For the last five years, as the ecommerce market exploded, many ecommerce agencies and merchants still view BigCommerce as somewhat of a dark horse. Coalition has often been a strong recommender of the platform for merchants looking to grow online and our president, Jordan Brannon, helps you understand why below.
While BigCommerce has not had the splashy share price that Shopify has, and while it hasn’t been the subject of a big acquisition as Magento has, it is a platform that many more merchants should consider for their ecommerce needs.
There are a number of key advantages with BigCommerce that are worth digging into, especially if you are looking for a replacement to Magento 1, Volusion, or another enterprise ecommerce platform.
Here’s a quick summary of the things that we love about BigCommerce:
First, BigCommerce has amazing value as a leading ecommerce SaaS platform. SaaS means software as a service, and when done right, it means that you’re getting a shopping cart software and website builder that is highly scalable, frequently upgraded, secure, and an excellent value based on its total cost of ownership. BigCommerce scores highly in our platform evaluations year in and year out on all of those fronts.
More often than not, BigCommerce is lower in cost while still providing more features and better support than many more expensive competitors.
Second, BigCommerce is extremely easy to use. Based on feedback from merchants and our own testing, it regularly scores as a more intuitive platform to use than other competitors. Its administrative navigation is clearly labeled and well-supported with tooltips, online tutorials, and 24/7 support if you need any extra assistance.
While it sometimes scores lower than Shopify in ease of use, there are some feature trade-offs that could account for its difference.
Finally, BigCommerce wins because of its ability to deliver on its ‘open SaaS’ promise. Open SaaS means that BigCommerce provides a rich body of SaaS functionality and features while still allowing for a greater degree of openness (flexibility), as the core platform may not be able to predict all of its possible use cases.
A few examples of open SaaS at work include BigCommerce’s ability to support more complex product catalogs by allowing for a higher number of product options (variants or attributes in other platforms), product custom fields, more robust pricing and discounting rules, and a greater range of API support.
If you’re interested in getting a more thorough evaluation of BigCommerce for your current or possible ecommerce store, reach out to us via the contact link or the phone number listed here!
