I Compare Shopify vs WooCommerce vs BigCommerce: Which Should You Use?

Before I begin, it’s worth understanding the differences between the platforms.

Shopify and BigCommerce are all-in-one ecommerce solutions, which come with everything you need to start selling online without code or technical experience.

WooCommerce, on the other hand, is a free WordPress plugin that you install onto your website to access ecommerce functionality. It’s more technical though, requiring you to customize your store with code, source your own hosting through a web host provider, and connect a domain yourself.

Now that’s cleared up, I’ve rounded up Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce’s key pros and cons to help you decide:

Pricing is where things get a little complicated. While Shopify and BigCommerce have set price plans, so you know exactly what you’re going to pay, calculating your WooCommerce costs takes a bit more time.

What do I mean by that? Well, WooCommerce is a free plugin, so there’s no cost there. However, you’ll need to pay for extras like:

• A website domain: $10-$20/year
• Hosting: $36-$5,400/year
• Plugins: free-$129/year (per plugin)

Shopify’s pricing comes with a three-day free trial, so you can test out all of its brilliant features before spending a cent. To keep using the platform, you’ll need to upgrade to one of its three price plans that range from $29-$299 per month (billed annually). You can also access Shopify’s introductory deal, giving you your first month for $1.

Each plan lets you sell unlimited products, and provides you with brilliant sales tools like in-person sales integration and global selling across three markets. If you opt for the Advanced plan, you’ll gain access to awesome features like third party shipping calculations and lower credit card rates. 

With BigCommerce’s pricing plans, you can try before you buy on its 15-day free trial. Its three core plans are also the same price as Shopify’s, starting from $29 per month and going up to $299 per month. There’s also an Enterprise plan, which you’ll need a quote for.

You get unlimited bandwidth on all plans, and zero transaction fees. However, on the Standard plan, you don’t benefit from abandoned cart recovery features, which is an important tool for any business looking to scale.

Because BigCommerce and Shopify’s features are included in clear-cut pricing plans, their monthly plans are easier to manage since you’re paying one lump sum. With WooCommerce, you’ll need to work out your additional costs yourself, which I’d only recommend for experienced users, or anyone who wants more control over their pricing.

Generally speaking, all-around ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce are far easier to use than self-hosting plugins like WooCommerce. The reason is simple: all the building tools are supplied for you.

To find out just how easy each platform is to use, our team asked everyday people to test them and score the three builders on their ease of use.

The results found that Shopify was the simplest of the three. As you build your online store, Shopify provides you with plenty of visual cues, consistent typography, and uses simple language, which keeps setting up as easy as possible.

BigCommerce is a powerful platform, but with such power comes a bigger learning curve. It throws you into the deep end slightly by using technical language, and provides a relatively cluttered interface.

One of our testers had this to say about BigCommerce:

Yes, it’s not overly simple to use, but you can see why – it’s because it’s basically there to run your business for you. But creating a website was not the easiest of experiences.

WooCommerce is the hardest of the trio to use. It’s designed for the technologically savvy who know how to code.

WooCommerce requires more effort than Shopify and BigCommerce, but you won’t be completely in the dark. When you use WooCommerce, you’ll encounter a setup wizard that will walk you through initial steps like creating pages, setting up payments, and choosing shipping options.

Build time is one of the more complicated sections for us to examine. Why? Because the time it takes to build a website with WooCommerce varies hugely.

Since WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, you will need to install WordPress before you can set up WooCommerce. If you already have a WordPress site, then build time is relatively quick, as it’s just a question of adding the plugin. If haven’t already created a WordPress website, it’ll take longer.

WooCommerce build time is also longer because you’ll have to sort out web hosting yourself, and do some of your own coding.

In contrast, Shopify and BigCommerce have speedier build times since they come with all the components you need to build an online store, such as built-in ecommerce templates and sales tools.

How do these two all-in-one platforms compare? A Shopify store can be yours in just a few hours thanks to its visual cues and simple language, whereas building a BigCommerce store usually takes around a day or two, owing to a more complex editing interface.

Selling online isn’t just about the tools, features, and apps – your ecommerce website design needs to look good, too. If customers enjoy visiting your website, they’re more likely to make a purchase and come back for more.

Shopify offers 13 free themes and over 200 paid options that cost between $100 and $500 per design. However, if you decide to switch templates further down the line, you’ll need to pay for another theme and reformat your whole site, which will take some time.

Similarly to Shopify, BigCommerce lets you pick from 12 free themes and over 100 paid templates which range from $100 to $400.

Design is where WooCommerce shines. You can really let your creative juices flow with its limitless customization, and even design your own theme. So, if you have the coding skill, you really can ‘woo’ your customers with a wonderful website of your own making.

When you start out, you can use WooCommerce’s Storefront theme to begin with. This free ecommerce template is built to integrate perfectly with WooCommerce, and you can customize it by adding custom code or installing additional plugins.

One last thing – it’s worth noting that all three platform’s themes are mobile-friendly. This means that whichever builder you choose, the site you create will look great and work well on screens of any size.

It’s no use having a beautiful online store if you don’t have the correct tools to sell with. Compare it to this: you’re not likely to make much money in your brick-and-mortar shop if you’re hiring incompetent salespeople.

When it comes to sales tools, Shopify and BigCommerce are two experts in the ecommerce world. With both builders, there’s no real limit to what or how much you can do with your stock.

Their inventory systems are superb, letting you sell an unlimited number of different products on all price plans, while you can also print customizable shipping labels.

Shopify does, however, have stronger AI ecommerce capabilities than BigCommerce thanks to Shopify Magic, a suite of AI tools that come with all Shopify plans and was introduced in 2023. With the tool, you can:

• AI generate professional, SEO-friendly product descriptions
• Create new backgrounds for your website’s imagery
• Interact with a sidekick that can assist you with Shopify’s AI features (currently only available for select merchants)

WooCommerce also has a lot of ecommerce tools to boast about, but you’ll need more technical knowledge to get the most out of them. Because WooCommerce is an open source software, your options for tools are limitless – if you’re comfortable tweaking some code!

That said, you can still get the basics without coding: WooCommerce offers automated tax calculations, live shipping rates from leading carriers, and the option to embed products into different store pages.

What Payment Methods Do the Platforms Offer?

Accepting more payment gateways means that more people can buy your products – it’s that simple. But which builder supports the most?

All three platforms support a wide range of payment gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, and Apple Pay. However, the key differences between the three involve the amount of choice on offer.

Shopify has its own native payment gateway: Shopify Payments. Free with all Shopify plans, this feature enables you to set up multiple payment methods at once. This saves time since you don’t need to set up each payment option individually. 

If you’re not using Shopify Payments, you still have over 100 methods to choose from so you can accept online payments from customers.

WooCommerce also has an all-in-one payment solution called WooPayments, but you’ll need to install the plugin from the app store to get started. Though I couldn’t find the exact number of payment methods it offers, you’ll have access to credit and debit card payments, digital wallets, and buy now, pay later schemes.

BigCommerce doesn’t have as many payment methods as Shopify, with 65 in total. However, it does serve 230 countries (and over 140 currencies) if you’re keen to sell internationally too.

For any business, promoting your brand is vital for growth. In terms of ecommerce stores, having good marketing tools brings more clicks – and dollars – to your site.

SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process that helps your website rank higher on search engines like Google. It’s an important aspect of selling online – if no one can find your website, how are they going to buy your products?

Luckily, all three platforms provide strong tools enabling you to carry out basic SEO. Each one lets you:

• Edit meta titles and descriptions, which is the text that appears in Google searches and summarizes your content (Shopify has an AI meta tag creator to help with this)
• Update your URLs to ensure that your web pages have clean URL, making it easier for users to find your content online
• Add image alternative text so Google can identify the contents of an image

Social Media

Growing your social media presence is key for online stores, since it keeps you in touch in with your customers and provides a great way to promote new products or discounts.

Both Shopify and WooCommerce rely heavily on third party integrations for social media. While this can add to your store’s overall costs, it will give you precious flexibility. You can add sharing buttons, introduce social media marketing apps, and link your posts to your Shopify or WooCommerce website.

BigCommerce is the most self-sufficient platform for social media, because you can connect with social media accounts (like Facebook and Instagram) from your dashboard. However, you will need to use separate apps to add social media feeds to your website.

Multi-Channel Integration

Selling across more channels gives you a wider audience, so you can see the advantages already.

Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce all let you sell across multiple channels, including Facebook, Instagram, eBay, and Amazon. BigCommerce is even offering an expedited application process to start selling on Walmart Marketplace as quickly as possible.

What about Plugins and Integrations?

Plugins and integrations are add-ons that you can install to enhance your ecommerce website. Everything from live chat boxes to affiliate marketing software falls under this category, and you’ll definitely want a good selection of plugins at your fingertips so that you can give your customers a great experience.

Shopify’s App Store and BigCommerce’s Apps Marketplace both offer hundreds of free and paid plugins across all kinds of categories, from shipping and fulfillment to CRM and customer service. You can easily go the extra mile, with services like geolocation for different languages and currencies or segmentation for email marketing.

But as far as plugins go, it’s WooCommerce that really impresses. WooCommerce itself is a plugin for WordPress, which means it’s built to add all kinds of ecommerce features to a WordPress website. But beyond that, WooCommerce offers hundreds of free and paid extensions, with even more possibilities than Shopify or BigCommerce’s app stores.

Plus, WooCommerce offers premade “extension collections,” or groups of extensions curated for different purposes. There’s a collection for everything, whether it’s launching a new store or selling CBD online.

When using any software, you’re bound to have questions, or need some help along the way. With ecommerce stores, it’s important to fix issues quickly so as to not miss out on vital revenue.

Shopify has the best support out of the three. It provides 24/7 phone and live chat help, as well as email assistance and active social media accounts. It also has a brilliant help center, packed with loads of Shopify-related queries and answers.

Though BigCommerce’s help and support isn’t as comprehensive (there’s no social media support), you can access a “Help” tab from your dashboard that provides links to email request forms, 24/7 phone lines, an AI chat bot named Kora, and a dedicated Help Center.

When using WooCommerce, you may find it trickier to find the support you need. The platform is home to in-depth documentation and a bustling community, but you might need to dig a little to find what you’re looking for due to the vast number of resources out there.

Because of this, I suggest that beginners opt for BigCommerce or Shopify instead to avoid this steep learning curve.

Between Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce, Shopify comes out on top overall. It’s the best ecommerce platform I’ve tested due to its high-quality sales tools, professional ecommerce templates, and its ability to accomodate large or growing businesses.

However, it still might not be the right choice for you. I’ve summarized who the platforms are best suited for below:

You should use Shopify if:

• You’re at the helm of a large business that’s rapidly growing. Shopify’s sales tools can accomodate the size of your business and ensure that you keep expanding

You should use WooCommerce if:

• You want unlimited freedom to customize your website and you’re comfortable with coding and other technical skills

You should use BigCommerce if:

• You’re ready to scale your small business by upgrading the sales tools you have at your disposal