BigCommerce Programming Language: A Complete Guide to Stencil Development
Understanding the BigCommerce programming language stack is essential for building flexible, high-performing stores. This guide breaks down Stencil development, the role of Handlebars.js, and how combining BigCommerce APIs with PIM software supports scalable, data-driven ecommerce.
- Sean Purdy
- February 3, 2026
- 4:13 pm
Table of Contents
What You'll Learn:
Stencil Framework Fundamentals – How the BigCommerce platform uses Handlebars.js, JavaScript, and YAML for dynamic storefronts
Essential Programming Languages – The specific technologies required for BigCommerce development and customization
Template Development Skills – How to create custom themes using Handlebars expressions and access BigCommerce APIs
Local Development Setup – Installing Stencil CLI, configuring API accounts, and establishing efficient developer workflows
Product Data Management – Why PIM software is critical for managing complex product catalogs across multiple stores
If you’re exploring BigCommerce programming language options for your e-commerce store, you need to understand the technical foundation, and how it’s essential to customization and growth. Whether you’re a developer building custom themes or a store owner planning technical requirements, knowing what exactly powers BigCommerce storefronts will allow you to make informed decisions about your online business.
The BigCommerce platform uses Stencil as its modern theme engine, combining industry-standard languages like JavaScript, Handlebars.js, HTML, and CSS. This approach makes BigCommerce development accessible to a broader pool of developers compared to platforms like Shopify that use proprietary languages. As the Experts of PIM for BigCommerce at Catsy, we’ve seen how the right technical foundation combined with robust product information management creates scalable, high-performing ecommerce experiences.
1. Understanding BigCommerce's Stencil Framework
What you need to know first: Stencil is the BigCommerce platform’s theme engine. It powers all modern storefronts, replacing the legacy Blueprint framework with open-source, industry-standard technologies.
What Makes Stencil Different
Stencil launched in 2016 as BigCommerce’s answer to modern e-commerce platform development needs. Unlike proprietary frameworks that require specialized training, Stencil uses familiar web technologies that most developers already know, allowing developers to build stores faster.
The framework supports performance and flexibility across online stores. Stores built on Stencil load faster, respond better to mobile devices, and offer store owners more customization options without touching code. Page Builder functionality allows non-technical users to adjust colors, typography, banners, and layout characteristics directly from their BigCommerce account.
Technical Architecture
Stencil separates logic from presentation due to its component-based structure. Templates will make quick work of the visuals while Stencil objects will manage your store data. Separating the two ensures that code can be maintained without complexity.
The framework supports responsive design out of the box, ensuring consistent customer experience across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. Each Stencil theme can contain up to four variations, allowing online stores to optimize different layouts for specific audiences or market segments – particularly valuable for small businesses targeting diverse customer groups.
A key factor for success: Using open-source technologies means lower development costs, faster hiring, and easier maintenance compared to platforms requiring proprietary language expertise.
2. Core Programming Languages in BigCommerce Development
Here’s what powers your store: BigCommerce development relies on JavaScript, Handlebars.js, HTML, CSS/SCSS, and YAML, all widely-used web technologies that simplify developer onboarding and integration with the BigCommerce API.
Primary Languages and Technologies
Handlebars.js is the programming language for dynamic content templates. According to BigCommerce API documentation, this minimal templating language lets developers create robust, dynamic templates by embedding expressions directly into HTML-like files. Handlebars statements run server-side, generating the HTML that customers see in their browsers.
JavaScript powers interactive elements and client-side functionality across your e-commerce store. Developers use JavaScript to create customer experiences that really wow the customer, to handle form variations, and to integrate third party apps. JavaScript will work seamlessly to create fully functional storefronts.
HTML and CSS/SCSS provide the structural foundation and styling that impacts site speed. The BigCommerce platform supports both Sass and SCSS as CSS preprocessors, allowing developers to use variables, mixins, and nested properties for more efficient styling. The Cornerstone theme uses Citadel, a BigCommerce SCSS framework built on Foundation v5.5.3.
YAML Front Matter enables developers to request specific objects for each page through API calls, improving performance by loading only necessary data. This approach increases site speed and reduces server load by fetching precisely what each template needs – critical for maintaining fast load times that affect customer experience and conversions.
Programming Advantages for BigCommerce
Using standard web technologies will give you a few advanced features that your competition doesn’t have. In addition, it’ll be much easier to find help – your dev team won’t need special certifications. Developers can transition into BigCommerce without extensive training – saving you money and time.
Code maintainability improves because multiple developers can understand and modify existing themes without deciphering proprietary syntax. API documentation is abundant through both BigCommerce resources and general web development communities like Stack Overflow and GitHub. The BigCommerce developer portal provides comprehensive guides for accessing API resources and managing API accounts.
Critical insight: Common programming languages can reduce technical barriers and lower development costs, all while expanding your talent pool for building and maintaining your store at the store level.
3. Handlebars.js: The Template Engine Behind BigCommerce
The programming foundation: Handlebars.js is the core programming language that makes BigCommerce stores dynamic, allowing developers to inject product data, customer data, and conditional logic directly into templates.
How Handlebars Works in BigCommerce
Handlebars expressions appear between double curly braces and blend seamlessly into HTML files. A basic expression like {{product.name}} displays a product’s name, while {{product.price}} shows pricing information. These simple placeholders get replaced with actual store data when the page renders through API calls.
The power comes from Handlebars’ ability to include conditional logic and loops without cluttering templates. Rather than mixing complex JavaScript throughout HTML, developers use clean, readable Handlebars helpers that process data server-side before sending finished HTML to shoppers’ browsers – improving performance across multiple stores.
Stencil Objects and API Integration
Stencil objects are JavaScript objects rendered onto storefronts, categorized as Global, Common, or Other based on their scope and access level. Global objects like navigation menus appear across the entire e-commerce store, while page-specific objects contain data relevant to particular templates accessed through the BigCommerce API.
Handlebars helpers extend functionality beyond basic variable substitution. Built-in helpers handle tasks like formatting currency, looping through product collections, comparing values, and generating URLs using API resources. Custom helpers can be added when business requirements demand specialized logic for specific events or customer authentication scenarios.
Practical Template Examples
A product page might use Handlebars to display a gallery of images, iterate through product options like size and color, show inventory management status, and render customer reviews. Each element uses Handlebars expressions to pull store’s data from Stencil objects… without requiring custom JavaScript for every feature! This streamlines the checkout page experience for your customers.
Category pages leverage Handlebars to loop through product collections, apply filtering logic based on customer selections, and display pagination controls. The same template adapts to different categories automatically because Handlebars expressions pull the appropriate data based on context, reducing the need for duplicate code across BigCommerce stores.
Development efficiency matters: Handlebars’ clean syntax speeds up development while keeping templates maintainable, reducing both initial build time and long-term customization costs for your online store.
4. Setting Up Your BigCommerce Development Environment
Getting started right: Stencil CLI enables local theme development with real-time notifications, allowing developers to build and test changes before pushing updates to live stores through their BigCommerce API account.
Installing Stencil CLI
The Stencil CLI requires Node.js version 20.x and installs globally via NPM with the command NPM install -g @bigcommerce/stencil-cli. Once it’s installed, developers gain access to commands for initializing, starting, bundling, and pushing themes through the BigCommerce developer portal.
Local setup involves running stencil init in your theme directory, which creates a configuration txt file connecting your local environment to a BigCommerce store. You’ll need your store URL, an access token (also called Stencil CLI token), and a port number for the local server – all managed through your API account settings.
Creating API Accounts
Before using Stencil CLI, developers must create API accounts through the BigCommerce account control panel. Navigate to Advanced Settings > API Accounts, where you can generate new API credentials with specific OAuth scopes. For theme development, you’ll need read access to store data and write permissions for theme files.
The system generates a client ID and client secret during API account creation. These credentials authenticate API requests from your local development environment to your BigCommerce store, ensuring secure access to store’s data. Store these credentials! The client secret displays just once during creation.
Development Workflow
Running stencil start launches a local development server with Browsersync, enabling live previews across multiple devices simultaneously. Changes to template files, stylesheets, and JavaScript appear instantly in your browser without manual refreshing – dramatically improving performance during development cycles.
This workflow will do wonders for your developers’ productivity! They can experiment with checkout page layouts, test the functionality of the site, and refine designs in a safe environment – nothing will impact the live storefront as they create. Plus, multiple stores can be managed from the same page, with each configuration stored in separate txt files.
Deployment Process
When development is done, Stencil bundle will validate code and create a zip file that’s ready for upload to the BigCommerce platform. The new bundle contains all of the theme files, ensuring that nothing gets missed during deployment to your e-commerce store.
The command Stencil push bundles the theme and uploads it directly to your store, so it’s available in the theme library. Adding -a activates the theme immediately, while -d deletes the oldest theme if you’ve reached your theme limit on the store level. These options combine as Stencil push -a -d for streamlined deployment across BigCommerce stores.
Managing Product Data During Development
While Stencil CLI handles theme development efficiently, managing your complex product catalogs requires additional tools beyond standard API calls. Testing themes with realistic product data ensures templates handle various scenarios like long product names, multiple variants, and rich media assets.
The best PIM for BigCommerce is essential when your catalog includes hundreds or thousands of products with detailed specs. PIM software centralizes this product information, making it easier to populate development stores with accurate data for testing purposes.
Development best practice: Local development reduces risk, accelerates iteration, and prevents costly mistakes by catching issues before they affect customer experience on your online business.
5. Optimizing BigCommerce Stores with PIM Software
Why data management matters: As BigCommerce stores scale, managing product information through spreadsheets becomes unsustainable. PIM software gives you the centralized data management you need to grow across multiple stores and channels.
The Product Data Challenge
BigCommerce stores often start with manageable catalogs that can easily fit onto spreadsheets. But those businesses grow. When they do, complexity increases and product counts do, too… managing your data is now error-prone if you keep using manual methods.
The problem intensifies when you start selling across multiple channels through the BigCommerce app marketplace. Each marketplace and sales platform has specific requirements for product feeds, and manually reformatting your data is a huge waste of time. It also introduces errors that may eventually reach the customer.
How PIM Solves BigCommerce Challenges
Product Information Management (PIM) software is the central hub for all of your product-related data. That may include your descriptions, specs, pricing data, and digital assets. Rather than keeping your data scattered across multiple systems, your teams can now all work from one single source of truth.
Your spreadsheets were overwhelmed by product relationships, variants, and complex hierarchies. PIM fixes this.
Products with many colors, sizes, or configurations are easily organized with parent-child relationships. tech specs are consistent across all variants. And marketing content can be customized for different groups and channels.
The integration between PIM and the BigCommerce platform enables automated data synchronization through API requests. When product information updates in the PIM system, changes flow to your BigCommerce stores automatically using real time notifications. This automation eliminates manual data entry, reduces errors, and ensures customers always see accurate, current information – improving performance across your online stores.
Benefits for BigCommerce Merchants
According to research from Informatica, PIM solutions enable faster launch times by streamlining product launches and updates. Marketing teams can enrich product pages with detailed descriptions, multimedia content, and SEO-optimized copy without waiting for technical resources.
PIM makes multichannel sales super simple, because it handles data transformation. that means you can export your product feeds to Amazon, eBay, or wherever else you please – without manually formatting. Your BigCommerce account will stay consistent while you expand to new sales opportunities.
In addition, collaboration improves dramatically when your marketing, sales, and other teams all have the same information. There’s no more conflicting data, outdated specs, or customer complaints that the product doesn’t match the image. Workflows will coordinate content creation and publishing, which is imperative for efficient management of multiple stores.
Integration with Other Software
Modern PIM solutions integrate with inventory management systems, order management platforms, and other software critical to your online business operations. These integrations happen through API paths that connect systems securely, allowing store owners to maintain data consistency across their entire technology stack.
For businesses exploring headless commerce architectures, PIM becomes even more valuable. Headless storefronts separate the presentation layer from the backend systems, requiring robust APIs to deliver content. PIM platforms provide the API resources needed to power headless experiences while maintaining centralized control over product information.
Catsy’s BigCommerce Integration
As the Experts of PIM for BigCommerce at Catsy, we’ve built deep integrations that understand BigCommerce’s data structure and API requirements. Our platform handles product variants, options, custom fields, and digital assets while maintaining the relationships that make BigCommerce’s catalog structure powerful – all accessible through comprehensive API documentation.
The integration goes both ways. It’s bidirectional, as data flows from Catsy to your storefronts while your order info and customer data flow right back. This connection ensures that your team will always be working with fresh data – regardless of the system they’re accessing.
Catsy’s DAM (Digital Asset Management) component stores product images, videos, PDFs, and other software resources alongside product information. When products update in Catsy, the correct assets automatically attach to BigCommerce listings through automated API calls, eliminating the manual process of uploading and linking media files – improving performance and reducing time-to-market.
BigCommerce has fantastic native features, but to scale will take tools that were designed for enterprise-level data management. Catsy complements BigCommerce because it provides the central hub that powers data.
Strategic advantage: The Best PIM for BigCommerce transforms product data management from a bottleneck into a competitive advantage, enabling faster growth with fewer errors across your entire e-commerce platform presence.
Key Takeaways
Stencil uses open-source languages – The BigCommerce platform’s framework relies on Handlebars.js, JavaScript, HTML, CSS/SCSS, and YAML rather than proprietary code, making development more accessible and cost-effective for developers and store owners
API integration powers customization – BigCommerce API accounts with proper OAuth scopes and access tokens enable developers to build custom apps, integrate other software, and create headless commerce experiences through comprehensive API documentation
Local development accelerates builds – Stencil CLI tokens and local development environments enable developers to preview themes with real time notifications, reducing deployment risks and speeding up customization cycles for online stores
Standard languages reduce barriers – Using familiar web technologies expands your developer talent pool and simplifies long-term maintenance compared to platforms like Shopify with proprietary frameworks, benefiting small businesses and enterprises alike
PIM becomes essential at scale – As product catalogs grow across multiple stores, centralized product information management through systems like Catsy prevents errors, speeds up launches, enables multi-channel selling, and improves customer experience through consistent data
Frequently Asked Questions
What programming language does BigCommerce use?
The BigCOmmerce platform uses several web techs, including Handlebars.js for templates, JavaScript for interactive features, and HTML for structure. The Stencil framework combines these to create dynamic storefronts that convert! Developers can also use PHP and other languages to build custom apps, but there’s no need for extensive tech knowledge to use BigCommerce.
How do I set up a BigCommerce API account for development?
To create API accounts, log into your BigCommerce account and navigate to Advanced Settings > API Accounts. Then, click “Create API Account” and select the appropriate OAuth scopes based on your needs.
The system will generate a client ID and client secret for authentication. For Stencil CLI development, you’ll also need an access token (Stencil CLI token) which you can obtain through the BigCommerce developer portal; store these credentials securely in a txt file as the client secret displays only once!
Is BigCommerce development difficult to learn?
BigCommerce development has a moderate learning curve for developers familiar with basic web technologies. The platform uses industry-standard languages rather than proprietary code, making it more accessible than competitors.
Developers who have experience with JavaScript and HTML can typically start building custom BigCommerce themes within a few weeks. Comprehensive API documentation is available through the BigCommerce developer portal. The BigCommerce app marketplace also offers pre-built apps for common functions, which reduces the need for (and cost of) custom development.
Do I need to know programming to manage a BigCommerce store?
Store owners can manage their e-commerce store without programming knowledge using the built-in admin panel and Page Builder features. However, custom theme modifications, advanced features, and unique integrations require development skills and API access. Most merchants hire BigCommerce developers or agencies for customization while handling day-to-day store operations themselves – ideal for small businesses without in-house technical teams.
How does the BigCommerce API compare to Shopify's API?
The BigCommerce API offers more flexibility than Shopify’s API in several areas, particularly for headless commerce implementations. BigCommerce APIs provide extensive API resources without transaction fees on third-party payment gateways.
The API documentation covers REST API and GraphQL endpoints, allowing developers to choose the best approach for their specific requirements. BigCommerce support includes detailed guides for API calls, OAuth scopes, and customer authentication that many developers find more comprehensive than Shopify’s documentation.
