Whether you're an ecommerce veteran who's managed stores raking in millions every month, or you've never managed a store before, the most impactful decision you can make on the success of your business is which ecommerce platform you use. For ecommerce merchants in 2026, there's a whole library of platforms vying for your attention, and two of the most frequently chosen are Shopify and BigCommerce.
BigCommerce recently went through a huge transformation on how it positions itself, and with all of those new updates in place, many brands started to ask "is BigCommerce Better than Shopify?"
As an experienced ecommerce development agency, we have hands on experience working with both platforms. So, let's look at the core features, selling points and limitations of both BigCommerce and Shopify, as well as the general market fit and the types of retailers the platforms are most suited to. Before deciding which is best for you.
But first, a round of introductions is in order.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is a Canadian-Founded ecommerce SAAS platform founded in 2006. Launched due to the founders dissatisfaction with the existing ecommerce products on the market for entrepreneurs, Shopify has maintained it's position as the ecommerce platform for anyone to sell online.
This gained Shopify a reputation as purely a platform for small businesses. However since the launch of Shopify Plus - Shopify's enterprise plan for large ecommerce businesses seeking access to additional features and support - in 2014, Shopify has also become the go to platform for big brands looking to scale their ecommerce operation into the tens and even hundreds of millions.
Some of the most recognisable brands on Shopify includes Birmingham-based ecommerce fitness brand, Gymshark, Iconic british footwear brand, Clarks, and Kim Kardashian's very own, Skims.
Today, Shopify is a complete commerce platform - commerce, not just ecommerce - giving businesses everything they need to sell both online and offline. Millions of ecommerce businesses already rely on it, and as a service provider, Shopify continually innovates to support the merchants who trust the platform. It also recognises that merchants sit at different stages of growth, which is why it offers a range of plans tailored to each, from entry-level stores right through to Shopify Plus.
What is BigCommerce?
BigCommerce is an Australian-founded ecommerce SAAS platform founded in 2009. Formerly trading under the same name as the platform, BigCommerce is now part of a parent company, Commerce.com, which also includes Feedonomics and Makeswift, a full service product feed platform and a drag and drop website builder similar to Webflow.
Some of the most recognisable brands using BigCommerce include On, Mizuno, and Ben & Jerry's.
Despite being the platform of choice for enterprise brands like above, BigCommerce has always had quite an awkward ICP outwardly. With the CEO Brent Bellm stating in 2019 that while Shopify focuses on small businesses and platforms like Magento on enterprise businesses, BigCommerce's sweet spot is somewhere in-between. It aims to build sites for brands with between $1 million and $50 million in revenue.
But despite securing a $64 million investment in 2018 with the intention of pushing into the European market, BigCommerce's usage has been waning for years.
That said, BigCommerce still has real strengths worth considering. Its "open SaaS" approach gives merchants more flexibility - particularly around custom checkout, multi-storefront setups, and API-driven, headless builds. It also has a strong reputation in B2B ecommerce, with built-in features like customer-specific pricing and bulk ordering that many competitors only offer through third-party apps. That flexibility is exactly why so many brands lean on a specialist BigCommerce development agency to get the most out of the platform - the tools are there, but unlocking them properly tends to need real BigCVommerce development experience rather than a drag-and-drop approach.
We recently completed a BigCommerce to Shopify Migration for motorcycle apparel store, Baffle Haus, so we know the platform inside and out. So let's dive into a full platform comparison.
Shopify Vs BigCommerce at a Glance
Unlike other ecommerce platform comparisons, such as Shopify Vs Magento, Shopify Vs WooCommerce, and Shopify vs Wix, the differences between BigCommerce and Shopify aren't as immediately apparent.
When it comes to native features, approach to ecommerce, target consumer, and even the limitations of both platforms, the tech is nearly identical. However, it's when we zoom out and look at how each platform positions itself and seeks to empower merchants that we get the full picture.
And we'll cut to the chase here, Shopify is the clear winner. But why?
BigCommerce gives customers the flexibility to build their store in the way they need to from the beginning, with a big push around building headless, whereas Shopify has always put up some guardrails on what merchants can and can't do. Whilst this may sound like a point in BigCommerce's favour, in reality it showcases Shopify's focus on innovation and allowing them to operate in a lean and agile way.
But that doesn't mean it's going to be 100% right for you. Let's look at the differences and compare the two platforms in full.
Shopify vs BigCommerce: What's the Difference?
Both Shopify and BigCommerce are hosted, SaaS ecommerce platforms, which already puts them in a different bracket to open-source solutions like Magento and WooCommerce. That means both come with built-in SSL certificates and security, both promise 99.99% uptime, both are relatively friendly for non-developers out of the box, and both are optimised for mobile. From a distance, they can look almost interchangeable. It's only once you get into pricing structure, checkout flexibility, and the app ecosystem that the real differences start to show.
Shopify Vs BigCommerce: Use Case
As we touched on above, BigCommerce has historically pitched itself at that awkward middle ground platform - too in depth for a brand-new entrepreneur, but not quite offering the level of complexity you’d want from a fully custom-build. BigCommerce’s strengths lie with mid-market and B2B-heavy merchants: businesses that need customer-specific pricing, bulk ordering, multiple storefronts from a single backend, or a checkout they can rebuild from scratch without upgrading to a premium tier. For merchants set on that kind of custom, API-first build, working with dedicated BigCommerce developers or a specialist in BigCommerce web development agency is usually the best way forward rather than managing it yourself.
Shopify, by contrast, has a much wider scope. It serves everything from a first-time founder selling a handful of products to global brands like Gymshark and Skims processing tens of millions in revenue. Shopify Plus and Shopify Commerce Components give enterprise merchants working with a specialist Shopify Agency the modular, API-driven infrastructure they need, without forcing them to sacrifice the ease of use and speed to market that smaller Shopify merchants rely on every day.
So while BigCommerce can absolutely support a growing business, especially one with complex B2B or multi-storefront requirements, Shopify's breadth means it rarely forces a merchant to "graduate" onto a different platform as they scale. That flexibility, plus a significantly larger ecosystem of apps and partners, gives Shopify the edge.
Shopify Vs BigCommerce: Pricing
Here's where the differences between the two platforms really start to emerge.
Shopify's always presented itself as the accessible option for entrepreneurs, and the costs for their entry-level plans certainly reflect that positioning. And even as your business scales, Shopify's pricing remains competitive compared to other platforms - especially when you look at what you're getting in return.
For scaling ecommerce businesses, the price of your ecommerce platform is going to be a major consideration. Shopify offers several different plans depending on the size of your business. As of 2026, they are as follows:
- Basic - £19/month, aimed at new stores getting off the ground
- Grow - £49/month, for growing businesses that need stronger reporting and more staff accounts
- Advanced - £259/month, for scaling businesses that need advanced reporting and international shipping
- Shopify Plus - from £1,800/month on a three-year term, Shopify's enterprise-grade solution
Transaction fees also scale down as you move up the plans, which makes it worth budgeting for the jump between tiers as your revenue grows.
BigCommerce's pricing looks superficially similar, but works quite differently in practice. As of a June 2026 rebrand, BigCommerce has renamed its plans - Standard became Core, Plus became Growth, Pro became Scale, and Enterprise became Performance - though the underlying prices for the lower tiers stayed the same:
- Core (formerly Standard) - $39/month
- Growth (formerly Plus) - $105/month
- Scale (formerly Pro) - $399/month
- Performance (formerly Enterprise) - custom pricing, typically starting from around $1,499/month
On paper, that's nearly identical to Shopify. The catch is that BigCommerce plans are also capped by your trailing 12-month sales volume, not just by the features you need. Core is capped at $30,000 in annual online sales, Growth at $100,000, and Scale carries a 0.9% overage fee above $33,333 in monthly sales. Cross those thresholds, and BigCommerce will move you up a tier automatically, regardless of whether you actually need the extra features. A successful store humming along nicely on Shopify Basic can just stay there. A BigCommerce store hitting the same revenue on Core can't.
BigCommerce doesn't charge its own platform transaction fee, which is a genuine point in its favour if you're using a third-party payment gateway. However, it has introduced an Open Payment Provider Fee in 2026 of 2% on Core, 1% on Growth, and 0.6% on Scale for any order not processed through an embedded payment provider, which narrows that advantage considerably once you factor it in.
Shopify Vs BigCommerce: Features
In terms of actual features, both Shopify and BigCommerce have a treasure trove of tools that can be used to scale your business. However, the two go about this in different ways.
BigCommerce does offer third-party app integration, but it also builds a lot of common functionality - like customer segmentation, faceted search, and B2B pricing tools - natively into the platform itself. These built-in versions can take some time for users to wrap their heads around, and often benefit from the guidance of an established BigCommerce development company to configure properly, but they do offer increased flexibility once set up. Plus, because BigCommerce is genuinely open at the code level, merchants who want deep customisation - custom checkout logic, headless storefronts, bespoke integrations - can build almost anything, provided they have the in-house team or an experienced BigCommerce agency behind them.
Shopify, on the other hand, only offers some of this functionality built in, leaning instead on its third-party app ecosystem. And that ecosystem is enormous: Shopify's app store is roughly six times the size of BigCommerce's. So chances are, if you need an obscure piece of functionality, Shopify is far more likely to have an app you can integrate in minutes rather than build from scratch.
For ecommerce marketing specifically, Shopify has the edge too, with a wide-reaching stack of integrations covering everything from email marketing with Klaviyo to performance marketing with Meta, TikTok and Google built into the platform via AI.
It’s a trade off of customisation versus speed. BigCommerce gives you more out of the box and more room to build bespoke functionality without bringing in integrations. Whereas Shopify gives you a faster route to market by leaning on its partner ecosystem instead. For most scaling ecommerce businesses, speed to market wins out - but for the merchants with complex and non-standard requirements, BigCommerce's native flexibility can be worth the extra development investment.
Shopify Vs BigCommerce: The Checkout and Payments
One of BigCommerce's most-cited advantages is that its checkout is open source on every plan. Because BigCommerce doesn't gate checkout customisation behind a premium tier, merchants can edit it however they like - custom fields, bespoke logic, complex pricing rules, multi-step B2B approval flows - simply by downloading and modifying the code.
Shopify takes the opposite approach. You cannot edit Shopify's checkout unless you're on the Shopify Plus plan, and it's one of the most common complaints levelled at the platform. However, as a Shopify Agency who’ve worked with countless brands on Shopify Plus, you often won't want to edit the checkout anyway - Shopify's Checkout converts up to 34% better than other ecommerce platforms straight out of the box, and even on Plus, most merchants make light-touch changes (adding a signature field, building in upsells) rather than rebuilding it from the ground up. Additionally, Shopify’s Checkout is complaint with web accessibility criteria out of the box, and any edits could land you a costly fine if this is ignored.
On payments, Shopify natively integrates with over 100 different payment providers, including flexible options like Klarna, and it even has its own payment gateway, Shopify Payments, which supports all major debit and credit cards plus accelerated options like Apple Pay and Google Pay without needing a third-party gateway. There are some limitations - certain product categories like CBD and alcohol are restricted, and chargeback fees can be steep - but it's otherwise a strong, low-friction option for domestic and international selling.
BigCommerce historically had no native payment gateway of its own, integrating instead with providers like PayPal, Stripe and Braintree. It has since introduced BigCommerce Payments, with rates that undercut its own third-party gateway rates the higher up the plans you go. The advantage for BigCommerce merchants is flexibility: there's no restriction on which payment gateway you use, so if you have a specific provider requirement, BigCommerce won't stand in your way.
No real winner here, just different routes for different platforms.
Shopify Vs BigCommerce: Support
As a scaling ecommerce business, the support offered by your platform is going to be key to your continued success and ability to operate on the platform overall.
Shopify's support is available 24/7 via email, phone or live chat, and Shopify Plus merchants are assigned a dedicated merchant success manager for tailored, ongoing support. Plus, Because ecommerce is Shopify's core business - not a side offering alongside other software - the platform is heavily invested in keeping merchants supported and the product improving.
BigCommerce offers a broadly comparable level of support, including live chat and phone support, though it isn't quite as consistently positioned as a round-the-clock service across every plan. Enterprise-level BigCommerce merchants on Bigcommerce’s Performance plam do get access to dedicated account management, similar to Shopify Plus, but this tends to come at an added cost rather than being baked into the performance plan itself.
BigCommerce Pros and Cons
BigCommerce has a lot to offer certain types of merchants, particularly those who need deep customisation or strong native B2B functionality. The main benefits are:
- Open, editable checkout on every plan - no need to upgrade to customise your checkout flow
- No platform transaction fees - you only pay your payment processor's rates (albeit now with an Open Payment Provider Fee on non-embedded gateways)
- Strong native B2B tools - customer-specific pricing and bulk ordering built in, rather than bolted on via apps
- Multi-storefront and headless flexibility - well suited to brands wanting an API-driven, composable build with the right BigCommerce web design company behind them
However, BigCommerce comes with some notable drawbacks too:
- Revenue-based forced upgrades - cross your plan's GMV threshold and you're automatically moved to a more expensive tier, whether you need the extra features or not
- A much smaller app marketplace - roughly a sixth the size of Shopify's, meaning more gaps need to be filled with custom BigCommerce website development rather than an off-the-shelf app
- A steeper learning curve - the built-in flexibility that makes BigCommerce powerful also makes it more complex to configure without support from an experienced BigCommerce developer
- Waning market share - BigCommerce has not recorded a gross profit in the past two years, which raises reasonable questions about long-term platform investment compared to a company like Shopify, which grew revenue by 32% in Q3 2025 alone
Shopify Pros and Cons
Shopify is constantly growing and innovating, taking up more of the ecommerce market share worldwide with every passing quarter. Whilst they market themselves as the platform for entrepreneurs, they're equally focused on serving scaling businesses making multiple millions per year. For businesses at this level, the main benefits are:
- Running your B2B, B2C, and retail locations from one platform
- High flexibility, letting you make edits to your ecommerce website quickly
- High converting checkout, resulting in up to 34% more conversions than other platforms out of the box
- Unparalleled support with hundreds of updates rolling out each year
- The largest app ecosystem of any major ecommerce platform, roughly six times the size of BigCommerce's
All of these Shopify benefits sound great, but that's not to say the platform is without its drawbacks:
- Restrictive admin - making fundamental changes to your Shopify site is difficult without upgrading to Plus
- Checkout customisation locked behind Plus - unlike BigCommerce, where checkout is editable on every plan
- Poor content marketing functionalities - Shopify's blogging tools pale in comparison to other ecommerce platforms
- Shopify locks you into a rigid URL structure, which can hinder organic search performance and make migrating to the platform a challenge
- Your Shopify site relies on a third-party server - usually a non-issue, but there have been infamous occasions where all Shopify sites go down simultaneously
Shopify VS BigCommerce: The Winner?
Shopify: Best for most scaling businesses. Faster to launch, easier to manage day-to-day, stronger checkout conversion, a much larger app ecosystem, and more predictable costs as you grow.
BigCommerce: Best for merchants with complex B2B or multi-storefront requirements who want full control over checkout and storefront code from day one, and who have the budget for ongoing support from a dedicated BigCommerce development cvompany.
For the vast majority of merchants we work with, whether they're just starting out or already doing seven figures a year, Shopify's combination of speed, ecosystem and support makes it the stronger long-term platform. BigCommerce remains a capable, flexible option, but its narrower app store, revenue-triggered plan upgrades, and heavier reliance on custom development mean it increasingly makes sense only for merchants with specific technical requirements that justify the extra investment.
Build your Shopify store with Cake Agency
We're one of the most experienced Shopify agencies in the UK and a trusted ecommerce agency UK businesses rely on. We're a recognised Shopify Plus agency and Shopify Partner, and have built more than 200 ecommerce stores in our near decade as a business. Our team of Shopify experts and Shopify website builders specialises in web design and development for high-volume retailers.
As a full-service ecommerce digital agency and ecommerce marketing agency, we offer everything from Shopify development agency services to ecommerce advertising agency support, content marketing, and Google Analytics setup - making us a go-to ecomm agency for ambitious brands.
Whether you're looking for a digital marketing agency ecommerce solution, an agency ecommerce partner, or a dedicated ecommerce digital marketing agency to handle your full strategy, we're here to help. As one of the best ecommerce marketing agencies for scaling brands, we combine deep platform expertise with proven results.
If your online business is looking to scale, whether you want help migrating to Shopify, managing your current ecommerce store, or help building a new ecommerce website, contact our ecommerce agency team. We'd love to hear from you.
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