“Which platform is best for eCommerce?” It’s a question we often hear, and to tell the truth, there is no easy answer. There is a wide range of eCommerce-centric platforms that are excellent for selling online, including but not limited to Magento, Volusion, BigCommerce, and Shopify. Even WordPress, the perennial-favorite CMS platform, can be converted into an eCommerce website using WooCommerce.
However, when the majority of the debate dust settles, the two biggest contenders are BigCommerce and Shopify. Together, they account for nearly 6.5 million eCommerce websites around the world.
So, in the minds of many merchants, it comes down to these two.
But is one better than the other? Again, hard to say; but we can shed some light on some of the biggest differences, and here they are.
Pricing
Bigcommerce offers four different plans, ranging from the Standard plan at $29.95 per month to the Pro plan at $249.95 per month. Each plan has its own set of features, so you’ll need to compare them to determine which one is right for you.
Shopify also offers four different plans, ranging from the Basic Shopify plan at $29 per month to the Advanced Shopify plan at $299 per month. Like Bigcommerce, each plan has its own set of features, but Shopify also offers additional features such as gift cards, abandoned cart recovery, and third-party calculated shipping rates.
Processing Fees
When it comes to processing fees, BigCommerce and Shopify both have their pros and cons. BigCommerce charges a flat rate of 2.2% plus $0.30 per transaction, while Shopify charges a tiered rate that can range from 2.4% to 2.9% plus a fixed fee of $0.30 per transaction.
The advantage of BigCommerce’s flat rate is that it’s easy to calculate and you know exactly how much you’ll be paying for each transaction. On the other hand, Shopify’s tiered rate can be more economical for businesses that process a large volume of transactions.
Product Listing Flexibility and Features
Another difference between the two platforms is the number of products you can list. Shopify allows up to 100 products in their basic plan, while BigCommerce allows up to 500 products in their basic plan. This can make a big difference if you’re planning on selling a lot of products.
In addition, BigCommerce offers more features for product listings than Shopify. For example, BigCommerce allows you to add product videos and 360-degree spin images, while Shopify does not. BigCommerce also allows you to add product reviews and ratings, as well as related products, to your product listings. These features are not available in Shopify.
BigCommerce also offers more customization options for product listings, allowing you to add custom fields and options to your listings. Shopify, on the other hand, offers fewer customization options.
Finally, BigCommerce offers more powerful search tools than Shopify. BigCommerce’s search engine can be used to search by product attributes, such as size, color, and type. Shopify’s search engine is limited to searching by product name and SKU.
Payment Gateways
Shopify and BigCommerce also differ according to the number of payment gateways available. Shopify offers over 100 payment gateways, while BigCommerce offers over 30. This can be an important factor if you’re looking for a specific payment gateway.
BigCommerce offers a wide range of payment gateways. Among the most popular are PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net. With these payment gateways, you can accept payments from customers all over the world, and the checkout process is quick and easy.
Shopify offers over 100 payment gateways. Shopify’s payment gateways include PayPal, Stripe, and Amazon Payments. Shopify also offers a point-of-sale system, which allows you to accept payments in person using a credit card reader.
App Availability and Compatibility
A final major difference between these platforms lies in the availability of apps. Shopify has an extensive library of apps (over 2000) that can be used to extend the functionality of your store. You can find apps for everything from marketing and sales to shipping and payments. Bigcommerce, on the other hand, has a much smaller selection of apps, closer to 500. While BigCommerce does support some useful apps, it doesn’t have as many options as Shopify.
Making Sure Your Customers Find You: Shopify and BigCommerce SEO Services
The platform you choose will depend on the unique needs of your business, as both Shopify and BigCommerce can be used to build robust, highly-functional, custom-like eCommerce websites.
That said, it’s also imperative that you engage the proper marketing channels to ensure your online store gets found by the intended members of your target market.
While paid search marketing is a viable avenue for many online stores, all online merchants need to engage in organic marketing, and in this instance, that comes down to Shopify and BigCommerce SEO services.
Fortunately, we are experts in each, and there is some important crossover between the two strategies. Nevertheless, we create fully-customized strategies for all of our clients, with respect to industry, target audience, brand, and of course, platform.
For more information on how we craft our custom Shopify and BigCommerce SEO services, get in touch with us at 888-982-8269 or start with a FREE eCommerce SEO audit to learn more from our SEO experts and see where your online store’s greatest opportunities lie.
SEO and Site Architecture: A Difference That Outlasts Pricing
Pricing tiers and app counts change every year, so the more durable question for a long-term store is which platform gives your organic search strategy more room to work. Both platforms handle the SEO fundamentals — editable title tags, meta descriptions, clean URLs, automatic XML sitemaps, canonical tags, and 301 redirect management. The practical differences show up at scale. BigCommerce historically gave more native control over URL structure and faceted-navigation indexation, which matters when a catalog runs into thousands of SKUs with many filter combinations that can otherwise spawn duplicate, thin URLs. Shopify abstracts more of the technical layer away, which is faster for a small team but means certain advanced controls (such as fully custom robots directives) are handled through the theme’s robots.txt and metafield logic rather than a dedicated settings panel. Neither is “better for SEO” in the abstract; the better platform is the one whose constraints match how large and how complex your catalog will become.
Headless and Checkout Considerations
If you anticipate a custom front-end or a content-heavy storefront, factor in how each platform handles a decoupled architecture. Both expose robust APIs and support headless builds, but the trade-offs differ: a headless build gives you full control over performance and Core Web Vitals at the cost of engineering overhead and ongoing maintenance. For most merchants, the hosted checkout each platform provides — PCI-compliant, conversion-optimized, and continually tuned by the vendor — is an asset, not a limitation, and is one of the strongest arguments for staying on the native stack rather than rebuilding it yourself.
A Five-Question Decision Framework
Instead of asking which platform “wins,” answer these in order; the answers usually make the choice obvious:
- How many SKUs and product variants will you carry within two years, and how complex is your category and filter structure?
- Do you need a specific payment gateway, ERP, or B2B feature that only one platform supports natively?
- How much of your traffic will be organic versus paid — and therefore how much do granular SEO and URL controls matter to you?
- What in-house technical capacity do you have to maintain apps, themes, and integrations?
- What is the realistic total cost of ownership, including the apps you will actually install, not just the base subscription?
Editorial note: plan names and prices in this article reflect figures published at the time of writing; both vendors revise tiers periodically, so confirm current pricing on the official BigCommerce and Shopify sites before deciding. Whichever you choose, the migration and SEO strategy is where the value is won or lost — preserving URL equity and redirects during a platform move protects the rankings you already have.