Introduction
When it comes to enterprise ecommerce, choosing the right platform can make or break your online success. BigCommerce is an ecommerce platform known for its robust capabilities, extensibility, and enterprise-friendly features that help large online stores thrive. Many businesses often compare BigCommerce vs Shopify when evaluating scalable solutions for growth. Both platforms offer a broad set of tools to build and run digital storefronts, but BigCommerce’s key advantages—extensibility, B2B capabilities, advanced checkout features, ease of use, and excellent support—set it apart for enterprise needs. In this post, we’ll delve into five killer BigCommerce features you need to know about and briefly compare BigCommerce vs Shopify on these points, providing valuable insights for enterprise-level businesses planning their ecommerce strategy.
1. Unmatched Extensibility and Customization
One of BigCommerce’s biggest strengths is its extensibility. The platform is highly flexible and user friendly, allowing enterprises to customize and integrate almost every aspect of their store. BigCommerce provides an open API and supports headless commerce, enabling seamless integration with ERP systems, CRMs, and other enterprise software. In fact, BigCommerce offers a more robust API and more built-in functionality than Shopify, giving merchants greater flexibility to tailor their stores and avoid heavy reliance on apps. For example, BigCommerce supports up to 600 product variants (SKUs) with 250 options per product, far above Shopify’s 100-variant limit – a crucial advantage for enterprises with large, complex catalogs. This scalability ensures your platform can grow with your business.
BigCommerce also packs many features natively within the platform that other platforms offer only via apps or higher-tier plans. It includes capabilities like unlimited staff accounts, built-in product reviews, and real-time shipping rate quotes right out-of-the-box. These built in features reduce the need to hunt for third-party solutions and minimize additional cost.
By contrast, Shopify’s app store is more extensive, offering thousands of integrations for customization. Shopify’s approach, however, means not all essential features are native – many capabilities (such as advanced product filtering or customer segmentation) require installing third-party apps. Not only does searching and managing numerous add-ons take time, but each plugin may come with a monthly fee – an additional cost to consider when scaling up. BigCommerce’s comprehensive native feature set means you’ll rely less on external modules, simplifying your tech stack and reducing long-term costs.
Extensibility extends to SEO customization as well. BigCommerce gives you full control over critical SEO settings like URLs, page titles, and meta descriptions. Both BigCommerce and Shopify let you edit title tags and meta descriptions for your pages (important for search engine optimization), but BigCommerce goes further by allowing fully customizable URL structures and even direct edits to your robots.txt file. This level of control helps optimize your site for search engines and tailor it to your SEO strategy in ways Shopify cannot without apps or workarounds.
Lastly, BigCommerce offers even more extensibility via its flexible metafield setup. While other platforms do offer similar options, including Shopify, metafields are built into the core of BigCommerce. This allows you to easily extend essentially any aspect of your storefront to include customizable fields in a variety of types. Let’s face it – every store has some unique pieces of data they need to keep track of. BigCommerce handles this extremely well.
BigCommerce allows you to extend almost any object in the storefront with metafields, and apps like the Hypa Metafields Manager make this a breeze
2. Powerful B2B Capabilities
Enterprise businesses that sell wholesale or to other businesses need specialized B2B features—and this is an area where BigCommerce shines. BigCommerce has built-in B2B capabilities (especially with its B2B Edition for enterprise plans) that allow you to serve B2B customers alongside retail operations on one platform. It offers features like customer groups with custom pricing, bulk discounts, wholesale catalogs, and even quote management and purchase order support. For instance, you can set up exclusive price lists for different client segments and enable quick reordering, all natively within BigCommerce. You don’t need external modules or heavy custom development to support common B2B scenarios; much is ready out-of-the-box.
Compared to Shopify, which historically focused on B2C and requires apps or an expensive Shopify Plus plan to handle B2B needs, BigCommerce provides robust wholesale tools by default. BigCommerce even offers a dedicated B2B Edition package with features specifically designed for business-to-business selling, such as advanced account management, volume pricing, and purchase order workflows. These capabilities empower your sales team to manage large orders and negotiate pricing easily. By contrast, Shopify lacks many specialized B2B tools natively – merchants often have to rely on apps or custom work to fill the gaps. In practical terms, BigCommerce’s B2B strength means an enterprise can run a combined B2B/B2C storefront seamlessly, without bolting on multiple plugins.
Scalability is also a factor for B2B merchants handling high-volume orders and large catalogs. As noted earlier, BigCommerce can handle complex product catalogs (with hundreds of variants) and supports bulk operations well, which is ideal for wholesale ordering. Its platform performance is tuned for heavy load, so whether you’re dealing with large corporate purchases or frequent bulk orders, BigCommerce won’t be the bottleneck. Ultimately, if your enterprise has a significant B2B component, BigCommerce’s native wholesale and account management features offer a substantial advantage.
The B2B module of BigCommerce offers a wide variety of customization options to best serve the needs of even the most complex B2B setups
3. Advanced Checkout Features and Payment Options
A smooth and flexible checkout experience is vital for any large ecommerce operation. BigCommerce delivers with an optimized one-page checkout and a plethora of payment options. You can offer customers a frictionless checkout flow that’s mobile-friendly and highly customizable. BigCommerce supports digital wallets like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal One-Touch out-of-the-box, as well as multi-currency payments and localization to improve conversion rates globally. Additionally, BigCommerce’s checkout is open for customization—developers can use the Checkout SDK to tailor the experience or integrate with external systems (for example, to apply custom tax logic or third-party fulfillment services) without compromising security.
Critically, BigCommerce does not impose any extra transaction fees on your sales. You’re free to choose from over 65 payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, and many more) to get the best rates for your business, and BigCommerce offers this flexibility with no additional cost per transaction. Shopify, in contrast, strongly encourages use of its proprietary Shopify Payments system; if you use a third-party payment provider on Shopify, you’ll incur an added transaction fee (ranging roughly from 0.5% to 2% depending on your plan) on top of regular credit card fees. This difference can mean huge savings for high-volume enterprise stores. BigCommerce’s approach lets you avoid being locked into specific financial services and eliminates hidden fees.
BigCommerce also excels in abandoned cart recovery features. Recovering lost sales from abandoned carts can significantly boost revenue, so BigCommerce includes an Abandoned Cart Saver system (starting on its mid-tier plans) that automatically sends a series of customizable emails to re-engage customers who left items in their cart. This built-in abandoned cart recovery tool is a powerful asset for increasing conversions without extra effort. While Shopify also provides an abandoned checkout email feature, on its Basic plan this capability is quite limited (typically only a single automated email) and more advanced recovery tools require an upgrade or app. By contrast, BigCommerce gives you a robust multi-email cart recovery system as a standard feature.
For enterprises operating both online and offline, BigCommerce integrates with leading point-of-sale solutions to unify in-store and online transactions. Shopify offers its own POS system (Shopify POS) as part of its ecosystem, which is a plus for merchants invested in Shopify’s retail hardware. BigCommerce doesn’t have a proprietary POS hardware system, but it makes up for it by seamlessly connecting with top POS providers (such as Square, Clover, and Lightspeed) via apps and integrations. This means you can still run omnichannel retail across physical and online stores on BigCommerce without missing a beat. The checkout flexibility extends to these integrations, giving you choice in how you manage orders across channels.
Overall, BigCommerce’s checkout and payment features provide an enterprise-ready solution: a highly optimized checkout to reduce friction, extensive payment method support without penalties, and built-in tools like couponing, gift cards, and cart recovery to maximize sales. Customers get a convenient experience, and you retain control and user friendly flexibility in how you operate.
BigCommerce natively supports the ability to ship to multiple addresses, which is critically for ecommerce storefronts that do gifting.
4. Ease of Use and Streamlined Management
Despite its power, BigCommerce remains user friendly and relatively easy to use – an important consideration for enterprise teams that need to manage the system daily. The admin interface is modern, intuitive, and designed to make managing a large product catalog and processing orders as straightforward as possible. Even if your company is migrating from another platform or if your staff is used to Shopify, they’ll find BigCommerce’s learning curve quite manageable. The dashboard provides a clear overview of your store’s performance, and tasks like adding products, updating title tags and meta descriptions, or creating discount campaigns can be done with a few clicks.
BigCommerce strikes a balance between advanced functionality and simplicity. The platform offers all the tools you need to run a large online store while still being accessible – you don’t need to be a developer or tech expert to take advantage of its powerful features. This is especially beneficial for enterprise environments where your ecommerce team might include marketing managers, content editors, or sales personnel in addition to developers. Each team member can use BigCommerce’s interface with ease: for example, the marketing team can create promotions and view analytics, while the merchandising team can organize products into categories or set up bulk pricing rules without IT involvement.
BigCommerce features an intuitive page building experience, that allows for both built-in and custom widgets to be used to build pages in a visual fashion
Another aspect that enhances ease-of-use is BigCommerce’s emphasis on built-in functionality. With many features baked into the platform, your staff spends less time installing/updating apps or juggling multiple dashboards. Everything from SEO settings to gift card management is available in one unified admin. This not only saves time but also reduces potential bugs or conflicts that can occur when relying on numerous third-party plugins. The result is a more streamlined store management experience – a big win for productivity, especially in a fast-paced enterprise setting.
It’s also worth noting that BigCommerce provides extensive documentation, a community forum, and a knowledge base to help users master the platform. If a new team member joins, they can quickly find resources to learn how to perform any task. Moreover, because BigCommerce is a fully hosted SaaS solution, your team doesn’t have to worry about server maintenance or applying security patches – it’s all handled in the background. In short, BigCommerce is designed to be user-friendly for businesses of all sizes, from small business merchants up to large enterprises, combining rich functionality with an accessible interface.
5. Support
Enterprise-level retailers need more than just software features – they need reliable support and a secure, stable environment. BigCommerce delivers on both counts.
All BigCommerce merchants receive 24/7 technical support included with their plan, meaning if something goes wrong, you can reach out via phone, live chat, or email at any time and get help from a real person. Importantly, this round-the-clock support is provided at no extra charge, even for enterprise clients. BigCommerce’s support team is well-versed in both technical and business aspects of ecommerce, so they can assist with everything from configuration questions to best practices.
Beyond human support, BigCommerce offers a strong infrastructure that gives enterprises peace of mind. The platform boasts a 99.99% uptime rate and is built on a secure, scalable architecture. Security features like SSL certificates, PCI compliance, and DDoS protection are included, ensuring your online stores and customer data are safeguarded without you having to invest in third-party security apps. BigCommerce also performs automatic updates and maintenance, so your store is always running on the latest version with the newest features and security patches. This eliminates a lot of the IT burden on your team and reduces risk.
Another support-related advantage is how BigCommerce’s business model avoids conflicts of interest in assistance. Because BigCommerce has so many native capabilities, when you do need help, you often get a solution from one source. On Shopify, if you encounter an issue caused by a third-party app, their support might refer you to that app’s developers, potentially slowing down resolution. With BigCommerce, fewer moving parts mean the support team can usually address your issue directly. This “one throat to choke” scenario is beneficial for enterprises that require quick, accountable support to keep operations running smoothly.
In summary, BigCommerce backs up its feature set with enterprise-grade service and security. You get the confidence that comes with 24/7 support, robust built-in security, and a platform that can handle peak traffic without faltering. For a mission-critical ecommerce platform powering significant revenue, that level of reliability and support is a killer feature in its own right.
Wrapping Up
BigCommerce’s combination of extensibility, B2B readiness, checkout sophistication, ease of use, and strong support make it a compelling choice for enterprise ecommerce. While the BigCommerce vs Shopify debate often comes down to specific business needs, it’s clear that BigCommerce offers a rich set of built in features that cater to complex requirements out-of-the-box, whereas Shopify often leans on its app ecosystem for equivalent functionality. Enterprises should carefully evaluate the total cost of ownership and the native capabilities of each platform. For example, Shopify’s Basic plan may appear affordable initially, but it omits certain features (like gift cards or advanced reports) that BigCommerce includes – meaning you might end up paying for those via apps or upgrades as you scale. In many cases, BigCommerce can provide more value by reducing dependence on third-party solutions and scaling smoothly as your business grows.
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