your store's specific needs.

- SEO Features: WooCommerce

By default, WooCommerce stores have an SEO-friendly URL structure that allows you to create keyword-rich permalinks for your products. Furthermore, you'll have full control over the metadata of every page of your site, enabling you to fine-tune each product page for maximum visibility. The majority of WooCommerce's themes are also optimized for speed and mobile responsiveness, key components for successful search engine optimization. Finally, WooCommerce's already robust SEO capabilities can be expanded and fine-tuned with all major SEO plugins and extensions, which gives you the option to even further invest in your store's SEO functionality and increase its visibility and performance.

- SEO Features: BigCommerce

BigCommerce, too, has an impressive selection of built-in SEO features that enable sellers to build and launch an SEO optimized store. Like WooCommerce, BigCommerce's URLs are optimized and designed to allow sellers to create keyword-rich URLs for their product pages. Most BigCommerce themes are also mobile responsive, and many have been streamlined for speed and better SEO performance, though in our experience it's wise to do your own speed checks before committing to a theme. Where BigCommerce offers a bit more out of the box than WooCommerce is security and SSL certification. While WooCommerce requires you to source this yourself, all BigCommerce stores come with SSL certification, which contribute to your store's ranking in searches.

2. Marketing Tools

Marketing is an integral part of any ecommerce store, whether it's a standalone webstore or a marketplace-based one. A good marketing strategy increases brand visibility and awareness, attracts repeat buyers, and, most importantly, drives sales. Below, we'll take a look at the built-in marketing tools available on WooCommerce vs BigCommerce. Keep in mind that like SEO, marketing encompasses a wide range of practices and functionalities, which can be added to and expanded with addons and extensions both on WooCommerce and BigCommerce.

- Marketing Tools: WooCommerce

WooCommerce offers an impressive selection of built-in marketing tools out of the box. WooCommerce's marketing capabilities include:

• Coupons and discounts. Create discount codes or run sales on certain products, product categories, or on your entire store. Promotional sales options range from percentage discounts to minimum purchase perks and more.
• Recommended products. Set up recommended products to cross-sell and upsell to existing or potential customers.
• Integrate with Google Ads and Facebook Ads. WooCommerce integrates with Google's and Facebook's advertising programs right out the box, enabling you to launch wide-reaching ad campaigns.

Additionally, there are a variety of WooCommerce plugins that offer key marketing features like email marketing campaigns, abandoned cart recovery, and affiliate marketing functionality.

- Marketing Tools: BigCommerce

BigCommerce offers many of the same built-in marketing tools as WooCommerce, plus several that WooCommerce doesn't, at least not without the help of extensions. Some of BigCommerce's main marketing tools include:

• Discounts and coupons. Like WooCommerce, BigCommerce allows you to create a variety of custom discount codes and promotional campaigns for products or entire stores. You can offer percentage-based discounts, fixed-price discounts, and more.
• Abandoned Cart Recovery. BigCommerce offers built-in automated abandoned cart recovery notifications that sends reminder emails out to customers who leave items in their cart without completing checkout.
• Product Reviews and Ratings. Built-in customer product reviews and ratings are a valuable tool for increasing customer trust and boosting sales. Reviews can be integrated into the product pages, which is beneficial for SEO.
• Gift Cards and Loyalty Programs. BigCommerce has built-in support for gift cards, a useful tool for fostering customer loyalty and retaining returning customers.
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Tools. Use built-in tools to manage and optimize search engine marketing campaigns like Google Ads.

Additionally, like with WooCommerce, BigCommerce's marketing functionalities can be significantly expanded with the help of addons to create and run email marketing campaigns, affiliate marketing, and social media promotions.

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Customer Support and Resources

As a seller, you'll inevitably find yourself needing support from your shopping cart platform. Whether it's a bug that needs resolving or assistance with store functions, at some point all sellers need a little bit of help. Some technical difficulties are bigger than others, but all have the potential to cost you sales and could even prove devastating to your bottom line. Below, we'll review the customer support and resources you can expect to receive from WooCommerce vs BigCommerce, and help you choose the one that's right for your based on what level of support you'll need.

1. Community and Resources

When you encounter a problem with your webstore, your fist stop will likely be a browse through your platform's documentation. If you cannot find a solution there, your next stop will likely be your community of fellow sellers to see if anyone has encountered a similar issue and was able to solve it. Below, we'll do a quick review of the available resource and seller community for WooCommerce vs BigCommerce, so you know what to expect from each platform before committing to either one.  

- Resources & Community: WooCommerce

WooCommerce has extensive documentation, complete with detailed tutorials that walk you through every step of your store setup, and troubleshooting guides to help you address any issues yourself. Plus, since WooCommerce holds the lion's share of live ecommerce stores (with over 6.6 million webstores running on WooCommerce at time of writing), the WooCommerce community is extensive and offers a wealth of resources including webinars, courses, and guides, plus a variety of communities for sellers and developers alike on Slack, Github, and even in-person events.

- Resources & Community: BigCommerce

BigCommerce has a much smaller share of the ecommerce niche, with significantly fewer stores running on BigCommerce than on WooCommerce. As such, and due to the fact that it is a shopping cart product rather than an open-source shopping cart solution, its seller community is significantly smaller. Nevertheless, the BigCommerce Knowledge Base includes thorough tutorials and guides that will walk you through everything from customizing your store's theme to creating multiple storefronts. Furthermore, the BigCommerce Community has plenty of active users, with forums for Q&A, groups, and updates.

2. Seller Support Options

If documentation and seller forums aren't solving your problem, you'll need to contact your platform for support. Usually, seller support is where you turn when you have a problem that you cannot solve, or an urgent issue that needs instant resolution. In the latter, time is of the essence, and the availability and response times of seller support will directly affect your sales. Below, we'll go over the available seller support avenues you'll have on WooCommerce and BigCommerce.

- Seller Support: WooCommerce

WooCommerce has two avenues for seller support: email and live chat. Not all sellers will have access to both avenues, and for some problems (like those related to plugins) you may not be able to get support from WooCommerce at all. Since WooCommerce is not a paid service, so its support is a bit less centralized than BigCommerce's or other shopping cart products. If you use paid Woo products, you will be able to rely more heavily on Woo support than if you choose to use only third-party plugins.

- Seller Support: BigCommerce

BigCommerce offers seller support via phone, email, or live chat. Getting support on BigCommerce is significantly more straightforward than on WooCommerce, since all support is provided by BigCommerce itself. Its ticketing system is similar to marketplace tickets like those on Amazon or Walmart, with sellers getting access to their ticket history and open tickets directly on their store's interface.

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Security and Reliability

When you sell online, a store is that is both secure for your customers and reliable for you is of utmost importance. A secure store safeguards your customer's data and keeps their privacy protected, while ensuring that your selling data is backed up and encrypted. Furthermore, a reliable store is one that doesn't experience downtime or slows down due to server issues, doesn't glitch, and consistently behaves in the way it was designed. Below, we'll take a look at what these things mean in practice, and understand what you need to know when selecting a platform to host your webstore.

SSL Certificates

While the term "SSL certificate" might sound a bit too tech-y for many ecommerce sellers, all you really need to know about SSL is that it's a way to ensure that your ecommerce store operates securely. In a bit more detail, SSL certificates provide encryption for the data that customers enter on your site, and help browsers (i.e. Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc.) verify that the website your customers reach is really your website and not another website impersonating your store.

While SSL certificates are important to have for all websites, they're absolutely essential for ecommerce stores. This is because they are required for a secure HTTPS checkout, which gives buyers peace of mind when shopping with you by encrypting their payment details and other information and keeping it safe. So how do you get an SSL certificate for your ecommerce store? As you might have guessed, the process will be different depending on whether you choose to set up your store on WooCommerce or BigCommerce.

On WooCommerce, since you'll be sourcing your own hosting, you'll need to source your own SSL certificate. Most hosting providers offer SSL certificates as part of their hosting plan at no extra charge, but you can also opt to get your site's SSL certificate from a third party. Free services like LetsEncrypt.org offer free SSL certificates that are compatible with many hosting providers, while paid services like Cloudflare provide SSL certificates at a cost.

On BigCommerce, SSL certificates are included with your subscription, so you don't have to make sure they're provided with your hosting or source a free or paid certificate from a third party.

Data Protection and Backup

Having a backup of your ecommerce store can save you a lot of heartache, frustration, and lost sales if something goes wrong. As the saying goes, it's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it, which is why we recommend getting into the habit of regularly backing up your webstore. How you'll do this will look a little different on WooCommerce vs BigCommerce, but the underlying principle remains one and the same – keeping an up-to-date copy of your store saved somewhere safe in case something happens to your data.

On WooCommerce, you have three approaches to creating a backup of your store: manually, with a backup plugin, and with your hosting provider. Good hosting providers (though far from all) will automatically back up your entire store regularly, which is important to have. In our experience, however, it's best to have your own backup in addition to this automatic store backup, especially before making any major changes like installing a new plugin, changing your theme, or updating to the latest version of WooCommerce. To do this, you can either manually back up your store by transferring its files to an additional, secure server by use of an FTP, or use a third-party plugin. We recommend the latter, since third-party plugins can also be set to run and back up your store at regular intervals, so you don't have to deal with backing up your store manually.

BigCommerce won't automatically back up your store, and you should not rely on it to keep a copy of your store's data. On BigCommerce, you have two backup options: manual backup, or backup via third-party plugin. With the former, you'll need to manually back up individual aspects of your store one by one, as outlined in BigCommerce's store backup tutorial, and save them in a secure location. You'll need to do this regularly to ensure that your backups are up to date, and ahead of any major updates or changes. Another option is to enlist the help of a third-party plugin to back up your store's data. Like on WooCommerce, plugins like this can be set to run automatically to back up your store at regular intervals, eliminating any hands-on time for creating store backups.

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Scalability - Which Platform is Best for Your Business?

For many sellers, scalability is not the first thing they take into consideration when selecting a shopping cart platform to host their webstore. It seems like a far-off consideration, and many times it's overlooked in favor of more pressing matters like those discussed above. But scalability is an important consideration for all businesses, even if your growth plan is long-term, and even if it hinges on theoreticals and hypotheticals (because truthfully, all growth plans do). Or to put it another way, don't let your platform be the stumbling block on the road to growth for your business.

In this section, we'll examine WooCommerce and BigCommerce in terms of suitability for large and small businesses, and help you understand which platform is best suited for your business based on its current size. We'll also explore the potential for growth on each respective platform, so you can gauge which platform will best suit your plans for growth in the future.

1. Small Business vs Large Business

Selecting the right shopping cart solution will be a little different for different sized businesses. The size of your business dictates many things about the way it's run – just like you couldn't run a multinational operation out of your garage, you can't do it on just any shopping cart platform.

WooCommerce is our pick for the one platform that works for both, since many of the functionalities needed for either small or large businesses are added independently of the platform itself. Things like hosting and number of storefronts are scalable independently of WooCommerce itself, making the platform suited for all sizes of businesses. Its one major drawback for most smaller businesses, however, is the fact that it takes some access to technical knowledge to set up. Not everyone just knows how to source hosting and SSL certificates, and when you're just starting your ecommerce business, learning these things from scratch may be a bit too much to handle.

BigCommerce, on the other hand, offers tailored solutions for multiple sizes of businesses. Each subscription tier increase is meant for an increasingly larger store, especially in terms of sales value and number of storefronts. For large businesses, the upper tiers may begin to feel a little restrictive and perhaps even a bit overpriced for what they offer. The main costs of running a larger business will inevitably dwarf the $299+ monthly subscription fee for Pro and Enterprise plans, but that's not an expense you can scoff at. Ultimately, many larger businesses do a regular cost-benefit analysis of their expenses, and many find that at the higher end of BigCommerce's subscription plans, the costs simply aren't worth the value.  

2. Growth Potential

Both BigCommerce and WooCommerce give you a way to grow your business on their respective platforms. BigCommerce offers tiered plans, and WooCommerce is inherently customizable and scalable. Nevertheless, there are some key factors that could affect your business's growth.

For starters, BigCommerce's seller subscription plans are intrinsically tied to your revenue in the trailing 12-month period. BigCommerce automatically upgrades your subscription whenever your revenue reaches your tier threshold, but it does not downgrade your subscription plan automatically if your sales fall. For that, you'll need to reach out to the billing team yourself.

WooCommerce, on the other hand, has no such tier system, as it is not a shopping cart product. Instead, you'll need to coordinate WooCommerce's many moving parts when planning your store's growth. For example, you'll want to set up hosting with a provider that can scale your hosting plan to accommodate your growing store.

Both of these platforms have one obvious growth limitation, however: they only allow for real growth on their own platform. For true growth, ecommerce sellers will often opt to diversify their selling channels and reach more buyers than they would be able to reach with only a webstore. With ExportYourStore, you're able to do just that by taking your WooCommerce or BigCommerce store and integrating it with new sales channels, such as eBay, Amazon, Etsy, Walmart, Facebook, and more.

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Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways: WooCommerce vs BigCommerce

WooCommerce and BigCommerce both offer practical solutions for ecommerce sellers looking to launch their own webstore, but each one does it in a different way. WooCommerce is a free and open-source plugin for WordPress, itself a free and open-source CMS solution. This means that the costs associated with setting up and running a store on WooCommerce vary wildly, as sellers will have the ability – and obligation – to choose their own hosting, storefront theme, SSL certification, and more.

BigCommerce, on the other hand, is a shopping cart product that operates on a subscription model and offers an (almost) all-in-one solution for sellers looking to launch a standalone ecommerce store. BigCommerce makes much of the technical aspect of launching a webstore optional or entirely obsolete, making it a popular choice for sellers who's technical aptitude is limited.

Each platform offers a unique solution for sellers, with each one having its own benefits and drawbacks. Regardless of which platform you choose, you can always change your mind and migrate from one platform to another with ExportYourStore, or choose to integrate your webstore with additional selling channels using ExportYourStore's multichannel integration solution for shopping carts.