Let’s Delve Into BigCommerce Pricing Plans: Are They Worth Your Money?

BigCommerce has three core plans to choose from: Standard, Plus, and Pro. You’ll be able to choose whether you want to be billed monthly or annually, with a 25% saving with a yearly option, which ranges between $29 to $299. The platform also offers an Enterprise Plan with tailored pricing upon consultation.

While BigCommerce doesn’t offer a free plan like Wix, you’ll be able to make use of a generous 15-day free trial, which should give you enough time to get a feel for the website builder.

All plans will provide you with unlimited product listings, file storage, bandwidth, and staff accounts, and BigCommerce doesn’t charge transaction fees on any plan.

Here’s an overview of some key variations between the plans:

The Standard plan – and all other plans – includes the following features:

• Unlimited products, file storage and bandwidth – sell as many products as you want, without worrying about your store exceeding its limits
• No transaction fees – save money by only paying processing fees
• Four inventory locations – ship orders from multiple warehouses
• Three storefronts – manage the sales of multiple brands from one dashboard
• Real-time shipping quotes – offer the lowest shipping price possible to your customers
• Responsive website – looks great on both mobile and desktop
• Single-page checkout – ensure the checkout process is quick and smooth. The smoother it is, the more sales you make
• 24/7 live customer support – expert help to answer any technical or business questions

Who Do I Recommend the Standard Plan For?

BigCommerce’s Standard plan is a great option for brand new or small businesses.

While it doesn’t come with the frills of the more advanced plans, it provides you with the foundations needed to maintain an online store, all for a relatively low cost.

The Plus plan gives you everything from the Standard plan, plus some extra tools to help you increase customer conversions. These include:

• Five inventory locations – increases the order fulfillment locations available with the Standard plan by one
• Five storefronts – increases the storefronts available with the Standard plan by two
• Abandoned cart recovery features – use automated emails to win back customers who abandoned their carts at checkout
• Customer groups –  by building customer groups, you can reward frequent shoppers via loyalty programs
• Persistent cart – save customers’ shopping carts to their account so they can carry on shopping even if they switch devices
• Stored credit cards – help your customers checkout faster by allowing them to safely store their card details

Who Do I Recommend the Plus Plan For?

This plan is for growing ecommerce businesses looking to improve customer experience and boost sales. The abandoned cart saver is the real star of the show – it’s even been found that sending abandoned cart emails can win back 15% of shoppers!

I’d recommend this plan to all those who are comfortable with the additional $50 per month, as these more advanced sales features give you much better value for money than you get on the Standard plan.

This plan takes everything from both the Standard and Plus plans, and piles on even more features with a focus on taking your business to the next level.

You unlock:

• Eight inventory locations – increases the order fulfillment locations available with the Plus plan by three
• Eight storefronts – increases the storefronts available with the Plus plan by three
• Google customer reviews – a tool that lets you collect customer feedback and product ratings
• Product filtering – help customers quickly find the products they’re looking for using filters such as size, color, or brand
• Custom product filters – use custom product fields as filters in faceted search, which helps customers narrow down their options
• Custom SSL – if you’ve already bought an SSL elsewhere, you can transfer it to your BigCommerce store

Who Do I Recommend the Pro Plan For?

With eight storefronts and inventory locations designed to streamline your business processes, the Pro plan is suited to small-to-medium sized businesses that manage multiple brands and work across several regions. 

On top of this, BigCommerce’s Pro plan has a few other handy (but by no means necessary) features aimed towards boosting customer experience. If you’re an established brand with a backlog of positive Google reviews, you’ll benefit from being able to integrate these into your website. Alongside this, custom filters will really enhance your customers’ experience and help you stand out from the competition.

For the largest ecommerce stores, the Enterprise plan lets you max out on everything BigCommerce has to offer. In addition to the features on the other plans, you’ll have access to:

• Price lists – display different prices to different customer groups, such as wholesale or retail pricing
• Unlimited API calls – you can send an unlimited number of requests to your server

Who Do I Recommend the Enterprise Plan For?

The Enterprise plan won’t be suitable for new or small businesses. But for large, complex businesses earning over $400,000 in revenue per year, it offers an impressive host of features like priority support, professional services, and personalized payment rates.

BigCommerce’s pricing is unique because it makes you upgrade as you grow. When you hit a certain sales cap per year, BigCommerce will automatically move you onto a more advanced plan.

Here’s a recap of the ‘caps’ for each plan:

• Standard – $50,000. Good for smaller ecommerce stores.
• Plus – $180,000. A good option for medium-sized stores or fast-growing stores.
• Pro – $400,000; beyond this limit, you’ll pay an extra $150 per month for each extra $200,000 in online sales, up to $1 million. Great for thriving stores generating between $150,000 and $1 million in yearly revenue.

To reiterate, you won’t have a choice about whether or not to upgrade if you’ve reached the revenue threshold. You’ll be able to pick which plan you want to start on, but if your yearly revenue exceeds the cap for that plan, BigCommerce will correct this.

But don’t worry – upgrades don’t happen out of the blue.

Dashboard notifications and emails are used to alert customers of any upgrades, and these happen once your ‘trailing twelve month sales volume’ goes over your plan limit (i.e. BigCommerce doesn’t look at your revenue by tax or calendar year, but rather by the 12 months previous).

You’ll have plenty of warning if your plan – and your bills – are about to change, and your revenue is never limited, even if you go over the plan threshold.

Can You Downgrade Your BigCommerce Plan?

You might be worrying: what if my sales dip and I can no longer afford my BigCommerce plan? Do plan changes only work one way?

If your sales are dropping and the monthly fee is affecting your profit margins, don’t worry: you can still switch back to a cheaper BigCommerce plan.

We asked BigCommerce directly, and they explained to us that merchants are not automatically downgraded. If you want the cheaper plan, and you’re within the sales limit, you’ll have to contact BigCommerce to request this.

BigCommerce explained that “because a downgrade will result in the loss of features, we want the client to be the driving force for that action.”

When you’re signing up with a new builder, it’s sensible to want to know about any extra or hidden costs that might crop up, either as you check out or further down the line.

We’ve put together a list of the main extra costs you might encounter when using BigCommerce:

#1. Domain Names

A domain name is like a store’s street sign. It tells visitors who you are, and introduces what your website is about.

Buying a domain name from BigCommerce will cost you from $12 for one year. To put this into context, Shopify’s start at $15, while Wix’s are free for a year with any premium plan, like Wix eCommerce.

#2. Credit Card Rates

Whenever a shopper places an order on your store using a credit or debit card, you will have to pay a fee. This charge goes to the payment processor (a bank, for example). The charge is for helping you collect the money from your customer and transfer it into your account.

It’s a fee that all merchants have to pay. That’s how the world of ecommerce works.

BigCommerce’s processing fees for debit and credit cards start at 2.59% + 49¢ per transaction, which is pretty standard. The better your BigCommerce pricing plan, the lower your credit card fees.

BigCommerce’s credit card fees are a little higher than Shopify’s, but merchants selling in modest volumes are unlikely to notice the difference.

A key thing to mention here is that, unlike a lot of ecommerce builders, BigCommerce doesn’t charge any transaction fees. This means that processing fees are the only charge you need to worry about – simple!

This sets BigCommerce apart from its rivals – even Shopify charges a transaction fee unless you use its in-house payments system.

#3. Themes

BigCommerce has a small range of free website templates for you to choose from, but if you want to pick a premium theme, they range in price from $199 to $400 each. This is a one-time payment, and you can then use that theme for as long as you like!

Why choose a premium theme? Well, there’s a larger selection of styles to choose from – and because of this, it’s less likely that a lot of other stores will have picked the same design. Premium themes also come with more features built-in, giving you a more powerful store from day one.

#4. Apps

One of the reasons BigCommerce is such a powerful ecommerce builder is that most of its tools and features are built-in. This sets the builder apart from its rival Shopify, which really relies on its app store to provide users with a wide range of functionality.

However, BigCommerce also has a native app store for any specific add ons you require. It has a selection of free apps, as well as paid ones, which vary in price. For example, BigCommerce’s top paid apps range from $9.99 to $75 per month.

Many apps also come with either a free trial or a free plan, so you can choose whether or not to pay for an upgraded service.

#5. BigCommerce Partners

If you want to hire professionals to work with you on your store’s success, you can find a BigCommerce Partner to help you out.

BigCommerce has over 4,000 agency partners who specialize in everything from web design to marketing, so you can find your perfect solution. This is totally optional, and prices vary depending on the agency – you’ll need to contact them directly for a quote.

When we tested it out, we found the value for money on offer to be slightly below average because of its relatively high subscription prices. If you’re on a budget, Wix and GoDaddy are both cheaper alternatives.

Here are BigCommerce’s plan prices compared with the equivalent plans of our top website builders, when billed annually:

A lot of website builders’ entry level paid plans start off at a very similar price point to that of BigCommerce, but once you start to look at the more advanced subscriptions, BigCommerce’s prices raise considerably higher than others.

Deciding between BigCommerce and Shopify is a common deliberation; they have very similar plan structures and exactly the same prices. However, our testing found Shopify to offer more bang for your buck in terms of ecommerce features.

Out of BigCommerce’s subscription options, I’d recommend the Plus Plan as the best value for money because you’ll unlock new features necessary for growth, plus a huge increase on your annual revenue cap to support this climb.

BigCommerce offers a generous free trial of 15 days, much longer than the three days offered by Shopify – which is a good amount of time to try it out before committing to a subscription. This said, other builders like Wix offer a completely free plan that you can use for as long as you want – though you can’t sell anything on it.

The price caps provided by BigCommerce offer guidance as to which plan is best suited to your business. However, If you’re a merchant selling a high volume of very low margin products, BigCommerce’s pricing may not be worth it.

Hopefully you now feel like an expert on BigCommerce’s pricing – and have a good idea of which plan is best for you.

If you’re still unsure, here’s a quick recap of each BigCommerce plan, and what each is best for…

BigCommerce Pricing:

• Standard plan: $39 per month, or $29 per month when paid annually. Best for new or small online stores looking for all the basic features (and a few extras!)
• Plus plan: $105 per month, or $79 per month when paid annually. Best for growing stores that want to boost conversions and improve their marketing.
• Pro plan: $399 per month, or $299 per month when paid annually. Best for large online stores that need scalable features to support their continued growth.
• Enterprise plan: custom pricing. Best for fully established stores that need an extra level of sophistication in their features and support.

I’d recommend the Standard plan for most new sellers. However, my favorite is the Plus plan, because it comes with abandoned cart recovery – a must for any serious online store!

The Pro plan is a great choice for larger stores searching for new ways to keep scaling up their business, while the Enterprise plan is reserved for big sellers with big budgets and big teams to manage.

When choosing BigCommerce, there are a few extra costs to bear in mind – domain names, themes, and credit card processing rates are the main three to factor into your budget.

It’s always best to try before you buy, so I highly recommend jumping on BigCommerce’s 15-day free trial.