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The smartphones and internet have brought a big difference in the way of shopping and have led to an exponential increase in the eCommerce market as well. A meticulous research report has estimated that by 2025 eCommerce CAGR will increase up to 24.3 trillion dollars. The reason behind such popularity and growth is the facilities that eCommerce brings for the business as well as the customer. The most important thing to begin your eCommerce journey is a fully-fledged eCommerce website.
“Your website is the impression of your company just like the physical store.”
Think of the situation of strolling into a physical store that has poor items, improper placement of things, and bad service. You would definitely not like to stay at that place to buy anything. The same is the condition with the eCommerce website, as the better is the structure of your website, the higher is the lead conversions. Hence, you ought to be careful about the eCommerce platform that you choose to build your website as a platform takes care of the various essential factors associated with a highly functional website such as easy navigation, secure billing, clear policies, promotions, loading time, maintainability, scalability, etc.
The three most popular eCommerce platforms available in the market are BigCommerce, Volusion, and Shopify. Each of these platforms comes with its own strengths and weaknesses. This article will compare the important aspects of the platforms so that you can choose the best ecommerce platform that fits your business model and idea, and hence, settle on an appropriate development company, Bigcommerce, Volusion, or Shopify, for the same. To make a smart choice, let’s dig a little deeper into the ecommerce platform comparisons to throw some light on their differentiating characteristics.
Price
Though pricing is an important factor while looking for an eCommerce platform, however, you cannot base your decision solely on this factor. As we all know that to make money, you need to spend money, hence, you should be watchful to the features that are coming with the price paid by you. Big Commerce, Shopify, and Volusion come with different pricing plans, which you can select as per your requirement.
Shopify | Big Commerce | Volusion |
Basic Plan: 29$ per month
Intermediate Plan: 79$ per month Advanced Plan: 299$ per month |
Standard plan: $29.95 per month
Plus plan: $79.95 per month Pro plan: $299.95 per month Enterprise: Custom |
Personal: 29$ per month
Professional: 79$ per month Business: 299$ per month Prime: Custom |
As per the plans mentioned in the table, BigCommerce already loses this round because of ranging highest among the three. While on account of Shopify and Volusion, their costs look very similar at first, however, the plans are distinct in the features. Shopify allows you to keep unlimited products in the store for all the three plans whereas, in the case of Volusion, only business and the prime plan allow you for the same.
Also, Shopify charges 2%, 1% or 0.5 % on each transaction as per the plan but provides a free SSL certificate on the other side Volusion allows the free transaction, however charges for SSL certificate. Hence, Volusion and Shopify both can be considered to be the best online store platforms in the context of pricing, with slightly different features.
Sales Limitation
Sales limitation is a major setback with BigCommerce and Volusion. Actually, with these platforms, you are confined to make the sales of a limited amount which depends on the plan opted by you. Hence, it becomes necessary for you to pre-estimate the future sales and then select the plan accordingly. Shopify, on the other hand, is at an edge here as it does not requires any pre-estimations, rather, it allows you to make unlimited sales no matter what plan you have purchased.
Shopify | Big Commerce | Volusion |
Unlimited sales in all three plans. | Standard plan: Up to $50K
Plus plan: Up to $180K Pro plan: Up to $400K Enterprise: Custom |
Personal: $50 K
Professional: $100 K Business: $500 K Prime: Custom |
Hence, with the contrasting difference between Shopify and the other two in this context, Shopify once again proves to be the best online store platform for this particular feature.
User-friendly Interface
A user-friendly platform opens the doors for everyone regardless of their technical background. Shopify splendidly fits in this criteria as it is utterly simple and easier to use. With Shopify, you need not get any training or upskilling to work upon, however, that’s not the case with Volusion and BigCommerce, as to get hands-on these platforms you should own a few skills such as HTML, CSS, etc. Therefore, whether you are an amateur or an experienced businessman with some eCommerce websites already under the hood, you can use Shopify to build an eCommerce website for your business.
App Store
The Shopify app store is the largest store among the app stores of other platforms, with nearly 2400 apps in it. These apps enable the user to extend the functionality of their website as per the requirement, let’s say if a user wants to include a new feature of customer feedback, you can purchase the app called Product Review, likewise, you can go for Order Printer to print invoices, etc.
However, if we consider BigCommerce and Volusion, these platforms come with comparatively fewer apps in their app store that is 700 and 75 apps respectively. The drawback of the smaller app stores is that it limits the additional functionality of your website. Therefore, with such a huge difference in the number of apps for the users, and out of the top eCommerce platforms, Shopify comes out as a winner here as well.
Technical Support and Assistance
With 24*7 live chat and phone support, informative videos, emails, social media, etc, Shopify and BigCommerce both provide amazing technical support and assistance. Both of the platforms provide similar support to their clients. On the contrary, Volusion support is limited to just a few hours a day. Hence, it is already out of the picture in this case.
However, if you have to choose between Shopify and BigCommerce, opt for Shopify undoubtedly. Due to higher experience, Shopify has a very large community as compared to the BigCommerce. Therefore, it becomes comparatively easier for the client to reach the community, in order to seek any sort of help and support related to your online store.
Conclusion
Every platform has its pros and cons, like BigCommerce works great for larger business however is expensive, similarly, Volusion is a feasible choice for data-driven companies but it’s not user-friendly. Well, this is not all, if we consider the other major factors that might bring a difference to a business, then Shopify clearly wins the race.
Shopify is for everyone, be it a beginner or an expert. So, if you are planning to bring your business online, Shopify will prove to be the best eCommerce platform for small businesses and even for large scale enterprises. All you need to do for this is that just list down your requirements and our Ace developers will develop a perfect eCommerce website for you. Or if you already own a website you can hire virtual assistants and outsource various tasks such as logo designing, database management, customer dealings, etc. For any further queries, get in touch with us.
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