BigCommerce or Shopify? How to Actually Decide

We get asked this question a lot. Usually by brands who've read a few comparison articles and are more confused than when they started. So here's our honest take, based on building on both platforms for years.

The Short Answer

If you're selling physical products to consumers and don't have complex technical requirements, Shopify is probably the better choice. If you have complex catalogue needs, sell B2B, or want more control over your stack without going fully headless, BigCommerce is worth serious consideration.

Where Shopify Wins

App Ecosystem

There's an app for everything. Loyalty, reviews, subscriptions, email marketing—the Shopify App Store is massive. This means faster implementation and lower development costs for common features.

Theme Marketplace

More themes, more developers who know Liquid, easier to find help. The Dawn theme and OS 2.0 features are genuinely good.

Checkout

Shop Pay is excellent. High conversion rates, fast checkout, built-in financing options. Hard to replicate this with custom solutions.

Where BigCommerce Wins

Complex Catalogues

Products with many variants, configurable options, or complex pricing rules are easier to manage in BigCommerce. The 600 variant limit on Shopify causes real headaches for some stores.

Native B2B

BigCommerce's B2B edition is more mature than Shopify's B2B features. Customer groups, quote management, and company accounts work well out of the box.

Headless Flexibility

BigCommerce's APIs are more comprehensive, and their Catalyst framework for headless builds is solid. You get more control without Shopify Plus pricing.

Quick Comparison:

Choose Shopify When:

• Selling primarily to consumers
• Want to move fast
• Need lots of app integrations
• Value simplicity over control

Choose BigCommerce When:

• Complex product requirements
• B2B is significant revenue
• Want headless without Plus pricing
• Need more API flexibility

What About Cost?

Shopify's transaction fees (unless using Shopify Payments) can add up. BigCommerce doesn't charge transaction fees. But Shopify's ecosystem often means lower development costs. The total cost of ownership depends heavily on your specific situation.

Our Recommendation Process

We don't recommend platforms based on which we prefer. We look at your catalogue complexity, technical team, budget, timeline, and growth plans. Sometimes the answer is obvious; sometimes we genuinely think either would work and it comes down to preference.

Frequently Asked Questions

The questions buyers and engineers ask us most about this topic.

Should I choose BigCommerce or Shopify?

Choose BigCommerce for complex B2B catalogues with deep variant/SKU structures, unusual tax and pricing rules, multi-storefront setups on a single backend, and cases where Shopify apps cannot cover the requirement natively. Choose Shopify for developer availability, app ecosystem depth, and out-of-the-box simplicity. Neither is objectively better — the right answer is determined by your catalogue complexity, operations, and integration surface.

Is BigCommerce or Shopify cheaper at the same revenue tier?

At small to mid scale, BigCommerce often comes out cheaper because it does not charge transaction fees on top of payment processing — its base plans include features that Shopify reserves for higher tiers (faceted search, abandoned cart, etc.). At Plus/Enterprise scale (£3M+ GMV), the platforms converge on price; the bigger cost difference becomes apps and engineering rather than the platform fee itself.

Can I migrate from Shopify to BigCommerce (or vice versa) without losing SEO?

Yes, if you plan it. The non-negotiables: keep URL structures stable or implement 1:1 301 redirects, preserve all canonical and meta data, maintain product, collection, and blog URL slugs, and do not change pagination patterns mid-migration. We typically run both stores in parallel for two weeks with redirects pointing only after the new store is fully indexed and Search Console verifies the redirect map.