Let us have a brief look at Magento and Bigcommerce
What is Magento?
Magento is an on-premise, open source platform which comes in two editions namely Community Edition which is free of cost and Enterprise Edition which is a paid feature. Being open sourced, its software must be licensed and installed on your computer to run.
What is Bigcommerce?
BigCommerce, on the other hand, offers a SAAS (software-as-a-service) platform which is a paid service. It is cloud based which enables you to access your website on any web browser anywhere across the globe and on any device available via an internet connection.
Both Magento and BigCommerce come loaded with various features to help you grow your business, let’s compare and find out which one better serves your needs.
When it comes to creating a thriving webstore both platforms have their own sides which purely favors them according to one's business requirements ....
Magento vs BigCommerce’s Software
The primary difference lies in their software itself.
Since Magento is an open source platform which is free, it provides a ‘build from scratch’ model which allows you to customize the website yourself (provided you have the required knowledge), if not, then either have an in-house IT team to operate or a Magento development company.
BigCommerce, on the other hand, provides an out-of-the-box solution with its ready-made store application which one can customize himself with the minimum knowledge required but since it’s a SAAS, you must buy a plan and pay monthly rents accordingly.
SEO friendly tools
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a process of generating traffic by ranking the site high on search engines.
Magento is considered extremely SEO friendly with its access to Google content API and Google Sitcom along with its ability to make search engine friendly URLs and meta info for products and categories.
In addition to all the above features, BigCommerce provides txt file with product-specific SEO keywords along with Google Shopping support and 301 redirects.
Social media compatibility
Magento development provides various apps and integrations which facilitate sharing and selling on social media but unfortunately doesn’t come with an inbuilt
BigCommerce facilitates selling on Facebook by providing a Social shop program but unfortunately, Twitter and Pinterest connections are not included.
Themes and designs
Magento holds the upper hand here with a variety of free themes to choose from, (thanks to its open source platform) along with highly responsive designs.
BigCommerce store design is also highly responsive but with one minor setback, its limited availability of 42 paid and 16 free themes to choose from.
Expenses
Magento is free to download however setting it up and maintaining it will require IT experts which may cost a little along with extra hosting fee since it doesn’t provide hosting of its own.
BigCommerce comes with a monthly subscription fee which ranges from $29.95 to $199.95 per month but since its out-of-the-box solution, no extra cost is added and it’s self-hosted as well.
Easy Integrations
Magento integration is slightly more complex because of its open source platform and lots of customizable options.
BigCommerce provides a relatively easy integration due to its API which integrates well with other systems and fewer customization options.
Security features
Every e-commerce platform must provide its customers with a safe payment option or in other words, be a PCI compliant hosting provider.
Magento provides a built-in SSL security support, meeting PCI compliance standards is the responsibility of store owners themselves.
BigCommerce, being in charge of hosting and maintaining, provides PCI compliant by default to all its websites.
Payment getaways.
It is a merchant service that authorizes payments processing for e-businesses.
Magento offers several getaway options with ‘zero’ hidden costs.
BigCommerce provides its customers with more than 60 payment getaway options.
Extensions
Magento offers a massive benefit to its clients by providing more than 15,000 extensions and add-ons.
BigCommerce, on the other hand, lacks behind by providing 60 extensions and add-ons on its BigCommerce app store.
Customer Support
Providing customer support to its clients help build trust and strengthens future relations.
Since Magento, being free, does not provide hosting to its websites, one depends on support forums run by the Magento community itself.
With BigCommerce, one gets a dedicated 24/7 support with tons of other customer support services via calling, emailing, chatting etc.
Conclusion
That sure is a lot of information to process and after comparing both, we still aren’t close enough to decide which is better among the two. If we look at the popularity ratio:
Research shows that Magento is popular among large enterprises and BigCommerce ranges from small to medium to large.
Magento and BigCommerce both claim to host approximately 2,00,000 websites.
Magento’s clients include some of the famous brands such as Vizio, Rosetta Stone, Nike etc. BigCommerce too bags some big names including Toyota, Camelbak, Travelpro etc.
I guess at the end it all comes down to your company’s requirements. Both have the potential to turn your dreams into reality. Choose the one that best suits your needs and sees your business prosper.
