Any of you have any real world experience with either of these? Preferably both. Big commerce doesn’t charge the 2% transaction fee that shopify does, but does have a 2GB per month cap on bandwidth.
I’m comparing each of their lowest plans at $25 a month.
Shopify
$25 + 2% per trans
100MB storage
Unlimited bandwidth
Big Commerce
$25
200MB storage
2GB per month
I’m kind of liking the looks of the sites designed with shopify more, but is it as easy to use and powerful on the back end as big commerce?
Beley is right that their template language is very easy but it does have some limitations, as does the back end.
I noticed shopify’s backend isn’t really set up to handle refunds, and you have to dispute commission charges on these refunded orders once shopify’s invoice comes. It’s not an ideal cart if you are a drop-ship operation. There is no user account system for your customers whatsoever, so they cannot log in to check their orders, or have their personal info stored for ease of future purchases- although I hear you can rig a user system if you have a programmer who can work with shopify’s API, but all user information must be stored on a different server (yours) and this isn’t worth it if you’re not keen on paying for extra hosting just for having user accounts. Holding buyers information (credit card, addresses, etc) also involves certain liability issues.
Unless you plan to use a ready-made theme, you need a web designer who is well aware of shopify/liquids limitations. There are complications with images if your theme uses custom sizes that aren’t of these dimensions or widths ( 16x16, 32x32, 50x50, 100x100, 160x160, 240x240, 480x480, 600x600, 1024x1024) and retrieving specific images from a product folder is a messy process.Also 1024X1024 is the maximum image size you can upload. If you plan on having detailed product zoom images, you may have to host the high rez images on another server. Not being able to call out product images by name also makes zoom scripts and interactive thumbnails a little tricky.
But if all you need is a very simple shop that is nice and has no frills, it’s not that bad. Also, a good programmer (or web designer with javascript chops) can build custom solutions to some of the problems above.
Shopify is a slick system and their templating engine is awesome and easy to work with… I’m a big fan. But it’s expensive… if you do any volume at all, it will quickly add up and can be as expensive as some really heavyweight solutions out there. That’s why I don’t currently use it on any of my sites.
BigCommerce is based on the Interspire e-commerce software system – it’s their hosted version. It’s a nice shopping cart, but not as easy to template in my experience and is definitely more complicated than Shopify. That’s both good and bad… it has a lot of features Shopify lacks, but is more cumbersome and complicated as a result.
In the end, you should probably compare the capabilities and features with your needs and pick the one that will work best for you… and not base it solely on the costs.
shopify is smoother and easier. But the % cost can be a killer. Depends on your sales volumes. Im my opinion, its better to focus on marketing then on the system. If money is coming in the $50-200 you spend per month shouldnt matter
I used to completely agree with you. But lately I’ve changed my position. If the total fees (including the % paid) were reasonable for the e-commerce platform compared with other fixed-cost solutions, I would consider it.
For example, the Enterprise version of Magento starts at $12,000 per year. If you’re currently generating $20k a month in sales and have the $99/month Shopify account your total transaction fees would come to $2400 plus the $1200 for the monthly payments for a total of $3600, far less than the $12,000 for Magento.
So is it worth it? Maybe, maybe not. But you shouldn’t necessarily count them out just because the platform includes a % transaction fee.
Those are some HUGE numbers you’re tossing
around.
How about $99 / month and no commission?
Good does not need to be outrageously expensive and
expensive does not always = good.
There are 2 things I look for when building a business:
No penalty for success
The ability to Sell or Move the business.
There are plenty of solutions that offer these 2
items …but plenty that don’t. Choose wisely when you
start your business or pay the price when you
finally find success.
Those were not huge numbers. I tried to pick relatively conservative numbers. If you’re only making a few hundred dollars a month, you probably have more options than someone who needs a more expensive solution. You could most likely get away with a solution like BigCommerce.com, or any number of downloadable software packages, that don’t have any commissions.
But solutions like Shopify are still viable even for small businesses. When we started 2BigFeet, we purchased a shopping cart software for $1500 and then paid $130/month for hosting on top of it. Yes, this was 1999. But we figured it into our pricing just like our other expenses like our warehouse, computers, phones, etc. Solutions have gotten a LOT less expensive in the past decade.
But I also firmly believe, you have to spend money to make money. Especially in E-Commerce. If I had it to do over again, I’d invest in good hosting and a good e-commerce solution just like we did before.
My point is that the quality of the current
hosted solutions is already so good, there is
no need to pay huge fees to get great quality.
When you can get everything you need to run 1
(or 20 websites) under 1 umbrella, and do it all
for less than the price of your daily Starbucks
Latte …it simply makes no sense to pay more.
In fact, I would argue that many of the expensive
systems are in fact inferior to the current SaaS
systems.
Price does NOT = Quality
Of course, some folks will never be convinced of this.
When Hyundai beat Mercedes in product quality,
there was no mass exodus of people dumping
their Mercedes and rolling up to the country club
in a Hyundai.
So all I’m saying is, look before you leap. Don’t let
price determine your decision …do NOT buy the best
you can afford …buy the best available for your
specific business needs and your future business
vision.
Every solution is different. They have different features for different merchants. It’s very easy for a small merchant to need a more enterprise solution just because they need a feature that isn’t available in an “out of the box” or hosted software. Similarly, I’ve found many of those “hosted” solutions to have really spotty support and can be very slow at times (or even have downtime) which can have big implications on an e-commerce site.
What works (or doesn’t work) for you will most likely be different for someone else. I’m just saying you should look at the available solutions and choose one based on the TOTAL cost, features you need, support, and reviews. Period.
[QUOTE=beley;4735874] Similarly, I’ve found many of those “hosted” solutions to have really spotty support and can be very slow at times (or even have downtime) which can have big implications on an e-commerce site.
QUOTE]
Could you be a little more specific when making
a derogatory comment like this one please?
It’s not really fair to generalize and state that an
entire segment of service providers is bad.
I will agree with you that there are indeed bad
apples out there. There are cart providers with no
phone numbers and no addresses listed and count on
email for support.
That certainly would place them in a different league
than a company that has:
Toll free phone support
Live chat support
Click to Call support
Dedicated cart advisors for support
Modern Ticket support system
Look at the other big names in the hosted solutions
arena as well, there are very good companies out there
and frankly, it makes it tough to compete.
If they were all slow and unsupported, life would
be a lot easier for us as their competitor.
William, I have several examples of bad hosted solutions I’ve used over the past ten years, but things change over time and I didn’t want to call them out by name or talk specifically about their companies because they might well have changed/improved over the past few years.
I’m not saying all hosted solutions are bad, just many I’ve tried. I love Shopify, though I understand it’s feature set doesn’t work for everybody. There are great solutions out there, but both hosted and downloadable solutions have their downsides and that should be considered when making the decision. Look at product reviews, call current merchants that use the software, use a 30 day trial to try out the support first-hand.
I’ve never tried or used Premium Web Cart, and wouldn’t assume or infer that you don’t have a great product or support.
You really need to think about the fact that
if you cannot reach a person BEFORE they
have your money …what are the odds you’ll
get support AFTER they have your money?
Call 1st … then open your wallet. This will
save you a lot of aggravation later.