A wholesale brand has two platform quotes on the desk and a launch date that will not move. BigCommerce’s case is built-in trade selling, catalogue rules and extra storefronts. Shopify’s case is apps, checkout tools and hiring. The old tiebreaker is gone. Since 1 June 2026, BigCommerce charges 2.0% to 0.6% on orders through payment providers outside its own embedded list.
The short answer. Choose BigCommerce if quote-led trade selling, deep catalogue rules or several storefronts matter most. Choose Shopify if apps, checkout tools and hiring speed matter more. Since 1 June 2026 both charge 2.0% to 0.6% on outside gateways at self-serve level, so price the build, not the plan.
Who this is for. Founders and operators picking a platform, and teams pricing a move from one to the other. Who this is not for. Anyone weighing a hosted platform against open source. That trade is in Shopify vs WooCommerce.
Score your business against these six rows. Whichever column wins four is your platform. The other two become build scope.
| Criterion | BigCommerce fits when | Shopify fits when |
|---|---|---|
| Trade selling | Sales start with a quote and run through approvals | Trade buyers log in and buy at agreed prices |
| Catalogue complexity | You need deep option and pricing rules without apps | Variants and metafields (extra data fields on a record) cover it, and apps fill the rest |
| Fees at volume | Your processor is on the embedded list, or you are on Performance | You will run Shopify Payments, or Plus at 0.2% |
| Apps | You would rather build than buy, and you have the engineers | You want a ready app for each problem |
| Control over the front end | You want to own the checkout code itself | A Shopify-owned checkout is a line you can live with |
| Team skills | You already employ or retain BigCommerce developers | Hiring speed and the depth of the talent pool count |
A move either way is a build project, not a plan switch. Our Shopify migrations work shows the tests we run before a cutover.
The decision rule. If most of your revenue starts with a quote and a rep, lean BigCommerce. If most of it comes from buyers who log in or check out at set prices, lean Shopify. Then price the build for the two rows you lost.
Where BigCommerce is better: trade selling, checkout code and extra storefronts
B2B means business to business: selling to shops and dealers, not the public. BigCommerce wins on four things a trade team feels weekly.
- Trade tools ship as product. B2B Edition has corporate accounts, rep quoting, shopping lists, a quick order pad and an invoice portal (BigCommerce B2B Edition documentation).
- The checkout is yours to rebuild.
- Extra storefronts are a plan add-on. Shopify has no equivalent below Plus.
- Plans are priced against sales volume. That cuts both ways, as the fee section shows.
If your sales start with a quote and a rep, BigCommerce ships more of that ready-made. A distributor with a working BigCommerce team should often stay put.
Where Shopify is better: apps, payments and hiring
Shopify wins on four different things. Its app market is roughly six times larger. Shopify counts 8,000 apps against 1,208 for BigCommerce, as of April 2024 (Shopify’s comparison page). Shopify Payments and Shop Pay, the saved-details express checkout, save you building that work.
Plus adds checkout extensions and Functions, small pieces of code that change checkout rules without touching a checkout file. And the hiring pool is deeper.
Treat either vendor’s comparison page as marketing. Shopify claims a cost of ownership “31% better than BigCommerce” and checkout that “converts 12% better”. Both come from studies Shopify paid for. We have not used them.
The fee argument is over. “BigCommerce has no transaction fees” was the most repeated reason to pick it. Since 1 June 2026 that line is wrong for any self-serve plan using a gateway outside BigCommerce’s own embedded list.
Entry prices are close and the fee ladders now match
Both vendors publish self-serve prices in USD and keep enterprise prices behind a sales call. An Open Payment Provider is any card processor not on BigCommerce’s embedded list. Those orders now carry a fee.
| Tier | Shopify plan and price | Shopify outside-gateway fee | BigCommerce plan and price | BigCommerce outside-gateway fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry | Basic, $25 or $19 annual | 2% | Core, $39 or $29 annual | 2.0% |
| Middle | Grow, $65 or $49 annual | 1% | Growth, $105 or $79 annual | 1.0% |
| Upper self-serve | Advanced, $399 or $299 annual | 0.6% | Scale, $399 or $299 annual | 0.6% |
| Enterprise | Plus, from $2,300 a month on a 3-year term | 0.2% | Performance, from $1,499 a month billed annually | 0.0% under contract |
Plus includes your main store and nine expansion stores. Further stores cost $300 a month each (Shopify pricing, Shopify Plus pricing).
Two BigCommerce rules matter more than the headline price.
First, the plan ladder is tied to sales volume. GMV means gross merchandise value, what you sell before fees and refunds. TTM means the trailing twelve months. Core covers up to $30K TTM GMV, then moves you to Growth on its own. Growth covers up to $100K, then moves you to Scale. Scale has a $33,333 a month cap with “0.9% on GMV above monthly cap”, evaluated “on the first of each month” (BigCommerce 2026 pricing update). One good quarter can move your plan unasked.
Second, the exemption list. Twenty-one providers count as embedded, among them Stripe, PayPal Braintree, Adyen and Klarna. Anything else carries the fee. Shopify exempts one thing, Shopify Payments. That is a wider door for BigCommerce if your processor is listed, and a closed one if it is not.
B2B is where the two platforms genuinely part ways
Most advice online is out of date here. Shopify no longer keeps B2B behind Plus. Every paid plan now carries companies, company locations, quantity rules, price breaks, net terms and payment reminders. Net terms means the buyer pays 30 or 60 days after the invoice.
| B2B capability | Shopify Basic, Grow, Advanced | Shopify Plus | BigCommerce B2B Edition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Companies, locations, net terms, price breaks | Included | Included | Included |
| Active price catalogues | Up to 3 | Unlimited, assignable to a company | No published cap |
| Deposits and partial payments | Not available | Plus only | Included |
| Rep quoting and CPQ | App or custom build | App or custom build | Product feature |
| Invoice portal with a running balance | App or custom build | App or custom build | Product feature |
| Maximum line items on one order | 500 | 500 | No published cap |
Shopify also writes down what B2B cannot do. Accelerated checkouts do not work with B2B. Neither do subscriptions, tipping or legacy customer accounts. Orders stop at a “maximum of 500 line items” (Shopify B2B considerations, B2B features by plan). If your buyers place 900-line restock orders, that is the whole decision.
BigCommerce B2B Edition suits the distributor whose sales start with a quote and a rep. CPQ, short for configure, price, quote, is part of the product (BigCommerce CPQ announcement). The Buyer Portal is open source, so you can rewrite the buyer side.
Here is the split. If your trade buyers log in and buy at agreed prices, Shopify B2B covers it. One catalogue and one admin for both is worth real money. If your trade sales start with a quote, BigCommerce ships more ready-made. Our B2B and wholesale page sets out how we scope either one.
The checkout question is really a staffing question
Shopify lets you change the checkout at set hook points, not edit it. The checkout and accounts editor works “on the Basic plan or higher”. Apps that change “the information, shipping, and payments pages”, and the Checkout Branding API, are “available only on the Shopify Plus plan” (Shopify checkout extensibility).
BigCommerce takes the opposite line. Its Checkout SDK, a toolkit of ready-made code, is “a JavaScript library of methods for performing actions related to checkout”. It lets you “build your own custom checkout page on BigCommerce” (BigCommerce Checkout SDK documentation). If you need a checkout step no vendor has thought of, BigCommerce lets you build it.
That freedom has an owner and a bill. A custom checkout is yours to keep working through payment updates, browser changes and card-security reviews. Shopify’s limit hands that job back to Shopify. The real question is whether you have an engineer who will still own that checkout in three years.
Any payment provider not on this list is considered an Open Payment Provider and is subject to the fee.BigCommerce 2026 plan pricing update, checked 21 September 2026
Three integration differences are all cost lines
What holds up an integration build is rarely the platform. It is which system owns each record, and who clears the error queue (Shopify ERP integration guide).
- Ready-made links follow market share. More vendors ship a Shopify link than a BigCommerce one. On BigCommerce you build or buy a custom link more often. That is a cost line, not a fault.
- Extra storefronts are priced differently. BigCommerce sells them as an add-on at $30 a month on Core, $50 on Growth and $100 on Scale (BigCommerce pricing). Shopify includes nine expansion stores with Plus, then charges $300 a month each. In our view that is the strongest BigCommerce argument for a multi-brand seller.
- Do not assume an app works with B2B. Shopify warns that some apps “aren’t fully compatible with Shopify B2B” (external integrations). Ask for a demo on real companies.
Where this breaks: the move costs more than the fee gap saves
A move between these platforms is the same project either way. Your data matters more to the cost than the platform does. Products, variants, customers, orders and web addresses all move with standard tools. What does not move decides whether launch goes well.
| What you are moving | Leaving BigCommerce for Shopify | Leaving Shopify for BigCommerce |
|---|---|---|
| Checkout work | A custom Checkout SDK checkout does not come across. Rebuild it as Functions, or drop it | Shop Pay does not come with you, so assuming the same conversion rate is optimistic |
| Pricing model | Customer group pricing is redrawn as companies and catalogues, inside the 3-catalogue cap | Catalogues become customer groups and price lists, the easier direction |
| Apps carrying business rules | Option sets with pricing rules need a variant and metafield plan first | Price a build for every Shopify app that holds a rule and has no match |
The table below names what scales each cost. We show no figures because we have none we can source.
| Cost driver | What scales it | Range |
|---|---|---|
| Redirect map | Count of live product, collection and content URLs | Not measured |
| Checkout rebuild | Number of custom checkout steps and rules | Not measured |
| Pricing model redraw | Number of customer groups, price lists and catalogues | Not measured |
| Apps with business rules | Number of apps that hold a rule and have no match | Not measured |
| Gateway switch and order matching | Number of gateways and orders placed around cutover | Not measured |
| Parallel running | Weeks both stores take orders | Not measured |
Price the move against the fee gap, not the plan gap. Switching platforms to save 1% on gateway fees pays back only if your sales volume and your build cost both survive the sums. Run that number before you book the demo.
What we would tell you on a scoping call
Most teams asking this have already decided and want permission. Name the three things your storefront cannot lose. Check each against the vendor’s own docs. Then price the gap. If it is similar on both, pick the one you can hire for. Where Plus falls short is in our honest Shopify Plus review.
A move that saves a percentage point in fees and costs you a working B2B process is not a win. On continuity, our 54 months of work on one client platform, April 2022 to September 2026, is rare. Most teams do not fund that.
Our bias. Autonomous Technologies builds and runs the systems behind Shopify stores, for founders and operators who own the store after launch. We work on Shopify, so weigh what we say accordingly. Every figure above links to the vendor page it came from.
Questions buyers ask before they pick
Is BigCommerce cheaper than Shopify?
Not reliably, and less so since June 2026. Entry plans are close, at $39 against $25 monthly. BigCommerce’s self-serve gateway fees now match Shopify’s at 2.0%, 1.0% and 0.6%. Its plans also auto-upgrade on trailing twelve-month sales volume. Compare the plan you will be on in twelve months, not today’s entry price.
Is BigCommerce better than Shopify for B2B?
For quote-led distribution, yes. B2B Edition ships rep quoting, approval steps, a quick order pad and an invoice portal as product. For trade buyers who log in and buy at set prices, Shopify is now competitive. Companies, net terms and price breaks sit on every paid plan. The deciding detail is whether your buyers need quotes or just agreed prices.
Can I migrate from BigCommerce to Shopify?
Yes. Products, customers, orders and web addresses move with standard tools. Three jobs take the time. Rebuilding custom Checkout SDK work as Functions and checkout extensions. Redrawing customer group pricing as B2B companies and catalogues. Rebuilding option sets that carry pricing rules as variants and metafields.
Do I need Shopify Plus for B2B?
Not for most wholesale operations. Companies, net terms, price breaks, quantity rules, PO numbers and quick order lists work on Basic, Grow and Advanced. Plus is required for unlimited B2B catalogues, direct catalogue assignment, and deposits and partial payments. Match that list against your buyers before upgrading.
Facts checked October 2026, re-check by 5 April 2027. Prices and fee ladders were read from each vendor’s pricing pages on 21 September 2026.
