BigCommerce
Price: $24.95/month
BigCommerce is full featured, stable and easy to use. First time shopping cart owners will have no trouble making their online store profitable with this ecommerce platform
Visit WebsiteBigCommerce is a very complete, very reliable and very well supported shopping cart and a very good choice for new online businesses. It is very simple to setup and use and has more features than most similarly priced ecommerce solutions.
When businesses ask me to setup a new shopping cart for them I always start with BigCommerce and tend to only look at other carts if there is a feature required that BigCommerce does not support.
Features of BigCommerce
- 24/7 Support & 30 day free trial
- Mobile Template
- Sell on Facebook
- Sell on eBay and Amazon
- Product syndication like Shopzilla and Google Product Search, Price Grabber and Next Tag
- Gift Certificates and Wish lists
- Returns Management
- Customer and Order management
- Lots of free, very attractive templates
- Search Engine Friendly by default
- So simple to use and administer
- Reliable hosting and uptime
Advantages of using BigCommerce
- Easy to Use interface that works as expected and very comfortable to use every day to manage a business
- Search Engine Friendly (there are a few minor issues) but they can be easily overcome. Not as SEO perfect as they claim but not far from it.
- Integrates with MailChimp, iContact, oLark, iDevAffiliate and third party software thanks to a powerful and flexible API
Problems with BigCommerce
- No built in newsletter or affiliate software. Not really a problem I prefer to use MailChimp and Aweber anyway, but some people like to keep everything in one package. Most built in newsletter packages are awful compared to the real ones anyway.
- Unreliable support at times.Day to day help is fine but they have shown an arrogance when confronted with issues they do not want to fix or deal with (Quickbooks, Product Options and Variations) that is concerning at times. Should not be a problem for 99% of you. Pick up the phone and ring them it is easier and less frustrating than using the forums.
- The software sometimes tries to do so much. It presents a sometimes overwhelming list of options regardless of if you want them or not. It would be better if it followed the Pinnacle Cart style of hiding settings you have disabled – the user experience is a lot cleaner.
- No B2B support. there is a very convoluted method to create Wholesale customer logins but it is painful and works poorly. If you need to support retail and wholesale customers do not use BigCommerce
Payment Gateways Supported by BigCommerce
All of them. All the usual suspects and several smaller ones. Authorize.net, Paypal, Google Checkout, eWay in Australia, Payleap, 2Checkout – I could list them all for you, but suffice to say if you are using a payment provider that BigCommerce does not support you need to seriously rethink your choice of gateway not shopping cart.
Shipping Providers Supported by BigCommerce
Ditto for shipping providers. If they are worth using they are supported. UPS, USPS, FedEx, Canada Post, Australia Post the list if longer than I care to type and I won’t waste your precious time filling the page for the sake of it.
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- Administering a BigCommerce Store
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- BigCommerce reports
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- Changing BigCommerce Settings
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- Adding and Editing Products in BigCommerce
Other BigCommerce Reviews Worth Reading
Andrew Bleakley has written the popular BigCommerce review that has drawn hundreds of comments and some very valuable user comments and feedback. While you are there look for the links to the Shopping Cart Comparisons for a great run down comparing BigCommerce to Shopify, Volusion and CoreCommerce
Thanks for the quick review.
I have a customer I’ve put on Bigcommerce almost 2 years ago.
All is well… until they are trying to implement the site for Wholesalers, and the functionality is lacking.
The other items I haven’t see is a checkout “Up Sell” feature.
Any recommendations on ecommerce to support BOTH retail and Wholesaler?
Volusion has great support for multiple pricing levels integrated with customer types. Volusion supports related products that can be used to up sell.
BigCommerce does have “Up Sell” functionality in the form of cart suggestions (if you enable the popup add to cart feature). They are configured on the “Other Details” tab under the related products section when you edit products
I’m trialling Big Commerce at present and shopping around for the best solution for an eCommerce solution. There are a number of complaints about the storage capabilities and limits in the package deals. BC is not charging overages at the moment but users are concerned about what impact this will have on their businesses when they do. Have you reviewed the storage and hosting aspects of BigCommerce?
I have looked extensively at BigCommerce storage and hosting and for the price can confidently say they are as good as any shopping cart software vendor. You can also upgrade at anytime so if you find yourself consistently approaching your limits one phone call will solve your problem
Your review states you can sell on Amazon and Ebay through Big Commerce. You can natively only launch products to Ebay but not Amazon. At the moment you need a third party program to do that.
Based on your comments, what cart would you recommend if you have wholesale and retail customers?
Americommerce is best if you have wholesale and retail customers
Very helpful! Thank You.
Cindy, what is very helpful? Can you explain? I don’t read anything helpful. Maybe I need to properly re-evaluate all posts at hand.
Pleasure Cindy
I am concerned that for SEO purposes Australian websites will be at a disadvantage on google.com.au given the webstores running Americommerce and BigCommerce are hosted in the USA.
Any advice?
Use a .com.au domain – any impact you may experience by using US based servers is very easily counted with some very simple local SEO
Most of these comments lack the content that is necessary to property address the issue at hand, which is is Bigcommerce the solution over other carts? yes or no. That’s all you have to answer guys. Don’t give me a list of complaints why you should this or why they don’t have the other. If you want a cart with ALL the features you require, get a custom cart. Bigcommerce is cart for the mom and pop shops. You want to be big, customize your site and don’t rely on what can Bigcommerce do for you, the real question is what you can do for you?
I don’t see my post. Why? Because the truth is not allowed on this site?
I see it now. OK. Thanks.
I would like to have muliple stores and manage from one admin panel/login. Any recommendations?
Americommerce is perfect for this Maggie
I love BigCommerce shopping cart myself but the only little issue with them is they need more web 2.0 style templates. I know I can do them myself or get a designer to make new ones but most times it is better if one gets them in built. Other then that I believe the software has everything one needs to have a great e-commerce site.
Their servers have been down consistently over the last month and a half. Sorry is the answer – Hello, this is my business, my life and i get sorry! How about fix the servers.
Amazing Review: one question, we have issues with ecommerce solutions in the Middle East specifically in the payment gateway and shipping domains. USPS and UPS are too expensive instead Aramex is very large and widely supported. The other issue is that billing from Middke Eastern credit cards are not generally supported by international payment gateways like Authorize.net, so we are limited to using local payment gateway solutions. Earlier BigCommerce had a huge issue without the open API support, but with the new RESTful API, can this be resolved, as in creating a custom integration with payment gateway vendors and shipping partners?
Big Commerce is built on Interspire, , Interspire customers has been treated so bad over the last two years it sickens me. Any company that disregards its customers in this way is one to avoid. Big commerce have just stated they are no longer going to support Interspire, the very foundations of Big Commerce, leaving thousands of store owners with useless software and no support.
What happens next, Mich and his crew get bored with Big Commerce and ditch it and shaft all Big Commerce users same as they have Interspire customers. Avoid Big Commerce like the plague unless you like bugy, ill thought out appls like ebay intergrations, mailchimp intergration thats only links to lists and not groups, tax problem with google, feed problems for anyone living outside the USA and trying to use google feeds.
Did i forget to mention they ban users and delete posts if they dont like yourfeedback in the forum.
It is all hype.