E-Commerce has been the centre of attraction for all the businesses around the world in past few years and the competition has been increasing since then. Whether it is a small start up or an established business, all are looking to expand their roots on a global scale. With the increase of this online business competition, the number of technologies is even increasing worldwide each day. There are ‘n’ number of options available in the market of E-Commerce platforms, which make it quite a headache to choose the perfect one for your business. Comparing the E-Commerce platforms can be confusing because one would be better in some aspects while other would be better in other aspects.
Two of the biggest names in E-Commerce platforms are Magento 2 and BigCommerce. While Magento 2 is an open-source, PHP-based E-Commerce platform which is currently being used to run approximately 300,000 online stores globally. BigCommerce is even a fast growing E-Commerce platform that is being used to run around 65,000 online businesses for selling products as well as for payment processing.
So let’s find out, who wins the battle among these two E-Commerce platforms.
Points of Difference between Magento 2 & BigCommerce
REPUTATION
So the basic point of difference to start with is reputation as well as recognition of both these platforms across the audiences as well as market. Out of the top 1 million E-Commerce websites, 16 percent are being operated on Magento according to a survey. BigCommerce on the other hand, is being used in only 4 percent of these top websites. This gives quite a clear picture about who is the winner among two in terms of popularity. Google has even provided a survey report of Magento being the more searched one on Google Search Engine too.
Magento takes a win here.
HOSTING OF WEBSITE
Hosting is basically making the website go live for the users and audience to use. This is quite a big factor in differentiating both the E-Commerce platforms i.e. Magento and BigCommerce. Magento is self-hosted, which means that business people need to pay money to a third party company which will host your website online. There are many companies as well as online websites that can help in hosting your website online by charging a bit of hosting fees. Self hosting helps you to choose the features you want in your website as well as decide what all things should be included in your budget plan.
While on the other hand, BigCommerce is a hosted solution itself i.e. you don’t have to pay any third part company money to host your website online. In this way, extra cost is saved for your business.
So here BigCommerce wins the battle as it doesn’t involve any hosting costs.
COST-EFFECTIVENESS
Price is always a major factor for any comparison. Pricing is necessary to be verified first because your pocket should be able to bear what you are going to buy. These two platforms differ greatly in terms of price.
BigCommerce is basically a paid platform for your online E-Commerce websites. There are different plans starting from approximately 30$/month, basically when you buy a BigCommerce package for your business. The stores which make more than 125,000 USD, automatically are shifted to pro plan, which costs approx 200$/ month. These plans are created according to the number of features. The higher your plan is, the more features you get in your E-Commerce website.
These plans even work on the per credit card sales, which needs to be monitored because this is an extra cost. The basic plan includes 2.9 percent along with 0.3$ per card transaction. Thus, if your business is making great amount of sales then this transaction fees can be sky high.
But if we talk about Magento, it is an open source platform i.e. free of cost. The only cost involved in Magento E-Commerce Development is of hosting their website online. The community edition of Magento is free basically and hosting requires approx 4$ to 100$ USD/month.
Magento is quite cheaper than BigCommerce as the monthly fees is quite less for Magento rather than BigCommerce.
So in this battle of pricing, Magento seems to be the winner.
DESIGN
Design is one of the most essential factors for any E-Commerce website as a good design attracts customers and thus, results in lead generation as well as enhancing sales. Basically, Magento as well as BigCommerce have fee design templates tagged along with them. If we talk about BigCommerce, it has 7 free attractive templates and a range of paid templates that vary between 140$ to 240$. Magento being a free platform offers a wide range of free themes from Magento Connect as well as some other 3rd party websites.
Magento is highly customizable, which allows you even a blank theme to build your totally customized website. This implies that a website can be created the way you want from scratch. If we talk about BigCommerce, only few design options are available which makes the website less customizable.
These both platforms are used to build user-friendly as well as responsive web designs for the ultimate online shopping experience. People are more into using mobile phones for everything like shopping and surfing these days, thus both these platforms are quite popular because these develop mobile friendly websites.
USABILITY
Usability is a quite a big factor for E-Commerce websites from audience’s point of view. Usability is what can draw customers or shut them off. People always love to use the websites that are easy to use as well as with smooth navigation. BigCommerce is more of a user-friendly platform than Magento. Magento is quite awesome for the developers, but it seems quite difficult for the new users to use and navigate.
BigCommerce is having a very precise and easily understandable dashboard which can be used to set up a website easily and even get it live. While accessing the dashboard, point by point instructions are provided to the users. Coding is not at all required as the website builder helps to create a website as well as manage it automatically.
BigCommerce seems to be the winner in this fight.
CHARACTERISTICS
Features are what make a website development fun and creative. These both E-Commerce platforms have their own set of in-built features as well as additional features can be added on top of it.
Various built-in features of BigCommerce include promotional tools, various payment gateways, social media selling as well as many other built in functions.
Various in-built features of Magento include catalogue organization, browsing the products & user accounts. Magento 2 even offers one page check out option as well now, which is quite a boon for it as no one likes to put same info again & again.
So here Magento 2 seems to be the winner.
ADD-ONS
If we talk about the add-on features, BigCommerce offers more than hundred types of add-ons, for which one has to pay monthly as a subscription fees.
Magento on the other hand allows you to use ‘n’ number of add-ons, as it is an open source platform and prices are quite cheap. This allows Magento Developers to add any number of add-ons on their websites and thus, more functionality.
So here also Magento seems to take the win.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
Search Engine Optimization is one of the biggest factors for the success of an online business. According to a survey, approximately 45% of the online purchases made start with a search engine search.
According to a report about the best ecommerce platforms for SEO created by clearly observing the major factors affecting SEO, Magento takes the first place whereas BigCommerce is one the third fourth place.
So in this battle, Magento is a clear winner for increasing sales and traffic.
SUPPORT
Support plays a very essential role in any online business. Support can be a reason for the profit of your business and if you don’t get it, then the reason for loss.
If we talk about the community support for BigCommerce then its university is always helpful to educate people on how to increase their E-Commerce sales.
Talking about Magento, it has a very large number of users. There is always a presence of huge number of developers, who can answer your questions perfectly on their forums that help in making the usage of Magento better. Even the add-on developers provide proper support to their users.
RESULTS
Let’s talk about the positives and negatives of both these platforms.
Positives about BigCommerce:
- Eye-catching and full-featured free and paid templates
- Ease of usability
Negatives about BigCommerce:
- Less Customizable
- Costly
Positives about Magento 2:
- Open Source
- Highly Customizable
- Flexibility
- SEO Friendly
- Unlimited add-ons & thus, features.
Negatives about Magento 2:
- Difficult usability
- Finding as well as hosting fees.
Choosing a perfect E-Commerce platform depends upon the size, budget and details of the business. The features of one E-commerce platform may be perfect for one business but not for other.
Comparing two big E-Commerce platforms like BigCommerce and Magento 2 requires proper study about the characteristics, expenses, design and other important aspects.
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