Shopify vs BigCommerce
We have built on BigCommerce since 2010 and on Shopify for years alongside it. We migrate stores in both directions, and we would rather keep a client well-served where they are than run a move that solves nothing. That’s an unusual position from which to write this comparison, and it’s why the answer below is “it depends on your store” rather than a winner.
The short version: Shopify wins on checkout, apps and operations. BigCommerce wins on B2B, catalog structure and fees. Which of those matters more is a fact about your business.
Where Shopify wins
Checkout. The best in the industry, heavily optimised, with Shop Pay accelerating returning customers. It converts well without anyone touching it, and that is a meaningful part of what you’re paying for.
The app ecosystem. Larger, and on average better maintained. If your operation depends on a specific tool, it’s more likely to exist on Shopify, and more likely to be well supported.
Channels and POS. Selling through social, marketplaces and physical retail from one back office is where Shopify’s tooling is genuinely ahead. If you sell meaningfully outside your own storefront, this gap shows up daily.
People. More developers, more agencies, more staff who already know the admin. Operational familiarity compounds, and hiring for Shopify is easier.
Where BigCommerce wins
B2B, natively. Customer groups, price lists, quantity breaks, purchase orders and restricted catalogs are built into a standard plan. On Shopify the equivalent lives on Plus, and reaching parity usually means Plus plus apps. If wholesale is a serious part of the business, this is a structural difference rather than a marketing one.
Catalog structure. BigCommerce allows far more variants per product and distinguishes options that create SKUs from modifiers that change price without doing so. Shopify allows three options per product. For configurable products, this is the constraint that bites first — and it’s the defining problem when moving a complex catalog onto Shopify.
Faceted search and large catalogs. Deep category structures and thousands of SKUs are handled better natively. Shopify stores at that scale usually add a search app to close the gap.
Fees. No platform transaction fee on top of payment processing, regardless of which processor you use. Shopify charges a percentage per order unless you use Shopify Payments. At low volume that’s noise; at high volume with a third-party processor it’s a real line item.
The API. More permissive, which matters if you integrate heavily with an ERP, PIM or custom systems. The published platform limits are worth reading before you architect around them, but they’re generous.
The fee arithmetic, honestly
Plan prices are comparable tier for tier. The structural differences:
- Shopify charges a per-order percentage if you use a processor other than Shopify Payments. If you have a negotiated rate with an existing processor, that’s a cost of staying with it.
- BigCommerce charges no platform transaction fee, but plan tiers step up with annual online sales volume — grow enough and you move up a tier whether you wanted new features or not.
Neither is hidden; both are easy to underweight. Put twelve months of your actual order volume through both models before deciding on price.
Product structure — the constraint to check first
If you’re evaluating a move toward Shopify, do this before anything else: find your most complex product and count its meaningful attributes.
Three or fewer, and Shopify’s variant model fits. Four or more — size, colour, material, finish — and it doesn’t, with no setting that reconciles it (the Shopify variant limit, explained). The resolutions (compound options, split products, line item properties) each have merchandising and reporting consequences, and this decision has derailed more Shopify migrations late than any other single factor.
Moving toward BigCommerce, the equivalent check is modifiers: they don’t exist on Shopify, so a BigCommerce catalog that leans on them needs rethinking before a move the other way.
Themes, customization and headless
Both have modern theme architectures — Online Store 2.0 sections on Shopify, Stencil on BigCommerce — that leave merchandising in the merchant’s hands after launch. BigCommerce’s Page Builder plus custom widgets gives marketing teams unusually direct control of layout without a developer.
Both support headless: Shopify with the Storefront API and Hydrogen, BigCommerce with a GraphQL Storefront API and Catalyst. In either case you keep the platform for catalog, cart and checkout and replace the storefront with an application you maintain. The trade — control for maintenance — is the same, and it’s described honestly in our headless commerce guide.
Which one you are
| You’re probably Shopify if… | You’re probably BigCommerce if… |
|---|---|
| DTC, selling across channels or in-store | Wholesale is a serious share of revenue |
| Your catalog fits three options per product | Products have four or more attributes, or you use modifiers |
| A specific app is central to operations | You integrate heavily with an ERP or PIM |
| You want the best checkout and won’t customise it | Transaction fees at your volume are a real number |
| Hiring familiarity matters | You want native faceted search on a large catalog |
If you’re in neither column — deeply conditional pricing, a storefront that needs to behave like software — that’s a headless conversation rather than a platform one.
If you’re moving
We run Shopify to BigCommerce and BigCommerce to Shopify migrations, and we talk clients out of both regularly — usually because the problem they’re solving will follow them. The things that decide these moves are the redirect map (every URL changes, in either direction), the option-and-modifier remodelling, and the app stack.
If you want a second opinion on which column you’re in, tell us what you’re running. We make a living on both, so we don’t mind which answer it is.