BigCommerce vs WordPress Comparison: Which is Better?

This article dives into the essential features, pros, and cons of BigCommerce vs WordPress. It’ll help you understand which might be the better choice for your specific needs. 

BigCommerce vs WordPress: The Key Difference

The fundamental difference between BigCommerce and WordPress lies in their core approach to e-commerce:

BigCommerce is a dedicated e-commerce platform that offers an all-in-one solution, including hosting, security, and e-commerce features right out of the box. This setup is designed to simplify the process of running an online store. That makes it especially appealing for businesses looking for ease of use and a quick start without the need for extensive technical setup or customization.

WordPress.org, with the WooCommerce plugin for e-commerce, is a content management system (CMS) that offers unparalleled customization and flexibility through a vast ecosystem of themes and plugins. This makes it ideal for users who prioritize having full control over their website’s design and functionality and are willing to manage the complexities that come with such customization.

BigCommerce vs WordPress: Pros and Cons

BigCommerce Pros and Cons

Pros:

• All-in-One Platform: Includes hosting, security, and e-commerce features, simplifying setup and management.
• Ease of Use: User-friendly dashboard and intuitive setup process make it accessible for non-technical users.
• Integrated Sales and Marketing Tools: Built-in features for SEO, email marketing, and social media, reducing the need for external Integrations.
• 24/7 Support: Offers round-the-clock customer support and a comprehensive knowledge base.
• Scalability: Automatically scales hosting and security to handle increased traffic and sales.

Cons:

• Limited Customization: While customization is possible, it’s not as extensive as WordPress, potentially limiting specific design needs.
• Pricing: This can become costly, especially on higher-tier plans, compared to WordPress’s initially lower cost of entry.
• App Marketplace: While curated, the selection of Integrations and integrations is smaller than WordPress’s vast plugin directory.

WordPress Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Extensive Customization: Thousands of themes and plugins allow complete control over your site’s design and functionality.
• Large Community Support: A vast community and online resources offer support and guidance.
• Flexibility: Can be used for a wide range of websites beyond e-commerce, including blogs, portfolios, and more.
• Control Over Hosting: Freedom to choose your hosting provider, allowing for cost and performance optimization.

Cons:

• Complexity: The high degree of customization comes with complexity, requiring more technical knowledge or resources.
• Maintenance: Requires regular updates and maintenance for WordPress, themes, and plugins to ensure security and functionality.
• Security: While it’s flexible, the user is responsible for implementing and maintaining security measures, including updates and backups.
• Scalability: Scaling the website for high traffic can require significant effort, including upgrading hosting plans and optimizing performance.

BigCommerce vs WordPress: In-depth Comparison

Pricing

BigCommerce Pricing 

Subscription fees

BigCommerce offers four main plans for businesses of different sizes as below:

• BigCommerce Standard: $39 per month. For yearly payment, it’s $29 per month. 
• BigCommerce Plus: $105 per month, but if you choose to pay yearly, it’s $79 per month. 
• BigCommerce Pro: $399 per month, with a yearly option at $299 per month. 
• BigCommerce Enterprise: Custom pricing. You’ll need to contact sales for this. 

If you choose to pay annually, you’ll get notable savings:

• Standard Plan: Save $120 per year.
• Plus Plan: Save $312 per year.
• Pro Plan: Save $1,200 per year.

Every plan comes with a 15-day free trial, and you can test BigCommerce without cost. 

Also, no matter which plan you pick, there are no transaction fees from BigCommerce, meaning more of each sale goes to you.

Additional Fees to Consider

While BigCommerce doesn’t charge transaction fees, there are other costs you might face:

• Credit Card Processing Fees: These depend on your payment processor (like PayPal or Stripe) and are usually around 2.59% + 49¢ for each transaction.
• Integrations and Integrations: Costs vary. Some Integrations are free, while others may charge monthly fees.
• Themes: BigCommerce offers both free and premium themes. Premium themes can cost between $75 to $399 as a one-time fee.

WordPress Pricing 

WordPress (WordPress.org) is a popular platform for building websites, known for its flexibility and control. Unlike WordPress.com, which offers hosting plans, WordPress.org requires you to host your website independently. Here’s a breakdown of what to consider when budgeting for a WordPress.org site.

• Hosting Costs: Around hundreds of dollars for hosting costs per year. 
• Domain Name: About $6 to $15 per year for a .com domain. Price varies based on the domain extension and registrar.
• Maintenance: Running a WordPress.org site means you’re responsible for updates and backups. There are free and premium tools to help with this.
• Security: Investing in security plugins or services costs vary by provider.

The Verdict

In terms of pricing, BigCommerce is better than WordPress for its predictable costs.

Sales Features

Product Management

BigCommerce allows managing up to 600 variants per product and offers bulk import/export with up to 10,000 products at a time. This capacity can significantly ease operations for businesses with extensive catalogs, streamlining inventory management and product updates.

While WordPress (through WooCommerce) does not limit the number of products or variants, managing a large inventory can become cumbersome without the right plugins. The scalability largely depends on your hosting solution’s capacity to handle large databases efficiently.

Payment and Checkout

BigCommerce integrates with over 65 payment gateways and offers a native one-page checkout designed to boost conversion rates by reducing friction. The lack of added transaction fees across all plans can save businesses a notable amount annually, depending on sales volume.

Meanwhile, WordPress supports virtually unlimited payment gateways through extensions. However, each gateway may introduce its transaction fees, and the complexity of setup varies. Customizing the checkout experience can significantly impact conversion rates but requires careful configuration or development.

Shipping and Fulfillment

BigCommerce partners with major carriers to offer discounted shipping rates and provides built-in features for label printing and dropshipping. These benefits can lead to direct cost savings and operational efficiencies for businesses with significant shipping volumes.

WordPress’ shipping options are extendable with plugins, but exact discounts and capabilities depend on third-party services. Setting up advanced shipping rules or negotiating rates requires additional effort and potential subscription costs to specific plugins or services.

Analytics and Reporting

BigCommerce offers a suite of analytics tools that cover everything from basic sales reports to in-depth customer insights and marketing effectiveness. Access to these tools is included at no extra cost, providing businesses with valuable data for decision-making without additional investment in analytics software.

WordPress (WooCommerce) has basic reporting features, but integrating with advanced analytics platforms like Google Analytics for comprehensive tracking may require additional plugins. The depth of insight and analysis available can significantly impact strategic decisions, though this comes with the need to manage and understand multiple analytics tools.

Verdict

BigCommerce is a better choice for its integrated sales tools.

Marketing Features

Email Marketing

BigCommerce integrates seamlessly with top email marketing services like Mailchimp and Klaviyo, allowing automated campaigns, customer segmentation, and analytics. This integration simplifies managing email marketing directly from the BigCommerce dashboard.

Meanwhile, through various plugins, WordPress supports integration with a wide array of email marketing tools. The exact level of integration and automation depends on the plugin used, which might range from free basic functionalities to premium services with advanced features.

Social Media Integration

BigCommerce offers built-in features for selling on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, enabling businesses to connect their online store with their social media profiles easily. This direct integration can increase visibility and sales through social channels without additional plugins.

In WordPress (WooCommerce), you can integrate social media through multiple plugins, each offering different levels of functionality, from simple sharing buttons to complete social selling platforms. The choice of plugin determines the extent of integration and ease of use.

SEO Tools

BigCommerce has built-in SEO tools that automatically generate sitemaps, customizable URLs, title tags, and meta descriptions. This feature set, designed to enhance search engine rankings, can significantly impact organic traffic without the need for additional SEO plugins.

Meanwhile, WordPress (WooCommerce) is known for its strong SEO capabilities, especially when using plugins like Yoast SEO or All in One SEO Pack. These plugins offer comprehensive tools for optimizing content and improving search rankings, but their effectiveness heavily depends on the correct setup and ongoing management.

Discount and Coupon Codes

BigCommerce allows easy creation and management of discounts and coupon codes directly from the dashboard. This includes percentage-based discounts, dollar-amount discounts, and free shipping offers, among others, which can be targeted to specific products, categories, or customers.

Meanwhile, WordPress (WooCommerce) includes basic functionality for discounts and coupons, with extensive customization options available through additional plugins. This flexibility supports a wide range of promotional strategies but requires managing another layer of complexity.

The Verdict

BigCommerce wins for its integrated marketing features, providing businesses with a suite of tools ready to use out of the box. 

Integrations and Plugins

The Verdict

WordPress is the winner for its high customization.

Scalability

Hosting and Performance

BigCommerce offers cloud-based hosting with unlimited bandwidth, which automatically scales to handle increases in traffic and sales. This managed hosting environment means businesses don’t need to worry about upgrading servers or managing hosting resources as they grow.

Meanwhile, WordPress scalability depends on your chosen hosting provider. While you have the flexibility to select a host that matches your current needs, scaling up will often involve migrating to a more robust hosting plan or provider as your traffic and sales increase, which can require technical oversight and potential downtime.

Technical Maintenance and Updates

BigCommerce handles all platform updates and maintenance automatically, ensuring your online store remains up-to-date with the latest features and security enhancements without any effort on your part. This can significantly reduce the administrative burden as your business grows.

However, WordPress requires manual updates for WordPress core, themes, and plugins. While this gives you control over when and how updates are applied, it also adds a layer of ongoing maintenance that can become more complex as your site grows and utilizes more plugins.

Product and Inventory Expansion

BigCommerce is designed to easily manage large product catalogs with features like bulk editing and advanced inventory management. Adding products and expanding your inventory doesn’t compromise site performance, which is critical for growing e-commerce businesses.

WordPress (WooCommerce) can also support large inventories and offers extensive product customization options. However, the performance impact will depend on your hosting solution and how well your site is optimized for speed, potentially requiring additional plugins or custom development for optimization.

Market Reach and International Sales

BigCommerce supports multi-currency sales and has built-in features for international shipping and tax calculations, making it easier to expand your market reach globally without needing additional tools.

On WordPress, international sales capabilities can be enhanced with plugins for currency conversion, translation, and international shipping, offering flexibility in how you approach global markets but requiring configuration and management of these plugins.

Flexibility for Future Growth

While offering significant built-in functionalities for scaling, BigCommerce’s structured environment means there may be limitations in customizing your site’s functionality or integrating with specific third-party systems as your business evolves.

Meanwhile, WordPress offers almost limitless flexibility through plugins and custom development, allowing you to adapt and expand your site’s capabilities to meet specific business needs as you grow. This flexibility is a double-edged sword, as it can introduce complexity and require ongoing technical support.

The Verdict

WordPress is the winner as it offers unparalleled flexibility. 

Help and Support 

BigCommerce

• 24/7 Support: BigCommerce offers round-the-clock support via phone, live chat, and email. This means you can get help whenever you need it, which is great for urgent issues.
• Extensive Knowledge Base: There’s a comprehensive online resource center that includes guides, how-to articles, and videos to help you solve common problems or learn new features.
• Dedicated Account Manager: You get a dedicated account manager on certain plans, like the Enterprise plan. This person can provide personalized assistance and advice tailored to your business.   
• Community Forum: BigCommerce has an active community forum where you can ask questions, share experiences, and get advice from other users.

WordPress

• Community Support: WordPress has a massive community of users and developers. Forums, blogs, and social media groups are full of people willing to offer help and advice. However, support quality can vary since it’s not officially provided.
• Plugin and Theme Developers: For specific issues related to plugins or themes, support usually comes from the developers of those tools. This means dealing with multiple support channels if you use several plugins.
• Hosting Provider Support: Your hosting provider can offer support for issues related to hosting performance and security. The level of support depends on the provider and your plan.
• Online Resources: There are countless tutorials, guides, and videos available online that cover virtually every aspect of using WordPress and WooCommerce. Finding the right solution might require some digging.

The Verdict

BigCommerce wins in this aspect as it offers a more structured support system, which can significantly reduce downtime and frustration when issues arise. 

Security

Security Measures and Compliance

BigCommerce provides robust built-in security features, including automatic SSL certificates for encrypting data, PCI DSS compliance to handle credit card information securely, and protection against DDOS attacks. These integrated security measures relieve businesses from managing many aspects of their online store’s security.

In the meantime, the core WordPress software is known for its strong security standards, but overall site security depends significantly on user practices, hosting environment, and the plugins/themes used. The hosting service might provide SSL certificates or need to be set up separately, and achieving PCI DSS compliance involves ensuring all parts of your site and hosting are compliant.

Updates and Maintenance

BigCommerce manages all security updates and maintenance automatically. This means that the platform’s security is consistently up-to-date without requiring manual intervention from the business owner, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities.

WordPress, on the contrary, requires manual updates for the WordPress core, plugins, and themes. Regular maintenance and updates are crucial to keeping a WordPress site secure, as outdated software is a common entry point for security breaches. This requires a proactive approach and potentially technical knowledge or support.

Customization and Security

While offering less customization than WordPress, the limitations of BigCommerce also mean fewer variables could introduce security vulnerabilities. Custom code, when used, is typically restricted to areas that have minimal impact on overall security.

In contrast, the high degree of customization available through WordPress’ plugins and themes can introduce security risks if not carefully managed. Each additional plugin or theme increases the attack surface of your website, making regular security reviews and updates essential.

Handling Security Breaches

BigCommerce offers 24/7 support to address any security concerns and can provide rapid response in the event of a security breach. The centralized nature of the platform allows for quick implementation of security patches across all user sites.

Meanwhile, WordPress deals with security breaches and requires coordinating with your hosting provider and possibly third-party security services. The decentralized ecosystem means recovery efforts can be more complex and time-consuming.

The Verdict

BigCommerce wins as it offers a more hands-off approach to security, with many critical aspects managed by the platform itself.

Ease of Use

Interface and User Experience

BigCommerce features a streamlined, user-friendly interface designed specifically for e-commerce businesses. The dashboard and settings are intuitively organized, making it easy to find features related to products, sales, marketing, and store management. This can significantly reduce the learning curve for new users.

Nevertheless, WordPress offers a flexible but more complex interface that serves a broader range of website types, not just e-commerce. While WooCommerce adds e-commerce specific functionality, navigating the broader WordPress dashboard and customizing the store can be overwhelming for beginners without guidance.

Setup Process

BigCommerce provides a straightforward setup process with guided tutorials, making it easy for businesses to get their online store up and running quickly. This includes step-by-step assistance for adding products, setting up payment and shipping options, and customizing store design.

WordPress, however, requires a manual setup that involves installing WordPress, adding the WooCommerce plugin, and configuring your store. While there’s flexibility in setup and design, it typically demands more time and potentially technical knowledge, especially when customizing themes or adding functionality with additional plugins.

Managing Products and Inventory

BigCommerce focuses on e-commerce, and that is evident in its product management features, which allow easy addition, modification, and organization of products. Advanced inventory management tools help businesses keep track of stock levels with minimal effort.

While WordPress (WooCommerce) enables comprehensive product and inventory management, leveraging these features to their full extent often requires additional plugins or customization. The level of ease or complexity can vary based on the chosen theme and additional plugins used.

Customization and Flexibility

BigCommerce offers a degree of customization through theme settings and CSS modifications, allowing businesses to tailor their site’s appearance. However, the platform’s structure means there are boundaries to how far you can customize.

In the meantime, WordPress provides almost limitless customization possibilities, thanks to thousands of themes and plugins. This flexibility is a double-edged sword, offering the ability to create a highly customized store but often requiring more technical skill or resources to implement and manage.

The Verdict

BigCommerce wins for its user-friendly interface and integrated features.

Themes and Designs

Theme Variety and Quality

BigCommerce offers a curated selection of templates, with around 12 free templates and more than 175 premium templates that range in price from $75 to $399. These themes are designed specifically for e-commerce, ensuring a professional look and feel right out of the box. The themes are responsive, adapting seamlessly to mobile devices, which is crucial for today’s shopping habits.

On the other hand, the WordPress theme directory contains thousands of free and premium themes, offering unparalleled variety. Prices for premium ecommerce themes vary widely but generally fall within a similar range to BigCommerce’s premium options. The vast selection allows businesses to find highly specific styles or functionalities tailored to their niche, but quality and e-commerce optimization can vary.

Customization Capabilities

BigCommerce provides a visual editor for basic customizations like colors, fonts, and some layout changes without needing to code. For deeper customization, access to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is available, although making significant modifications might require web development skills or hiring a developer.

Just the reverse, the customization possibilities on WordPress are nearly limitless, especially when using page builder plugins like Elementor, Beaver Builder, or Divi. These tools allow extensive customization of every aspect of your site’s design without needing to touch code, although some learning curve is involved.

The Verdict

BigCommerce is a better choice as with it, it is easier to launch a store that looks professional without extensive design skills. 

Who Should Use BigCommerce?

• Businesses seeking an all-in-one e-commerce platform where hosting, security, and updates are managed by the provider.
• Owners looking for ease of use with a straightforward, user-friendly dashboard that simplifies the management of their online store.
• Companies that prioritize quick setup and minimal technical hassle, wanting to focus more on sales and less on website maintenance.
• Businesses planning to scale and looking for a platform that seamlessly handles increased traffic and sales without the need for manual upgrades.
• Retailers wanting integrated sales features and marketing tools without the need to install additional Integrations or software.

Who Should Use WordPress.org?

• Businesses requiring extensive customization and control over their website’s design and functionality, willing to navigate a steeper learning curve.
• Users comfortable with, or having access to, technical resources for website development, maintenance, and security management.
• Sites that extend beyond e-commerce, such as those incorporating blogs, forums, and other functionalities not inherently focused on online sales.
• Owners who value a wide array of design options and the ability to deeply customize the user experience through a vast selection of themes and plugins.
• Entrepreneurs ready to actively manage their site, including regular updates and security checks, to ensure optimal performance and safety.

What to Consider When Choosing Between BigCommerce and WordPress.org

Deciding between BigCommerce and WordPress.org for your online store involves considering several key factors. Here’s what to keep in mind, explained simply:

• Technical Skill Level: Think about your comfort with technology. BigCommerce is user-friendly for beginners, handling much of the technical work for you. WordPress.org, while flexible, often requires more technical knowledge, especially for customization and maintenance.
• Customization Needs: Consider how unique you want your site to be. WordPress.org offers extensive customization through themes and plugins. BigCommerce has customization options too, but within a more structured framework.
• Budget: Look at your budget not just for the initial setup but also for ongoing costs. BigCommerce has clear pricing plans, but WordPress.org might seem cheaper at first. Remember to factor in hosting, themes, plugins, and potential development costs for WordPress.org.
• E-commerce Features: Assess what features are important for your store. BigCommerce provides a suite of built-in e-commerce tools, making it easier to manage sales, marketing, and security. WordPress.org requires plugins like WooCommerce to add these features, offering great flexibility but potentially adding complexity.
• Scalability: Think about your long-term plans. Both platforms can scale, but how they do it differs. BigCommerce automatically scales its hosting and security for you. With WordPress.org, scaling up will often require you to upgrade hosting plans and optimize your site’s performance manually.
• Support: Consider the level of support you might need. BigCommerce offers 24/7 support and a wealth of online resources. WordPress.org has a vast community and many resources online, but direct support depends on your hosting provider and the plugins you use.
• Security: Evaluate your capacity to manage site security. BigCommerce takes care of security for you, including updates and compliance. WordPress.org gives you control over security but requires you to stay proactive about updates, backups, and protection.

BigCommerce vs WordPress: Table Comparison

FAQs: BigCommerce vs WordPress

BigCommerce vs WordPress: Conclusion

In the “BigCommerce vs WordPress” comparison, both platforms have their unique strengths. BigCommerce offers an all-in-one e-commerce solution that’s easy to manage, making it ideal for businesses looking for a straightforward approach to online selling. WordPress, with WooCommerce, provides unparalleled customization and flexibility for those willing to dive into the details of their website’s functionality and design. Your final decision should align with your business’s needs, technical resources, and how hands-on you want to be in managing your online store.