Choosing an ecommerce platform can feel like picking the “engine” for your entire business. Your storefront, checkout experience, catalog management, and integrations all depend on it. That’s why Magento vs BigCommerce keeps coming up for teams that are serious about scale.
Both platforms can run high-performing online stores. Yet they take very different paths: Magento gives deep customization with heavier technical ownership, while BigCommerce focuses on a hosted SaaS experience with built-in commerce features. Below is the updated comparison with clearer structure, tighter wording, and more practical decision points.
Magento vs BigCommerce: Overall Description
What is Magento?
Magento (now Adobe Commerce / Magento Open Source) launched in 2008 and became known for flexibility and customization. Adobe acquired Magento in 2018, and the enterprise product is now positioned as Adobe Commerce.
- Magento Open Source: free software, self-hosted, you manage setup, security, performance, and updates
- Adobe Commerce: paid enterprise version with extra capabilities and Adobe ecosystem support
Magento fits teams that want full control over code, infrastructure, and complex business rules. It usually works best when you have in-house developers or a long-term agency partner. Magento was founded in 2008. The platform is famous for its flexibility and customization. Adobe. Inc acquired Magento in 2018 for $1.68 billion. Although it offers functions to help amateurs develop their brand, Magento is more suitable for users who possess coding skills. For large corporations or enterprises, this platform is highly recommended as it requires self-hosting, installation, and setup.
There are currently 250,000 online stores powered by Magento. It is an open-source platform, meaning anyone can use it for free, but only if users have proper coding knowledge.
What is BigCommerce?
BigCommerce was founded in Austin, Texas, in 2009. The company provides a SaaS (Software as a Service) eCommerce platform with 600+ employees. BigCommerce is famous for its advanced features, including customer grouping and segmentation, search engine optimization, and web hosting.
BigCommerce has helped 100,000 people start selling online, offering the most built-in features compared to the big four e-commerce software. This platform has some big-name clients under its roof, such as Toyota, Kodak, and Ben & Jerry’s. Overall, this is designed for big businesses looking to grow fast.
Magento vs BigCommerce: On The Front End
Magento vs BigCommerce: Ease of Use
To run a business, there are countless things to consider. Users want to spend time focusing on their customers, products, and brands – not on the building, customizing, and editing the website. At the end of the day, the website is just a bridge between retailers and consumers, helping sellers to showcase their products and services easily. Therefore, the web experience needs to be smooth and it should be easy for users to navigate.
Magento
Magento asks for more technical involvement. Store setup, theme changes, and many custom workflows often require PHP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript knowledge. Even routine tasks can feel “developer-first,” especially when you start importing catalogs, managing attributes, or refining checkout.
Magento can feel great once it’s configured correctly. Yet getting there often takes time, documentation, and a solid build plan.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is more approachable for non-technical teams. You can manage products, categories, and storefront basics from a unified dashboard. The drag-and-drop builder improves the editing experience, and many standard e-commerce tools are easier to switch on without custom development.
BigCommerce still has a learning curve, especially for advanced catalog structures and multi-storefront strategies. Still, the platform generally fits teams that want faster time-to-market.
Magento vs BigCommerce: Help & Support
Magento
Support depends on which Magento product you run.
- Magento Open Source: community forums, docs, and partner agencies
- Adobe Commerce: enterprise support options (varies by contract)
The community is strong, and documentation is deep. Yet urgent troubleshooting can become slow if you rely only on forums.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is known for structured support, including 24/7 channels on many plans. It’s also easier to get platform-level answers because BigCommerce owns the hosting and core stack.
If your team prefers vendor-led support and faster resolutions, BigCommerce usually feels simpler.
Magento vs BigCommerce: On The Back End
Magento vs BigCommerce: Product Management
Magento
Magento shines with complex catalogs and advanced product types:
- simple, configurable, grouped, bundle, virtual products
- attribute-heavy catalogs (size, material, region rules, B2B pricing logic)
- bulk editing and imports (powerful, but takes care and experience)
One tradeoff: performance depends heavily on hosting quality, caching, and correct configuration. Large catalogs can run fast, but they need proper infrastructure.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce supports robust product management and keeps the admin workflow straightforward. Many brands like it for:
- clean category management
- built-in commerce features that reduce reliance on custom modules
- marketplace and channel connections via apps and integrations
BigCommerce works well for teams that want solid catalog tools without running their own server stack.
Magento vs BigCommerce: Abandoned Cart Recovery
After putting the items in their cart, customers can leave the sites right before making payment. The abandoned cart recovery function will automatically send out emails with incentives or call-to-action to convince shoppers to complete their orders. One of every three recipients of abandoned cart emails clicks on a link in those emails, with 28% of them finishing purchasing. Therefore, an abandoned cart campaign is an extremely important function to have.
Magento
Magento can run abandoned cart programs, but availability depends on your setup:
- some functions require Adobe Commerce features or extensions
- many merchants install third-party modules to run email sequences
It can be very flexible once configured, yet it adds implementation work.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce supports abandoned cart recovery on specific plans (commonly not on the entry tier). It’s typically easier to configure and manage because the workflow is guided within the platform.
If cart recovery is a priority and you want it running fast, BigCommerce often feels smoother.
Magento vs BigCommerce: Security
In 2020, the financial services industry was hit with tens of millions of attacks per day, which raises a warning for eCommerce platforms where we also work with customers’ sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, addresses, or phone numbers. Hence, the security offered by eCommerce platforms should be taken into consideration when choosing which software works best for your store.
Magento
Magento gives you control, and that can be a strength. Yet it also means your team owns a lot:
- patching and version updates
- PCI scope decisions (depending on checkout/payment setup)
- server hardening, monitoring, and incident response
Magento can be very secure when managed well. It just demands disciplined maintenance.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce includes hosted security basics such as SSL and platform-level compliance support (PCI alignment varies by checkout configuration, but SaaS reduces the operational burden). For many teams, this reduces risk and internal workload.
If you’d rather spend less time on infrastructure security, BigCommerce is typically the easier path.
Magento vs BigCommerce: Apps And Add-ons
To better manage your store, users are recommended to look out for new features to integrate. Many free and paid options on both platforms can bring your store operation to a whole new level. Therefore, it is such a waste not to utilize these apps and extensions offered on Magento and BigCommerce.
Magento
Among over 5000 extensions and apps to select from Magento, 1970 of them are free. 10% of the paid apps cost around $30 per month while other extensions can cost up to $2000 per month. The price varies greatly depending on the development agency that creates them.
Magento offers advanced apps but they lack the basic built-in functions. A typical example is Facebook. It costs around $188 to integrate an online store with Facebook. Moreover, apps on Magento require coding knowledge to install, which is more suitable for large corporations with developer teams.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce has a smaller app marketplace than Magento, yet most standard needs (payments, shipping, marketing, reviews, analytics) have reliable options. Implementation is usually faster, with less technical overhead.
Magento vs BigCommerce: Payment Processors and Transaction Fees
The chosen e-commerce platform for your online store should offer a lot of payment gateways, as your users can only earn profits after the transactions happen smoothly. Both Magento and BigCommerce have plenty of payment options for merchants to choose from.
Magento supports payment via five methods (along with regular online card payment):
- Check/Money Order
- Cash on Delivery
- Bank Transfer
- Purchase Order
- Zero Subtotal Checkout (when an offer code takes the price to zero, but tax still needs t to be calculated)
Magento comes built-in with PayPal and Authorize.net. Other choices are available but they are mostly large business solutions, such as Worldpay. There are over 150 other payment processors on Magento. It asks a bit of work to set up because users need to do it themselves. You will need different sets of skills, including coding, to integrate the payment processors.
Payment apps on Magento give users access to many payment options in different languages and countries. Hence, it is easier to expand your business internationally.
Unlike Magento, BigCommerce doesn’t have that many payment integrations to choose from. They only have around 30 apps, which are designed to support over 100 countries and more than 250 local payment methods. This platform also provides a one-click setup for its payment processors, which means users can constantly accept all the major credit cards and payment choices.
All the payment tools are mobile-optimized on BigCommerce to ensure mobile shoppers get the same level of service as desktop users. Merchants are supported with multiple currencies on BigCommerce, which makes it easier to collect sales around the world.
In regards to payment options, BigCommerce seems to be the better option, as it is quicker and easier to get paid. Adding payment gateways can be done within a couple of clicks from the dashboard, whereas in Magento, it requires coding and integrating apps, which is much more complicated.
Magento vs BigCommerce: Point-of-sale System (POS System)
Neither Magento nor BigCommerce have their own POs system, only the extensions are available on their App Store which offers great features.
Magento extensions for POS systems offer click-and-collect, real-time synchronization of inventories, customer orders, or buy online pick up in-store. The price of Magento POS varies from $49 per month to $1299 per month.
For BigCommerce, their App Store also has outstanding POS apps which all provide must-have advanced POS attributes. Most of the third-party extensions support mobile devices for your online store, including receipt printers, barcode scanners, or label printers.
ConnectPOS offers both BigCommerce POS and Magento POS systems which have basic to advanced features such as tax rates synchronization, various payment methods, or AI facial recognition.
Magento vs BigCommerce: Pricing
Magento is an open-source platform, which means it is free to download and use. Nonetheless, to have a proper store, the platform comes with a selection of extra costs, mainly coming from the apps and integrations. Some of them are necessary for your online store, others are just nice to have.
Magento has two plans:
- Magento Open Source, which is completely free to use
- Magento Commerce is a customized plan where users need to work directly with Magento to come up with the exact price
The Magento Open Source is not built-in with many hands-on features. Users will need to install a good amount of apps for your online store. Therefore, the true cost of a Magento store varies greatly, which could be up to several thousand dollars per year.
For BigCommerce, it has four payment plan:
- BigCommerce Standard – this is the cheapest option on this platform. It has enough features for users to build an online store ($29.95 per month)
- BigCommerce Plus – this is the most popular plan in which some premium options are available, such as abandoned cart saver, customer segmentation, etc ($79.95 per month)
- BigCommerce Pro – it provides even more scalable features ($299.95 per month)
- BigCommerce Enterprise – this is for big companies with a custom price
Magento vs BigCommerce: Discussion
It is hard to say which platform is better when comparing Magento and BigCommerce. Both of them have some of the most hands-on and innovative features. The point here is to see which one best meets your needs.
While BigCommerce is not the easiest software in the world to use, it is more simple than Magento. It doesn’t require coding knowledge, and all the tools are in one place. This platform is best for those who need a large, fast-growing business up and running online quickly. It is fairly simple to use which provides all the tools required to build an eCommerce empire.
With its limitless customization, Magento gives users loads of design flexibility. It works brilliantly when being installed by specialist developers. Their extensions are quite impressive and hands-on. Magento is designed for uses who possess thousands of products in their catalog, have developers in-house, and have a global, enterprise-level business.
ConnectPOS: One POS layer for Magento and BigCommerce
ConnectPOS is a POS platform built for retailers that want stable in-store selling while keeping ecommerce and inventory aligned. If you run Magento vs BigCommerce evaluations and already know you’ll sell both online and in-store, ConnectPOS can fit as the “storefront-to-counter” bridge.
ConnectPOS supports:
- Magento POS and BigCommerce POS with real-time sync options
- multi-store inventory and customer data alignment
- common retail hardware (barcode scanners, receipt printers, cash drawers)
- flexible payments and tax configurations for different locations
- offline selling mode for stores with unstable connectivity (based on deployment and configuration)
For brands running pop-ups or stores with spotty internet, offline capability matters. Yet the bigger win is clean syncing across channels so online orders, in-store purchases, and inventory updates match what your team sees in real life.
Final Words
The Magento vs BigCommerce decision comes down to ownership versus convenience. Magento can match complex requirements with full flexibility, while BigCommerce keeps the operational load lighter and the launch path clearer.
If in-store selling is part of your plan, pick your ecommerce platform first, then line up a POS layer like ConnectPOS that keeps inventory, orders, and customer data consistent across channels. If you’re interested in ConnectPOS’s capabilities, get in touch with us!
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