I’ve received private messages and emails from several of you asking me what I think of Big Commerce as an e-commerce platform. For what it is worth, here is my opinion.
There are currently three major “all in one” hosting platforms competing for your business. They are Big Commerce, Shopify, and Volusion. There are other shopping carts that you can add to your own website. The first big problem with these “all in one” programs is that if you ever get disgusted with their services, they raise their prices (which Big Commerce recently did), or anything else, you are stuck — unless you want to totally begin over with a new shopping cart. Your shopping cart is tied into your hosting.
My own shopping cart is currently with a smaller “all in one” hosting company that I have been with since I began my business 23 years ago. It is precisionwebhosting.com. I, too, would lose my cart if I changed to another hosting company but I pay $19.95 per month and have paid that amount for the past 23 years. The company is large enough that it has almost 100% uptime and if there is ever a problem, I email them or fill out a support ticket which gets immediate attention. And amazingly, the reponse is oftentimes from Ken, the owner of precisionweb. Ken even worked with me (at no additional cost) to change my website from an html site to a wordpress site. They will build a whole website for you for around $500 if you don’t have the expertise to do it yourself. This is amazing support that only a smaller company that has been in business for years can provide. It’s just like the smaller but well-established gift basket businesses vs the big guys. This is not the only company like this. There are others.
The other major problem with these “all in one” platforms, such as Big Commerce is pricing. Big Commerce charges you a 1.5% transaction fee. Folks, that is 1.5% that you will pay to Big Commerce on every order that is placed through their shopping cart and is in addition to whatever fees your merchant account charges you. Shopify and Volusion do not charge these transaction fees. The reason that Big Commerce charges a transaction fee is so that they can pay their “partners” to build websites for you (read about their partners at https://www.bigcommerce.com/partners/ )
It’s really all about what you are looking for in a website and whether you want to be dependent on a company that has taken advantage of their customers in the past by increasing hosting rates, adding transaction fees, and being in full control of your business. Amazon webstore is another one. It used to cost about $30 a month but has increased its price to $79.95 and those who have these stores have no choice (other than starting over with another company) but to pay it.
If you have additional questions, as me. I looked at all of them to make sure that precisionweb was still my best choice so I am VERY familiar with each of them.