BigCommerce

What is BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) ecommerce platform that enables businesses of all sizes to create and manage online stores. Its core purpose is to provide a flexible, scalable, and feature-rich environment for selling products online. The platform serves both business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) models, offering specialized tools for each. Key functionalities include website creation, product management, order processing, and marketing. Founded in 2009 by Eddie Machaalani and Mitchell Harper, BigCommerce has grown into a global company with its headquarters in Austin, Texas. It is known for its open architecture, which allows for extensive customization and integration with other business systems.

BigCommerce Features

BigCommerce offers a comprehensive set of features designed to help businesses launch, manage, and grow their online sales.

• Storefront Design and Customization: Users can build beautiful, responsive online stores using pre-built themes or create a unique design with the drag-and-drop Page Builder. It also supports full code access for deep customization.
• B2B Ecommerce Functionality: The platform includes powerful native B2B features such as custom price lists for different customer groups, bulk pricing rules, and a streamlined quote management system.
• Multi-Storefront Management: From a single BigCommerce dashboard, merchants can create and manage multiple unique storefronts. This is ideal for businesses targeting different regions, brands, or customer segments.
• Payment Gateway Integration: BigCommerce integrates with over 130 leading payment providers, including PayPal, Stripe, and Square, allowing businesses to accept payments from customers worldwide without extra transaction fees from BigCommerce.
• Product and Inventory Management: Easily add and manage products with support for variants, custom fields, and digital goods. Inventory is tracked across all sales channels to prevent overselling.
• Marketing and SEO Tools: The platform has built-in SEO features like customizable URLs and metadata. It also supports email marketing integrations, promotions, and discount codes to attract and convert customers.
• Headless Commerce: BigCommerce provides robust APIs that allow businesses to separate the front-end presentation layer from the back-end ecommerce engine, enabling content delivery to any device or application.

BigCommerce Pricing Plans

BigCommerce offers several pricing tiers tailored to businesses at different stages of growth. Each plan is based on the store's annual online sales volume.

• Standard: This plan is designed for new or small businesses starting their online journey. It includes all the essential features to build a fully functional online store, including unlimited products and bandwidth.
• Plus: Aimed at growing businesses, this plan includes everything in Standard plus advanced marketing tools like customer groups for segmentation, an abandoned cart saver, and persistent cart functionality.
• Pro: Suited for established, high-volume businesses. It offers more scalable features, including Google Customer Reviews integration, product filtering, and a higher annual sales limit.
• Enterprise: This is a custom plan for large-scale enterprises with complex needs. It provides dedicated support, advanced security features, and unlimited API calls, making it ideal for complex B2B operations and multi-storefront setups.

BigCommerce Free Plan

BigCommerce does not offer a permanent free plan. However, it provides a 15-day free trial for new users to explore the platform's features. During the trial period, you can build your store, add products, customize your design, and test all the functionalities of the chosen plan. A credit card is not required to start the trial, allowing you to fully evaluate the platform before committing to a paid subscription.

How to use BigCommerce

Getting started with BigCommerce is a structured process. Here is a typical workflow to launch your online store:

1. Sign Up for a Trial: Visit the BigCommerce website and sign up for the 15-day free trial. You will answer a few questions about your business to help tailor the experience.
2. Add Your Products: In the dashboard, navigate to the 'Products' section. Click 'Add' and fill in the details for each item, including name, price, description, weight, and upload high-quality images.
3. Customize Your Storefront: Go to 'Storefront' to choose a theme. You can use the Page Builder to drag and drop elements like text, images, and banners to customize your homepage and other pages without any coding.
4. Set Up Payments and Shipping: In 'Store Setup', configure your payment gateways (like PayPal or Stripe) to accept payments. Then, set up your shipping zones, rates, and methods.
5. Review and Launch: Go through your site to check for any errors. Once you are satisfied, select a paid plan and connect your custom domain to make your store live to the public.

Pros and Cons of BigCommerce

Pros

• No Transaction Fees: BigCommerce does not charge its own transaction fees on any of its plans, regardless of the payment gateway you use.
• Strong Built-in Features: Many features that require paid apps on other platforms, like customer groups and advanced product filtering, are included natively.
• Excellent Scalability: The platform is built to grow with your business, from a small startup to a large enterprise, with strong B2B capabilities.
• Good SEO Performance: BigCommerce provides strong, built-in SEO tools, including customizable URLs, metadata, and image alt tags.

Cons

• Annual Sales Limits: Plans have revenue thresholds, and exceeding them requires an upgrade to a more expensive plan.
• Learning Curve: With its extensive feature set, the platform can be more complex for absolute beginners compared to simpler alternatives.
• Theme Costs: While free themes are available, many of the premium, more advanced themes can be expensive.

BigCommerce integrations

BigCommerce has a large app marketplace with hundreds of integrations to extend your store's functionality. You can connect your store to other business tools for a seamless workflow.

• Salesforce integration: Sync customer data, orders, and product catalogs between BigCommerce and Salesforce for a unified view of your customers.
• QuickBooks Online integration: Automatically sync sales, fees, and customer information to QuickBooks to simplify accounting and bookkeeping.
• Mailchimp integration: Connect your store to Mailchimp to automatically add new customers to your mailing lists and create targeted email campaigns.
• Klaviyo integration: Use deep data integration for advanced marketing automation, creating personalized email and SMS campaigns based on customer behavior.
• ShipperHQ integration: Integrate with ShipperHQ to offer complex, real-time shipping rate calculations and delivery options at checkout.

BigCommerce Alternatives

• Shopify: A very popular alternative, known for its ease of use and extensive app store. Shopify is often considered easier for beginners, but BigCommerce offers more built-in features without relying on apps.
• WooCommerce: A free, open-source plugin for WordPress. It is highly customizable but requires you to manage your own hosting, security, and maintenance, making it more hands-on than BigCommerce.
• Magento (Adobe Commerce): A powerful platform for large enterprises with complex needs. It offers immense flexibility but is significantly more complex and expensive to implement and manage than BigCommerce.
• Wix eCommerce: A website builder with added ecommerce functionality. It is very user-friendly for simple stores but lacks the advanced, scalable features that BigCommerce provides for growing businesses.

BigCommerce API

Yes, BigCommerce provides a comprehensive set of APIs that allow developers to build custom solutions and integrations. The platform's APIs are a core part of its 'Open SaaS' strategy, enabling headless commerce setups and deep integration with third-party systems like ERPs and CRMs.

To obtain API keys, you need to be the store owner. You can create them for free within the BigCommerce control panel:

1. Go to Settings > API > API accounts.
2. Click Create API account.
3. Choose the API resources and permissions the account needs.
4. Save your changes. The API credentials (Client ID, Access Token, and API Path) will be displayed and can be downloaded.

Here is a basic cURL example to fetch a list of products using the BigCommerce API:

curl --request GET \
  --url https://api.bigcommerce.com/stores/{store_hash}/v3/catalog/products \
  --header 'X-Auth-Token: {access_token}' \
  --header 'Accept: application/json'

Replace {store_hash} and {access_token} with your actual store credentials.

BigCommerce Affiliate program

BigCommerce offers a lucrative affiliate program for content creators, bloggers, and influencers in the ecommerce space. Affiliates earn commissions by referring new customers to BigCommerce.

• Commission Rate: The program offers a generous commission of 200% of the customer's first monthly payment or a fixed amount for enterprise leads. This means you can earn a significant amount for each successful referral.
• How to Join: You can apply to the program through the BigCommerce website. The program is managed through the affiliate network Impact Radius, which handles tracking, reporting, and payments.
• Getting Paid: Once your application is approved, you will get access to a dashboard with unique tracking links and marketing materials. Commissions are paid out monthly through Impact Radius, typically via direct deposit or PayPal, once you meet the minimum payment threshold.