With the realization of the immense benefits of online businesses, more and more business owners are taking their business online. Launching an online store and selling products without the boundaries of geography has simply widened the scope of growth for businesses. From known global brands to small local stores, everyone is joining the eCommerce trend. This trend has increased the demand for reliable and easy to use eCommerce platform for setting up the online store. Depending on your need and budget, you need to choose a platform that fits. For brands witnessing a high influx of traffic and transactions, BigCommerce Enterprise and Magento Ecommerce compete in terms of features and pricing.
Before comparing BigCommerce Enterprise and Magento Ecommerce, it is necessary to know the details of each of these platforms and their pros and cons.
What is BigCommerce Enterprise?
BigCommerce Enterprise is a popular eCommerce platform being used by large businesses. It has been in the market since 2015 and the product has evolved significantly over the past years. BigCommerce Enterprise is a product of BigCommerce, and was designed specifically for “high volume brands”. It includes businesses that make $ 1 million or more in sales annually.
The platform empowers innovation for your brand and allows it to explore limitless possibilities. It can be implemented for Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) operational models. BigCommerce Enterprise helps build eCommerce stores with the flexibility of open SaaS.
Big Enterprise is being used for known brands as well as more than 1000 merchants. Few of the clients using BigCommerce Enterprise are –
- Gibson.
- Toyota.
- Ben & Jerry’s.
- Skull Candy.
- Ford Parts.
- Woolrich.
- Martha Stewart Cafe.
- Balance Me.
- Paul Mitchell.
- Avery Dennison.
- PetCoach.
- CamelBak.
The features of this platform are of the highest level a platform can offer its customers. Right from a high influx of traffic to a high conversion rate, the platform smoothly handles it all. The highlight of this platform is that its pricing model is based on value instead of flat packages. It can also be easily implemented for multi-store structures.
Since its development, BigCommerce Enterprise has shown no signs of slowing down. It has become a major revenue generation platform for BigCommerce.
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Pros of BigCommerce Enterprise
- 99.99% Uptime: The platform operates on an infrastructure that offers High Availability (HA) with 99.99% uptime. Thus, it gives merchants the best performance and resilience.
- Security and reliability: The Enterprise platform is certified for security as a Merchant and Service provider with ISO and PCI. They also have a sound system for data backup and restore with two data centers and a separate third data center to mitigate any failure.
- No set pricing: BigCommerce Enterprise does not come with fixed pricing, the cost varies with the number of orders processed each month and the average cost of each order. So, a business will only pay for what they are consuming.
- Business to Business and Business to Consumer: It is possible to customize BigCommerce Enterprise to B2C or B2B model. Business owners can create customer groups based on pricing, promotions, or product access. They can also manage quotes, control bulk pricing, and customize for their ERP punch out the solution.
- Broad Spectrum of Payment Methods: With a broad spectrum of credit authorization and payment methods, it becomes easy for eCommerce customers to pay for their online shopping.
- Fastest APIs in the Industry: BigCommerce Enterprise uses the fastest APIs to sync data with third-party websites. The data sync methods are not only fast, they are secure and safe too.
- Use for International store setups and global shoppers: BigCommerce Enterprise uses third party translation services for a localized frontend in any local language. Their ShipperHQ shipment integration provides accurate quotes for cross border shipping. The stores can accept payments in over 100 currencies with a choice of payment gateway.
- Quicker Implementation at a Lower Cost: As Enterprise works on SaaS, it is possible to achieve your implementation goal in a quicker time compared to an on-premise solution. As updates, troubleshooting and fixing issues are also done by BigCommerce Enterprise, you do not have to separately train employees for the same. Thus, the overall cost is lower.
Know more about BigCommerce Enterprise
Cons of BigCommerce Enterprise
- This platform is only for Enterprise Customers. According to the website, an enterprise customer is the one with over $1 million in annual revenue. But while booking a demo, it is stated that an Enterprise customer is one with over $100 million in annual revenue. So businesses making flat $1 million may not have their onboard request accepted. Due to its criteria, it is available to only a limited fraction of online businesses.
- As per their revenue model, the eCommerce business is charged more as the store grows.
- There is no Lite version of the platform available for eCommerce stores to give a try to limited features.
What is Magento Commerce?
Magento Commerce is the premium version of Magento Opensource. Opensource Magento is the CMS for more than 30% of businesses in the online industry. While Magento Opensource is free-to-use, it may not be the right fit for websites witnessing high traffic and transactions. This is where users have the choice of opting for Magento Commerce. It comes with rich, out-of-the-box features, endless customization, and a headless architecture. Magento Commerce presents its users with a vast choice of extensions and implementation partners.
Earlier Magento Commerce was available in 2 variations, Magento Enterprise Cloud and Magento Cloud. Now, both these variations have been unified into a single platform, Magento Commerce. Along with advanced features and functionality, Magento Commerce also comes with 24X7 support from their technical team.
Magento Commerce is being used by several big brands including –
- END Clothing.
- Paul Smith.
- Brewdog.
- Monin.
- Barbour.
- Bulk Powders.
- Cox & Cox.
- Helly Hansen.
- Jaguar.
Pros of Magento Commerce
- Advanced Features: With Magento Commerce, clients get advanced marketing features, targeted promotions, and even options to implement customer reward programs.
- Option to Choose between On-Premise and Cloud Hosted: Customers can choose to host their eCommerce stores on the cloud or go for on-premise hosting. As a cloud-hosted environment brings the benefits of a SaaS, it comes with a higher price tag. So, if the client needs an efficient eCommerce store on a budget, they can choose a combination of Magento Commerce and on-premise implementation.
- Fully Customizable: Magento Commerce also functions as the open-source way. Thus, it is possible to develop custom Magento extensions and deploy them just the way existing Magento extensions are built and deployed.
- High-Performance Tools: Magento Commerce, especially Cloud, comes with a suite of high-performance tools like Blackfire.io, ElasticSearch, and NewRelic. Blackfire.io allows clients to test the performance of page loads and get real server data. This data can be used for optimizing the website. NewRelic is a monitoring tool that allows analysis of PHP execution and server speed. Elastic Search is an advanced version of the default MySQL search.
- PCI Security Compliance: To check the security compliance of the Magento Commerce website, clients can use PCI Attestation of Compliance by Magento. In the case of Magento Commerce Cloud, the platform is already Level 1 Solution Provider PCI certified.
Know more about Magento Commerce
Cons of Magento Commerce
- IoT devices are emerging at a steady pace. Magento Commerce is not fully equipped to publish content and sell products on these devices. It is still not fully developed as a headless commerce platform that can strategize and work as an omnichannel for all touchpoints.
- Magento Commerce has integration with PayPal and several other known names in the payment gateway. But, compared to other platforms with similar features, few payment gateway modules are still not built.
- Magento provides support at the only developer level. Magento Commerce comes with direct Magento support but it costs around $15000 per year. Thus, the tech support is expensive if you compare it to other platforms.
- Magento Commerce is easily scalable. When a client scales their eCommerce system, their hosting charges also increase. This can be an added burden on the pocket. Even the analytics, sales tracking, and statistics are not advanced.
- As Magento Commerce uses multiple environments like Staging, Production, and Integration, the overheads are extra. Each of the environment comes with different configurations for servers and may result in confusion while deployment.
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Conclusion: The Winner
Both BigCommerce Enterprise and Magento Commerce are strong in their areas. Both come with their set of pros and cons. Do not make pricing plans as the only factor of selection between the two. You need to compare both these platforms on all levels and then make a decision. If you are looking for a simpler platform, do not plan to scale your system regularly, and have worked with Opensource before, Magento Commerce can be a good choice. But, if you need an advanced system with out-of-the-box features and support, BigCommerce Enterprise is a clear winner. Make sure you choose a platform that works well for your business objectives and goals.
Web Developer & SEO Specialist with 15+ years of experience in Open Source Web Development specialized in Joomla & WordPress development. He is also the moderator of this blog "RS Web Solutions".