Introduction

Choosing the right e-commerce platform is akin to laying the perfect foundation for your online business. It goes beyond just aesthetics; it’s about functionality, scalability, and how well it aligns with your business model. Whether you’re setting up shop for the first time or considering migrating from your current platform, this decision will have a profound impact on your business journey.

The e-commerce landscape is vast, with numerous platforms to choose from – we’ve operated on quite a few of them and worked on websites for others. However, the two platforms we found ourselves considering about three years ago are the ones we’ll be discussing in this post. By the end, I’ll share which platform we ultimately chose and why, but remember, every business is unique, and each solution has its own set of pros and cons.

Today, we’ll delve into two major players in the e-commerce platform arena: Magento and BigCommerce. Each one possesses its strengths and quirks, making them suitable for different types of businesses. Magento is like the hand-built sports car of the e-commerce world – powerful and highly customizable, while BigCommerce is more akin to a luxury SUV – reliable, packed with features, and user-friendly.

So, whether you’re leaning towards Magento’s extensive customisation capabilities or BigCommerce’s approachable nature, this post will help you understand the pros and cons of each, enabling you to make an informed decision that aligns with your business and e-commerce aspirations. Let’s get started and compare these two platforms!

Overview of Magento

Magento is a highly versatile and robust e-commerce platform designed with power users in mind. It’s not just any ordinary e-commerce solution – Magento is an excellent choice for businesses aiming to significantly scale their operations while customizing every aspect along the way. Originally launched in 2008, Magento has evolved into a platform that excels for medium to large enterprises requiring a sturdy foundation for their online stores.

Magento is packed with features that enable extensive customization, from the visual design to the core functionalities of your site. Whether you’re aiming to craft unique customer experiences or integrate complex back-end systems, Magento provides the tools to tailor your site precisely to your business needs. The platform is also renowned for its robust global community. For developers seeking advice or retailers looking for support, the community forums, comprehensive documentation, and abundant third-party resources offer a wealth of information and guidance.

This vibrant ecosystem not only supports troubleshooting but also drives innovation within the platform itself. If you’re considering Magento, you’re gearing up for a journey that offers extensive control and customization, supported by a community of fellow users equally committed to creating outstanding e-commerce experiences. Magento is well-suited for businesses planning rapid growth and possessing the technical resources to fully leverage this powerful platform’s potential.

Pros of Magento

Customizability: If you’ve ever dreamed of building an e-commerce site that perfectly matches your vision down to the last pixel, Magento is your go-to. This platform is the ultimate playground for customization. You can tweak the layout, adjust functionalities, or add unique features that make your site stand out from the crowd. It’s like having a set of advanced building blocks that let you construct anything from a pop-up shop to a sprawling digital mall.

Scalability: Magento truly shines when it comes to growing your business. Whether you’re starting small or expanding into new markets, Magento can handle the surge like a champ. It’s designed to seamlessly manage large volumes of products and transactions, making it an ideal choice for businesses that foresee rapid growth or experience seasonal spikes.

Community: One of Magento’s superpowers is its vibrant global community. This platform isn’t just supported by its developers; it’s backed by a vast network of users, developers, and service providers who are always ready to lend a helping hand. From professional advice on forums to a plethora of plugins developed by Magento enthusiasts, the community is a rich resource for support and innovation.

Cons of Magento

Complexity: With great power comes great complexity! Magento’s robust features can be a double-edged sword. Setting up and managing a Magento site requires a fair bit of technical know-how. Without it, you might find yourself navigating a labyrinth of features and code. It’s highly recommended to have a skilled developer or a dedicated team to harness its full potential and keep things running smoothly.

Cost: If Magento were a car, it wouldn’t be an economical choice. The cost of operating a Magento site can add up quickly. From hosting to custom development and ongoing maintenance, the expenses can be significant, especially for small businesses or startups. It’s important to budget not only for the initial setup but also for the regular updates and professional services that you might need to keep your Magento site in top shape.

Overview of BigCommerce

BigCommerce stands out as the go-to e-commerce platform for those who prioritize ease and efficiency over exhaustive customization. It’s designed for businesses of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises, who want a robust online store without the heavy lifting that can sometimes come with it. Its user-friendly approach allows even those with minimal technical knowledge to set up and manage their store with relative ease.

Key Features of BigCommerce:

• Comprehensive e-commerce tools: From SEO and marketing tools to product management and analytics, BigCommerce provides a suite of built-in features to support your online business.
• Multi-channel selling: Seamlessly integrates with multiple marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and social platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
• Security and reliability: With hosting included, BigCommerce ensures your site remains secure and operates smoothly with excellent uptime.

Pros of BigCommerce

User-Friendliness: BigCommerce is celebrated for its user-friendly interface that makes e-commerce less daunting. With intuitive design tools and straightforward backend management, it’s perfect for business owners who prefer to focus more on their business and less on the complexities of website development.

Built-in Features: One of the strongest suits of BigCommerce is the plethora of built-in features that it offers right out of the box. From advanced payment and shipping options to effective SEO tools, the platform reduces the need to hunt down and install numerous plugins, making your store management simpler and more streamlined.

Support: BigCommerce prides itself on providing extensive customer support. With 24/7 live agents, a comprehensive help centre, and community forums, help is always on hand. Whether you’re troubleshooting an issue or looking for advice on best practices, BigCommerce’s support structure is designed to assist you promptly and effectively.

Cons of BigCommerce

Less Customization: While BigCommerce is highly efficient, it doesn’t offer the same level of customization as Magento. If your business requires highly specific design or functionality that goes beyond the templates and settings offered, you may find BigCommerce limiting.

Platform Fees: BigCommerce operates on a subscription model, which includes monthly fees that can vary based on the type of plan and the scale of your operations. While these fees include hosting and support, they can add up, especially for smaller businesses that need to manage their budgets closely. This recurring cost is something to consider when evaluating the total cost of ownership for your e-commerce platform. Although not cheap, it was cheaper than Shopify and Magento for our package.

Comparison

Performance: Magento offers robust performance capabilities, especially for handling high volumes of products and complex catalog configurations. It’s built to sustain high traffic loads, making it suitable for larger enterprises. BigCommerce also performs well, with fast loading times and less management required to maintain optimum site performance, ideal for medium-sized businesses.

SEO Capabilities: Both platforms offer strong SEO features. Magento provides deep customization options for SEO, allowing fine-tuning of every element. BigCommerce comes with SEO-friendly features out of the box, such as automatically optimized URLs and built-in metadata fields, which simplify the SEO process for less technical users.

User Experience: BigCommerce leads with user-friendly designs and an intuitive backend, making it easier for non-technical users to manage their stores effectively. Magento, while offering a highly customizable experience, requires more technical expertise to optimize the user interface and experience.

Cost-Effectiveness: BigCommerce may be more cost-effective for smaller businesses due to its inclusive pricing model that covers hosting, security, and support. Magento, although requiring a larger initial investment and ongoing maintenance costs, can be more cost-effective in the long run for larger businesses that need a highly tailored e-commerce environment.

Case Studies/Examples

There are lots of well-documented success stories with each platform, we would always suggest finding people in your industry and seeing what is working for them.

Magento Success Story: Omega Watches, a leader in the luxury watch industry, uses Magento to create an immersive online experience that mirrors the sophistication of its brand. With Magento, Omega has been able to leverage extensive customization capabilities to offer customers detailed product customization, enhancing the online shopping experience and boosting sales.

BigCommerce Success Story: Ben & Jerry’s, known for its fun and creative ice cream flavours, chose BigCommerce to streamline its e-commerce operations. The platform enabled them to launch quickly and efficiently, integrating seamlessly with various marketing channels. This allowed Ben & Jerry’s to focus on creating engaging content and campaigns, driving both online and in-store traffic.

Conclusion

Choosing between Magento and BigCommerce boils down to your business needs, technical capacity, and growth ambitions. Magento is ideal for businesses seeking a highly customized online store and have the resources to manage it, whereas BigCommerce offers a more straightforward, cost-effective solution for businesses looking to get up and running quickly with minimal technical effort.

Are you ready to take your e-commerce to the next level but not sure which platform is right for you? Conducting further research or consulting with an e-commerce expert can provide personalized insights tailored to your business needs. Reach out today to find out how we can help you make the best choice for your e-commerce journey!

Our Story

Our e-commerce site built on Magento for about 8 years.  We had started on Magento 1, which was slow and vulnerable.  Then we migrated to Magento 2 and that was also slow, but less prone to breaking.  It was expensive to host and run, and despite having a dedicated server and a caching server, we also needed Cloudflare as a Content Delivery Network.  It was a bit like one of my old bosses, temperamental, erratic and awful for team morale.  

We chose Magento in the first place 

1. It could handle decimals, we sold fabric so if somebody wanted to buy 1.5m of fabric then it could handle it.  
2. We needed some custom code to adjust our stock a certain way when something sold. 
3. A competitor had a beautiful Magento site and we wanted one that would compete.
4. We had outgrown EKM Powershop 

It felt that we were always plugging gaps with Magento, fixing one thing and another issue would come to light, or development work would need to stop to apply an update.  During our time on the platform, running promotions and clearance sales were stressful because the site might crash, or something would go wrong.  

We reached the end of our tether with Magento and considered a Hyva Theme, which was fast but expensive and limiting because not everything we did would have been supported. So I decided that us and Magento had to break up, I looked at WooCommerce and Shopify in detail but in the end, BigCommerce won out for us at the time. 

We used Shogun to develop our new theme ourselves, and it did look awesome.  Pages that would take developers days or weeks to make on Magento, were coming together in hours.  The uploader was a bit quirky and a little unreliable, but I got it working. The whole migration took us a month and most of that time was creating all of the products from scratch.  It was suddenly a bit like going bowling with the side bumpers up, everything seemed to work.  

For me BigCommerce was great, I wished we had moved to it 4 years earlier, but it was the decimals functionality that I thought I could not live without that held us back.  But that’s the power of hindsight, isn’t it?  I have glossed over the choices and pros and cons of each system.  I would heartily recommend trying out each system you are considering and if you would like advice on what would be a good fit then we are happy to help.