In the recent era of eCommerce, more and more companies are going online and desire to makes their business successful. Undoubtedly, Bigcommerce is a powerful and well-known platform, there are many reason that you might be considering and evaluating alternatives to this platform for developing a new online store or for migrating an existing one. There are major categories with eCommerce platform hosted and self-hosted. Hosted means that the company will host your store, whereas self hosted means with the help of software you have to get your own web hosting.
The shopping cart of Bigcommerce is not difficult to work with but some users still prefer simple solution like Magento, OpenCart, Shopify, Prestashop and Woocommerce. I have evaluated several shopping cart and selected these five as the best Bigcommerce alternative and that are very useful for your eCommerce business.
Magento:
When it comes to eCommerce, Magento is the most preferred choice for all because it is very flexible, feature rich and versatile open source platform. If you are looking for eCommerce solution that allows scalability, responsive structure and fully customized design then Magento is the best answer for it. If you plan to migrate to Magento, check out our recent blog post related to top challenges you may face.
Pros:
- The professional look as well as well-organized information and categories of Magento helps you to create an ideal store.
- It allows extensive customization, provides full control over development, and design their business related platform.
- It is user-friendly and capable to handle huge varieties of products as well as ability to manage multiple store fronts.
- It supports multi-currency and multi-language.
- Integrate with WordPress and ideal for eCommerce business.
Cons:
- It is available with costly extension.
- Too many features make it complicated and confusing to the users.
- Expensive to run in terms of hosting.
- It takes many step to customize the setting and available with classic old design
- It’s time consuming because of its complexity.
OpenCart:
OpenCart is simple tool that can easily fulfill the requirement of both basic and advanced store as well. It is feature rich and free also comes with own set of themes and extensions. It’s an eCommerce system that can be hosted on any server configuration and also supports databases plus PHP.
Pros:
- It offers good features including catalogue functionality and good order processing
- It comes with good documentation that helps users from initial set up to other functionality.
- It is simple and user-friendly interface
- It is simple and user-friendly interface
- Responsive and quick admin UI
Cons:
- For improving the performance you need extension for catching and SEO functions
- Customization is not easy to use
- It does not offer SEO friendly URLs
Shopify:
Shopify provides more than 100 professional theme so you can easily choose according to your requirement. However, with the help of shopify you can easily launch your online store. Just you need to create an account, pick a free theme and customize the design that’s it.
Pros:
- It provides free hosting so you don’t need to do anything other than getting creating an account.
- It has an easy store set up, configuration and launch.
- It comes with many SEO features and that will help you in website promotion.
- The admin area interface is user-friendly to use
- It offers numbers of free and responsive templates
- It has simple paypal integration
Cons:
- It does not offer too much product attributes.
- Every products in the store is categorized by its size, colour and material as well as you can add many options for each of these parameter but you cannot create new ones.
- If you use payment gateway then you can’t avoid transaction fees.
Prestashop:
Prestashop is suitable for those who want to start online store with low budget. It is developed in PHP but don’t require any rocket science to get started with. You can easily run and sustain your store compared to Magento.
Pros:
- Flexibility of admin panel is the main advantages. User can easily customize their store according to their requirement.
- The software is light-weighted so that enhances the speed of the shopping store.
- If you want to update the new theme then you can replace it with old theme easily.
- Variety of payment and shipping gateways
- Catalogue and site management is easy
Cons:
- It is great for small to medium size business but if you want to make the store effective then you need to add different modules.
- Some modules need to be purchased because they don’t come with solution pack.
- It is not available with professional design as compared to other solution
- Need more focus on marketing
WooCommerce:
In wooCommerce you can customize everything from within your dashboard, test it and easily change all the option until you are gratified with the result. If you know little bit about wordpress then it shouldn’t be any problem. Without any trouble, you can install eCommerce store because wooCommerce makes people’s life more easier. Additionally, the plugin also works simply and offer useful features.
Pros:
- It is filtered in the specific categories like coupon by date, sales by date, by products etc.
- It’s a free plugin so just down load and add products in your wordpress dashboard.
- Client can easily review and rate to their products by adding rating to their comments.
- It has secured and robust shopping cart
- User can personalized or customized the theme according to their requirement.
- Shipping and payment option can be changed with the help of plugin.
Cons:
- However, wordpress is free it doesn’t come with free hosting so you have to pay for it separately.
- Even if it’s simple but still you need to set up on your own and that includes download and install the plugin on your wordpress.
What you are thinking of these eCommerce solutions? Which one do you prefer? All the plugins have their own pros and cons so choose according to your requirement. However, if you have other platform in mind or you are planning to switch your website then share your idea with us in the comment box below.
Jimit Bagadiya
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