I have just published my comparative review Big Commerce vs Volusion, I hope you find it useful
Trying to get a useful comparison of Shopify and Big Commerce is almost impossible. To read the websites the both do everything in the universe and they both do it easier than all others.
Using our own unique method we will take you through a few scenarios and let you quickly fight through all the marketing nonsense to the hosted shopping cart that best suits you.
The Design Differences
Shopify wins hands down when it comes to being easy to customize the look of. You can definitely customize the look of Big Commerce but it is a lot harder and a lot more involved and if you have to pay a designer – significantly more expensive.
The Shipping Options
OK unless you live in North America (or have very basic shipping needs) go with Big Commerce. the company behind them are partially based outside America and the International shipping options reflect that. No matter which continent you live on Big Commerce will be able to handle you shipping needs – Shopify usually falls short for Europeans and Australians.
Simplicity of Use
Both Shopping carts are very powerful but for straight forward, ease of use we have to go with Shopify. This doesn’t mean Interspire is difficult to use, it isn’t it is very intuitive and set out like a very familiar business application. Shopify just simplified as much as possible and has opted to impress us by just working. big Commerce looks like it was designed by a marketing team looking for pats on the back.
Product Management
Big Commerce has this one hands down. Shopify has only the simplest of product management options (which may well suit you), though recent upgrades have started to bring it on par with the real world. Shopify will get there in the end, they will have to, but if you are selling anything that requires a customer to choose and option go with Big Commerce it is far and away simpler to manage products and inventory
Reporting
We said earlier that a marketing department designed the interface for Big Commerce and the biggest plus of this is the back end reporting. It is exceptionally powerful and simple to use. Shopify has the basics and will probably suit most people, but if you crave information and graphs look into Big Commerce
Aesthetics
You will be using your shopping cart a lot so aesthetics must form some part of you decision. Unfortunately we couldn’t split them. On the days we were the worker bee’s we lent towards Shopify’s simplicity and cleanliness. When we had manager hats on Big Commerce and it’s application interface appealed. Not sure how we split that one. Mac users to he left, PC users to the right.
Stability and Longevity
Hard to look past Shopify on this one. Big Commerce is based around the Interspire product but it is still a new product (especially this new multi-store version that powers Big Commerce). Shopify was custom written for it’s job and has been doing it long enough and successfully enough that it is going to take away the points. There is a big marketing push behind Big Commerce that is making some ridiculous claims, let’s see what the reality is like in a couple of years
Price
They both offer free trials – although as I type Shopify is offering one twice as long as Big Commerce. Generally they are pretty much price equal and that won’t change anytime soon – they will jostle for cheapest offering for a while but eventually they will find a stable price point and float there together. One thing we did notice was that to get the online shop from zero to selling (with a custom design and integrated into an existing website) was significantly faster and cheaper with Shopify
Expect this article to be updated as we push further into each product, we also have continued this theme with a comparison of Volusion and Big Commerce
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How is Shopify's support? I have been frustrated with Big Commerce's because they have no after hours, or weekend/holiday support which means your business could be down for several days if you have an issue
There support is great (at least on email never had to ring them)
Usually any issues we have are solved with online docs and the wiki though – but emails were responded to very quickly
the look of the finished sites by Big Commerce makes me instantly think of Magento, and then when you mention marketing, I had to ask …. is the back end similar? Is it dereived from them?
No Big Commerce is derived from Interspire – nothing at all like Magento – which I find alot more difficult than it should be
I know it is a resource hog, but the community edition makes it very affordable
I've got a site ready to launch once I get my head around the templating and design portion.
I found you because I really want to offer my customers an easy ecommerce solution, for those who can't install or develop from an os commerce, or the other Fantastico scripts. Your information was very helpful. If I am reading the reseller info correctly, Shopsite offers 25% commissions off of the customers sales – am I reading this right? and Big Commerce is a straight commission also 25% on the fee they collect every month for the service. The way most ecommerce sites go, I think BC is a better deal for resellers. What are your thoughts? Again, this is a first for me and I want the best deal for me AND my customers overall.
Personally the best deal for you and your customer's is to select one or two shopping carts and learn them inside out – if you like it and can expertly use it the rest will take care of itself – and happy customers that pay there bills are much more valuable than one off commissions for referrals.
I like the Big Commerce / Interspire combination because it is essentially the same product from a developer/design point of view (which makes life reliable). Shopify used to be hands down the simplest thing to use – but as it adds features it is losing ground slowly.
Magento was a product I tried really hard to like but just couldn't – it was such a massive piece of software and seemed to re-write a few rules (probably for the better) – I revisit it occasionally to see how it is progressing and expect it will eventually take it's place near the top of the heap – just not yet
Thank you for your input and insight. I believe I will heed your advice
and I will also take a better look at Big Commerce.
Anytime – let me know how it all pans out for you Meredith.
Andrew, I'll keep you posted!
Thanks for the short and to the point comparison. This was great. I’m looking forward to updates on the products.
my pleasure, i hope it helped
Hey Andrew,
Quick question, do you have any other recommendations for e commerce platforms that are a little more robust but dont kill you on price. I need great SEO architecture, ebay integration, amazon integration and a few other things.
Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated
That’s a pretty steep set of requirements. Interspire, Big Commerce and Volusion are all as robust as you could require (Interspire more so because you can host it on rock solid servers somewhere)
eBay and Amazon are integrated through feeds – Zen Cart and osCommerce have plugins you can buy that will handle that – but the shopping carts themselves are rubbish.
Best bet would be Interspire and have someone knock up add-ons that handle the feed export
SEO is good for the new ones (Interspire, Big Commerce, Shopify) Zen cart and osCommerce are search engine poison
Great review. I am looking for a shopping cart solution and am stuck between Shopify & Big Commerce until I saw the add for Volusion on your site. Shopify doesn’t support downloads, which is a deal breaker for me. Big Commerce seems to be a great choice but I also just reviewed the Volusion offering and am totally lost now. Who is better? Volusion or Big Commerce? Looks like Volusion has more customers and their feature set is huge. Haven’t tried their product yet though.
Not sure what Ad you saw – it might have been a Google one. I have almost finished my review of Volusion (Winter 09 release) and I am really unimpressed. It may have a lot of features but for the most part they are poorly implemented. At this point, without knowing precisely what you need I would recommend Big Commerce hands down – it does support digital products. If you send through more specific requirements I can give you firmer recommendation.
Both products do offer free trials if you want to test the waters.
I just moved one of my websites to Volusion. I must say, I like all they offer EXCEPT their paypal integration. My store will still show it as an order, even if the customer did NOT complete the payment checkout. This means I have not received payment but it still shows as an order received. For this reason alone, I am looking into Big Commerce for my second, higher volume store. I will start my free trial next week and see how it goes.
That sounds like a real problem. What have Volusion said abut the problem. For that matter how have you found there customer service? Good luck with the Big Commerce store I hope it works out for you as well as it has worked out for me.
It is a HUGE problem. I spoke with Volusion and they said being that the customer leaves the site to go to PayPal, they have no way to tell if they actually paid. I let her know their competetors said their servers talk with Paypal’s servers to ensure payment was complete before ever showing as an order. She just said she was sorry and gave me options like adding notes to my website asking the customer to be sure they finish payment if they choose paypal. Not really something I want to do though. I do like their customer service so far, they are quick to respond even if it’s not what I want to hear.
@ Joe Keyes, the reason Paypal integrates this way is because your customer must be lifted off the site to go to Paypal’s checkout screen. Volusion must assume the order is completed, because they actually “submit” the order. There really isn’t any other way simply because Paypal Standard works that way. What I have found out through support is that Paypal Standard will send notification back to Volusion. Once notification that payment is received, your order in your processing screen will turn to “processing.” If it is still at “new” then the payment was never received. You can contact support to get further clarification. In fact, as I write this reply in the evening, you can call Volusion’s support line, something you can’t do with either Shopify or Big Commerce after hours, which I’ve found frustrating in some providers…
Thanks so much for this comparison. I am a web designer looking to gain some small e-commerce clients, and am evaluating which system may be better to invest time learning. Shopify obviously markets directly to designers, and it is definitely appealing. But Big Commerce seems to be a strong competitor with a few more options for complex stores/shipping/products. I hope you can keep this review up-to-date with their current offerings, it is much appreciated!
I intend to keep it updated. Thank you very much for your kind words
Very good writeup! Hard to find honest and thorough Reviews between shopping carts that aren’t either full of buzz or bias.
I just wanted to quickly note that Shopify _does_ support downloadable products with the new “Product does not require shipping” option. There’s also a (paid) app called http://www.fetchapp.com that makes downloadable products very convenient with Shopify.
Glad to hear they are onto downloadable products – I will update the review in the next few days. There are also some huge changes coming through from Big Commerce so it is going to be interesting.
Thanks for reading and thanks for the feedback
I am a Volusion reseller and I must say of all the content I have read on this site and this blog are clearly bias towards Big Commerce. Just the fact that there are no link backs to Volusion are quite interesting. Why, I say? Both Big Commerce and Shopify pay out affiliates money to refer to their software–Something Volusion has never done. Great job Andrew, looks like you could be making some good money with this site. On the contrary, your clients/referrals suffer. When I refer my clients to Volusion it isn’t for a referral fee, but strictly because I believe there is not a better ecommerce solution, period. I come from a background in creating Yahoo and Magento stores, and as of two years ago I have strictly been using Volusion for my clients. My clients are successful, and Volusion is successful for offering such a great product and service offering.
Maybe there are no link backs to Volusion because the title of the post is Big Commerce vs. Shopify.
Thanks for that David. I just approved his comments and let it be, I started replying several times but I just didn’t see the point.
In case our mate Jason comes back there are many ways to monetize back links to Volusion – I choose not to because it would be seen as an endorsement of their software.
Thanks for stopping by David, pop in again sometime.
Hi Andrew
I am seriously considering moving to big commerce. I have been so impressed with its free trial. the only thing that is bothering me is that I came across a post somewhere that said big commerce is not pci-dss level certified and that as of july 2010 this is a must. Apparantly the process takes ages to get through. Do you have any idea about this?
Thanks
Louise
No, I don’t. They don’t mention it so it is probably safe to assume that they don’t currently comply, but you can be certain that if they have to by July 2010 they will. I have sent some emails and message sto people working there to try and get an answer. As soon as I find out – you will.
Thanks very much
Hi Andrew
I think I may have come across the answer
http://community.bigcommerce.com/bigcommerce/topics/help_with_pci_security_audit_site_testing
I am happy with that.
Thanks
That’s the exact same link I was sent this morning. It looks like they are going to be compliant in time which is great news.