Deciding on BigCommerce vs Magento (Adobe Commerce) can be challenging for any entrepreneur who wants to start an online store.
Both platforms are renowned for their robust features and ecommerce capabilities, making it difficult to choose.
BigCommerce is known for its scalability and ease of use, making it ideal for growing businesses looking to expand their online presence without a steep learning curve.
Magento, also known as Adobe Commerce, is a standout choice for businesses that crave control and flexibility in their ecommerce operations. Its powerful customization options and advanced functionality put you in the driver’s seat for managing your online store.
Our detailed BigCommerce vs Magento comparison covers both platforms’ most important aspects, including ease of use, design flexibility, ecommerce capabilities, pricing, and customer support.
This article on Magento vs BigCommerce aims to help you understand which platform best aligns with your business goals, ensuring a successful launch and operation.
BigCommerce is the better option overall if you’re a beginner or a business owner looking for an affordable and easy-to-customize platform. Its user-friendly interface and built-in features make it ideal for those who want to launch and manage an online store quickly without extensive technical expertise.
However, Magento (Adobe Commerce) would suit a large-scale business that requires advanced customization and flexibility. It offers robust tools for complex ecommerce operations, making it a preferred choice for enterprises that need more control over their online store’s functionality.
When comparing BigCommerce vs Magento on pricing, the former with $39/month wins, offering more features at a lower cost. For a competitive price, you get a comprehensive ecommerce solution that’s accessible even for smaller businesses.
Magento offers custom plans based on a client’s needs, so you’ll have to contact the sales team to request a quote. However, there are multiple overhead costs that will increase the total cost. Some examples include web hosting ($14.99-$39.99/month), domain ($10 to $20/year), SSL certificate ($50-$600/year), web developer, and transaction fees (~2%- 4%).
BigCommerce offered a 2.33% visit conversion rate in May-June 2023 according to Incisiv’s study in collaboration with BigCommerce. It has a 20% higher conversion rate than the market benchmark, making BigCommerce’s one-page checkout helpful.
BigCommerce vs Magento (Adobe Commerce): An overview
PCI-certified as a level 1 Solution Provider, CDN and DDoS protection from Layer 3 through Layer, virtual private cloud
Magento did have its strengths, but between BigCommerce vs Magento, BigCommerce stood out. It’s a game-changer for anyone without deep technical expertise.
For the Standard plan: 2.59% + $0.49per credit/debit card transaction
3.49% + 49¢ per PayPal Digital Payments transaction
– Web hosting: $14.99 to $39.99 per month – Domain: $10 to $20 per year – SSL certificate: $50 to $600 per year – Web developer: Hourly cost based on a developer’s expertise – Transaction fees: 2% to 4% per transaction for payment platforms and credit card processing fees
BigCommerce offers a transparent and easy-to-understand pricing structure for businesses looking to get started without the complexities of asking for custom plans. With a starting price of $39 per month, you can have your store up and running quickly and affordably.
The transaction fees charged by BigCommerce are clearly defined, which helps in budgeting and financial planning. For small to medium-sized businesses, this predictability is a significant advantage.
On the other hand, Magento (Adobe Commerce) requires contacting their sales team to get a quote, which can be a deal breaker for businesses looking for upfront costs.
Additionally, Magento’s reliance on third-party services like web hosting, domain registration, and SSL certificates can add complexity and cost. If you don’t have a dedicated development team, you’ll need to hire web developers, which can further inflate the cost. This makes Magento more suitable for large enterprises with bigger budgets and in-house technical expertise.
Ease of use
Winner: BigCommerce
BigCommerce
Magento (Adobe Commerce)
Learning curve
Moderate
Extensive
Customization
High
High
Overall UX score
9/10
8/10
BigCommerce is easier to use and more beginner-friendly than Magento (Adobe Commerce). Despite having an extensive range of features, it doesn’t have a steep learning curve.
With its drag-and-drop feature, you can easily create custom banners, fonts, images, and backgrounds, making the process straightforward and enhancing your experience.
BigCommerce’s higher rating is due to its user-friendly design and features that make managing your store simpler. Key tools like marketing, analytics, and channel management are easy to access, improving the overall experience.
The analytics dashboard provides a comprehensive view of key information in one location. It offers a snapshot of key metrics, such as average cart value, conversion rate, revenue, orders, and customer data. You can also monitor abandoned carts and the entire purchase process, all in one convenient location.
Magento, on the other hand, has a more extensive learning curve.
While it offers more customization options than BigCommerce, it also requires more technical knowledge. Users need to be comfortable with coding or have a development team on hand to fully leverage Magento’s extensive capabilities.
This can be a barrier for smaller businesses or those without in-house technical expertise. Despite its powerful features, the complexity of Magento can make it less accessible, especially for beginners.
BigCommerce is the clear winner, especially if you want something simple and efficient. The platform is perfect for beginners or anyone who wants to create a professional website without dealing with codes and multiple extensions.
You can easily move elements on the page, adjust layouts, and see changes in real-time without any coding, making the process much easier. This straightforward approach is great for creating a professional store and works well for various industries, such as retail, food and beverages, wholesale, and health and wellness.
With 170 themes, BigCommerce offers plenty of design options to suit different industries and preferences, so you will surely find something you like.
BigCommerce’s main theme, Cornerstone, is a flexible and modern template that’s a great starting point for any online store. It’s easy to see why over 41,000 customers use BigCommerce for their business.
Image via BigCommerce
While Magento offers more customization options, the design process is more challenging for those without technical expertise. The platform only offers nine themes out of the box, which significantly limits the variety of design options available compared to BigCommerce.
For users who want a more customized look, additional themes can be purchased or developed, but this typically requires more time, effort, and cost.
Businesses without a dedicated development team need to go through a steep learning curve. The lack of beginner-friendly tools like page design and setting content and images without the code can be significant drawbacks.
Although Magento’s flexibility and powerful features are undeniable, the platform’s complexity can be a hindrance for those looking to get their website up and running quickly.
Image via Magento (Adobe Commerce)
BigCommerce truly excels when it comes to ease of design. With its drag-and-drop editor, even those without any technical experience can create a professional-looking website in no time. Magento, while powerful, requires a more hands-on approach with coding, which can be a hurdle for businesses without technical resources.
When comparing BigCommerce vs Magento in terms of ecommerce features, Magento (Adobe Commerce) pulls ahead. It’s especially great for businesses looking for advanced capabilities and customization. It offers a level of flexibility that is unmatched, particularly in areas like abandoned cart recovery.
With Magento, you get a comprehensive suite of options for adding abandoned cart recovery extensions, unique discounts, managing multiple storefronts, and integrating a wide range of payment gateways with 415 possibilities. This makes it a secure and powerful choice for large enterprises or businesses with complex needs.
All you need to do is enable the extension from the backend, and you’re good to go.
The ability to create unique discounts and handle abandoned carts effectively on both platforms is a significant advantage. Still, Magento’s customizable ecommerce features make it the clear winner in this category.
Magento’s advanced tools and flexibility offer a significant advantage if you want complete control over how your ecommerce site operates.
BigCommerce also offers special discounts and a feature to recover abandoned carts, but it falls short compared to Magento. Regarding payment options, BigCommerce has 65+ choices, which is not as impressive compared to Magento.
Having multiple payment gateways is helpful for businesses in different markets or those needing specific payment methods.
BigCommerce offers essential inventory management, which works well for smaller businesses or those with simple inventory needs. However, if your business grows or has more complex inventory needs, Magento’s advanced inventory management gives you better control.
Robust built-in SEO capabilities, more technical SEO features available without apps
SEO-friendly URL structures, tags, sitemaps, and descriptions, customizable extensions
When comparing BigCommerce vs Magento in terms of SEO, BigCommerce takes the lead. It offers strong built-in tools that make it easy to optimize your online store for search engines.
It has automatic SEO settings, like creating URLs automatically, along with options to customize URLs, improve listings, set up automatic redirects, increase site speed, and easily edit the Robot.txt file.
These SEO features make BigCommerce a great option if you want to manage SEO directly within the platform without needing a lot of third-party apps, especially in the early stages.
Image via BigCommerce
Magento, on the other hand, offers a more flexible but less user-friendly approach to SEO. While it doesn’t provide SEO automation, Magento’s open-source nature means you can implement highly specific and advanced SEO strategies with the help of a developer.
However, this also means that users without technical expertise might struggle to make the most of Magento’s SEO potential. The platform offers metadata, site maps, URL rewrites, and configuring robots.txt but with the help of codes.
It doesn’t have the same level of out-of-the-box SEO tools as BigCommerce, which can be a drawback for those looking to quickly optimize their site.
BigCommerce stands out as the best option, especially for businesses with large inventories or complex product catalogs. You can list up to 30,000 products in your store, making it ideal for businesses that need to manage a lot of products without slowing down.
It allows up to 600 variations (SKUs) per product, which is great for businesses with many product options. Moreover, BigCommerce supports up to 1,000 images per product, perfect for businesses that rely on visuals to showcase their products.
For industries like fashion, electronics, or home decor, where detailed listings with multiple variations and images are important, BigCommerce offers a big advantage. The higher limits on SKUs and images allow businesses to create detailed product listings without any issues.
Image via BigCommerce
Magento, while highly customizable, doesn’t offer these generous out-of-the-box limits. Its flexibility comes with managing large inventories or numerous products. The SKU can go up to 800,000 but may require additional customization and server resources, potentially complicating the setup and maintenance of your store.
While Magento can technically support large catalogs, achieving similar limits to BigCommerce often involves more advanced configurations. This is not ideal for businesses that want a simpler and easier solution.
Customer support
Winner: BigCommerce
BigCommerce
Magento (Adobe Commerce)
24/7 support
Yes
Yes
Live chat
Yes
Yes
Support resources
Multiple
Yes
Phone support
Yes
Yes
BigCommerce has top-notch customer support that’s hard to match. It offers 24/7 customer support, so help is always available whenever you need it. Whether you run into a problem during a late-night update or need help with a new feature, BigCommerce’s round-the-clock support is a real lifesaver.
You can also reach out through live chat or phone, so you can quickly talk to a support executive, which is super helpful when you’re dealing with an urgent issue.
It also has plenty of resources, like guides, tutorials, and community forums, making it easy to find answers to common questions.
This support network is great for businesses of all sizes, whether you’re just starting and need step-by-step help or are an experienced user looking for advanced tips. With both immediate, personal support and a wealth of resources, you’re never left in the dark.
While Magento offers solid support options, it doesn’t quite match BigCommerce’s accessibility.
Magento’s support is typically more suited for larger businesses that have the in-house technical expertise to navigate its complexities. While Magento does provide a range of resources, including documentation and community forums, its support system often requires a more hands-on, self-service approach.
This can be a challenge for businesses that aren’t as technically inclined or those that prefer more direct, one-on-one support.
Security features
Winner: Magento
BigCommerce
Magento (Adobe Commerce)
Encryption for data protection
Yes
Yes
Two-step authentication
Yes
Yes
Anti-DDoS protection
No
Yes
SOC and SIEM
Yes (SOC)
Yes (SOC)
BigCommerce partners with Cloudflare to offer anti-DDoS protection as part of its security and performance suite. This partnership includes SSL termination and static image management, enhancing both security and performance.
The combination of two-factor authentication through an authenticator app, SOC 2 compliance, and Cloudflare’s Anti-DDoS protection makes BigCommerce a more secure choice for businesses that prioritize comprehensive security measures.
Image via BigCommerce
Magento (Adobe Commerce) is a leading platform for security, offering top-tier protection for online stores. As a PCI-certified Level 1 Solution Provider, Magento ensures the highest standards for payment processing security, safeguarding customer payment information with stringent measures.
In addition, Magento provides robust protection against DDoS attacks with CDN and DDoS protection from Layer 3 through Layer 7. This multi-layered defense helps keep your site operational during high-traffic periods.
The use of a virtual private cloud (VPC) further enhances security by isolating your store’s data, reducing the risk of breaches, and ensuring your business’s sensitive information stays secure.
To get Adobe Commerce or Magento Open Source ready for testing when two-factor authentication (2FA) is turned on, adjust the following settings using the command line.
Image via Magento (Adobe Commerce)
Overall, Adobe Commerce offers more robust security features than BigCommerce and wins this round of the BigCommerce vs. Magento comparison.
There has always been a dilemma in BigCommerce vs. Magento, but the choice depends on your business needs. BigCommerce is great for small to medium businesses that want an easy-to-use platform without much technical hassle. Magento is better for larger businesses that need advanced customization and can handle a more complex setup.
2. What are the key differences between BigCommerce and Magento?
BigCommerce is user-friendly with its drag-and-drop editor, making it easy for anyone to create a store. Magento, however, requires coding skills for customization. Also, BigCommerce has clear pricing, while Magento’s costs can be more variable.
3. Which shopping cart is better: Magento or BigCommerce?
For a simple and cost-effective shopping cart, BigCommerce is the way to go. If you need more control and customization options — and have the technical know-how — Magento might be the better choice.
Other helpful resources for you to grow your new store:
Bernard is the Sr. Director of Communications & Creative at Omnisend, with a passion for good research, helping ecommerce businesses with their marketing automation needs, and beating absolutely everyone in Mario Kart 64.
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