Shopify vs WooCommerce vs Magento vs BigCommerce: Which is Best for Your Online Store?

Choosing and setting up the right eCommerce platform can help you achieve multiple goals: build and grow a customer base, attract new customers, re-engage inactive ones, and track key performance indicators (KPIs) while monitoring your team’s work.

But first, you must pick the platform that fits your business best. To do that, it’s important to understand the strengths of the industry leaders: Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and BigCommerce

Magento
Magento is a well-known open-source eCommerce platform offering Community and Enterprise Editions. It’s trusted by many large brands like Helly Hansen, Sigma Beauty, Ford, Vizio, Landrover, Nike, and Nestle Nespresso. Over 170,000 online stores currently run on Magento. The platform’s slogan is “Designed to grow, built for flexibility,” highlighting its ability to scale and adapt to businesses of all sizes.

The key features of Magento include:

• Magento offers many features for different needs, such as support for large product catalogs with various options, built-in product bundles, and tools for cross-selling and upselling.
• There are three main deployment options: the solution can be hosted on-site, in the cloud, or on a third-party hosting platform.
• The performance can be optimized for any website size thanks to flexible hosting options.
• There are many built-in SEO features available.
• Magento easily supports payment gateways like PayPal, Authorize.net, Amazon Payments, and Stripe.
• There are more than 5,000 extensions available for complete customization.
• You can use a wide range of configurable product features, both built-in and additional.
• A Magento-based store can be easily scaled to handle up to 250,000 product items.

However, there are also some downsides to consider:

• The platform can be difficult for beginner web store creators to master, as Magento is designed for building custom, non-template solutions.
• Finding skilled developers can take a lot of time and money, so it’s important to have the right contacts to avoid wasting resources.
• Authentic Magento-based projects start at $20,000, which may not be affordable for many companies. If you’re looking to save costs, you might want to compare Magento with WooCommerce and consider the latter option.
• Magento Open Source Edition is free, but you’ll still need to pay for hosting, which can range from $20 to $150 for shared Magento hosting or $500 to $800 for dedicated servers, depending on your store size. There’s also the Magento Commerce Edition (Enterprise), which costs between $22,000 and $125,000 per year, and the Magento Cloud Edition for PaaS solutions, which ranges from $40,000 to $150,000 per year.

WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a free, open-source plugin developed by WordPress. It is the most popular free option for online store developers. However, it doesn’t come with built-in hosting, so you’ll need to find your own hosting provider.

Looking at the statistics of the top 10,000 sites, WooCommerce is used by about 10% of online stores, which shows it’s quite popular, even though it’s not the most widely used.

If you decide to use this popular WordPress plugin for your project, here’s what you’ll get:

• You can choose from thousands of themes on this platform, all of which can be customized either through a graphic editor or by editing the CSS, HTML, or PHP code.
• There are many flexible configuration tools available, including simple product listing, bulk email, multiple store inventories, analytics, and various marketing features.
• WooCommerce also offers a variety of built-in SEO features.
• You also have many payment gateway options to choose from.

On the other hand, the disadvantages of this platform include:

• Using too many plugins and extensions can result in slower loading times and overall performance.
• A lot of extensions require payment, either as a one-time cost or on a monthly basis.

BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a platform designed for building large, scalable eCommerce solutions. It’s an ideal choice for those who are new to web development and looking to start their eCommerce journey.

It is the only platform that directly integrates with Google Merchant Center, enabling users to advertise their products on Google Shopping. Additionally, BigCommerce seamlessly connects with third-party apps and software, making it easier to manage daily store operations. For example, you can integrate QuickBooks, Olark LiveChat, Optimizely, and many more tools.

The key features of BigCommerce include:

• BigCommerce offers approximately 140 paid themes, ranging from $150 to $300, along with 9 completely free themes.
• BigCommerce comes with PayPal as a built-in payment gateway option.
• A full range of reports is available.
• 250 available product options.
• Official integration with Mailchimp.
• The platform offers 4 pricing plans, ranging from $29.95 to $299.95 per month.

BigCommerce also has its drawbacks:

• BigCommerce is less customizable than Magento and WooCommerce, offering a limited selection of themes with only certain customization options.
• The cost of using BigCommerce depends on the number of sales, making it difficult to accurately estimate the long-term budget for a store. If you’re choosing between BigCommerce and Shopify, it might be better to go with Shopify.
• The platform requires a monthly fee, with the most affordable option costing $29.95 per month, suitable for stores with an annual turnover of up to $50,000.

Shopify
Shopify is another popular eCommerce platform that works well for small and medium-sized businesses. It has been used by store creators like UgMonk, Pipcorn, Taylor Stitch, Happiness Abscissa, Skinny Teatox,and HELM Boots.

One of the best features of Shopify is its user-friendly approach. The platform is very intuitive and offers a drag-and-drop website design interface. You can easily set up a fully functional online store, or choose the Lite plan with the Shopify button if you only need essential eCommerce features.

You can easily create discount promo codes and gift cards for your customers, promote your store on social media, and build an extensive email list for newsletters.

The key advantages are:

• A great choice for beginner store builders.
• A wide range of built-in features, along with all the additional capabilities available in the Shopify App Store.
• Shopify operates on the cloud, eliminating the need to arrange hosting separately.
• More than 60 themes are available, including free and paid options, with prices ranging from $140 to $180.
• Performance is not an issue since the Shopify team handles hosting support and load balancing.
• Shopify offers many built-in SEO features, with even more available through the app store.
• Shopify supports over 70 payment gateways, including options like PayPal and Amazon Payments.
• The platform provides access to over 3,000 apps.
• Shopify adheres to all six PCI compliance standards and implements SSL encryption for secure data protection.
• The Basic Shopify plan starts at $29 per month, while the more advanced plans range from $79 to $299 per month. Shopify Plus, designed for enterprise-level businesses, starts at $2,000 per month.

Now, let’s look at some drawbacks:

• Integrating third-party solutions often comes with additional costs.
• Shopify offers less flexibility in configurations compared to Magento, giving Magento the edge in this area.
• Shopify isn’t the cheapest option, but unlike BigCommerce, it doesn’t charge additional fees as your sales grow over time.