Speroteck Speroteck

Being a TL on this platform, I want to tell you a little about what it is like.

Information is most easily digested through comparison, so I will compare this platform with its closest competitor – Shopify. I’ve got some positive experiences with Shopify, so I think this comparison is quite relevant, although a bit biased.

These are two top e-commerce platforms mainly for small and medium businesses. I’ll start with a list of advantages and disadvantages.

Bigcommerce

BigCommerce is one of the fastest-growing eCommerce software platforms in the world, which allows business owners to set up an online store, customize it to their liking, and then sell an unlimited number of digital, physical, or even service-based products.

PROS:

• Good rest API documentation, a very powerful server architecture that allows you to implement serious features for importing and updating data. The API server allows you to make up to 60,000 calls every hour for a full-price package
• Good client-server graphQL architecture
• It’s easy to start development because it uses Stencil SLI
• Frequent updates and improvements that focus on deep server side updates and features will be appreciated and seen only after a while, but they are key to further scaling and improvements
• You can use custom react
• There is an open-source checkout written on React + TypeScript. More improvements are expected on custom checkout, which will allow you to have full control over all the functionality
• Very good price for the presented functionality
• A lot of core settings for marketing, interaction with the client, and product settings
• Availability of SEO settings that can be improved in the future
• The transaction payment is without commission
• After the last update, very convenient development of widgets in the local environment

CONS:

• Despite the recent update, the documentation is not complete and not entirely clear for both developers and clients, which makes the platform not so easy to start
• Unable to use the latest ES6 features
• StoreFront API is very poor, you can pull only certain data
• CORS policy does not allow accessing the server api from the site domain, you need to use AWS or Azure for that purpose for getting data
• There is no direct access to the backend, so complex features need to be implemented on third-party services such as AWS or Azure
• Inelastic HTML engine (handlebars), it is impossible to write custom functions and variables. Because of this, it is often necessary to render blocks on a js
• Many servers and other features are under development
• Unattractive basic theme styling

Shopify

Shopify isn’t just a piece of software or a singular product — it’s an all-in-one commerce platform, where merchants can build and customize an online store and sell in web, mobile and across multiple channels like social media and online marketplaces.

PROS:

• Very convenient html engine – liquid. Allows you to render almost anything from the context.
• Using a special scheme, you can customize almost any part of the site with a user-friendly interface.
• Lots of apps for any purpose.
• A large selection of themes, both paid and free with a very attractive basic styling.
• The ability to get any data almost anywhere almost eliminates the need to use a server API in the development process.
• Very convenient and clear admin panel.
• Huge community and a lot of information about problems and their solutions.

CONS:

• Server API limit to 2 (standard) 4 (plus version) calls per second. which makes it very uncomfortable to interact with him. The architecture of the server-side API is not so well developed.
• Much less native settings in almost all sections.
• Commission on some payments.
• Little opportunity to scale as the business grows. Some things can be solved with the help of applications, but this is an additional price, or they may not solve everything.

So to start summarizing. Despite the fact that Bigcommerce is inferior in many ways, in my opinion, it has a much stronger implementation of the basic structure: server, speed, and scalability.

That is, this platform has not yet been completed, but it has the potential to be an ideal solution for both medium and large businesses. And all the improvements they make are talking about that. In many ways, the emphasis is on B2B commerce, improving the variability of products and their promotion, updating the server API, and adding more and more new marketing features and interactions with the client.

If they also pay attention to the visual component and convenience, they risk largely bypassing Shopify in the future.

Shopify is just the perfect platform at its level, with a super simple and intuitive admin panel, flexible code, and user-friendly documentation. They have quickly become popular and pay attention to development, first of all, visual things: beautiful basic themes, ease of use, good advertising, and the correct presentation of their best sides. They have perfectly implemented their architecture and continue to make it more and more convenient.

But I don’t see them claiming to change something radically. They have occupied their position and it suits them completely, which does not detract from all the advantages I have described above.

Of course, both platforms have slightly different clients, and each solves its own problems. It is already the task of the solution architect to determine which platform is most suitable for a particular business.

As a bigcommerce developer, I am very interested to see the development of this platform. I see the intentions for a very great potential and this is akin to participating in some kind of startup. For the time I have been working, they have improved a lot of fundamental things, and if it develops at the same pace, then one day it will scale into one of the world’s top e-commerce platforms.

WRITTEN BY: Illia Provolovskyi, Speroteck BigCommerce team.