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Top 3 BigCommerce Alternatives (As low as $9/mo, 2000+ Apps)

While BigCommerce powers several websites, there are a lot of concerns raised by its users like unintuitive jargon for beginners or difficult to use advanced features which is why you should consider BigCommerce Alternatives.

Below are few reasons why you would wish to choose BigCommerce alternatives.

  • BigCommerce is expensive around pricing options
  • It limits online sales per year based on pricing plan
  • Third-party apps, plugins, and software are priced separately
  • Though it mentions no transaction fees, this is applicable only to few selected payment gateways
  • Propagates leading payment gateways. No standardized payment options for credit cards
  • Smaller app marketplace
  • High switching cost to alternate platform
  • Low on inventory management
  • Expensive themes with very few selection of free themes

Clearly, these are some of the concerns you have to ponder about in case you are a BigCommerce user.

Through this post, we will discuss, top 3 BigCommerce alternatives to provide you a wider spectrum around the next set of options.

hostingpillBigCommerce Alternatives
  1. Shopify Lite ($9/mo.) (My Favourite)
  2. Volusion
  3. Site123

BigCommerce Alternatives 1: Shopify Lite

BigCommerce Alternatives: Shopify

Shopify’s e-commerce solutions provide a unified platform to run your business with ease. It helps in building a fully customizable online store with its several innovative and inbuilt solutions.

Shopify is a Canadian based e-commerce solution provider based out of Ottawa, Ontario. There are several large-scale entrepreneurs depending on Shopify.

There are more than 600,000 businesses powered by Shopify, with more than 1,000,000 active users and over $55 billion sold on Shopify.

Next moving on to the benefits of using Shopify over BigCommerce.

Reason 1 – Themes:
Shopify has more improvised theme collections as compared to BigCommerce. It has a good collection of user rich experience themes and focuses more on the look and feel of the website.

shopify-templates

The free templates are equally appealing as the paid ones. With Shopify, you can access more than 100 templates and can also customize it.

Reason 2 – Pricing:
Both Shopify and BigCommerce have approximately similar pricing model. However, Shopify is more flexible on this with its Shopify Lite version which is $9 per month.

shopify-lite

This is a good option for smaller scale websites and businesses with a limited number of products. With Shopify, you would not have to spend a huge amount in case you wish to develop a small website.

The same with BigCommerce would cost you at least $29.95 per month

Reason 3 – Sales Limit:
One very big advantage of using Shopify is, it does not have too many sales limitations. In a way, it is more flexible as compared to BigCommerce.

BigCommerce limits the sales for each plan. So with BigCommerce, if you exceed sales then you need to switch over to a more expensive plan

Reason 4 – Third-party Apps:
Shopify supports more than 2000 apps as compared to BigCommerce which is a little low on third-party apps support.

Here is guide to install apps in your store:

https://youtu.be/8r4iSicZvg0

The comprehensive list of apps on Shopify allows you to quickly integrate almost any added feature.

Reason 5 – Mobile apps:
Shopify offers quite a few distinct smartphone apps to its user base. The main ones are ‘Shopify’ and ‘Shopify POS’ for iOS and Android.

BigCommerce does not have any dedicated mobile app support.

Reason 6 – Expert Help:
Shopify has a larger base of expert help for design, analytics store setup, and marketing as compared to BigCommerce.

Here’s a breakdown of the Shopify pricing for each plan:

Features Lite Basic Shopify Shopify Adva. Shopify
Products Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
Storage Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
Bandwidth Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
Staff accounts 1 2 5 15
Price $9/mo. $29/mo. $79/mo. $299/mo.

BigCommerce Alternatives 2: Volusion

BigCommerce Alternatives: Volusion

Volusion is a fully cloud-based e-commerce platform which was started in 1999. It is headquartered in Austin, Texas. (Review)

They provide almost all necessary services to successfully run your store as well as have some features which are market differentiators.

To their credit, Volusion has more than 40000 online retailers. Over the years Volusion has constantly been watchful and making quick amendments to their services.

It is popular amongst store owners owing to its simple to use features which are integrated within the dashboard.

Volusion has helped several customers worldwide including well-known brands such as Motorola, Disney, Chicago Tribune and 3M.

Let us now understand how can Volusion be a good BigCommerce alternative.

Reason 1 – Pricing:
Volusion has a low priced starting option. Pricing is something that Volusion does better than BigCommerce. Their starting plan is at $15 per month with a support for 100 products.

volusion-pricing

With BigCommerce you just can’t choose a less expensive plan.

Reason 2 – Rich Knowledge Base:
Volusion has a good collection of the knowledge base with starter videos and a large number of how to guides. Worth noting is their efforts to ease out development by providing content-rich resources almost about every feature.

Volusion_Resources

BigCommerce does not support such a rich knowledge base. With BigCommerce a lot of times, you will end up searching for support outside of their official website.

Reason 3 – Transaction Fees:
Volusion does not have any terms attached to transaction fees. They do not charge a transaction fee. A point where they score above BigCommerce.

Reason 4 – Themes:
Volusion has more free themes as compared to BigCommerce.

BigCommerce Alternatives: volusion-theme

The themes are not only responsive but are also more creatively designed. Definitely, BigCommerce scores low on this with a mere 7 free themes.

Reason 5- Intuitive Dashboard:
Volusion has an easy to use and intuitive dashboard with most of the features embedded into the dashboard, making it easier to use. BigCommerce provides a dashboard, however not all the features are embedded in the dashboard.

This makes it slightly complex for beginners.

Reason 6 – Inbuilt recurring billing:
Recurring billing which is used to sell subscription-based products is part of Volusion’ s every plan. However, with BigCommerce you have to install a separate Paywhirl app for recurring billing.

Here’s a breakdown of the Volusion pricing for each plan:

Features Personal Professional Business Prime
Transaction Fees 0% 0% 0% 0%
Storage Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
Bandwidth Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
Products 100 5,000 Unlimited Unlimited
Price $29/mo $79/mo $299/mo Custom

(No fees. No credit card. No risk.)

BigCommerce Alternative 3: Site123

BigCommerce Alternatives: Site123

Site123 is a free website builder tool. Its goal is to make owning and hosting a website more affordable and accessible for everyone.

Site123 provides users with everything they need to host a website. A domain, SSL encryption, 24/7 support, as well as free themes and apps are all included.

Site123 focuses on beginners and first-time website owners. The beginner-friendly tools make it easy to create a business site, blog, online store, or even digital card.

So, What are the Reasons for Considering Site123 Over BigCommerce?

Reason #1: Affordable Pricing

Site123 is exceptionally affordable.

Pricing starts at $12.80/month and even the most expensive plan only costs $34.80/month. For that price, you even get a free domain for the first year. You can start hosting a store at only $28.80/month with a Professional plan.

Usually, plans are discounted by up to 50% for the first year. And, the packages conveniently scale with your needs.

Reason #2: Free Website Hosting

With no free plan or trial, you have to pay to use BigCommerce from the beginning.

However, you can test any Site123 plan risk-free thanks to a 14-day free trial. You can even host a website for free forever as long as you stay under 250MB of storage and bandwidth.

Reason #3: Ease of Use

Site123 is aimed at absolute beginners. It’s difficult to find a website builder tool that’s more beginner-friendly.

The dashboard is intuitive and straightforward without the overwhelming features and jargon. It’s also much easier to customize the available themes thanks to the simple web page builder.

Reason #4: Wide Theme Selection

Site123 offers nearly 200 themes, all of which you can use for free.

In contrast, you have to pay a hefty sum for most of BigCommerce’s themes. What’s more, all of BigCommerce’s themes are only aimed at online stores. However, Site123 also has themes for other types of websites.

Reason #5: Unlimited Sales

Unlike BigCommerce, Site123 doesn’t limit the number of sales you can make with the Gold plan. Even the more affordable Professional plan lets you sell 500 orders a month. Site123 Pricing Plans:

Free Basic Advanced Professional Gold
Free domain No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Storage 250MB 10 GB 30 GB 90 GB 270 GB
Bandwidth 250MB 5 GB 15 GB 45 GB 135 GB
Sales Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
Price $0/month $12.80/month $19.80/month $28.80/month $34.80/month

BigCommerce Alternatives: VERDICT

Above I have given a detailed walkthrough about the various BigCommerce alternatives. Each of this has set of features which have a cutting edge advantage over BigCommerce.

A fact which is clear is there is no specific guideline on which e-commerce you should choose, but it purely depends on your business requirement.

Volusion and Shopify are easy to use. While a general review is, Volusion has a slightly steeper learning curve.

However, again Volusion is rich on knowledge base so things can be learned easily.

With Shopify, you have the luxury of having a larger community support since this is a popular platform for website development. It has a low priced option (Shopify lite $9/mo.) for the smaller website and additionally you have access to more than 2000 apps which is just phenomenal.