Shopify vs Volusion | Which of these similar eCommerce platforms is right for you?

As two of the oldest e-commerce platforms, shopify and volusion have a lot in common. they're subtle but important. differences, however, may chip the scales in favor of one over the other. Hi everyone, this is Ashleigh with IWD Agency- the e-commerce experts. we help merchants reach their online goals through marketing optimizations and store enhancements. if you're new here, be sure to subscribe to our channel so that you're notified of new content, so that you can stay on top of your ecommerce game. when comparing shopify and volusion, at first it might be more about how similar they are, but keep watching to learn more about each and to see which has the upper hand. both shopify and volusion have the same basic purpose: to help you create your online store. both are fully hosted solutions, which mean you don't need to install any software for using the platforms. both offer you a range of design, marketing and e-commerce functionalities in return for a monthly fee. they let you sell any type of product and even services, and neither needs any coding nor tiknical knowledge for creating your store. although volusion is tiknically older, having been around since 1999, it has had less impact than shopify, the second most popular hosted solution in the us, which has so far helped 1 million users worldwide compared to volusion that has a little less than 60 000 customers. volusion went through a massive redesign phase in 2016 and added more features to improve integration issues. yet, according to google trends, shopify is not only bigger, but by far more popular than volusion. aside from scale, the two platforms are different in some important ways, which can affect your overall experience with building and managing your online business. let's highlight these features that can help you decide usability. both platforms need little to no tiknical knowledge to launch your store. they have a clear-cut dashboard that lets you add inventory, change store settings for full orders or even view analytiks and site metrics for your store. although both shopify and volusion have a straightforward interface, users have found it more difficult in the past to set up a store with volusion than shopify. issues with uploading templates, slow speed and poor editing, not to mention volusion's limited number of templates, are some common pet peeves for its users. recently, volusion redesigned its platform, which improved user experience, but shopify's theme editor is still more streamlined. adding sections that use the core theme design is much easier with shopify. with volusion, you'll have to go through many steps and questions to add or modify different features for your store. sometimes, the extensive guides and processes could be more nuisance, especially if you are more experienced in building online stores. overall, volusion setup seems to have a few hiccups compared to shopify's easy breezy process pricing. even the pricing plans for the two seem to be similar at first. shopify has three core plans that range from 29 a month to 299 dollars a month and two custom plans: shopify lite at nine dollars a month for selling on social media platforms or blogs, and shopify plus a custom solution for large businesses that starts at about two thousand dollars a month. volusion has a four level plan within that same range- 29 a month to 299 dollars a month, and volusion prime, which is a custom plan with its price based on your requirements. unlike shopify, which has no limits on sales or products in any of its plans, volusion's personal plan is limited to annual sales below 50 000. what gets volusion's customers excited about its pricing is the complete absence of transaction fees in all of its plans. compare that to shopify, where you end up paying 0.5 percent, 1 or even 2 transaction fees on every purchase, depending on your plan's level. of course, you can avoid shopify's transaction fees if you use their payment system, shopify payments. the problem is that it only works if you are selling from certain countries. if your country is not on the list, you'll get to choose from hundreds of third-party gateways for which you do pay the transaction fees. yet another difference between their pricing is that shopify offers abandoned cart recovery- a popular feature in e-commerce platforms- as a built-in feature in its basic plan, whereas volusion you would have to sign up for at least its professional plan to get the same functionality. also, different shopify offers point-of-sale features for all of its plans. volusion offers none. with the same pricing range, shopify seems to offer way more value for your money, but volusion's advantage of not having any transaction fees is an attractive deciding factor, especially if you sell from anywhere other than the 27 countries that offer shopify payments. design: both platforms have a range of free and paid themes that are mobile friendly, professional and modern, but volusion is more limited in variety and less flexible with customization than shopify. although volusion currently offers 18 free themes compared to shopify's 10, it has two paid themes- balance and glass in the us- compared to shopify, which has more than 60 design themes to choose from. another important design factor is how easy it is to find and customize the themes available. with shopify, it's much easier to filter your search based on style, price or industry, whereas volusion provides no filters at all. shopify also has great customization tools and a user-friendly interface, which are absent in volusion. volusion lags behind when it comes to the variety and usability of its design, themes, apps and features. another clear win for shopify is the wide range of apps and features it offers to ensure smooth management, regardless of the size of your business. again, volusion seems to have a lot to catch up with here. shopify offers over 100 payment gateways, compared to volusion, which only supports stripe, paypal and authorizenet. although both platforms have their own payment solutions, shopify payments only applies in specific locations around the world. shopify's killer app store covers thousands of apps and more than 2200 plugins, compared to volusion's 14 apps. although it covers basic functionalities like mailchimp, it simply fades compared to shopify's wide range of options. dropshipping, a popular method with online sellers that allows you to send orders to suppliers who then ship directly to customers as a fully supported option with shopify, compared to inventory source the one integration for dropshipping in volusion. shopify also offers great pos functionalities, which lets you choose the platform for taking orders, payment and inventory while you sell your products in a physical store, although pos can be used in any of shopify's plans. the full range of pos functionality costs an additional 89 per month. volusion has no pos functionality yet, where you can have ratings and reviews and abandon cart recovery and shopify with their basic plan. in volusion, you'll have to sign up for at least 79 a month to get the same features. volusion does offer built-in solutions for affiliate programs and recurring payments, which makes it an ideal choice if you're running subscription services. marketing shopify offers powerful seo tools and integrates with reporting tools like google analytiks and adwords. if you need additional metrics to gauge the performance of your store, shopify has its own analytiks software that comes in handy. it offers great email marketing apps which you can install to send automated email campaigns. it also has a blogging tool that can boost your efforts in content marketing. the more advanced blog features like archiving and categorization are available through a third-party plugin like wordpress. just by comparing the variety of apps, volusion clearly lags behind. it has basic marketing features to get you going, but with a far less variety of features. like shopify, volusion also offers a third-party content management like wordpress, but because it remains on a sub domain users.

Ballistic Agency's Volusion vs BigCommerce Battle

if you're on volusion and are considering other options for hosting your ecommerce website, you're going to want to stik around for this. our volusion versus bigcommerce battle coming up now. [Music]. in 1999, kevin sproles, at the ripe old age of 16, started what would become volusion. no doubt he had no idea how big of a presence he would have in the e-commerce world, but for many years, volusion bridged the gap between hard to manage open source ecommerce solutions and costly and complex enterprise solutions. volusion was one of the first to offer a free trial, which was a game changer when looking for a way to sell online. back then, 20 years ago, you were a real pioneer if you were selling online, and volusion made e-commerce easy and affordable for any small business. over the years, volusion has had its ups and downs. they built out robust native functionality, like the deal of the day in stok notifications and a loyalty program, and they integrated pci data security standards into their network as far back as 2004 and have maintained their level one compliance since 2006. they were innovators and we recognized that. we became a volusion partner back then and many of our clients were very happy on their platform. however, lately, volusion has had more challenging times, staying relevant and competitive. as you probably know, they acknowledged a security breach in 2019. on top of that, innovations on their v1 platform have been slow to materialize compared to several of their competitors. similarly, bigcommerce came about from humble beginnings. in 2003, two developers in australia met in an online chat room and formed a company called interspire, which later became big commerce. in 2009, they opened their office in austin, texas, and secured funding. a couple of years after that, they later opened an office in california and began hiring talent from the likes of amazon and paypal. in july of 2020, big commerce filed for an ipo and went public in august. fast forward to today and you're now in the fully developed modern era of e-commerce, and big commerce is leading the way in hosted e-commerce solutions. when you compare which platform integrates with the tools that leading brands use to gain market share, support their customers, sell across multiple channels, pick, pack and ship like a pro, and integrate with your back office software, it's hard to argue how volusion could ever beat bigcommerce. comparative illusion: bigcommerce is the clear winner because they're on a great growth track and have a bright future ahead. their updates and new features roll out with regularity with their open sas platform. enhancing the functionality of bigcommerce is as easy as installing an app from their robust app store, but where bigcommerce really shines is its tik support, b2b functionality, headless commerce, integrations with leading apps and enterprise features. here are just a handful of the apps that we think work better on bigcommerce, either natively or via their app store, when compared to volusion. we believe in bigcommerce so much that we're now a big commerce preferred partner and our developers are required to go through big dev boot camp before joining our team. you and i made a great decision choosing volusion years ago, but now it's time to enter the modern era and take your web store to the next level with big commerce and ballistik agency. so contact us today and find out how to get your free consultation. until next time, thanks.

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BigCommerce vs Volusion

now, a lot of you have been at your wits end trying to figure your way between BigCommerce and Volusion. now today's victim, online based video, essentially aims to clear the air once and for all and you will see for yourself. we're in big commerce, cause big time on Volusion, practikally on every single facet. and before I proceed any further, I would also like to reiterate that big commerce offers this 15-day trial, which is absolutely commitment free and you're not bound by any kind of restriction of any kind, including the fact that you don't even need a credit card. you can start your free trial right now. I provided the direct link to this very page, which will clearly showcase the fact that practikally on every feature, every facet, BigCommerce scores big time over pollution. so, to get started, first of all, making it very clear that retailers are definitely making a be big, be way for big commerce: visa v pollution. let's see why. and in terms of unlimited products, become us offers that, whereas Volusion does not. unlimited bandwidth, the Commerce office that Volusion does not. bandwidth. overage fees: there are no such fees on big commerce, whereas Volusion charges $7 per GB SSL installation fee. or become us again, there's nil, there is Volusion. charges are very high: $99. the trial length? yes, I'm, as I clearly mentioned, as is 15 day trial, and whereas on Volusion it's a 14 day trial. okay, to be fair, there isn't much of a difference because we are not looking at a huge margin per se: 14 verses 15. the blog on big commerce is built in bearish on Volusion, its third-party abandoned cart saver. on big commerce you've got automated recovery emails, whereas on Volusion you simply have a statik report: multi currency support- they comma supports that Volusion does not age a platform and code base. be commerce is just, whereas Volusion is 16 years. SEO settings are preset on B commerce, whereas their manual on Volusion. finally, when it comes to the product URL structure become us keeps it simple way. you simply got domaincom / product, whereas Volusion may complicates things a little more because you've got a domaincom / product / underscore p / GM 1 - 1 h TM, though clearly that's way more complicated. and to further get a feel for this- the superiority of b commerce, visa v Volusion- let's actually take a real time trial and this looks into: how much money would you reinvest with no bandwidth fees? and to get an answer to that question, we need to answer these aspects. first of all, paid size. what is the average size in KB of a page on your ecommerce site? so let's say, to keep things very simple, let's say 25 KB. that's a simple page where that we are looking at monthly visitors. how many visitors does your ecommerce site typically receive in a month? again, to keep things really simple, let's say thousand visitors in a month, about 30. ordered a pageviews per visitor. how many pages does a visitor to your keep ecommerce site typically view? it should be at least 3. homepage, product and check-out. usually when you have a visitor coming in they do check out more than 3. so let's say 10. so we've got these aspects in place. calculate actual cost: so let's check that out now- what you'll actually pay with Volusion: number of GB per month: one, the packaged mini package will cost, have a list price of 15 with 1gb included, no overage. actual cost: $15. likewise, plus Pro premium will cost 35, 75, 135. so clearly there's way more cost involved. availing comes to illusion. that is the reason when, with overages you know going way over the top, as you don't want to stik to that and switch to become us ASAP, and that's the reason. already there are 500 plus Volusion merchants who actually made the transition to big commerce and let's say the some of them and what they have to say. like Kathy Haas at diva dog, she was a former Volusion clan. she says: volusion's interface scared me right off. big commerce is much better and their support was very terse, specially when I cancelled. you guys have just been so helpful with those webinars and the consultants. likewise Kenny Cain at stupid cancer, who's also a form of Volusion clients. she says in four months on big commerce we surpassed revenue for all of 2012 on Volusion. so you can very well imagine. and Rita Shelley at see-through guard- again another form of the Volusion client- used to see less than 1% mobile conversion on Volusion and on big commerce we are above 10%. our sales overall have increased 55% after switching because of the look and feel of the site and its functionality. so you can see that you know people are clearly making the switch from Volusion on to big commerce because they see a lot of benefit and once they see that they don't see any of the complexity, any of the challenges with Volusion unfortunately has to offer, they want to make the switch. and once they made the switch, they clearly wants to remain on big commerce. so they come us on every front scores over Volusion in so many different ways. so that's something I will reiterate and therefore I would like to probably once and for all establish the fact that when it comes to big commerce versus Volusion, they- commerce clearly scores on practikally every front, and that's a great reason. yet again, I reiterate that: do start your free 15 day trial. once you've started your trial and gone through the entire process, you will yourself find that big commerce cause in a very big way. so, without further ado, go ahead, make the most of it. the link is there in the description below this video. you simply need to click on that. you can get to this very page. you can yourself compare BigCommerce and Volusion and eventually get going with your be commerce trial.

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Shopify vs Bigcommerce Comparison

[Music]. hey everyone, today I'm gonna be making a quick video that's going to cover the differences between Shopify and bigcommerce. now, BigCommerce and Shopify are probably the two most popular website builders. if you're looking to start your own online store, for anyone just starting out, I'm gonna kind of go over the basics and, just before we go ahead and start here, I want to let you guys know that these are very similar platforms and it's likely that both of them will work for what you're trying to do. there's just a few minor differences that I want to cover and there's a few reasons that one will work better than the other for certain types of businesses. so, obviously, this is my opinion, a lot of this and just information from my experience. so you may want to try them out yourself, but let me give you my thoughts. so, obviously, the first thing we're going to go over here is pricing. you'll see I have Shopify open up here on the left and it'll show you their pricing right here for their basic plans. they have three basic categories: your basic Shopify, your regular Shopify and then the advanced Shopify. now, if you go look over on the right side here for bigcommerce, they have the same three basic platforms, very comparable and, as you can see, the pricing is comparable as well. now for the purpose of this demonstration, this review, basically we're gonna focus on the standard and the plus plans, because that's what 95% of you guys are going to need, especially when you're just starting out. I think Shopify said that the plus is their most popular and so I'd assume probably the same with big commerce and the middle plan. it's usually what I end up using for a lot of things, but but really you're just fine, starting with the standard plan and most cases with either platform. so you can see pricing is pretty similar, starting at $29 a month or 2995 a month for BigCommerce: 95 cents more basically for the first two plans on bigcommerce. pretty comparable there, so doesn't really sway either way. where the things start to really get get different is in the transaction fees. so, as you can see on the left here for Shopify, their credit card rates, you can see online credit card rates start at two point nine percent plus 30 cents per transaction if you have the basic plan, and then they go down to 2.6 percent plus 30 cents for the next plan up and that a little bit further further down for the advanced plan. now you can see where it may pay to actually spend a little bit more on this, this middle plan, if you're going to be doing enough volume to make up that extra 0.3% in savings versus you know the little bit extra you're spending on the monthly plan. so those are the credit card fees for Shopify, and Shopify has their own payment processor, which is it's really a great thing. one of the reasons I love Shopify is because they're they have Shopify payments- allows you to take credit cards on your store. you don't have to use PayPal, and it's really an amazing, amazing feature. very easy to set up. they require very little information from you. you'll be up and running basically immediately once you start your store. now let's compare that over here to big commerce and the thing with big Congress is they don't really have their own credit card processor, but they do use something called Braintree which is powered by PayPal. I think it's a partnership or something like that. I'm not a big fan of PayPal and that's kind of the main reason I don't like using this the processor. but, as you can see, their fees are fairly comparable- slightly lower here on the middle plan at 2.5% versus Shopify's 2.6 percent, but still a 30 cent transaction fee in addition to the the percentage, so pretty comparable on the payment processing fees. and you also need to realize that you can use any other payment processor you want with either of these. so it was Shopify. I would definitely recommend you use the Shopify payments, but with big commerce I'd probably recommend you find something else, such as, you know, stripe or something like that you could. you could even just use regular old PayPal if you want, but Shopify does integrate with 70 additional payment gateways at least last I checked, and I think Big Tymers is more, so around 40 other options for you. so still a lot you'll be fine with either. so at this point they're still pretty, even now when it comes to payment processing. one another thing we want to tok about is the fees when, when you're using it- a processor that's other than you know, Braintree for big commerce or Shopify payments- if you're using your own payment processor, you'll see up here under transaction fees for big commerce that they have zero transaction fees. so that means if you're not using their payment processor, they will not charge you any additional fees on top of what your external payment processor is charging you. so that's a big plus of big commerce and, as you can see here, with Shopify, if you're using Shopify payments, they won't charge you any additional fees. but if you do decide to use an external gateway, a payment processor, they'll still charge you a fee on top of what your payment processor charges you. so 2% if you have this plan, one percent for the middle plan, half a percent for the advanced plan. if you do plan on using something other than Shopify payments with Shopify, this is a big plus to go with the Middl plan, you're saving 1% on all your payments and that one percent savings makes, you know, a big, big difference and goes long ways towards that $79 a month. so that's something to keep in mind if you have another payment processor that you'd rather use. but once again, I'd say Shopify payments is probably the best payment process and for anyone just starting out. so I'm still going to give the plus to Shopify on this. but if you're set on using another payment processor, consider big commerce, all right. the next thing we're probably should cover is the trials. now I've put some links in the description to get you guys some free trials of both of these. so if you want to go down and check those out, you can click over and and start a free trial. both of them offer a great free trial program. no credit card necessary. they require very little information. Shopify will give you 14 days and BigCommerce will give you 15 days. if you click those links, it'll take you right to the free trial page and you can sign up directly- very easy. I'd even recommend you try them both out. if you're still unsure after this video, give them both a quick shot and see which one you like better. so I think that's a great thing that they both offer. the next thing we're going to want to tok about is your themes. so the theme is gonna be what your store looks like. you know the layout of your store. you're basically your starting place. they both offer free themes. they both offer paid themes. now, in the past I've always been able to get by with free themes, and Shopify has, I know, at least 10 free themes, and some of them have multiple variations, so it's probably more like- I don't know- twenty, twenty-five if you count the variations. well, big commerce only has around seven last I checked. so I do think Shopify has a little bit of an advantage when it comes to the actual way the themes are laid out, the way the themes, and I think a lot of that comes from the fact that Shopify has people, you know, external graphic designers, independent designers, that can do a lot of their themes for their theme store, both the free ones and the paid ones, whereas BigCommerce, I'm pretty sure they design all their themes in-house, so not as much creativity goes into those- that some of them are looking a little outdated- still good ones. but with themes- free themes- Shopify takes the win. now, as far as paid themes go, paid themes would be more, for I don't know if you're going to be selling a unique set of products or something where you need a specific theme that you know can't fit into these paid or these free themes that are kind of, you know, targeted at a broad audience. so that's what the paid, the

Shopify Vs Bigcommerce 2021

looking to start an online business, you need a hosting service to execute your business more effectively and efficiently. there are only so many options and choosing between all of the different platforms. to make it simple for you, in this video, we will compare two of the biggest e-commerce platforms- shopify and big commerce- available today. now that your choice of platform will be your storefront and the ability to manage your online shop will hugely affect your sales. so let us start our comparison with one of the most important factors that can shape your decision: price plan. both shopify and bigcommerce have options that can fit any budget and need. shopify starts with a very affordable plan, charging you just nine dollars, but it does come with some gimmicks. you cannot have a storefront, but you can sell social media or an existing website. it also allows you customers to track their orders and you can even add a buy button to your products. the overall price plans of shopify and big commerce are identikal, starting at 29.95 per month for standard and go up to 299.95 per month for the pro subscription- all things like bandwidth products and file storage, etc. but the major notikeable difference is in the number of staff accounts. shopify has a limit in each plan, while bigcommerce offers an unlimited number of staff accounts. before you choose sides, though, commerce forces you to upgrade to a more expensive plan. if your sales surpass a fifty thousand dollar mark in a year, you are moving to the next plan that cost more, and if your sales exceed the hundred and fifty thousand dollar limit, you will be moved to the next plan. it will not be a gift from the platform. you will be required to pay for the upgrade out of your pocket. shopify does not have such limits and you can grow your business as much as you can, only purchasing a more updated plan if you need to once start to big commerce and shopify. although we have caught it a draw here, this is just the tip of the iceberg. moving forward payment methods, both the platforms offers several payment methods so you can cater to a diverse range of customers, but they are not just offering it for free. both of the platforms charge a certain amount or percentages every time a payment is processed in your favor. on standard debit or credit card payments, both shopify and big commerce charge standard 2.4 to 2.9 percent in processing fees, plus 30 cents additional per transaction. however, shopify charges additional charges 0.5 to 2 in fees if any other payment method is selected, then their own, called shopify payments. it may not look like a considerable amount, but as your business scales, this will become a notikeable cause. on the other hand, hats off to the big commerce. it does not charge these additional fees. one more start of big commerce here. if you had figured out these prices and fees. the next major thing to do is consider usability. usability affects the functionality and allows the user to make their shop more reachable to the right audience. both of the platforms offer everything that should be there. with shopify, the framework pretty simple: you log on to create an account, add your products and be on your way in just a couple of hours. bigcommerce offers an extensive list of free and paid themes to choose from, depending on your product or brand. all of the themes and designs are fully responsive and customizable, and there are certainly more options available by big commerce than shopify offers. to understand this better, shopify only offers three product options: size, color and finish- while bigcommerce has no limitations, potentially allowing you to showcase your products better, even with slight limitations- that might become an issue once you grow, it provides a more beginner friendly user experience. that's why more people take start from this platform overall. both deserve a start in this department, moving ahead as we speak of growth. both the platforms offer the add-on. both shopify and bigcommerce offer plenty of features to kick off your business as soon as you make an account: add-ons for search engine optimization, accounting and taxes calculation, customer retention, sales and marketing, optimizing conversions- you name it. they have all the options available, both developed in-house by the platform or third-party developers. this can be a game changer for some users. simultaneously, shopify has tons of features available in its app store. bigcommerce offers more functionality without having to purchase additional apps. for example, the biggest of all- with different price list options, meaning you can offer different prices in different currencies and all the transactions being conducted in the same currency. most of these can be added via the shopify app store. it is, however, important to account for the additional cost, so big commerce gets another star here, now that we have explained all the identikal and different features. shopify's overall score was two and big commerce came out ahead with three stars. in the end, it depends on your personal preference and understanding of the platform. which one do you prefer to use? let us know in the comments. if you found the video useful, please hit the like button and subscribe to the channel. thank you for watching [Music].

5 reasons you should choose Shopify over BigCommerce

Hey, Look at you Doing your research and being a good merchant. That's nice to see, because choosing an e-commerce platform is a big decision. Of course, you've heard of Shopify- Everyone has heard of Shopify- but I'm assuming you're here because you've also heard of BigCommerce and you're wondering how they compare to each other. Hopefully, I can make your life just a little bit easier, because in this video, I'm gonna give you five reasons why you should choose Shopify versus BigCommerce. Pull yourself up a chair and let's tok about it. In this series, we've been exploring reasons why you would choose one e-commerce platform over another. With both Shopify and BigCommerce being SaaS platforms, this discussion is a bit more subtle and nuanced. In this video, I'm gonna give you five reasons to choose Shopify and then, at the end of the video, I'll link you to another one where I give you five reasons you should choose BigCommerce. Hopefully those reasons helpe make your decision just a little bit easier. I'm making sure to mention in all of these videos that no one is unbiased, myself included. I have my favorite platforms. In this case, we're BigCommerce partners. don't do so much with Shopify. However, I'm not here to sell you anything. I want you to end up on the absolute best platform for you. Now I'll roll through these five things that I think are Shopify's biggest advantages, but it's not these things that have me most excited about the Shopify platform. At the end of this video we'll discuss the big picture thing that I think really makes Shopify stand out over all the other e-commerce platforms. Now I'm sure as we go along I'll give them numbers, but these are really in no partikular order. so let's just get into it. And the first reason to choose Shopify / BigCommerce are some functionality differences. There are a couple of features here worth pointing out. First, Shopify provides automatik abandoned cart recovery at a lower price point than BigCommerce. Abandoned cart emails are important and if you're on the entry level plans, it's included with Shopify but not with BigCommerce. Now, once you move up to the mid-level plans, then both platforms include this feature. so if you're mr big moneybags, it's doesn't really apply to you. Point-of-sale is another big piece of functionality that might make a difference in your decision making process. Although point-of-sale terminals are an option on BigCommerce, Shopify has a fully integrated solution directly from Shopify themselves, and that can make your life a lot easier if point-of-sale is important. So if you plan on selling goods in some sort of physical store or pop-up shop or something similar, then this could be a big check mark on the Shopify side of your comparison. Now, this next one is not really so much a feature of the platform itself as it is a benefit of the community that's grown up around Shopify. With Shopify heavily advertising itself to those merchants just getting started, it's really grown a community of providers catering to the drop-shipping market. That means the tools, resources and knowledge to help you grow your drop-shipping brand are more readily available on the Shopify platform. Although drop shipping is not exclusive to beginning stage entrepreneurs- those just getting started in e-commerce- are much more likely to exclusively dropship products. The cost structure of the platform and ease of getting going with Shopify is very appealing to this market. So if you're just getting started and looking for the cheapest, quickest and easiest way to get a drop shipping store up and going, Shopify is a clear winner. Even if you're a more established merchant and drop shipping is a big part of your business, then you may find the marketplace tooling to be a better fit for your needs. But you'll need to do some research just to be sure. And the second reason to choose Shopify versus BigCommerce are that there are more apps in the app marketplace. There are significantly more third-party apps available for Shopify than for BigCommerce. Some BigCommerce supporter- I'm sure it's gonna chime in here and claim that BigCommerce has more functionality and thus has a lesser need for third-party apps. That's a solid line if you're a slick salesperson trying to persuade somebody to choose your e-commerce platform. But whether that's true or not in your partikular case really depends on the functionality that you're looking for. So it's tough to generalize an answer, so we'll base this just on statistiks alone. So, just based on statistiks. if you want some random piece of functionality that the core platform doesn't provide, there's a stronger chance that someone in the Shopify marketplace provides that functionality. So if you geek out on perusing third-party apps for additional functionality, then Shopify's got what you need, baby. Oh yeah, enjoy that marketplace. At some point. if you're serious about e-commerce, you're gonna want to accomplish something that your cart of choice just won't do. Having a large ecosystem of apps might be just the thing that makes your needed functionality affordable and keeps you from having to have a custom-developed Worst case. it's a safety net. if budget is your biggest concern, Sure, these apps can cost money, but are oftentimes much, much cheaper than trying to create that functionality on your own. And the third reason to choose Shopify over BigCommerce is that there are no limits on the amount of sales for your store. if you're happy with the features of your Shopify store, then you just keep growing that store without having to upgrade to a more expensive plan. You're a smart merchant, so I'm sure sooner or later you'll figure out that some limitation is holding you back and decide to upgrade to the robustness of a larger plan. But there's no one forcing you to make that decision. You can do it on your own time. The majority of Shopify's money comes from payment processing, so they don't really give a damn about your measly little subscription revenue. BigCommerce, on the other hand, doesn't push you into an in-house payment processor or charge transaction fees. That means the subscription income is a big part of their revenue. so they definitely care, Understandably so a man's gotta eat. But because of that their pricing is unfortunately based on your sales volume. For instance, their cheapest plan allows you to do $50,000 a year in sales. Once your sales for the preceding 12 months goes over that amount, they'll require you to upgrade to the next tier. Now that should be a smooth process. It's not like you have to rebuild your whole site or anything, It's just flip of a switch. but it does give you less control over which plan your on and what your costs are. You're not allowed to choose a plan based solely on the features provided in that plan, like you can with Shopify. And the next reason to choose Shopify over BigCommerce is theme availability. Traditionally, one of the biggest costs associated with a new website build is dialing that theme in just perfectly. It can cost thousands, tens of thousands of dollars if you're designing and building it from scratch. Now I don't have that kind of cheddar laying around, and you probably. you don't either, But luckily you don't need to if there are cheaper options available. Now BigCommerce has some nice themes on the marketplace, so it's not like you don't have any good theme options over there. But Shopify is on another level with the quantity and quality of the themes available. Often for the price of taking my family down to the local Starbucks for a whole bunch of mocha frappa-latte-cinos, you can have a clean design to use as the basis of your online business. That can cut your overall build cost significantly and allow you to use that money for something that moves the needle or perhaps is more fun like a nice bottle of whiskey. And the fifth reason to choose Shopify versus BigCommerce is its ease of.