Shopify and BigCommerce get compared constantly, and the comparison usually collapses into "which has more features" — the wrong question for most brands. The real question is which platform's default assumptions match your business: Shopify assumes you'll extend the platform with apps; BigCommerce assumes you want more built in natively from day one. Here's the honest breakdown of pricing, features, and which kind of brand actually wins with each.
Pricing: BigCommerce’s real advantage
BigCommerce's core plans (Standard, Plus, Pro) land at price points comparable to Shopify's own tiers, but with one structural difference that matters at volume: BigCommerce charges no additional transaction fees on top of your plan, regardless of which payment processor you use. Shopify's plans carry card-processing rates that scale down as you move up tiers, but a store using a non-Shopify-Payments gateway pays an extra transaction fee on top. For a high-volume store, that structural difference can outweigh the sticker price entirely.
Where Shopify wins on features
- App ecosystem — Shopify's app store dwarfs BigCommerce's, which matters directly for anything you can't get natively: subscriptions, advanced personalization, niche integrations.
- Checkout and sales tooling — Shopify's checkout is broadly considered best-in-class, with more native payment options and stronger conversion tooling out of the box.
- B2B, now on every paid plan — as of Shopify's April 2026 rollout, company profiles, custom catalogs with their own pricing, volume discounts, and payment terms are available on every paid plan, not just Shopify Plus — a meaningful shift for wholesale-adjacent brands (see our full guide to Shopify pricing for the complete plan breakdown).
Where BigCommerce wins on features
- More built in natively — customer groups and segmentation, an abandoned cart saver, persistent cart, stored cards, faceted search, and price lists all come standard rather than requiring an app.
- Real-time carrier-calculated shipping rates on every plan — a genuine advantage for brands with complex, weight- or dimension-sensitive shipping.
- Multi-storefront governance — BigCommerce's architecture handles multiple storefronts from one backend more natively, which matters for brands running several distinct brand experiences.
Who actually wins with each
Shopify remains the stronger default for most small-to-medium D2C brands — the app ecosystem, checkout quality, and now-universal B2B features cover the large majority of what a growing brand needs without custom development. BigCommerce becomes genuinely compelling for B2C retailers with larger, more complex catalogs and higher operational complexity — brands that would otherwise be paying for several Shopify apps to replicate features BigCommerce includes by default, or that need multi-storefront governance from day one.
Total cost of ownership: where the sticker price lies
Comparing base plan prices alone is the most common mistake in this decision. A Shopify store that needs abandoned-cart recovery, customer segmentation, and faceted search — all native to BigCommerce — is paying for three or more separate app subscriptions to replicate what BigCommerce bundles by default. Depending on the specific apps chosen, that can add $100–400+/month before touching Shopify's own plan fee, which can flip the "cheaper platform" conclusion entirely once real usage is modeled rather than the advertised base price.
The right way to compare: list every feature your specific catalog and operations actually need, mark which ones are native on each platform, and price out the apps required to close the gap on whichever platform is missing them — not a generic "Shopify is usually cheaper" assumption that ignores your specific feature list.
FAQs
Is BigCommerce cheaper than Shopify? BigCommerce's advantage isn't the sticker price so much as the absence of extra transaction fees — at volume, that structural difference often matters more than the plan price itself.
Does BigCommerce have as many apps as Shopify? No — Shopify's app ecosystem is significantly larger, which matters if your business needs are covered by a specific niche integration rather than a built-in feature.
Which platform is better for B2B and wholesale? Both are strong contenders in 2026 — Shopify made core B2B features free on every paid plan in April 2026, while BigCommerce has long included native customer groups and price lists as a B2C-adjacent B2B path.
Is BigCommerce good for large, complex catalogs? Yes — its native faceted search, price lists, and multi-storefront governance are specifically built for higher-complexity B2C retail.
Should I migrate from BigCommerce to Shopify? It depends on whether the features you're paying app costs to replicate on Shopify would already be native on BigCommerce, or vice versa — worth a proper audit rather than a default assumption either way.
Does the base plan price reflect the real cost? Rarely — model the app subscriptions each platform needs to cover your specific feature list before comparing sticker prices; that's usually where the real cost difference actually lives.
Our take
Neither platform is a wrong choice for a serious ecommerce business — the decision comes down to whether your catalog complexity and shipping requirements are better served by BigCommerce's native depth, or whether Shopify's app ecosystem and checkout quality are worth building on top of. If you're not sure which side of that line your brand falls on, talk to us about a platform strategy consultation.
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