Adobe Commerce (Magento) Vs BigCommerce

Adobe Commerce (Formerly known as Magento) and BigCommerce are two powerful eCommerce platforms, both suitable for Mid to Large scale stores. When it comes to deciding which is most suitable for your business, there are a number of factors which should be considered, whether your top priority is scalability, design, ease of use or cheaper price point. 

What is Adobe Commerce?

Adobe Commerce is one of the world’s leading digital commerce solutions for merchants and brands. Magento had a rebrand in April 2021, where Adobe decided to rebrand the platform to Adobe Commerce. Although the rebrand took place in 2021, Adobe had already been running the platform for a few years prior to this, were they acquired Magento in May 2018. Magento was initially released in March 31 (2008); In June 2020, Magento 1 reached end of life, were Adobe had officially announced they will no longer support the software. Prior to this date, they had been providing quality fixes and security patches for the platform, giving merchants plenty of time to upgrade to Magento 2, which was released in November, 2015. Magento 2 was introduced in order to provide significant performance and security improvements, as well as other feature-rich enhancements.

This featured-rich, highly advanced eCommerce platform is intended for businesses that want to expand their growth and deliver an extraordinary customer buying experience. It has multiple features for providing a seamless customer experience. It has become an omni-channel solution for Business-To-Consumer (B2C) and Business-To-Business (B2B) merchants looking for an enterprise edition.

Some popular features of the platform include:

  • Order and product management
  • Content management made easy with Pagebuilder
  • Marketing Tools
  • Business intelligence dashboards
  • Customer segmentation
  • Unlimited customisation
  • Ability to integrate many 3rd party payment solutions
  • Customer loyalty tools
  • Related products, Upsell and Cross-sell functionality
  • B2B features and many more

What is BigCommerce?

BigCommerce is one of the leading Open SaaS (Software as a Service) eCommerce platforms for mid-market and enterprise brands. BigCommerce is a hosted eCommerce package, which means that the platform has everything you need to get up and running to begin selling across multiple channels, from Domain, hosting and Software all in one package. The platform has a great range of features included as standard, ideal for any businesses looking to add a slight edge over competitors.

Some popular features of the platform include:

  • Order management
  • Product management
  • Abandoned cart recovery
  • Dropshipping
  • Analytics tools and reporting
  • SSL certificate

Adobe Commerce Vs BigCommerce

Both platforms are leading eCommerce platforms which both offer B2C and B2B solutions for online sales. When deciding between the two platforms, it’s important to take some of the below factors into consideration.

Pricing

When it comes to pricing, Adobe Commerce has three options:

Open Source – This doesn’t require a monthly subscription; it’s completely free to download, install and setup. The only costs involved in this will be for the domain, domain name, SSL certificate, development time and extensions (optional).

Adobe Commerce Enterprise – This includes the cost of everything mentioned above in the open source option, although a yearly license fee is also acquired. The license cost depends on which additional features are included.

Adobe Commerce Cloud – As the name suggests, this is a cloud based package, which is the more pricey option of the three. This package makes use of all Adobe Commerce Enterprise features, but also benefits from Adobe’s cloud-hosted deployment model, meaning that you won’t have to look elsewhere for hosting as this is provided.

Unless you’ve chosen to go with Adobe Commerce Cloud, due to the scaleability of Adobe Commerce, it’s recommended to purchase a good hosting package to ensure the website has sufficient resources in order to get the best performance possible.

Unlike Adobe Commerce (which has options), BigCommerce is a subscription based platform which does come with a monthly cost. The cost of this depends on the business needs; BigCommerce offer different pricing packages.

Set-up

BigCommerce has a slight edge over Adobe Commerce when it comes to setup. Since BigCommerce is a subscription based platform, it has everything you need from Domain, hosting, SSL, and installation to get you up and running. Adobe Commerce on the other hand requires manual installation by a developer; You will also need to purchase a hosting service to get up and running.

Customisation

When it comes to customisation, Adobe Commerce has slightly more to offer. Adobe Commerce is fully customisable, allowing developers to customise every aspect* of the store. Adobe Commerce also have many 3rd party extension providers who actively develop and maintain modules to work with Adobe Commerce. Most of these come at a cost, although these provide a nice way to add additional features to the website to help drive more sales.

Themes

Out the box, BigCommerce has many free/purchasable themes which can be downloaded and applied to your store. Adobe Commerce comes with much fewer theme options, although there are a number of 3rd party theme providers who sell customised themes that are designed for quick installation. Adobe Commerce does however allow you to create a theme completely from scratch, allowing for full customisation of how the store will look.

Ease of Use

When it comes to usability, BigCommerce has got a slight edge over Adobe Commerce. Primarily since BigCommerce provides everything in one package, it easier to get set up with ease. Non-tech savvy users may have a slightly steeper learning curve to finding there way around Adobe Commerce’s features, although the platform does grant users with complete control over their website.

Security

Both the platforms offer a high level of security to ensure customers can safely purchase from any stores using the platform. Adobe Commerce and BigCommerce both release frequent security updates throughout the year. If a vulnerability has been discovered, Adobe Commerce provides a ‘patch’ to fix any raised/flagged security issues. Since BigCommerce is a paid package, they take care of all of the security patches for you – automatically! Whilst using Adobe Commerce, you would require a developer to implement these security fixes provided by Adobe. Adobe Commerce also offers PCI DDS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards), as well as two-factor authentication which adds those extra layers of security to the site.

Support

BigCommerce offers dedicated help and support via phone, email and live chat, with a professional team available 24 hours of the day. Adobe Commerce on the other hand (Unless you are registered for the Adobe Commerce Cloud Plan) doesn’t have any dedicated support contact of such, although with the platform being open source, it has an excellent user community via online forums. Typically Adobe Commerce solutions would be developed by an experience team of developers or hosted with an experience hosting service who could also offer great support if any issues crop up.

SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) allows you to optimise your website ranking. SEO plays an important role within the website as this will be one of the leading factors to getting customers onto your website. Both of the platforms offer similar solutions, allowing you to easily edit each web page title, description etc.

Multilingual & Currency Support

Both of the platforms offer Multiple language support and multiple currency support to allow you to sell internationally. Whilst Adobe Commerce supports currencies from 200+ countries worldwide; BigCommerce stores are capable of selling in 100+ currencies.

Payment Gateway Options

BigCommerce may have the slighter edge over Adobe Commerce here regarding payment gateways it supports. Whilst BigCommerce does support 40 different payment options, including all of the major big names, Adobe Commerce has much fewer options as out-the-box, although there are a number of 3rd party extension providers which have provided support for numerous other payment gateways. BigCommerce nonetheless forces you to choose one of the available options it has built-in; Adobe Commerce quite the opposite, allows you to make use of any additional payment gateways which have been developed as 3rd party solutions. Generally all of the big names in payment options already have 3rd party extensions available for use, but these do come at a slight.

Summary

Above we have highlighted some of the key aspects which are worth considering when choosing between the two platforms. As previously mentioned it’s important to first determine the main purpose and goals you want to achieve from having an online store. BigCommerce is a subscription based product which you need to pay monthly for, which has the convenience of providing everything you need to get up and running all in one package. Adobe Commerce on the other hand is an open source platform, so no costings are initially involved for the software, although you will have to find a reliable hosting provider and support yourself. Whilst BigCommerce is easier to setup and has a simpler user interface solution to get your online business up and running in a timely manor, Adobe Commerce is much more advanced platform which is extremely scalable, offers much more customisation and flexibility to have a larger inventory to sell thousands of products.