Shopify vs. BigCommerce in 2026: How to Decide Between the Top eCommerce Platforms

Which is better for your business? Shopify or BigCommerce? Shopify and BigCommerce are leading eCommerce platforms with subtle differences. Both platforms enable functional online stores aligned with short and long-term eCommerce strategies.

Assessing product types, staff size, and appetite for apps vs. built-in features will indicate what platform best suits your needs.

Choosing the right eCommerce platform can feel overwhelming with so many options on the market. Shopify vs BigCommerce stand out as two of the top solutions, but deciding between them isn’t easy either.

These two platforms serve similar purposes on the surface, providing the tools for merchants to create online stores. However, they differ in their target customers, built-in features, pricing models, and more. Knowing these distinctions is crucial before launching a store.

The good news is that assessing a few factors upfront about your business can clearly indicate whether Shopify or BigCommerce better suits your needs. Consider your product types, staff size, appetite for apps vs. built-ins, and other requirements. Outlining your must-haves guides you to pick the ideal platform aligned with your operations now and in the future.

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the utilization of online marketplaces to record rates. According to a Semrush report, the global eCommerce industry traffic peaked at nearly 25 billion in early 2022.

Typically, you’d expect the excitement to die down once COVID-related restrictions began falling away. This happened but to a minimal extent. Semrush data indicates that traffic was up 8% in the first three months of 2023.

The stats are crazier when you shift the focus to sales. Statista data at the time projected that eCommerce businesses worldwide would sell $3.1 trillion worth of goods and services in 2023, growing at a 10.06% CAGR between 2023 and 2028 to reach nearly $5 trillion.

That growth trajectory has held up, and then some. Global retail eCommerce sales reached roughly $6.88 trillion in 2026, up from $6.42 trillion in 2025, and now account for about 21.1% of total global retail sales, a share expected to climb to 22.5% by 2028. Growth has slowed slightly from the post-pandemic surge, but the market is still expanding faster than physical retail by a wide margin.

Accordingly, it shouldn’t be surprising that plenty of activity is happening in the eCommerce technology space. The niche is rapidly evolving as companies work hard to create a more streamlined market for the billions of online shoppers worldwide.

Of the 3.2 million eCommerce sites indexed by SimilarTech at the time of the original comparison, nearly 2% ran on top of WooCommerce technology, with Shopify taking second place at 0.92%. However, the scale shifted in Shopify’s favor when considering only the top one million sites, where Shopify commanded a 4.7% market share, over 0.6% ahead of WooCommerce. BigCommerce came a distant 12th in that lineup, powering close to 40,000 sites, though it’s easy to excuse BigCommerce’s lower adoption rate because the technology mainly focuses on business-to-business (B2B) usage scenarios.

The picture has shifted considerably since then. By 2026, Shopify’s share of the top one million eCommerce sites has grown to roughly 24%, split between standard Shopify stores and Shopify Plus, while WooCommerce holds around 8% of that same high-traffic segment. Market-share figures vary meaningfully by methodology and data source, but the direction is consistent: Shopify has extended its lead among established, higher-traffic stores, while BigCommerce continues to punch above its raw site count in B2B-focused deployments.

Interesting things begin to happen when you break the analysis of eCommerce software further down based on what section of business platforms focus on. An ECommerce Platforms analysis lists BigCommerce as a top solution for online B2B usage, while other analyses continue to rank Shopify as a leading platform for selling to consumers.

That is why you can say that Shopify and BigCommerce remain among the top eCommerce platforms heading into 2026 and beyond. However, how do you choose when faced with a Shopify vs BigCommerce decision?

Ultimately, Shopify and BigCommerce serve the same purpose, they allow merchants to create a digital touchpoint for buyers. To that end, it shouldn’t be a question of which is which when choosing the ideal platform.

However, when your online shop goes live, a few things will emerge that speak to the differences between the platforms. This is when you know what platform you should have selected initially.

As always, you make better decisions when starting from a point of strength, which, in this case, is detailed knowledge of what each platform offers. To help make sense of this, here is how Shopify and BigCommerce compare.

2026 Pricing Update: New Plan Names and Rates

Since this comparison first published, both platforms overhauled their pricing structures, so the numbers above are worth restating precisely.

Shopify’s current plans are Basic at $39/month ($29/month billed annually), Grow at $105/month ($79/month annually), the plan formerly just called “Shopify”, Advanced at $399/month ($299/month annually), and Plus starting at $2,300/month on a multi-year term. Online credit card rates run from 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic down to 2.5% + 30¢ on Advanced, with Plus earning the most competitive rates. Third-party gateway fees (charged if you skip Shopify Payments) scale from 2% on Basic down to 0.2% on Plus. Shipping discounts now reach up to 87% off, an improvement from the 77% figure at the time this comparison was first written.

BigCommerce renamed all four of its plans on June 1, 2026: Standard became Core, Plus became Growth, Pro became Scale, and Enterprise became Performance. Core runs $39/month ($29 annually), Growth is $105/month ($79 annually), Scale is $399/month ($299 annually), and Performance starts at a published $1,499/month on an annual contract, the first time BigCommerce has disclosed a starting Enterprise-tier price. Alongside the rename, BigCommerce lowered its revenue thresholds: Core now covers stores up to $30,000 in trailing 12-month gross merchandise value (GMV), down from $50,000, and Growth covers up to $100,000, down from $180,000. Scale merchants pay a continuous 0.9% overage on GMV above $33,333/month rather than hitting a hard plan-jump. BigCommerce also introduced an Open Payment Provider Fee, 2% on Core, 1% on Growth, 0.6% on Scale, that applies only if you process orders through a gateway outside its list of Embedded Payment Providers (which includes BigCommerce Payments, Stripe, PayPal, and about a dozen others); orders processed through an embedded provider carry no additional platform fee.

The practical takeaway: Shopify and BigCommerce are now priced almost identically at the entry and mid tiers, and BigCommerce’s long-standing “no transaction fee” pitch now comes with conditions tied to which payment provider you use.

If one thing is clear, Shopify does better in several areas than BigCommerce. How does the platform achieve this?

Supporting Businesses With Financing

Shopify has a clear advantage over BigCommerce in providing an enabling environment for businesses. It does this through the following features:

In comparison, BigCommerce does not offer direct financing programs or lending partnerships. Companies would need to seek out third-party financing independently rather than have options integrated for them.

Discounted Plans

In such a crowded eCommerce platform space, it takes technique to take the lead. For Shopify, one of its tactics is extending discounts and trial incentives on subscription plans.

Shopify edges BigCommerce out in this area. Specifically, Shopify offers the following types of discounted or introductory terms for merchants:

On the other hand, BigCommerce offers a 15-day free trial for new merchants, with no credit card required to sign up. Once you sign up for a Shopify account, you get a 25% discount if you pay annually. BigCommerce offers the same 25% annual-billing discount across its Core, Growth, and Scale plans as of 2026, closing what used to be a gap between the two platforms’ discounting strategies.

Load Time and Page Speed

An eCommerceCEO analysis, at the time this comparison was first published, put Shopify stores at the head of the load-time ranking, the stores’ average load time was 1.3 seconds, with BigCommerce trailing at roughly 2.2 seconds given the additional feature weight BigCommerce carries out of the box. Independent, current load-time benchmarks comparing the two platforms head-to-head are harder to source reliably in 2026, since both platforms have shipped substantial performance and checkout updates since then, so treat the original figures as directional rather than current.

Functional Mobile App

Both Shopify and BigCommerce provide mobile apps, but they have subtle differences. Shopify provides the options for merchants to handle their stores on the go, making it more functional. Also, the Shopify app allows sellers to manage orders and reports.

On the other hand, BigCommerce offers one of the better mobile experiences with regard to built-in features. The vast number of app options and built-in features make BigCommerce easily scalable. But this comes at a cost: BigCommerce’s feature-rich mobile app has a steeper learning curve. You’d need more time to get comfortable with the platform, whose trade-off is a quick launch of your business. In contrast, Shopify’s functionality means an easier learning curve.

Payment Gateways

Shopify offers a proprietary integrated payment processing solution, Shopify Payments. Merchants can use it to seamlessly accept credit cards with competitive rates and no long-term commitments. Importantly, sellers incur lower costs when they choose Shopify’s payment gateways.

In addition to Shopify Payments, Shopify integrates with numerous traditional and alternative payment gateways globally. These include major players like Stripe, PayPal, and Square, as well as region-specific options.

Then, there is Shopify POS. Shopify’s POS (point-of-sale) system for brick-and-mortar retailing comes with several integrated payment systems like tap, chip, pin, swipe, and mobile wallets. This reduces the need for extra hardware.

Although BigCommerce provides similar functionality through its own Embedded Payment Provider network, the feature is not as tightly proprietary as Shopify’s. Instead, merchants often set up third-party POS solutions like Stripe Terminal, Square, and Heartland Retail. This means the specific functionality of your BigCommerce POS system varies depending on which third-party solution you integrate into your store, while Shopify users get a more unified experience out of the box.

BigCommerce also edges Shopify in some areas, including:

Built-In Features

BigCommerce often comes with more built-in features out of the box, reducing the reliance on third-party apps. This includes:

Pricing Structure for High-Volume Merchants

BigCommerce is a B2B-facing eCommerce platform, so its pricing structure has historically favored high-volume merchants:

For merchants projecting large volumes of monthly transactions who use an embedded gateway, BigCommerce still provides a cost-effective, scale-ready pricing structure. Shopify can become costlier for high-volume merchants who rely on third-party gateways due to its transaction fee schedule.

Unlimited Staff Accounts

BigCommerce includes unlimited staff accounts across all of its self-service plans. On the other hand, Shopify’s Basic plan includes no additional staff seats at all, with Grow adding 5, Advanced adding 15, and only Plus offering unlimited accounts.

This can become a significant cost differential when managing a larger business team. Some key advantages of BigCommerce’s unlimited accounts include:

The ability for merchants to add unlimited user accounts to assist in-store management remains a clear win for BigCommerce stores with larger teams, and a critical administrative simplification over Shopify’s tiered per-seat model.

Enterprise-Grade Features on Lower Tiers

Even BigCommerce’s lower pricing tiers come equipped with more advanced enterprise-level features than Shopify’s equivalent tiers:

So even smaller BigCommerce merchants can tap enterprise capacities, allowing them room to scale operations while paying less than Shopify’s higher tiers.

Shopify and BigCommerce are wonderful products in their own right. That is why comparing them seems like splitting hairs.

However, differences exist, although subtle. Knowing these differences is invaluable and could be why your store meets performance targets. So, if each eCommerce software has clear advantages, how do you know what platform is right for your business? These questions should bring clarity:

Asking these strategic questions first is crucial. The resulting insights can guide you to determine if the Shopify or BigCommerce approach better aligns with your operational and business requirements now and in the future.

It helps if you can identify must-have features and probable sales trajectory, which allows you to pick the ideal platform.

Whichever platform you select to power your online store, you must find a separate solution to manage product content. A system for storing and managing product information and digital assets is necessary, regardless of your catalog length.

Handy tools like PIM software and digital asset management programs are the perfect fit for this job. A product information management (PIM) solution takes in all details about your products from all sources and stores them in a database. This database is accessible to everyone with proper authorization.

The database of a PIM tool is a central location, empowering businesses to distribute complete and accurate product data to sales channels, catalogs, websites, etc.

Similarly, a digital asset management system stores digital files in a centralized hub. This way, it is easy to manage and update the assets and to ensure that all connected channels receive accurate images, videos, and documents.

Some advanced management solutions like Catsy integrate PIM for e-commerce and DAM functionalities in one platform. This PIM and DAM integration brings many benefits, and the most crucial is the ability to map product attributes to assets seamlessly.

Catsy has advanced connectors that support both Shopify and BigCommerce. If nothing else, this versatility simplifies the decision about using either of the top eCommerce platforms.

On the one hand, Catsy’s Shopify PIM and DAM software provides bi-directional syncing that pushes enriched product content, names, descriptions, tags, variants, and collections, directly into Shopify, so a change made in Catsy populates automatically on the live storefront. If you have multiple stores, Catsy supports Shopify Markets and localized storefronts, letting brands manage region-specific content and currencies from a single source of truth rather than duplicating work across storefronts. Metafield mapping is configured once during setup, after which BigCommerce, and Shopify variant and market data continue to sync automatically. For a deeper walkthrough of the setup process, see Catsy’s guide to integrating a PIM system with Shopify.

On the other hand, Catsy has purpose-built B2B features in its BigCommerce PIM software that fit perfectly into the BigCommerce ecosystem. Brands and distributors managing thousands of attributes can utilize Catsy to manage SKUs and share content to all key B2B channels, including BigCommerce storefronts synced on an hourly cadence, a branded digital catalog, generated PDFs, and, for industrial brands, distributor-ready exports for partners like Fastenal, Ferguson, MSC, and Grainger, alongside distribution platforms like AD and Zoro. Catsy’s BigCommerce integration also supports customer-group pricing checks and custom field rendering, so B2B buyers see the right price list and technical specs without manual intervention.

Choosing between platforms doesn’t have to mean choosing between data quality and speed to market. If you’re weighing your options further, Catsy’s PIM platform comparison guide and its roundup of the best PIM software walk through how commerce-stack requirements, Shopify, BigCommerce, or otherwise, should shape a PIM shortlist. Global brands managing multi-region catalogs on either platform may also find Catsy’s cloud PIM platforms for global retailers guide useful for evaluating localization and channel syndication needs before committing to a stack.

So, after going a few rounds with these two eCommerce heavyweights, it’s clear that both Shopify and BigCommerce pack an impressive punch. They can pretty much do it all when it comes to setting up functional online stores.

But let’s get real, you’ll probably not build two separate stores here. For most brands, it’ll come down to picking which platform best matches a particular direction and game plan from the get-go.

Do you want to sell to other businesses and want a store that offers all the features you might need? BigCommerce could be your choice. Going all out on a nimble site and an accompanying functional mobile app? Then maybe Shopify’s your pick.

See, the differences really come out in the details tailored to you. Once you figure out whether you’re selling to consumers or doing big business supplies, that’ll clue you in.

So sort out your must-haves first, then let the rest line up. That way, when your store’s raking in sales, you’ll just know you picked the one primed for your style from start to finish.

When it comes to Shopify vs BigCommerce, the right platform for you comes down to your business needs. The same is true for picking a PIM and DAM solution.