Magento vs Bigcommerce: Better Option For 2022 And Beyond

Rajesh Bhimani
6 min readMar 7, 2022

Magento and Bigcommerce are both big names in the eCommerce world. They both deliver outstanding solutions for online businesses. But you cannot choose both of them for a single store, right? There always will be a dilemma, which platform to choose for your design.

The platforms are immensely significant, and stores made at these platforms are doing wonders. But, is your brand niche and target audience the same as the other store? Is your budget and product range similar to your competitors? No! Then how can you choose a platform just because the other business house is using the same?

Selecting a platform for your online store should be solely your decision based on studies and data. In this article, we’ve curated all the benefits and drawbacks of Magento and Bigcommerce. It will help you in choosing a platform between these two gladiators.

Advantages of Magento and Bigcommerce

Both platforms have a bundle of advantages that help proliferate your online business. Let’s have a look at the benefits that both platforms bring to the table.

  • Customization

Magento — Website design, features, products, pages, etc., everything can be customized skillfully with the help of a professional experienced developer. Magento Web Development provides an enticing and engrossing website with the most pleasing user experience.

Bigcommerce — It does not require any technical skill to set up the website. Customization is accessible if needed. For users’ ease of working, Bigcommerce has many features in-built. Apart from easy setup, its themes and templates are unique and tailored for mobile users.

  • Scalability

Magento — Magento provides enough scope to scale and expand your business. There is no limit on transactions, products, and orders; only server capacity ought to check.

Bigcommerce — Bigcommerce has connectors that assist you in selling your products on major websites like Amazon, eBay, etc. It aids more exposure to new brands to grow exponentially. Also, as mentioned above, Bigcommerce integrated many necessary components into the system that help to scale your online business.

  • Multi-vendor functionality

Magento — It has this feature to manage multi-vendors on a single platform. Its admin interface can be used to make a multi-tenant eCommerce store. So, many stores can operate at a single backend and at a reduced cost.

Bigcommerce — You need to integrate Bigcommerce multi-vendor marketplace in your website.

Disadvantages of Magento and Bigcommerce

Magento

  • Magento needs technical skills to develop, maintain and upgrade the platform.
  • It increases your expenses of hosting and frequent maintenance. Thus, not feasible for new ventures and small organizations.

Bigcommerce

  • It has a limited number of themes, so you have to hire a developer to construct or customize the theme if you want something new.
  • Bigcommerce doesn’t provide a mobile app, so you won’t be able to take the store to mobile users.

Significant features comparison to know which platform is better

Price

Magento prices depend on the type of Magento version you want to use, either open source or Magento commerce. Open source is free; you only have to pay for hosting and addons. At the same time, Magento commerce has distinct price segments as per the features. Also, you need to hire a professional to set up the website. Therefore, you shouldn’t have a budget criteria if you select Magento.

Bigcommerce has subscription plans, out of which you choose the one that suits you. You can upgrade the plan whenever you feel. Also, Bigcommerce has an annual income cap. If you exceed the income cap, you are forced to switch to the higher plan type that will increase your monthly expense. Hosting cost is included in subscription charges.

Ease of use

Magento store setup is not easy. As we said, it needs technical knowledge. Customization and integration of extensions need a certified developer. A beginner won’t be able to use it easily.

Bigcommerce is easy to use. Novices also can use it with the help of online tutorials to manage their store. Furthermore, Bigcommerce has many in-built features and extensions like a payment gateway, which you don’t need to add. Therefore, it increases the ease of working.

Flexibility

Albeit, Magento open source has some limitations with features. When your business grows, you need more functionalities to perform. Magento open source lacks in providing you all the critical components for B2B, but Magento commerce can. You will feel good when your business needs the additional features, and you will have all of them with Magento commerce.

Magento commerce cloud doesn’t have limitations with bandwidth. So, you can grow and expand rapidly with this platform.

Bigcommerce has a subscription-based model that helps you grow without worrying about exceeding the service. However, you have to pay extra if you outgrow the subscription plan. It has many tools and connectors that help you integrate with new channels and marketplaces.

Hosting

Magento open source doesn’t have a hosting facility. You are responsible for hosting and hardware. However, Magento commerce has cloud hosting, but it has many issues. Software update and security is still your concern.

Bigcommerce has a Google cloud hosting platform. So, you don’t have to bother with hosting services. Bigcommerce hosting provides you on-time maintenance and quick page load time; also, its downtime is more diminutive.

Support

Magento doesn’t provide support; you only have community support for open source. However, Magento commerce users have access to the support team.

Bigcommerce has a 24*7 support team that gives assistance via phones, live chats, and emails in all subscription plans. A dedicated consultant is assigned to the corporate plan for priority assistance.

Extensions and add-ons integration

Magento has various extensions and plugins to increase the functionalities of the store. It also has many in-built features to make your website adequately operational. Third-party integration needs professional aid, or else you will risk the website’s security.

As we said above, Bigcommerce has many in-built features that increase the website’s performance. But to enhance the website’s overall functionality, adding third-party extensions is possible with Bigcommerce. They have many approved free and premium add-ons to customize your eCommerce website.

Payment gateways

Magento has PayPal and Braintree default payment options. Other choices can be added using third-party integration, which is not difficult.

However, Bigcommerce supports PayPal, Amazon Pay, Stripe, Authorize.net, etc., without any transaction fee.

SEO

Managing SEO is crucial for every website. Magento always stands on top when it comes to SEO. It has tools that help optimize your eCommerce website for search engines. The new version also has the option to manage the promotion, communication, and content.

Bigcommerce also has ample helpful tools to boost your site’s SEO. Microdata feature assists in improving the website’s ranking in search engines. You can post your promotional content on social media using the SocialShop program.

Security

If you are using Magento open-source, you are solely responsible for the security of your website. All the version upgrades and security patches are your liability. Again, it needs a developer to perform these profound activities. For Magento commerce, the company shares the security responsibility. The Magento system takes care of Commerce Cloud, and users have to ensure their customized instance’s security.

Bigcommerce provides security to all its subscription plans. The charges are included in the membership fee. They give specific server firewalls, intrusion detection software, 24*7 customer care, and fraud protection service.

So, above are the essential features for every eCommerce website, and we tried curating both Magento and Bigcommerce to help you choose the most suitable platform.

Choose the best suitable option

Both Magento and Bigcommerce are established technologies, and they are running numerous websites successfully across the world. Advantages and disadvantages are associated with everything you use, which is inevitable. You choose the software according to your business need, budget, target audience, product niche, and most importantly, technical knowledge.

You should choose Magento if,

  • Budget is not a constraint for you
  • You have a team of developers to look after the website
  • You want the outstanding performance of your website with robust APIs

You can choose Bigcommerce if,

  • Your budget is limited, and you don’t have an IT team
  • You need a simple and easy setup and quick market reach
  • You want to sell via various platforms, including social media

In short

You can select any of the platforms; it will help your business get established. But before choosing any one, you need to determine your needs and expectations from the platform.

Hope this article helped you make your mind to choose either Magento or Bigcommerce Development. Pick the most suitable option that will accompany your business for a longer span and ensure the quality of the website should not suffer. Happy Selling!

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Rajesh Bhimani

Rajesh Bhimani is the Founder at Skynet Technologies, Website Design and Development Agency. He has 21 years of experience in Technology and Marketing industry.