Have you always wanted to open up an online shop? Perhaps the prospects of dropshipping or even establishing a brand of your own are very alluring to you? If any of those are even remotely true, then I welcome you to read some BigCommerce reviews.
You see, these days, online branding (and marketing) is the way to go. If you want to build a successful business, 9 times out of 10 it has to be online-based. This is where the above-mentioned BigCommerce reviews come in - an increasing number of businessmen and woman are turning to website builders for help.
Is BigCommerce any good? What are MyBigCommerce reviews saying about the company in question? Read on and find out, or check out more recommended website builders, such as Squarespace and Zyro).
TL;DR: As far as eCommerce and online shops are concerned, BigCommerce is a super-scalable, well-designed website builder. While some industry newcomers might find the platform too difficult to use, once you get a hold of it, there’s no end to all of the different features you’ll be able to use.
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BigCommerce Review: Why Build an Online Shop?
Let’s get the obvious questions out of the way first - why build an online shop, in the first place?
If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past few years, you’ve probably noticed that there’s an abundance of online shops and businesses popping around - even BigCommerce reviews will tell you that. Why is that the case? Well, mostly because it works.
Whether you want to get your name out there, boost up your sales and reach or establish a brand new business altogether, online marketing is the way to go. Dropshipping stores, white-label print-on-demand companies and online service providers are just the begining - there’s no end to how creative you can get.
However, in order to create the before-mentioned online store, you’ll have to either hire a designer (programmer) and spend thousands of dollars, or do it yourself. And as some BigCommerce reviews point out, the beauty of doing it yourself with BigCommerce is that there are no prior coding knowledge requirements.
Whether you like website builders or CMSs (Content Management Systems), both allow you to build a site for yourself. That said, if you choose to go with the website builder option, you’ll be able to create your e-shop much faster and with (possibly) better visual presentation.
Interested? Awesome - let’s move on to the actual BigCommerce reviews.
What features are important for an eCommerce website builder?
One of the most important features is the ease of use. If you will be building your own eCommerce site, you want something that is easy to use but also leaves room for customization as your business grows. Another very important feature is SEO. You want a site that is optimized and provides tools for great SEO, especially as a new business, you’ll want all the help you can get to be found online. Lastly, having great sales tools, which include an easy checkout experience for your customers as well as email marketing tools and exit-intent popup tools to capture more sales.
Pros
- Free trial
- Great TTFB / site speed
- Plenty of features
- Integrates with social media sites
Cons
- Might be a bit difficult to use for some
- Some features are a little bit laggy
Table of Contents
BigCommerce: PROS
Let’s start off by looking at some of the most prominent positive BigCommerce reviews. Right after this, we’ll move on to the cons, BigCommerce plans and at the very end, I’ll tell you my opinions on whether this website builder is worth it or not.
An Abundance of Features
You know what’s really cool with owning your own website that you can adjust and configure at any given time?
That’s right - the possibility to customize your site in any way that you might want.
That being said, it is unfortunate that quite a few website builders out there (whether eCommerce-based ones, or in general) lack even the fundamental features, not to mention some more intricate and technical ones.
As BigCommerce reviews state, though, this builder isn’t one of them.
BigCommerce comes packed with many - and I do mean MANY - features for you to use and play around with. The beautiful thing here is that you will be able to find almost any function that you might need, irrelevant of how small or huge your shop is.
And I’m not even talking about your now-common website integrations like Facebook, Amazon or Instagram. As of late, these things are seen as a given. No, when I say features, I’m talking about the ability to sell multiple different products on your site, the number of app integrations that you can do, different payment channels, and so on.
I could literally sit here and make a full list of the seemingly countless options you’ll receive with BigCommerce, but that would probably be counterproductive. The point, however, stands true - if you’re looking to not only build an online shop but also expand it, BigCommerce will definitely supply you with the tools to do so.
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Scalable
Oftentimes, you’ll hear the term “scale” being thrown around whenever the topic of website builders (especially eCommerce ones) comes about.
To scale something means to be able to steadily grow it with time. As far as website builders are concerned, the meaning of this term will really mostly depend on the situation - scaling a blog, for example, might mean that you’ll have tools to manage and interact with your growing audience.
However, we’re here to talk about MyBigCommerce reviews - in other words, online marketing and eCommerce.
In this area of website builder expertise, scalability mostly relates to how well your website can adapt to the growing number of customers it receives over time. There are countless amounts of details that go into this - feature variety and usability, site performance, analytics and product tracking, and so on and so forth.
All of that being said, you’ll probably be happy to hear that many BigCommerce reviews state that this platform might just be one of the top-scaling eCommerce builders in the entire industry.
All of the above-mentioned details add up to make BigCommerce an amazing tool for anyone who wants to expand their business further than just the initial launch (at least that’s what a bunch of MyBigCommerce reviews claim).
Great TTFB / Site Load Speed
I’ll admit - it’s fun to talk about features and functions and all of that other front-end good stuff. However, in the same way how you wouldn’t buy a nice-looking car without checking under the hood, you probably wouldn’t purchase a subscription to a website builder without checking its back-end parameters, either.
When you’re managing an online store, there are two very important things marketing-wise - Time Till First Byte (TTFB) and site speed.
The TTFB parameter tells you how fast the initial byte on your site loads as soon as a request is issued to your domain. In layman’s terms, it simply reveals the period of time how long a customer has to wait to get to your website after typing its name and pressing “ENTER”.
Site speed is different - it’s the amount of time of just how long it takes till the full page on your website loads.
Now, here are the numbers for the TTFB that we’ve measured during our research for BigCommerce reviews:
Those are some steady parameters! And now the site speed:
Less than 2 seconds for a page to fully load is absolutely amazing. It’s good to see that BigCommerce has optimized their website to the fullest extent!
Good Themes - Great Usability Options
You will find that most website builders concentrate their ad campaigns and a whole lot of attention, in general, to the topic of themes and theme templates.
Whether you’re building a gallery page or a massive corporate website, themes are extremely important. While there are builders that still seemingly don’t understand this (I’m looking at you, Web.com), most companies get it and try to maximize their ads, accordingly.
BigCommerce reviews state that the builder has some pretty decent theme templates available to the average user. There are 5 free theme options, but the majority of templates are paid ones.
One thing that might scare some people away is the pricing of the paid theme templates. It can range anywhere from over $100 USD all the way to close to $300 USD! Do keep in mind, though, that this website builder is specifically designed for eCommerce - since you’re going to be making money, you shouldn’t be too surprised with these prices.
Where the theme templates fall a tad bit short in style, however, they make up in usability.
User BigCommerce reviews state how cool it is that you can change the themes at any given time without losing any progress for your website. The themes are going to adjust to the content - that’s great news!
Furthermore, BigCommerce has made sure that all of the themes available on their platform are fully mobile-friendly. A whole lot of online shopping happens on people’s phones - this criterion is extremely important, and it’s good to know that the company has made sure everything is in order.
BigCommerce CONS
Now, let’s take a look at some of the negative BigCommerce reviews that are circulating on the internet.
Too Difficult?
Every once in a while, you’re likely to come across some BigCommerce reviews that talk about the platform being a little too difficult to use.
Is that really the case?
It depends on who’s asking.
If you’re already an established businessman (woman) and are simply looking for the “next best thing”, you shouldn’t face too many problems with understanding the terminology, functions and general idea of the website builder. Needless to say, if you’ve used a builder before, things will be THAT much easier.
However, if you’re trying to open up your very first online shop, and you think that API stands for “Another Pesky Interface”, you’re likely going to have a bad time at first.
Note, though, that this doesn’t mean that the platform is super-difficult to use and only accessible to the elite marketers - it’s not. However, as with anything else in life, it all boils down to the prowess of your knowledge in the fields of eCommerce and website building.
Some Features are Unexpectedly Laggy
Lag is a nuisance - there’s no question about that. Whether you’ll come across reviews that talk about BigCommerce pricing or ones that deal with BigCommerce plans, in general, you’re bound to see lag being referenced every once in a while.
Is it really that bad? No, not by a longshot. Is it annoying? Yes.
Not every single feature is like that, however. Users report that the most laggy loading screens that they’ve experienced came from changing themes or dealing with some advanced features on the site.
Honest BigCommerce Review - NO EXTRA FEES? [2021]
Price
Finally, now that we’ve finished with the pros and cons most commonly-noted in BigCommerce reviews, let’s talk about the BigCommerce plans.
In total, you’ll have 4 different plans to pick from:
- Standard - $29,95 per month
- Plus - $79,95 per month
- Pro - $299,95 per month
- Enterprise - you’ll have to call them, but they promise better prices than you’d get with Magento and Shopify Plus
On top of that, the company also offers users 15 days to try their services out for free.
Now, there’s no denying that the BigCommerce pricing options are quite expensive… For the average person. Understand that not everyone who’s looking to build a website is going to flock to BigCommerce - the platform is built around online shops and marketing, and that’s exactly the types of people who are going to visit it - sellers and business people.
Considering the fact that you’ll be making money while using BigCommerce, the plans start making a whole lot of sense. And remember - with each tier, you’ll receive a ton of additional features, customization options and so on. Also, every single plan comes with 24/7 live customer support - that’s a really cool feature!
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Conclusions
Now that we’ve finished talking about BigCommerce pricing, pros, and cons, there’s one final question left to answer - is BigCommerce worth using?
It definitely is.
BigCommerce is one of the best options as far as website builders are concerned for anyone looking to open an online shop. With an abundance of different features to choose from, you should never have a problem of “not being able to do something with your site”.
Decent themes, great TTFB and site speed, 24/7 live customer support… Honestly, the builder has everything that you might want for your shop! As far as eCommerce-dedicated website creators go, BigCommerce definitely deserves a spot on the best website builder list.
All in all, I hope that this overview of BigCommerce reviews has helped you become better-informed about the company and its product. If you do actually want to start building your business and scale it further than just the initial release of an online store, do check BigCommerce out, and consider even more recommended options, such as Squarespace and Zyro.
Contributed by: Andrew Mallonee , Founder of Mallonee Media
Andrew is a senior specialist application engineer and the founder of Mallonee Media - web development and creative agency taking a slightly different approach to helping clients. They cater to peo...
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