Moving away from BigCommerce won’t automatically make your ecommerce stack cheaper. In 2026, BigCommerce Core, Growth, and Scale are priced very close to Shopify Basic, Grow, and Advanced.
The bigger differences usually show up elsewhere: GMV limits, payment fees, app costs, development work, B2B requirements, and the cost of moving everything to a new platform.
That’s why the best BigCommerce alternatives aren’t simply the cheapest ones. The better choice depends on what’s pushing you away from BigCommerce in the first place.
BigCommerce already covers a lot, including B2B, headless commerce through Catalyst, and a GraphQL Storefront API. Most stores that switch are doing it because another platform fits their pricing model, workflow, app ecosystem, or frontend setup better.
Quick Recommendations
- Choose Shopify if you want managed hosting, a broad app ecosystem, strong multichannel support, and B2B available below an enterprise platform.
- Choose WooCommerce if WordPress content control is central and you're comfortable owning hosting, plugins, updates, and development.
- Choose Adobe Commerce for complex enterprise catalogs, multi-brand commerce, or extensive customization with a dedicated technical team.
- Choose Salesforce Commerce Cloud when commerce needs to sit deeply inside an existing Salesforce stack.
- Choose commercetools when one commerce backend genuinely needs to power multiple custom frontends.
- Choose Wix or Squarespace for a comparatively straightforward storefront without complex B2B, ERP/PIM, or composable requirements.
- Choose OroCommerce when B2B account structures, quoting, negotiated pricing, and purchasing workflows are the business itself.
BigCommerce Alternatives Comparison
BigCommerce and Shopify's self-service tiers are priced almost identically as of mid-2026. The real cost difference shows up in GMV thresholds, payment-provider fees, and app or development spend, covered next.
Why Businesses Look for a BigCommerce Alternative
Switching makes sense only when you can name what BigCommerce is actually costing you, not because it lacks a category of functionality.
BigCommerce has a genuine B2B Edition with company accounts, quotes, invoices, and a buyer portal, and its own headless framework alongside a GraphQL Storefront API for custom frontends.
A merchant may still switch when another platform's pricing model, app ecosystem, workflow, or frontend architecture fits the business better, whether that's payment flexibility, app spend, developer time, B2B workflow friction, or content control.
How to Evaluate Total Selling Cost
BigCommerce and Shopify now look almost identical on base subscription price. As of mid-2026:
See BigCommerce's current pricing, its 2026 pricing update, and Shopify's current pricing for the latest figures.
The subscription is only the starting point.
BigCommerce can move you onto a higher plan as your trailing 12-month GMV increases. Core moves to Growth above $30,000 in GMV, and Growth moves to Scale above $100,000. Scale includes $33,333 in monthly GMV, then adds a 0.9% charge on GMV above that amount.
Those thresholds use BigCommerce's Inclusive GMV calculation, which applies a 10% reduction to gross order value. That means the number BigCommerce uses for billing may not match the GMV in your own reports.
Payment setup matters too. BigCommerce charges an Open Payment Provider Fee on self-service plans when you use an eligible outside provider: 2% on Core, 1% on Growth, and 0.6% on Scale. The fee doesn't apply when you use one of its embedded providers, which currently include Stripe, Adyen, PayPal Braintree, Klarna, and Worldpay.
Shopify handles the tradeoff differently. It doesn't automatically move Basic, Grow, or Advanced stores onto a higher plan because of GMV. But if you use a third-party gateway instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify adds its own transaction fee: 2%, 1%, or 0.6%, depending on the plan.
So two stores paying the same monthly subscription can end up with very different platform costs. The difference comes from sales volume, payment setup, and how each platform charges once you grow.
What This Means
- Don't move to Shopify just to lower the base subscription. Its first three full-store plans now cost almost exactly the same as BigCommerce's.
- If you use a non-embedded payment provider on BigCommerce, calculate the Open Payment Provider Fee before comparing costs.
- If you use a third-party gateway on Shopify, calculate Shopify's additional transaction fee.
- If you're approaching BigCommerce's GMV threshold, model the next plan or Scale overage rather than today's bill, remembering it's Inclusive GMV, not raw gross order value.
- Then add apps, development, hosting, and migration on top before comparing totals.
Beyond the subscription and payment fees specifically, also model app or plugin subscriptions, theme cost, development time, support beyond what's included, hosting for self-hosted platforms, and the one-time cost of migration itself.
1. Shopify
Shopify makes the most sense if you want a managed platform with a large app ecosystem, strong multichannel support, and B2B features without moving straight to Plus.
Core B2B functionality now exists on Basic, Grow, and Advanced. The limits change by plan, including how many company locations, quantity rules, and B2B market catalogs you can manage. Plus gives you more room, including unlimited B2B market catalogs and direct catalog assignment to individual companies or locations. Shopify's B2B plan features page shows the exact differences.
You also get more built in than many merchants realize. Customer segments, email campaigns, lead capture, automations, and abandoned-checkout recovery are available without adding another marketing app, and Shopify includes 10,000 marketing emails per month before extra send charges begin.
That doesn't mean a larger store can automatically skip a dedicated ESP. Work out what you actually send and how much segmentation you need before making that assumption.
The downside is that more unusual requirements still tend to push you toward apps or custom development, especially around checkout, catalog logic, and highly tailored workflows.
For stores that choose Shopify, AI-generated Shopify product pages are where PagePilot fits. We cover that further down.
2. WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a better fit when content control matters as much as commerce.
Because it runs on WordPress, your store, blog, landing pages, custom content types, and publishing workflow all live in the same system. That gives you much more control over URLs, templates, plugins, and editorial structure than most hosted ecommerce platforms.
The SEO advantage is that control, not some built-in ranking benefit.
WooCommerce itself is free, but the final stack rarely is. Hosting, security, maintenance, plugin conflicts, and paid extensions all become your responsibility. Features such as subscriptions also tend to require an extension rather than coming with the core platform.
WooCommerce's pricing breakdown gives a better picture of what those extras can add.
3. Adobe Commerce
Adobe Commerce starts to make sense when your requirements are difficult to fit into a standard SaaS platform.
That could mean complex B2B rules, several brands or storefronts, unusual catalog structures, or a heavily customized buying experience. The common thread is that you can point to the complexity before you buy the platform.
Adobe now sells Commerce through several models, including Commerce as a Cloud Service, Commerce on Cloud, and Commerce Optimizer. Pricing isn't public, so implementation, integrations, partner work, and ongoing development all need to be scoped directly.
What you're paying for is depth. Adobe Commerce can support large catalogs, multi-brand operations, complex B2B setups, API-first builds, and customization that simpler platforms deliberately avoid.
See Adobe's Commerce packages and pricing page for the current options.
4. Salesforce Commerce Cloud
Salesforce Commerce Cloud is easier to justify when commerce is already part of a larger Salesforce setup.
If customer data, service, automation, order management, and sales workflows already live inside Salesforce, Commerce Cloud can bring the storefront into that same ecosystem. Current offerings cover both B2C and B2B commerce, along with order management, analytics, segmentation, and headless or composable storefronts.
The case gets weaker if you're buying it only for the storefront.
If Salesforce isn't already central to how your business handles customer data or operations, make sure the integration benefit is worth the enterprise cost. A lot of storefront functionality can be bought elsewhere for less.
See Salesforce Commerce Cloud pricing for the current packages.
5. Composable or Headless Commerce
commercetools is aimed at businesses that want one commerce backend powering several custom frontends and have an engineering team capable of owning that setup.
It separates the commerce layer from the presentation layer, which gives developers much more freedom over storefronts, apps, channels, and integrations. The tradeoff is that you also take on more responsibility for how those pieces are built and maintained.
For a conventional ecommerce store, that extra freedom may solve problems you don't actually have.
commercetools does offer a Builders workflow to shorten the path to launch, and its current offer includes a 60-day trial with unlimited catalogs, channels, and storefronts. Pricing is order-based rather than GMV-based and is still quote-led.
See commercetools pricing for the current structure.
6. SMB Website Builders
Wix and Squarespace are more capable on catalog size than their reputation sometimes suggests.
Wix Stores currently supports up to 50,000 products and 1,000 variants per product. Squarespace 7.1 supports up to 10,000 products per store page and up to 250 variants, images, and SKUs per product.
So product count isn't usually where these platforms hit the wall.
The limits show up in operations: complex B2B accounts, deep ERP or PIM integrations, unusual checkout logic, multi-store setups, and large app ecosystems. If those become important, that's usually what pushes a business to migrate.
For a straightforward storefront, though, either can be perfectly adequate even with a fairly large catalog.
7. B2B or Open-Source Specialist
OroCommerce is built for businesses where B2B isn't a secondary sales channel. It's the main operating model.
Company accounts, negotiated pricing, account hierarchies, catalogs, and quoting are part of the core product rather than features layered onto a standard consumer storefront.
Its Community Edition is open-source and self-hosted. Enterprise pricing is quote-based and can vary with GMV, admin-user count, and deployment model. Oro lists 25 admin users as a baseline, with deployment available through OroCloud, your own cloud environment, or on-premises infrastructure.
See OroCommerce's pricing page for the current structure.
The free Community Edition and the Enterprise product aren't interchangeable, so compare the actual features you need rather than assuming the open-source version gives you the full commercial stack.
On Subscriptions Specifically
Shopify has the strongest built-in subscription setup of the managed platforms here. Its free Shopify Subscriptions app supports weekly, monthly, and yearly billing, multiple subscription plans, and discounts. If you need more complex rules, there’s also a large third-party app ecosystem.
WooCommerce gives you more room to customize subscription logic, but that flexibility usually comes through paid extensions rather than a native feature.
Wix supports subscriptions for physical products. Squarespace supports recurring physical products and services too, although there are payment-method limits and subscription downloads aren’t supported.
Before You Migrate From BigCommerce
If you’re moving to Shopify, its migration guidance covers the basic process. The harder part is making sure nothing important gets lost between the two platforms.
Start with the data. Make a full inventory of products, variants, stock, customers, orders, subscriptions, B2B accounts, pricing rules, and custom fields before you move anything.
Map your URLs before the domain changes. Every important BigCommerce URL should have a destination on the new store. Shopify lets you import redirects by CSV, which is much easier than fixing broken links after launch. Bring over titles, descriptions, and canonical setup where relevant too.
Work out how customers will log in. Customer passwords don’t move to Shopify through a CSV import, so existing customers may need to activate a new account or regain access another way. Have that communication ready before launch.
Treat subscriptions as their own migration. Check which provider you use, how payment tokens are stored, what billing schedules are active, and what has to move with them. Shopify has separate rules for payment-method migration, so review its subscription payment migration guidance before setting a cutover date.
Check every integration individually. An app with the same job on Shopify may not behave the same way it did on BigCommerce. Review ERP, PIM, tax, fulfillment, marketplaces, feeds, reviews, loyalty, and email one by one.
Rebuild B2B rules deliberately. Companies, locations, catalogs, price lists, payment terms, buyer roles, purchase orders, and approval flows don’t always map cleanly between platforms.
Place a real order before launch. Run through payment, tax, shipping, discounts, emails, analytics, feeds, and fulfillment from start to finish. A storefront that looks right can still fail once a real order hits the back end.
Keep BigCommerce live until the new store is stable. Don’t cancel the old platform the moment the new one launches. Keep a way back until QA is complete and the domain, checkout, integrations, and order flow are behaving properly.
Where PagePilot Fits
PagePilot only comes into the picture if you move to Shopify.
It’s not an ecommerce platform. It’s a tool for building Shopify product pages and landing pages, which can be useful when a migration involves rebuilding pages rather than simply carrying them over.
With AI product page generation, you can start from a product URL and generate the copy, images, and layout together, then edit the page in PagePilot’s drag-and-drop editor.
That’s most useful for product or campaign pages you want to rethink during the migration instead of recreating by hand. See PagePilot’s pricing if you want to compare that workflow against your migration plan.
Conclusion
Moving away from BigCommerce is usually about fit, not finding a dramatically cheaper monthly plan.
Shopify and BigCommerce now charge very similar prices at their self-service tiers. The bigger differences show up in how each platform handles GMV, payment fees, B2B, apps, and the storefront itself.
If Shopify is where you end up, try PagePilot free to rebuild your first product pages without starting from a blank canvas.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the best BigCommerce alternatives for fast-growing stores?
Shopify is usually the best BigCommerce alternative for a fast-growing store, for its app ecosystem, managed hosting, and B2B features available on Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Plus. For a store growing specifically through content and SEO, WooCommerce is worth considering instead, since it gives you WordPress-level control over the content stack, though that control doesn't guarantee better rankings on its own.
Which BigCommerce alternatives have lower total selling costs?
No BigCommerce alternative has a clearly lower total selling cost by default, since BigCommerce and Shopify have nearly identical self-service pricing as of mid-2026. BigCommerce ties plan upgrades to GMV thresholds and charges an Open Payment Provider Fee outside its embedded providers, while Shopify charges a comparable transaction fee only if you skip Shopify Payments. Model your actual payment provider and GMV before assuming either is cheaper.
Which platforms support B2B ecommerce?
Several platforms support B2B ecommerce, including BigCommerce itself, which has a B2B Edition with company accounts, quotes, and a buyer portal, so B2B support isn't unique to its alternatives. Shopify includes B2B on Basic, Grow, Advanced, and Plus, with feature depth increasing by tier. For B2B as the core business rather than an add-on, a specialist like OroCommerce is usually the better fit.
Which platforms support subscriptions and multichannel selling?
Shopify supports subscriptions and multichannel selling most completely among these platforms, through its free first-party Shopify Subscriptions app plus a broad app ecosystem for more complex logic, and strong coverage across storefronts, marketplaces, and social. WooCommerce offers more control over custom subscription logic through extensions. Wix and Squarespace both support simpler recurring physical-product offers without a full commerce stack.
Which platforms support headless or composable architecture?
BigCommerce and commercetools both support headless or composable architecture, though differently. BigCommerce has its own headless framework, Catalyst, and a GraphQL Storefront API, so headless support isn't a reason to leave on its own. A dedicated composable platform like commercetools makes sense when the same backend needs to serve multiple custom frontends, pricing on an order-based model with a 60-day trial, rather than when you simply want more flexibility than a theme provides.
Which platform is best for enterprise customization?
Adobe Commerce and Salesforce Commerce Cloud are the two best platforms for enterprise customization. Adobe fits complex catalog, multi-brand, and B2B needs with a choice of SaaS or PaaS deployment. Salesforce fits organizations that need commerce to integrate tightly with Salesforce's existing customer data, service, and automation products. Both are quote-based and need a dedicated development team.
Which platform has the best built-in marketing tools?
Shopify has the strongest built-in marketing tools among these platforms, including customer segmentation, email campaigns, lead capture, automations, and abandoned-checkout recovery across its plans, plus 10,000 free marketing emails a month before per-send charges apply. That covers a lot of prelaunch and lifecycle marketing without a third-party app, though a larger list should still model send volume rather than assuming it fully replaces a dedicated ESP.
Is switching away from BigCommerce worth the migration cost?
Switching away from BigCommerce is worth the migration cost when you can name a specific, recurring cost the switch removes, a payment-fee structure, an app gap, a B2B workflow limitation, rather than acting on a general sense that another platform might be better. BigCommerce supports B2B, headless, and multichannel selling natively, so switching rarely fixes a missing category of functionality. It's worth it when a named constraint is costing real time or money every month.
