Magento has been around for quite some time and is a well-developed framework for eCommerce sites. However, as it is a framework, building your eCommerce site won’t be that easy as compared to the self-hosted BigCommerce platform. BigCommerce can be called as a newly emerging eCommerce platform as compared to Magento but the user experience and ease to use is unmatched. These both have their own set of merits and demerits so it may be a bit difficult for non-technical business owners to make a selection between BigCommerce and Magento.
To help with that, we will try to make a quick comparison among these two platforms on the points that matter the most:
Time to Launch
BigCommerce is a hosted platform and within a few clicks, registration and payment after the trial period of certain days, you can be the proud owner of an eCommerce site.
Whereas for Magento, you if you are not well versed with this platform, you will need to hire a developer and may take around 1+ months depending upon your requirements.
Further, if you need your developer to create custom apps for your Magento platform, the development time will go higher.
Features to Use
Bigcommerce allows you with a WordPress-like dashboard which will help you handle features here and there. The social media share icons esp. Facebook, payment gateways (Authorize.net and Paypal), basic SEO, BigCommerce product feeds and other useful features can be found on the app store or integrated by default.
However in Magento platform, as this has been around for a lot of time, many developers have contributed their apps for you to easily integrate features.
Designing your Store
The design is the first and foremost thing that comes after your site name and URL. BigCommerce platform offers around 100 templates for your site design free of cost.
These templates that BigCommerce provides follow the latest eCommerce site trends. But alike the apps, Magento may beat the BigCommerce in this aspect too with the free and premium templates.
However, if you need to change or customize the templates, you will need some help of the developers.
Approximate costing
When you are running an online store based on the BigCommerce platform, the basic price that you will need to pay will be $29.95 per month.
BigCommerce will charge you the cost based on quota and transaction value as well. As with Magento, it is open source in nature and you don’t have to pay a dime if you are able to work on the development yourself, but paying your developer can range anywhere depending upon your site requirements.
The next cost that you’ll have to incur with Magento option is that you will need to purchase a domain name and hosting service with the third parties yourself.
Extendibility and flexibility
When you are working with BigCommerce platform, you have the opportunity to extend your site’s functionality based on the apps that have been approved by BigCommerce in their store.
So there is somewhat a limitation. However, for Magento based site, you can use the extensions in the Magento app store like the one we have offered for ExportFeed to Magento product feed.
But apart from that, as the documentations and tutorials for developments are available, someone with hands on experience can tweak the features and looks to match the best fit.
Customer Support
If you encounter some issues while developing or running your eCommerce site on BigCommerce, you can easily reach out to the support staffs.
Just this gives you a lot of comfort and quicker solution to the issues. But in case of Magento, you should either consult with the developer you used to develop the site or go through the forums or documentations which will be like searching for needle in the haystack.
Now to answer the main question,
“When to choose BigCommerce &When to choose Magento?”
Here is the summary…
- Probably go with BigCommerce if you are new to the eCommerce business and new to handling your online portal.
- Go with BigCommerce if you are looking for a hosted eCommerce solution where you will find support when needed.
- Go with BigCommerce if you are willing to pay on a monthly or timely basis for the service you receive.
- Make decisions in favor of Magento if you are willing to spend development time and cost to get things the right way – your way.
- Start eCommerce site with Magento if you already have or planning to have a domain name and get your hosting space.
- Choose Magento platform if you are planning to extend your site with your custom defined features and designs.
We are sure that you have more ideas and reasons as to why you chose the platform that you are using. So if you wish to share your reasons, we are sure that your opinion will be valuable to others as well.
