Published Date: October 04, 2024
With so many website-building platforms available, it can be quite overwhelming to choose the one that ticks the right boxes for you. Choosing the right platform to create and manage a website is important to strengthening your online presence, so the decision should be taken carefully.
Here, we have compared two of the most popular and robust platforms, Wix and BigCommerce. Both are highly capable of catering to online businesses and can be customized to fit your requirements. Let’s take you through the breakdown of both Wix and BigCommerce. Both are excellent platforms for managing your website and business processes.
Recommended read: What is a Website Builder and How Does it Work?
Before starting the battle for the better, let’s quickly look into what both these platforms have for you.
Wix is a famous website builder focused on small to medium-sized businesses, making it easier for them to build a website effortlessly. It also facilitates tech-savvy users in modifying the HTML and CSS codes. Not only a builder, but Wix also caters to the e-commerce functionality with its built-in tools.
User-friendliness: Wix has a very intuitive and user-friendly interface and a simple drag-and-drop builder to create a professional-looking website. Choose from over 900 pre-designed templates, add images, content, and branding, and make your Wix website truly yours.
SEO capabilities: Wix has built-in SEO tools to improve your ranking. It supports a solid search engine-friendly infrastructure, so your website can compete at the search engine. You can customize Meta tags, structured data markup, URL structure, robots.txt files, etc., to boost your website’s SEO.
Email marketing tools: Wix also facilitates and manages email marketing campaigns from a single platform. You can even automate the campaigns so you never miss an opportunity.
Video and logo maker: Whether you want to create a product demo or just want to describe the specifications of a product, the Wix video maker helps you create videos quickly. Moreover, with the help of its built-in AI-powered logo maker, you can make a professional logo for your business in a few seconds.
Analytics: You can use the Wix platform to gather insights about your customers’ behaviors and preferences and use these insights to make better decisions and identify the areas for improvement.
Since its launch in 2009, BigCommerce has progressed as one of the top platforms used by medium to large e-commerce businesses. Thanks to its native e-commerce support that makes it easy to create and manage an e-commerce store. With its capabilities to customize the storefront, it supports your e-commerce store growth.
Mobile-optimization: Every BigCommerce theme is designed to be responsive so that mobile users can also enjoy an uninterrupted experience of your e-commerce site.
Page builder visual editor: Use the drag-and-drop editor to seamlessly build your web pages, add new elements, arrange them accordingly, and see the implemented changes in real time with WYSIWYG editing.
WordPress Integration: Build your website in WordPress and integrate it with BigCommerce which offers complete back-end support to the WP sites.
Digital wallets: Allow your customers to pay through digital wallets as BigCommerce is integrated with multiple payment gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, Amazon Pay, etc.
Multi-storefront: Create multiple storefronts and manage them from the single BigCommerce dashboard as it allows you to seamlessly manage your operations from a single account.
Let’s have a quick comparison between Wix and BigCommerce.
Features | Wix | BigCommerce |
---|---|---|
User-friendly | Easy to use drag and drop, user-friendly interface. Suitable for building simple websites | Moderate interface, page builder visual editor. More suited to users who have some technical knowledge. |
Templates | A large pool of more than 900 niche-specific pre-made templates to choose from. | A large pool of more than 900 niche-specific pre-made templates to choose from. |
Suitability | A large pool of more than 900 niche-specific pre-made templates to choose from. | Suitable for businesses who want to scale. |
SEO | Limited SEO capabilities | Advanced built-in SEO features |
Support | Support through email, phone calls, and chat is available | Support through email, phone, live chat, and community forums is available |
E-commerce store creation | E-commerce functionality is available in the paid plan with limited e-commerce features as it is not a dedicated e-commerce platform. | More focused on building e-commerce stores with extensive built-in features and capabilities to build a flexible online store. |
Now, let’s dive into a detailed comparison between Wix and BigCommerce and analyze which is better. The decision to choose one between the both majorly depends upon your business specifications, budget, and the specific features you want to add to your website.
Wix and BigCommerce are both considered user-friendly, so users don’t necessarily have to hire technical and coding experts; they can utilize these platforms on their own.
Wix is one of the easiest website-building platforms, and it has a drag-and-drop builder to create stunning websites quickly. Wix AI is one of the fastest ways to build a website by using Artificial Intelligence hassle-free. Just answer a few questions, and Wix ADI will customize the storefront for you. With the drag-and-drop editor, you can easily add products and elements that save time and make the web-building process more efficient.
Although BigCommerce has an easy interface as compared to other e-commerce giants, it still requires basic tech knowledge to create a storefront with BigCommerce. With the Store Design Tool that was recently introduced by BigCommerce, it has become easier to build a website than before but still, the beginners might find it difficult to navigate through the platform.
Verdict: When it comes to user-friendliness, Wix is hands-down the easiest platform we have today. Although BigCommerce comes with a slight learning curve, using this platform for your business can bring exceptional growth.
Whether you want to build a simple website or create an e-commerce store, you know how important it is to lay a solid foundation for a website, which is possible with the selection of a suitable template. The platform you choose should have extensive pre-designed templates specific to your industry so it becomes easier to choose a niche-specific template.
Wix has a large repository of more than 900 pre-fabricated templates. Some have minimal designs, while others are more professional. Each template is designed to be responsive to ensure that your website works smoothly across all devices. In addition to templates, Wix also offers a library of images and videos to add to your website to give it an attractive look.
When it comes to template selection, BigCommerce offers over 100 pre-designed templates. The number of niche-specific templates in BigCommerce is quite limited compared to Wix. All the templates have modern and responsive designs, making it easy to build an e-commerce store without any technical expertise.
Verdict: Wix is a clear winner due to the extensive options of templates to choose from according to any industry.
If you want to build an e-commerce store, you need to go with a platform that instantly creates your store and facilitates it with all the tools and features necessary to manage an online store.
If you want to build an e-commerce store with Wix, you need to purchase any of its paid plans, which will give you access to the e-commerce features and functionalities. It offers multi-channel selling with which you can sell your products on other platforms like Amazon, Walmart, etc. You can integrate POS into your Wix e-commerce store and streamline your payment processing. Customers can make online payments via PayPal, Stripe, Wirecard, etc. Wix Payments are also available for swift payment processing.
With Wix, you can manage store inventory via your preferred inventory management system and automatically track the product quantity in stock. If you want to add additional capabilities to your Wix e-commerce site, you can use Wix App Market and add third-party apps to satisfy your needs. The abandoned cart recovery option is also available to increase your sales.
BigCommerce is ‘big’ on facilitating e-commerce stores, and its advanced features make it a leading e-commerce platform. It offers advanced inventory management, enabling low-stock notifications and stock-level tracking. You can import your product inventory from other platforms to BigCommerce via a CSV file and save significant time.
BigCommerce supports sales and marketing tools you might need for your e-commerce website, such as integration with other platforms, abandoned cart recovery, coupon codes, etc. It even allows you to manage multiple storefronts from a single dashboard and sell your products on multiple channels. With its multi-currency selling support, BigCommerce can take your business to the next level.
BigCommerce is integrated with more than 65 payment gateways, including PayPal, Apple Pay, Stripe, and others, making payment processing easy.
Verdict: BigCommerce is the clear winner when it comes to facilitating e-commerce features. It has advanced built-in e-commerce features and an advanced inventory management system to keep your store up and running.
Whether you are building an e-commerce store with Wix or BigCommerce, it must appear at the top of SERP results when your target audience searches for the service/products you provide. Luckily, both Wix and BigCommerce come with decent SEO capabilities to make your website perform better at the search engine.
Wix allows users to add basic SEO functionality to the website, but it does not provide advanced SEO tools. It comes with an SEO Wiz Tool that offers personalized SEO recommendations but is not very big on technical SEO. Moreover, the Wix templates can sometimes lead to slow page loading which results in a negative SEO score.
Since BigCommerce is a dedicated e-commerce platform, it does not compromise on the page loading speed. Faster page loading results in achieving a better SEO score. Moreover, the built-in SEO capabilities allow you to create keyword-rich URLs and meta descriptions and further assist you with tools like robots.txt editor and XML sitemap generator. You can even integrate apps to achieve better site speed and automate your SEO tasks.
Verdict: BigCommerce is a winner here as it offers more advanced SEO capabilities and helps improve your site ranking significantly.
Both Wix and BigCommerce are designed to be budget-friendly and offer numerous features and functionalities without adding extra burden on the users.
Wix offers one free and four paid plans. If you have never used Wix before and are just starting with the platform, it is suggested to go with the free plan. All the plans offer free domain for a year and every plan offers some amazing features for a strong online business presence.
Wix pricing plans are as follows:
BigCommerce allows users to use this platform free for 15 days and then choose a paid plan. It has 4 paid plans, and each plan offers amazing e-commerce solutions for different businesses. You may choose to pay on a monthly or annual basis.
Verdict: Wix is more affordable than BigCommerce but if you are planning to build or run an e-commerce website, BigCommerce facilitates you with more capabilities and tools that might cost higher but are great for business growth.
Adding integrations to extend the functionality of your business website is important these days as many businesses choose those platforms that facilitate their required integrations.
Although the Wix App Market is quite popular, you may not find the required app or tools there. It has 350+ integrations available that help you leverage the advancements into your Wix website. The apps are further categorized on their intended use such as marketing, design, communication, online selling, etc. The need for manual data entry is reduced with the useful integrations supported by Wix as it allows you to connect your website with tools like Google Analytics, etc, and measure your campaign performance.
BigCommerce, on the other hand, supports more than 1200 apps in its App Store. With its powerful integrations, it also allows you to sell your products on multiple channels, including Facebook, Instagram, eBay, etc. It also integrates with Shipping carriers, Google Analytics, and many other tools to run your business efficiently.
Verdict: Although BigCommcerce is a winner here due to its extensive app market, it does not make Wix lag. Wix supports fewer apps than BigCommerce, but it still helps businesses extend their functionalities.
It is extremely important to keep your website data secure especially today when the cyberattacks are increasing and data security can be compromised at so many levels. Both Wix and BigCommerce offer amazing security features to keep your website and data secure and protect your website from any potential cyberattack.
Wix protects your website data with built-in features like data encryption, privacy regulations, role-based access, security auditing, secure servers, etc. Wix adheres to data security regulations and ensures that its privacy is not compromised by offering GDPR and CCPA compliance.
BigCommerce takes your website security to the next level with its advanced security approach. Not only does it offer data encryption, continuous data monitoring, and security audits, but BigCommerce is also partnered with Cloudflare to enhance data security even more. Like Wix, BigCommerce is also compliant with DGPR and CCPA.
Verdict: BigCommerce is the winner when it comes to picking a secure e-commerce platform.
Whatever platform you are using, it is important to have actively available customer support so you can have a smooth and flawless experience of using that platform.
Wix offers guides and resources via blogs, tutorials, and support via phone calls to ensure that every user is served with efficient customer support 24/7. Since Wix has millions of users globally, it offers multiple resources to assist them in resolving their issues. Although they have efficient customer support, the support in specific regions and languages is not very active. Their call-back operating system is also not very active, and you may even have to wait for several hours.
Apart from the exceptional live customer support offered by BigCommerce, it also has extensive blogs and videos on its website to help you resolve your issues. Personal guidance from BigCommerce Experts is offered if you choose the Enterprise plan. While the BigCommerce interface is a tad difficult, its extensive Knowledge Base and round-the-clock customer support make it easy to find help at any point you stumble upon.
Verdict: BigCommerce has more active customer support than Wix. Although they both have a Knowledge Base, and support via chat, and phone calls available, the active support offered by BigCommerce has an edge over Wix.
If you want to build an e-commerce store, both Wix and BigCommerce offer amazing features and tools that are easy to use and build a storefront quickly. Remember that nothing comes with perfection and every website-building tool and platform has certain areas that you might feel struggling with. Choosing the one between Wix and BigCommerce heavily depends upon how you want your website to look like, what your goals are, your budget, and your background in website creation, etc.
You may go with Wix if:
Wix is more suitable for building small websites and gives you access to a wide variety of templates. It gives you more control over the page design and customizations and helps you configure a website just as you want. If you have a limited budget and you are not good at technical know-how, Wix is a great option for you.
You may go with BigCommerce if:
BigCommerce facilitates an e-commerce store creation with its robust built-in features. If you want to establish a quick storefront, BigCommerce is the right option to consider. It helps grow your business, enables you to sell your product/services across multiple channels, and offers advanced security features to ensure data protection.
Are you a beginner who wants to kickstart an e-commerce venture? Are you looking for an e-commerce platform that will facilitate your business growth? Do you want to leverage a wide App Market to extend your site’s functionality? Do you want to sell your products/services across multiple channels?
These are just a few of the concerns that you might consider when choosing between Wix and BigCommerce. Both of them have their advantages and limitations, but choosing one over the other depends on your end goals.
Both Wix and BigCommerce facilitate your business in multiple ways, protect your data, and allow you to optimize your online store for search engines. While BigCommerce outperforms Wix in many ways and makes it easier to build an advanced e-commerce store, you cannot take your eye off the benefits Wix comes with.
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Wix does not offer advanced e-commerce functionality and you have to purchase its premium plans to get your hands on its e-commerce features. Moreover, its customer support is not very efficient and the app market is also not very extensive.
Wix is a more affordable option, especially if you are running a small business or starting a business from scratch. BigCommerce comes with expensive pricing plans, especially for businesses that have large online stores and an extensive range of products.
BigCommerce is a versatile and flexible e-commerce platform that can be integrated with Wix. If you want to get the most out of these platforms, it is suggested to integrate both these platforms, start selling across multiple channels, and manage your sales and inventory effortlessly.
BigCommerce is suitable for those who are running medium to large businesses. BigCommerce is easy to adapt and helps in your business growth. If you want to build a full-fledged e-commerce store with advanced features and functionalities, BigCommerce is the right option to go with.
Wix is more suitable for creative professionals, small businesses, freelancers, and startups.
BigCommerce offers limited templates and designs, its pricing plans are a bit expensive, and its interface is not very beginner-friendly. You may have to struggle while navigating across BigCommerce if you don’t have any prior knowledge of the platform.
While Wix offers basic built-in SEO tools, BigCommerce offers extensive SEO capabilities. BigCommerce offers fast page loading and advanced SEO tools to help your e-commerce site rank at a better spot.
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