BigCommerce vs Magento

The operation of a successful e-commerce business has many components that interact with each other. But nothing can be as important as the platform on which you want to run your business. When choosing a platform, you should take your time and do thorough research, otherwise it will be an obstacle preventing your business from growing effectively and profitably.

Two major players in the world of e-commerce platforms are without doubt BigCommerce and Magento. Both have a reputation for being powerful e-commerce platforms that allow you to customize your online store and extend its functionality with extensions. Let’s take a look at some of the main differences between the two platforms.

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By introducing a cloud offering, Magento is an open source platform that is increasingly giving the impression of a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform. However, BigCommerce is already uniquely positioned as an open SaaS platform. This enables merchants to make customizations and add integrations that were previously only possible with an open source platform. BigCommerce also offers 4 months free of charge for Magento users planning a migration.

For online merchants affected by the end of life of Magento 1, now is a critical time to consider the options available on the market. Not sure which one is right for you? Here is a quick breakdown comparing the two platforms with some of their key benefits.

BigCommerce

Automatic upgrades and patches so you’re always on the latest version with no downtime due to upgrades. This is extremely important, especially for an online shop, since sales are lost during downtime.
When BigCommerce releases an update with a new feature, merchants have immediate access to it and can control when or if they want to activate it.
BigCommerce includes hosting without any bandwidth caps or limits.
Thanks to BigCommerce’s automatic updates, merchants don’t have to pay for ongoing maintenance costs and developers, and can focus on innovation or growing their business.
BigCommerce features a drag & drop page builder which is available on all plans. That is not something merchants would get on Magento open source. You don’t need to have any coding skills if you want to customize your storefront.

Magento

The maintenance of necessary security patches and version updates is time-consuming, expensive and labor-intensive.
The more customizations a merchant makes to his Magento shop, the more difficult (and expensive) it becomes to maintain the store. This has an enormous impact on the installation of updates, security patches and the addition of extensions.
The costs can vary greatly with Magento. Especially the costs for infrastructure, development, hosting and maintenance add up.
Due to the complexity of the Magento platform merchants usually need to rely on the support of developers.
The learning curve from Magento 1 to Magento 2 is significant, as M2 is using a different architecture and newer technologies under the hood.

Still not convinced? Check out the following opinion on BigCommerce and Magento:

We’d been on Magento for several years, but there came a point when we realized that the platform wasn’t optimized for what we were trying to do anymore. Plus, we were never sure if the data from that system was 100% correct. We needed a hosted platform that allowed us to focus more on the marketing and selling of products rather than always being tied up with system maintenance. That’s why BigCommerce stood out as a big opportunity for us. We were expanding into B2B markets and fundamentally changing the way we do things online, and BigCommerce helped us accomplish that. It’s helped us get to where we are today. – Wayne Ainsworth, Ecommerce Manager, Awesome GTI

Ultimately, BigCommerce seems to be ahead in this comparison as a SaaS platform built for seamless scalability at an affordable price. As an added bonus, BigCommerce offers merchants who migrate from Magento to BigCommerce 4 months free and 10% off migration services. No matter if you are forced to migrate from Magento 1 or if you just want to explore your options, there is absolutely no risk whatsoever to give BigCommerce a try.

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