BigCommerce is like a teenager. In many ways it’s an adult, but it still has under-developed aspects. Which makes it an excellent buy if you only need the good parts, and can deal with the underdeveloped parts.
Pro’s
BigCommerce (as the name implies) is all about commerce. With a huge part of their pitch about their reliability on big shopping days. We specifically approached BC from a B2B point of view with a LOT of weird pricing rules.
Major Pro #1: BC does a lot of funky pricing out of the box (enterprise). Prices to control who gets what bulk discounts with individual lists, pricing with % off, fixed $ off, and fixed $. Ability for additional options to have per item $ or % increases, or a fixed amount. Discounts based on Category, BOGO, etc, etc. All possible and easy to do in BC. Fist bump from me, which after evaluating 4+ eCommerce systems couldn’t handle most of that list for this price range. The one *sigh* is that pricing for specific customers is kinda of a work around (you have to use price lists with 1 customer or build a custom solution outside of BC), but still possible.
Major Pro #2: There is a built in integration with our ERP, Acumatica. This integration is solid and works with many, many aspects of the ERP. It’s relatively easy for an advanced business user (without knowledge of how to code) to setup and modify. With help from a dev, they could easily setup a vast majority of the system by themselves (as I did). However, fair warning that the more your ERP is customized, the less its going to work with this default connector.
Major Pro #3: One of the big pros with BC (which I almost forgot because it simply fades into the background as it should) is the SaaS nature and robust infrastructure they provide. A good chunk of their whole pitch is “we will not go down (esp. on these 5 major sales days (e.g. Black Friday)).” I say that “you almost forget it” because its one of those services you just don’t think about. You just expect a website to stay up, all the time, that’s what it should do. Until, of course, it doesn’t. And if you’re the one responsible for the site, the last thing you want is a call from the exec team asking why the site isn’t working at whatever un-Godly hour. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Con 1: It’s appears evident that BC is growing out of a more niche / homegrown system. Settings are mostly confined to one location (the settings area), but often must be located in strange out of the way locations. Examples:
•To create new field/property for customers, you don’t go to some property settings area. You instead go to the new customer and create a new question for the form??
•Daylight Savings Time is not a set-it-and-forget-it setting, but must be manually updated every time DST changes (like why?).
•If you upload an image to the page builder (and there is already a file with the same name) it simply gives you a generic error message. It doesn’t tell you there is a duplicate file name (and that is why your image isn’t uploading).
•Alternatively, if you upload an image to the category image tool that is over a certain size (about ~1mb), it will tell you it successfully uploaded, but the image will simply not appear in the list
Con 2: As someone who is used to WordPress, and its ability to customize almost anything and everything easily via the admin panel page builder, the lack of customization with BC feels like (and is) a downgrade. The page builder is basic with simple functionality. It’s okay if you just need to build a simple page but, most crucially, it does not have the ability to modify template pages (like all category pages).This is something that you can do easily with Divi in WordPress as an example. The default main menu customization (hint, there is basically none) is also a joke. I know there is a headless commerce option as well, we did not look into that seriously, but may work out given your circumstance.
Assuming you’re reasonably okay with code (basic stuff like HTML, CSS), a lot of changes are possible via directly editing the theme. However you are still writing code at that point.
This is where the BC apps and 3rd parties come to the rescue. Their are excellent options for adding back such functionality. There is an app for a Mega Menu, Advanced Product filter, Awesome Search which we use. Functionality that can turn your site from okay to great. Tools like BCTools.io are life savers when you’re staring down at 8 hours of manual changes vs. 1 upload sheet (shout out to Tory @ BCTools.io).
So definitely have a budget for apps. Depending on the size / complexity of your site, ball park between $50 min to $500. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
