BigCommerce vs Shopify

BigCommerce is a hosted e-commerce platform founded in Sydney in 2009 and now based in Austin, Texas. It is a publicly listed company and, in 2025, its parent company renamed itself Commerce while keeping BigCommerce as the platform brand alongside the product feed service Feedonomics and the visual site builder Makeswift. Its pitch against Shopify is openness: no transaction fees on orders through its embedded payment providers, open APIs and strong headless and B2B capabilities.

The platform includes more out of the box than most rivals: product options and variants, faceted search, customer groups and price lists, multi-currency and multi-storefront management. Core, Growth and Scale plans have fixed monthly prices but cap sales (GMV) per tier and charge a small fee on orders through outside payment providers, so a growing store is moved to a higher plan or to Performance, which adds custom pricing and contract terms. Channel Manager connects listings to Amazon, eBay, Google Shopping and social platforms.

BigCommerce suits mid-market brands, B2B wholesalers and companies building a headless storefront with Next.js or a CMS. Beginners usually find Shopify easier, with a larger theme and app ecosystem, while WooCommerce gives more control to teams that want to self-host. For Turkish merchants, local payment, marketplace and e-fatura integrations are thin, so local platforms such as ikas or T-Soft are often more practical.

Shopify is the leading hosted e-commerce platform, founded in 2006 in Ottawa, Canada, by Tobias Lütke and his co-founders. Merchants from first-time sellers to global brands use it to run an online store, sell on social channels and take in-person payments with Shopify POS.

The platform covers storefront themes and the online store editor, product, inventory and order management across locations, Shopify Payments and the Shop Pay accelerated checkout, discounts, shipping labels in supported countries, marketing email and analytics. The App Store adds thousands of extensions. Shopify Plus serves large brands with checkout customization, B2B features, multiple stores and headless commerce through Hydrogen. Shopify Magic and the Sidekick assistant add AI help for descriptions and store operations. Pricing combines a monthly plan, from Basic through Grow and Advanced up to Plus, with payment processing fees; using a third-party gateway instead of Shopify Payments adds a transaction surcharge.

Shopify fits most direct-to-consumer brands that want reliability and a huge ecosystem without managing hosting. Costs rise with apps and fees, and customization beyond themes requires Liquid or developer help. WooCommerce offers more control on WordPress, BigCommerce includes more native features, and Medusa is an open-source headless option. In Turkey Shopify Payments is not available, so stores rely on third-party gateways such as iyzico and pay the extra fee, while ikas and Ticimax are strong local alternatives.