Shift4shop Vs Bigcommerce: 2023 Comparison

Introduction: shift4shop(3dcart) Vs. Bigcommerce

BigCommerce and shift4shop are both highly used and very famous eCommerce platforms, and customers of both platforms are loyal and confined to each. Though both are similar in some ways and different in many ways. To understand which is a better platform for any business, shift4shop vs. BigCommerce, you need to first understand what abilities both of these have, and how they are suitable in their own ways.

BigCommerce:

It is a leading name in the eCommerce department and has helped build many online stores that are both, successful and efficient. It is a builder platform, working on the SAAS (Software as a Service) premise, that provides high scalability and multiple features and settings to build the store of your choice. Clients using BigCommerce have some big names included to the list, such as: Ben and Jerry’s, Kodak and even Toyota.

Though, BigCommerce is also suitable for small scale businesses and for beginners in the eCommerce industry, as it helps your navigate through and build your store in the most easiest and reliable ways, having a very helpful customer support program that leads small business owners towards success.

Bigcommerce Development Company has a great advantage over many of its competitor eCommerce platforms, which is the fact that most of the tools, features and support required by the ecommerce platform are already in built in its system, so the store owner does not have to pay extra or bring in any resource from a third party, as BigCommerce provides everything within the paid package.

These include: multiple themes, an SSL certificate, web hosting, advanced SEO optimization options, and much more. In fact, it also integrates multiple payment gateways and distribution channels that suit almost all of its customers in one way or another.

Some advantages that BigCommerce has over other eCommerce development platforms are as follows:

• Scalability – BigCommerce has great scalability, which means it can cater to many more customer scales sizes, and has capabilities that exceed expectations in comparison to other eCommerce platforms.
• Built-in Features – As already discussed, anything that is required by a user to build an online store is already built-in in the BigCommerce platform, making it easy to jump start a business in no time.
• Distribution and Selling – As also mentioned earlier, BigCommerce lets you distribute and sell your product through different channels, for example, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.
• SEO Optimization – BigCommerce has excellent SEO tools that help the business optimize their SEO marketing technique without much hindrance.

shift4shop:

shift4shop has been fairly new to the eCommerce industry, but has gained momentum in recent times. It was developed by Gonzalo Gil, who has previously also developed shopping cart solutions and customizations for a number of eCommerce merchants.

Though, he really wanted to build an eCommerce platform that provides everything necessary in a shopping cart solution under one roof, and that is what drove him to conceive shift4shop . For him, this was the ultimate eCommerce platform that has everything available for the users, and they did not have to go searching for them elsewhere.

This is the reason that shift4shop offers multiple in-built features, is capable of different kinds of integrations, has apps and amazing SEO features that are one of the best in the eCommerce market.

Its plans are fully packed with scalability, capabilities and growth for your business in multi folds. It does not stop here, because shift4shop developers are still constantly working to upgrade and offer new and innovative technological ideas that will bring greater benefits to the users and customers. shift4shop does not focus on any one stage of the businesses’ life cycle, rather, it is an all in one solution for any and every online store that you want to build and manage.

Some benefits that shift4shop offers to its users are as follows:

• Ease in Sale – For sellers, it is a powerful and effective platform that lets the business owner sell products easily, giving the customers also a seamless process to make their orders online.
• Control – shift4shop has a very secure administrative interface that gives the user complete control of what happens in their online store. System access, data of the customers, inventory, customer invoices and any other important data are saved on cloud, giving the owner access from any computer that allows internet access.
• Free Templates – This gives the customer a lot of autonomy over their store and lets them choose which theme or template fits into their brand image.
• 24/7 Customer Support – There is always a team of professionals ready to help you in any issues or technical difficulties that your face, which helps all users solve most of their problems effectively.

What’s the difference between BigCommerce and shift4shop?

In the introductions to both of these platforms, shift4shop vs BigCommerce, we have seen that they both are highly efficient and famous in the eCommerce industry, making it difficult for new business owners to choose which one is better suited for their online store. Both of these, BigCommerce versus shift4shop , have their own capabilities and benefits, but by drawing a comparison in different regions of the eCommerce industry, we can conclude and check which one is better in what area, which could, in turn, help business owners choose which features they prefer and which platform performs the best in those specific ones.

The comparison is as follows:

• Functionality:

In aspects of functionality, BigCommerce or shift4shop , both play an essential role, and cater to specific audiences and their needs better than others.

BigCommerce is known to be one of the easiest eCommerce platforms to build on, as its ease of use and limited options help customers get less confused and focus on the main task, along with it offering multiple payment gateways and integrations to suit different users. Though, most of its functionality is reserved for the higher paid plans, like the Pro plan or the Enterprise plan, and some functions are neglected in the lower plans.

shift4shop has a great functionality when it comes to startup companies, because it is an easy to understand and work with software platform, and is open to new users, helping them in every step of the way. In addition, most of its functionality comes with everything being available built in for the users, as they can easily built their online store in a small fraction of time.

• Design:

Bigcommerce web design company gives you a limited amount of customization and designing options for free, where you can hardly edit much of the store, and have to choose from their generic designs, which would be similar for all companies, unless the user is willing to pay some more money apart from the subscription for further plug ins and options.

shift4shop , however, gives more editable designing options, whereby users can design much more flexibly than BigCommerce, and that too, for free. Also, further additions and edits later are also possible without any extra charges, making it a highly customizable and suitable platform for business owners who are looking for something specific to their business.

• Themes:

BigCommerce does seem to boast about their offering 100 or more themes, but in reality, BigCommerce only offers up to twelve free themes, and those are also very generic and not complete or changeable in appearance. Though, BigCommerce does offer some customizable edits that can make your theme more attractive. For more theme options, the user has to pay extra, and prices start from $145 onwards, which is very pricey for some business owners.

shift4shop , on the other hand, offers more than fifty themes that are free of charge, giving its customers a full variety of options to choose from. Their themes are professionally designed and each one has its own appearance that is unique, giving users of all price ranges and packages the ability to customize and set their store according to their wants and needs.

• Development Time:

BigCommerce is pretty easy to use for business owners, who are building the website and online store, as it has detailed plans and step by step processes in tutorials to guide the owner how to build their perfect store. Moreover, the fact that there are lesser theme options available is actually an advantage here, as users waste less time in choosing an appropriate theme when the choices are limited. BigCommerce users can have their store running within minutes.

shift4shop also is knows to have a very small time frame that is taken up as compare to bigcommerce headless commerce, and users of shift4shop can also run their website within a day’s time, but users do spend more time lingering on the theme and design customizations that shift4shop offers, which wastes a lot of uptime.

• Features:

BigCommerce, as known by many, has almost all of the features you need to build a complete online store already built into the software. This includes the SSL certificate, SEO optimization options, multiple product selling, etc. Though, some of the options like the abandoned cart and focusing on customer group options are only available for the higher paid packages, and are not present in the standard or plus packages, which is unfair for smaller businesses who want to grow.

A shift4shop merchant does not have to worry about all these, because almost all of its plans cater to the audience in a similar way, with smaller additions as the prices go up. This means that even those options and features that are not available for smaller users of BigCommerce are available for almost all kinds of users of shift4shop .

• Payment Gateways and Fee:

BigCommerce does give the option to its customers to choose from a list of payment gateways, such as PayPal, Apple Pay, etc. But, for some users, it is still seen to be a very limited list with about 50 payment gateway options, and is seen to leave its merchants not much control over their payment methods in their online store.

In comparison to BigCommerce’s limited list, shift4shop comes in supporting more than 160 payment gateway solutions, which is more diversified and much higher in number than any other platform in the eCommerce industry. It has all kinds of payment providers, who give services to all sizes and kinds of businesses, making it so much easier for its customers.

One thing in common in between BigCommerce versus shift4shop is that none of them charge any additional fees for using any payment gateway at all.

• Budget and Pricing:

BigCommerce charges fees on a monthly basis, and has multiple pricing plans to suite different users, as mentioned below:

Though these prices may seem suitable and not too much to some people, the fact is that, BigCommerce clients cannot exceed their sales revenue limits, which are pre capped, and if they do, they have to pay heavy penalty charges and move to a higher, pricier plan.

shift4shop has more affordable pricing plans that are tailored for all kinds of small and large businesses, and are carefully designed to effectively grow your business. Their pricing plans are as follows:

shift4shop also has no caps as to how much sale a store is doing, and charges nothing extra or any kind of penalty, therefore, if we judge solely on monthly plans and prices, shift4shop proves to be cheaper.

• Marketing Tools:

BigCommerce has some pre built in marketing tools in the system itself that consist of offering gift cards or discount coupons to the customers to attract more people. It also gives a Facebook storefront feature, whereby social media can be integrated effectively for marketing. It also allows you to place banners on different social media websites for attraction purposes.

shift4shop , however, offers discounts, gift cards and coupons as well, but it also takes the higher place in marketing, as it offers much more than just that. It goes a step forward to provide the business owners some more built in marketing features for free that include: Newsletters to keep their customers updated, Affiliate Programs to have their customers in contact with them constantly, and even daily deal updates to have repeat customers and attract new ones.

• SEO:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a very powerful tool that is highly necessary for online stores, businesses and software to keep in mind if they want to succeed in the eCommerce industry, as this is one of the main customer attraction tools that would prove to be beneficial.

Bigcommerce App Development has in built SEO tools such as keyword searches, store and data audits to ensure that they are of SEO standards, and also allow you to edit the descriptions, Meta titles, and names as per maximum SEO. In addition, they also provide AMPs (Accelerated Mobile Page formats) so that even on other devices it is notable and among the earlier sites on search engines.

shift4shop also believes in maximum optimization of search engines and outlets, and it also offers multiple built in tools for it. These tools help in SEO through the Core Template Engine that provides a framework of themes from Bootstrap, integrating AMP for product pages, AJAX, even an optimized code structure, and browsing and page loading seamlessly at lightning speed.

• Customer Help and Technical Support:

shift4shop vs BigCommerce, both seem to be fairly easy to use software platforms in the eCommerce industry, and allow beginners and startups to jump start their business in less time, and more efficiently through their easy launching. Yet, some people need extra assistance and resolution to problems and errors that occur during the process.

This is the reason that BigCommerce provides customer help and technical support throughout the day, all week and around the year. They are available through live chat, phone calls, emails and even video tutorials available to help you. Though, in recent times, a lot of users have complained about their BigCommerce support services, claiming that they give a user error, and are hardly efficient in solving any problem at all, especially if you are one of the lower paid package users, who get priority support. This could come as a drawback for BigCommerce if they claim to have effective support available all the time.

shift4shop also has 24/7 customer support and technical help available from professionals who are eagerly waiting to solve any problems promptly that the user may ever face. They are also available through live chat, phone calls and video tutorials, and they are also available for any small or minor fault that may arise at any given time. They promise to make your eCommerce journey as easy and smooth as possible, and are on high alert for every customer, without any priority support action, as all customers are equal and important for them, no matter how big or small.

• Integrations:

BigCommerce wants to give its customers a pure and curated experience of integration, so it offers integrations with those applications and sources which it has personally chosen. Some of the most popular applications that are chosen for integration purposes are: Netsuite ERP, ShippingEasy, Zendesk and Nextopia. Some of the systems and businesses that it integrates with further include: Facebook for social media purposes, MailChimp for mailing purposes, Google as search engine integrations, etc. which are big names in their respective fields.

shift4shop also supports integration in many different ways, for example, as compare to Bigcommerce integration with sales channels is a highly essential one, as sales is the main aim of all business worldwide, and it allows integrations in this regard especially with: Amazon, eBay, Google, etc. which are very big and essential companies. Though it is just not limited to that, and extends further into account management systems software, shipping software and even real time shipping carriers, which all integrate towards the success of shift4shop and its users.

• Sales features:

BigCommerce has an idea about marketing, but when it comes to sales, there are quite some points that BigCommerce is lacking or lagging behind in. The first and foremost concern that users have with BigCommerce is the fact that it caps the sales and puts a sales limit, and in case someone crosses the limit, they are charged with heavy penalty, and have to switch to a more expensive plan. Furthermore, it does not even have a Point of Sale (PoS) system, which could help it accept cash, cards or any other source of income from anywhere.

Alternatively, shift4shop does have a Point of Sale (PoS) system up and running, allowing it to accept cash, cards, money orders, checks and every source of income any time and from anywhere. In fact, it is free of cost for all merchants, which gives shift4shop an upper hand in this regard. Also, shift4shop has no such sales limits imposed on its users, which leads to no heavy charges, penalties or change of pricing plans, unlike BigCommerce.

• Inventory Management:

BigCommerce lets you stock up unlimited number of products in your online store, with titles and descriptions that help maximize your sales and profits. It even gives you storefronts that are especially built for social media purposes like Facebook, owing to the fact that its inventory management system is very precise and the owner can show case the products one by one for the ease of the customers, making it more convenient and helpful.

This is where shift4shop lacks a bit, as this platform caps and puts a limit on the number of products that your show case, for example, for the smallest startup package, it might be cheap, but you can only show case a maximum of 100 products and not more. Though its inventory management and order processing are efficient, this fact that it limits the products you can put on sale in the store is a major hurdle for any business owner who wants to sell online.

• Mobile Responsiveness:

BigCommerce does not have a mobile application for itself, unlike other eCommerce platforms but it does focus on mobile responsiveness, just a little. Out of the 12 or more free themes that BigCommerce provides, only a couple of them are mobile responsive, which shows only a slight tilt towards technological advancement in the mobile responsiveness field.

shift4shop thinks it is highly essential for the online store and themes to be mobile responsive, which is why, most of the free 50 themes that it provides are highly mobile responsive, and the software itself also has a mobile app that helps it keep up with other eCommerce platforms.

Q.1.) Is shift4shop the biggest competitor of BigCommerce?

No, shift4shop is just one of the competitors of BigCommerce, as BigCommerce has many other competitors in the eCommerce industry, especially software like Shopify and Magento, which are bigger competitors for BigCommerce than shift4shop .

Q.2.) Who would you recommend shift4shop or BigCommerce? and Why?

shift4shop is mostly recommended for beginners who are just starting up their business and online store, because it is a very easy to use software, with immense customer support and really low prices, which is good for small companies as well that are looking for growth.

BigCommerce is recommended for medium sized or bigger companies, as it is a little on the pricey side, and it caps the sales, which would not be worthy working with for smaller companies, as their profits are very marginal and small, and bigger companies could benefit with higher limits. It is also good for people who have some prior coding knowledge, and are fine with generic themes.

Q.3.) BigCommerce or shift4shop : Considering speed, product numbers, technical support, and the use of a shared hosting service, which e-commerce solution is better?

BigCommerce does become a little slow when it comes to loading and browsing and has been demeaned by customers for having very little real technical support, who claim that its technical support is not helpful at all. Though, it has no product number limits, as you can showcase an unlimited number of products in many different ways, and it’s a self-hosted service.

shift4shop is claimed to have AMPs and coding structures that help customers browse seamlessly and page loading is very fast, at lightning speed as claimed. In addition, their customer service is always available through live chat, phone, and tutorials, and they are said to be highly efficient in solving even the smallest of problems. They are also a self-hosted service, but the only disadvantage of shift4shop is that it has a limitation on the number of products you showcase through this platform.

Q.4.) shift4shop vs Bigcommerce: which one is best for small business owners?

While both BigCommerce and shift4shop are well-known e-commerce platforms, BigCommerce stands out as an all-in-one solution that offers everything a business needs to establish a successful online store.

BigCommerce provides comprehensive features for payment processing, shipping, and SEO and offers a highly customizable platform that can fit the unique needs of any business. From responsive templates to cloud-hosted hosting, BigCommerce provides the necessary tools for an online store to grow and succeed, which 3dcart lacks.