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E-commerce

BigCommerce

Portrait of Lukas Horvath, co-founder of Roelu Studio
Lukas HorvathCo-founder

What is BigCommerce?

BigCommerce is a hosted e-commerce platform that competes with Shopify in the mid-market and enterprise segment. Brands run their store on BigCommerce's infrastructure, with checkout, payments, and product management included. BigCommerce is known for strong native B2B features, an open Storefront API for headless setups, no per-transaction platform fees on most plans, and built-in multi-channel selling to Amazon, eBay, Google, and social.

Why it matters

BigCommerce is the platform brands consider when Shopify's transaction fees, theme limits, or B2B gaps start to hurt. It ships native customer groups, price lists, quote management, and purchase orders — features Shopify only added via Shopify Plus or third-party apps. The Storefront API is mature, making headless setups straightforward. The downside is a smaller app ecosystem and fewer agencies versus Shopify's army. For mid-market and B2B brands, BigCommerce often wins on total cost of ownership. For consumer DTC with heavy app needs, Shopify's network effects still pull. Picking between them is a real architectural decision, not a coin flip.

How it works

Brands sign up for a BigCommerce plan, configure their store in the admin, and pick a theme — either Stencil-based on the hosted front-end or fully headless using the Storefront API. Products, inventory, customer groups, and B2B price lists live in the BigCommerce admin. Payments process through built-in Stripe, PayPal, or other supported gateways at standard processing rates with no extra platform cut. Multi-channel selling pushes the catalogue to Amazon, eBay, and Google Shopping from the same admin. For headless builds, a front-end in Next.js or similar fetches data from the Storefront API and renders the store; BigCommerce continues to handle checkout, payments, and orders.

Related terms

  • Shopify

    E-commerce

    A hosted e-commerce platform that runs your storefront, payments, and checkout in one subscription — fast to launch, easy to use, and increasingly hard to…

  • Medusa.js

    E-commerce

    An open-source, headless e-commerce platform that gives brands the commerce engine — cart, products, orders, payments — while leaving the storefront design and…

  • Headless Commerce

    E-commerce

    An e-commerce setup where the storefront is built separately from the cart, checkout, and product engine, so the brand controls design and speed without ever…

  • Composable Commerce

    E-commerce

    An e-commerce strategy of picking specialized tools for each job — cart, search, payments, content, analytics — and stitching them together with APIs, instead…

  • Storefront API

    E-commerce

    The set of endpoints an e-commerce platform exposes so a custom front-end can fetch products, manage carts, and run checkout without ever using the platform's…

  • B2B E-commerce

    E-commerce

    Selling products or services online from one business to another — with logged-in catalogues, negotiated pricing, purchase orders, and multi-step approval…

  • Vendor Lock-in

    Business & Strategy

    When switching away from a platform becomes so painful, slow, or expensive that you stay even after the platform has stopped serving you well — the silent tax…