We build almost entirely on Shopify, so treat this with the scepticism that deserves. But the useful version of this comparison is not a feature grid — it is an honest account of where BigCommerce is genuinely better, because those cases exist and pretending otherwise wastes your time.
Where BigCommerce actually wins
No transaction fees on third-party gateways. Shopify charges a fee if you do not use Shopify Payments. BigCommerce does not. If you are locked into a specific processor for reasons you cannot change, that difference compounds.
Native B2B without the Plus tier. BigCommerce ships customer groups, price lists and quoting lower down its pricing. Shopify puts serious B2B behind Plus. For a mid-size wholesaler, that is a real gap.
Multi-storefront on one backend. BigCommerce lets you run several storefronts from a single catalogue without separate subscriptions. Shopify wants expansion stores, which on standard plans means paying again.
More built in before you reach for apps. Faceted search, complex product options and some promotion logic are native. On Shopify several of those are apps, and apps are both a recurring cost and a performance cost.
| BigCommerce | Shopify | |
|---|---|---|
| Third-party gateway fees | None | Charged unless you use Shopify Payments |
| Native B2B | Lower down the pricing | Effectively Plus-only |
| App ecosystem | Smaller — gaps are real | The deepest in the category |
| Theme market | Limited | Large, and agencies know it |
| Hiring a developer | Harder, and it costs more | Straightforward |
| Checkout | Customisable on higher tiers | Plus, via Functions |
Where Shopify wins, and why it usually decides it
The ecosystem. This is the honest reason most DTC brands end up on Shopify, and it is not a small thing. Whatever you need to plug in — subscriptions, reviews, loyalty, 3PL, attribution — there is a mature Shopify integration and someone has already hit the edge cases before you.
Finding people. You can hire a Shopify developer next week. Finding a good BigCommerce developer takes longer and costs more, and if your agency relationship ends you want a large pool to hire from. Platform choice is partly a staffing decision and brands consistently underweight that.
Checkout conversion. Shopify Checkout, and Shop Pay in particular, is the most optimised checkout in the category. You inherit years of testing you did not pay for.
Pace of change. Shopify ships constantly. Functions, checkout extensibility, Markets, Hydrogen — whether or not you use all of it, the platform you are on is moving quickly.
The strongest argument for Shopify is rarely a feature. It is that your next five decisions — a subscription app, a 3PL, a reviews platform, a new developer — are all easier on it.
How we would actually decide it
Ask what proportion of your revenue is B2B. If it is substantial and you are not prepared to pay for Plus, BigCommerce deserves a serious look and we would say so.
Ask whether you are tied to a payment processor. If you are, model the transaction fee over three years before dismissing it.
Ask how many storefronts you genuinely need. Several brands think they need four and actually need one catalogue with proper market routing.
If none of those apply, the ecosystem argument usually wins, and it wins by more than any feature comparison suggests.
Talk it through
Not sure which platform fits what you sell?
Tell us your revenue split, your payment setup and how many markets you serve. We will give you a straight recommendation — including when it is not the platform we build on.
Ask us directlyA real read within one business day — not a sales call.
If you are migrating either direction
The platform matters less than the migration plan. Every URL mapped before cutover, redirects tested, structured data reproduced, and a rollback you could actually execute.
Most of the horror stories attributed to a platform are actually stories about a migration nobody scoped. We wrote up how to avoid that in detail in our WordPress to Shopify migration guide, and the method is the same whichever direction you are going.
About the author
Manpreet Singh
Manpreet Singh is the founder of Proscube, an ecommerce growth studio. He leads the studio's Shopify and Shopify Plus engineering, headless builds, CRO, and its work on AI engine optimization, and writes its guidance on how to grow a DTC brand without wasting money. He works directly with founders — no account-manager layers between you and the people doing the work — and would rather tell a client not to build something than sell them work they don't need.
More about Manpreet
