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
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BigCommerce 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
Already decided on Bigcommerce – Andrew Bleakley wrote a great post on selecting the best Bigcommerce plan that you may want to read
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
OpenCart would be best, But it is a custom ecommerce platform
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.
Listen to wezers – what he has said is completely true about Big commerce
Absolutely agree with you. I am using bigcommerce for last two years.
I have been using Big Commerce for almost 2 years now http://www.mobilesignalbooster.co.uk although reasonably happy trying to find a UK service provider as my biggest market is the UK.
Also would like to have top navigation for products some of the templates on big commerce seem a little dated.
On volusion for ~5yrs, want to change due to the trouble clients have checking out, and our inability to follow up on abandoned carts (among other things). I like your comments about Americommerce, but… we’re trying to integrate our store with our Amazon and eBay stores as well as our QuikBooks system, using a third party, and they’ve never dealt with Americommerce. They have a hard enough time doing stuff they say they already know. Any advice?
Jorian – if you want eBay and Amazon integration go with Big Commerce
eBay integration ?!?!? The only “integration” is a listing tool, and a bad one since it lacks many eBay features like “Make an Offer” for instance. BigCommerce will create an order when you sell an item on eBay, and that’s it. No inventory syncing, no editing, no custom templates, no more than 1 picture, etc. It’s a scam.
I have been with Interspire then followed onto Bigcommerce, I am looking to move, no updates, don’t listen to their customers and arrogance that starts at the top
My initial contact with bigcommerce, left more doubts and answers. Most of the information is superficial. Why would I need to sign up to view the templates they offer, do they have something to hide? Time is money and wasting time looking for details is a waste.
Limited. All marketing scam to get you hooked on it.
does anyone have anything to say about magento?
Bigcommerce have altered the way they display image urls in their customers stores. As a result images are no longer linked to customers stores. Instead images url’s have essentially been stolen and are now on bigcommerce.com urls….. Huge impact in terms of SEO for store owners. Bigcommerce are not going to change it either!
whats the alternative now? they seem to be the only ones that was hosted doing that.. i checked shopify and volusion and they do the same.. i dont know where else to go
Volusion. Imagine investinf time, money and effort into your stored images only to have them hijacked by the cart you are already paying for. Lots of bigcommerce sites have lost ranking.
Support is TERRIBLE. We have been tracking inventory daily and a glitch inside Big Commerce has cost of untold amounts of money and lost customers. I think our biggest mistake was switching to Big Commerce
its true they do and i have no idea why…check their facebook youll see tons of complaints
I am starting a small retail business and trying to figure out the best ecommerce with the most features and best pricing. BigCommerce does not seem to have a complete pricing (what each item cost). Does anyone have a full package and a cost analysis?
Amazon WebStore anyone?
Nearly 2 years into BigCommerce. Reality is Big Commerce has its limitations but for the most part is a very cost effective way to launch an ecommerce site. We are still seeking a custom platform for our products and with multiple options available with our products, Big Commerce is a mediocre platform at best. If your products have extensive measurements or details associated with them you may want to look into something else. You will also need a custom design company to build your site unless you have coding experience and this takes $$$$$ and time.
Andrew- Do you have a platform that will allow you to customize products that have multiple “rules” associated with.
The big commerce software/system is really pretty decent considering its a template based system. How ever the technical support is a JOKE, call them with an issue other than logging in or paying them and they can’t or wont help you, and if you are thinking about transferring a domain, forget about it. You will be waiting until next summer for them to finalize the transfer.
I was going to trial BC. Email them with some queries but never go a reply. Since there is no pre sales service, you know what to expect when you sign up. I called up Australia Post’s My Shop In A Box, delightful and knowledgeable. Give it a go 1300 798 939
I have used Interspire for a few years, was pretty cool, but suddenly they pulled the plug and no longer develop and support the platform. I was angry, because I have paid huge amounts of money for all eight stores we run…
So we decided to switch to CS Cart last summer.
Wish I had not done that, because the trouble we have been through…
Now focussing on Big Commerce (as a follow up of Interspire), but there a still a few problems wich prevent me from switching at this moment.
The sale-support is great, trail period was 15 days and everything worked well, but now I am unable to test any further, so I will have to sign up for a new teststore.
As I hear it, I might just as well looking for something else instead.
Interesting reads by everyone. We are getting ready to launch in January and the online experience is our final component. After reading the experiences of many people here I am now “questioning” the choosing of BigCommerce. I have done some pretty extensive research, from a technical perspective, but it’s nice to see real world comments. If not BigCommerce, who then?
My primary needs are CSC, back end development power and as complete control of the overall experience as possible. I have the development wherewithal to go custom but would rather not do that considering the CSC component…that can get dicey and it’s just me on the technical end…and I’m too busy with the entire enchilada and really can’t afford to hire a developer at this point. We do not have a ton of products so size is and never will be an issue. But presentation, ease of use and stability are key. Interfacing with eBay and Amazon is an absolute must have. Thoughts?? Thanks in advance folks!
My experience with BC has been fairly negative mostly in the area of support. I spent a great deal of time putting together a store and never even got to launch! They could not resolve issues and oneI customer service rep would contradict another as it turned out they were all wrong!
Recently I have been getting a lot of emails from big commerce telling how theyve improved and was thinking of giving them another try. Until I read all the above posts. the question is who? Why not one of the majors? I ruled google out because they are beyond arrogant, more like aloof, indifferent id say. So I’ve been thinking of trying yahoo. I have spoken and emailed theirsupport and at least they appear to care. Any thoughtsof on them? We sell strictly b2b so have no need for amazon or ebay. Thanks, ES
Just started (opened) on my 2 bigcommerce stores, and i have had very good Customer service so far. The actual store admin is relatively easy to work with. So far… very happy with BC.
Big time server issues for almost a year now. We frequently see the store go down or stall out five or six times a day. I loved Big Commerce from day one……….but they don’t seem to be able to or don’t seem to care enough to fix the problem.
I was 99% convinced of BC until I came across this forum.
Are there any UK based retailers who have experience with BC? And would they recommend them to start with. Also does anybody have experience with mitigating to a new (OS) platform when business is out of the start up phase.
I understand they become impossible once you want to move away from them.
In addition to comments abo
I was 99% convinced of BC until I came across this forum.
Are there any UK based retailers who have experience with BC? And would they recommend them to start with. Also does anybody have experience with mitigating to a new (OS) platform when business is out of the start up phase.
I understand they become impossible once you want to move away from them.
I feel pretty much the same way. Thinking it was a done deal and while it gets rated better than most it sounds like service is blah at the best considering a growing company with 300 people. Too common they management get arrogant and only want to fatten their wallets.
Ive heard core commerce has almost the same features but not a very big company which can be a good thing
We’re a UK based retailer. The lack of options for internationalization with BigCommerce is a big issue when trying to expand to other European countries. But even bigger is the lack of reliability. Our shop has been down three times already in the last 4 months. To add to the comment made earlier the “arrogance” of the support is baffling. Unannounced “maintenance windows” right bang in the middle of the day and they explain you it is for your own good. We’re thinking about moving to Magento to give us the flexibility we are after. The learning curve and implementation effort is higher but, with hindsight, it would have been cheaper to do it from day 1.
This company’s customer support sucks. They are the worse. They take 3-4 weeks to get back to you and don’t know how to solve simple technical problems. For a technology company, they don’t know much about technology.
I wonder why Ryan Deiss would recommend your shopping cart to people at his San Francisco Conference when there are so many problems. I’ll have to ask him about it.
http://www.shoppingcartcommunity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=535
http://www.jtcorkernseo.com/avoid-interspire-doomsday-bigcommerce-payday-july-1st/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=avoid-interspire-doomsday-bigcommerce-payday-july-1st
Our BC site has been down several times a day, every day over the past couple of months, sometimes for 50 minutes, resulting in critical error warnings from Google (product crawl warnings)and postponed adwords campaigns by us.
Dreadful responses from BC including
” You are right when you say that some stores on some servers work fine and others might not.”
No help or interest whatsoever from them even when we said we would have to move if things didn’t improve.
Maybe they don’t think we will.
However we are. We are currently switching over to a Magento site – 6 weeks and we’re off. Can’t wait and would not recommend.
While the e-commerce platform isn’t bad, their customer support is very slow, and in fact a couple days ago they weren’t taking any calls and their live chat service was down– during their hours of operation. I don’t rely on help services very often, but functions that were previously working, haven’t been working– I believe due to a Web design change, but they are hurting my business as result. I would not recommend Big Commerce as a result of the poor customer service.
BigCommerce is good when you are starting out, but once you try to grow you will suddenly find their weaknesses are going to drive you mad.
- Having a niche and unique store is very important if you have competition. To fully customize BigCommerce they require you will be nickle and dime’d on multiple monthly plans with BC “partners” just to achieve simple things.
Take this recent post for example:
http://forum.bigcommerce.com/f5/forum-thread-1921-deleted-we-need-it-back-13072/
The store owner simply wants to display the product SKU in search results. BigCommerce’s solution? Pay someone a monthly fee.
BigCommerce has MANY shortcomings.
- Partner apps (as mentioned above) are not white-label. That’s right, when big commerce did not have a feature to retarget abandoned carts they suggested we use a partner’s monthly service to do so. Well the retargeting also advertised the retargeting service itself. How unprofessional. Everytime I brought it up on the forums my thread was deleted.
You know what? Just join the forums and take a look at the last 7 days of threads. You will find plenty of disappointment. New features have been delayed for years.
The past year’s “update” newsletters are just fluff. Most of the news contains:
- Tips that even a monkey knows are important for ecommerce
- “They” (bigcommerce) have new flashy graphics for “Themselves”
- Goals and ideas that will never come to fruition in your lifetime
- Warm fuzzy crap
Simply put Big Commerce development as completely went full retard. They are pushing development for the dumbest stuff (O look a new UI and a mobile app to run your store from!!!..fucking dumb) while much needed and asked for items like better coupons, site relaibility (yes mine goes down a few times a day) and forums that are not editing anything they don’t want to talk about. There answer for everything is “try this app”….fuck you I pay $200 a month for these features, if these features don’t work…fix em! Avoid Big Commerce
This seems to be a good comparison.
The comments are true. The software has bugs and their customer service is a joke. Their customer service rep, Scott Smithwick is a true prick and miserable human being. In addition to being completely incapable of resolving any issue beyond a login, he is condescending and outright disrespectful to customers. I regret the time wasted building out our website on their platform.
In terms of ecommerce software, BigCommerce is my favorite shopping cart to use and recommend to my clients.
Just a few weeks ago, they launched several new template designs that look very good. They are also fully integrated with Stripe payment gateway.
BigCommerce continues to listen to its users and keeps bringing us new features.
BigCommerce offers a million features but only with the most basic and out dated versions.
Although they “support Canada post” they support the version that no longer works.
The wholesale functionality means you can give discount prices but specify nothing else.
The eBay integration will simply post an ad and that its. since the ad is so limited you’ll likely not get a sale from it
Despite this company being in business for a number of years now, their software remains plagued with bugs and they have brought out close to zero features in the last year despite having an “Ideas” section on their website now.
Their transparency is terrible. They cannot provide dates on rectifying SEVERE bugs, some of which we reported up to a few years ago. Their priorities amaze us. A lot of their support is outsourced to Eastern Europe and the Philippines who do their absolute best to not ESCALATE tickets when they are BUGS. I have been told a few times on bugs that “this hasn’t been reported by others”, implying that certain bugs reported are simply not bugs and it is somehow user error.
System administrators who are the only ones that can resolve issues only work during normal business hours (Monday to Friday, 9 til 5 – they do not have shifts despite claiming to be a near 24 / 7 company). Their system administrators also take ages to respond to all their hundreds of escalated tickets, mostly presumably containing bugs. They will write “reports” in the USA for their engineering team in Sydney to follow up on. You will never hear an outcome. You will never know when or even if it will be sorted. None of them can provide resolution times. Their new features pending always end up taking months longer than anticipated.
Considering this company? DON’T use them. One of the poorest companies I have worked with. Support over-stretched. Management have no clue at all. BigCommerce should be ashamed of themselves.
I have been working with BigCommerce. There are much more features in comparing with other shopping carts. Recently I like AbanteCart because of the code it outputs and it has so many great features. I don’t have special programming knowledge but I set up my online store without any problems. Also installation of extensions is very easy. Additionally, most of the extensions that others charge for such as pay-pal, shipping, etc., are free as well.
If you are thinking of Big Commerce and are looking at review sites like these please take heed.
BC is terrible, firstly the design community is very small and to make changes to the design of your store is very difficult, even to an experienced HTML developer.
Secondly it is just a bare bones solution, any added functionality will cost you more in monthly app costs.
Thirdly their customer service is the worst I have ever and I mean EVER experienced.
Fourthly there is no white label version, all of the automatic emails to your customers are spammed with links to “create your own shopping cart with Big Commerce” very unprofessional, and you need to edit the HTML code directly to remove them.
This business is a joke.
Don’t use this cart, I am stuck with it until I go through the process of changing which is a nightmare in its self.
DON’T USE BIG COMMERCE. THEY ARE USELESS AND UNPROFESSIONAL. THEIR SYSTEM KEEPS HAVING ISSUES AND IT’S ALL CUSTOMERS FAULT – SCAM ARTIST BIG COMMERCE – STAY AWAY FOLKS!!!!
I HAVE PROOF TO BACK MY WORD – BIG COMMERCE RUINED MY ENTIRE CAREER ONLINE =- AND I WILL NOT STOP HERE. – FOLKS FEEL FREE TO ASK ME FOR PROOF
Yeah I agree that Big Commerce is a good choice for new online businesses. It includes the best SEO configuration. The ability to set up options, option sets and rules is much more powerful. Additionally, Big Commerce has a wide array of built-in marketing tools that will help you not only build your website, but your brand as well.
I currently run 2 stores on the Bigcommerce platform, both doing over a million in rev. While it has its ups and downs I have to say it is the best out of the 4 shopping carts I have used in the past.
It seems like some people do not understand what a SAAS platform is all about. You have to realize that you are paying $24.95 a month. That is a STEAL! If you are looking for a cart that has everything you want, then build it. Keep in mind you are looking $10,000 min just to get things going and don’t even get me started on the up keep.
Sure there may be some down time here and there but I guarantee if you start tracking down time with something like pingdom it will be a lot less than you think, and, for $24.95 you have a whole company who is going to work for you when your site goes down. If that’s not a bargain I don’t know what is.
I have also had a great experience with the support team at Bigcommerce. I can tell that they have a bunch of new people but most of them are willing to go the extra mile to get you a solution for your problem.
All in all I would highly recommend Bigcommerce they are a big part of my success as well as many others. If you have any questions I would be more than happy to answer them as I have been with Bigcommerce for over 2 years.