BigCommerce Rest In Peace (Alternatives Re: Price Increase)

[Greyson F]

Yeah, their new pricing sucks. But Shopify's is not any better. Both these companies are trying to make money on credit card processing. Both their rates are higher than what I currently pay.

Maybe I'll dust off the Interspire software. I have 5 BC stores right now. There's no way I'm staying with them at $80/mo.

Volusion's pricing looks decent, but their templates are hard to modify.

Shopify has an insane 2% fee if you use an external payment gateway.

@MJ, what are you running? It's being self hosted right?

IMO, Bigcommerce is not run be people who have online stores. I met them in Texas a few years ago and also spoke to their support when I went from Interspire to BC. Their support does not know how to use their own stores and their training department has given really bad advice in how to run an online store. I've stuck with them for almost 5 years now. But it's probably time to move on. Or course migrating 5 stores will be a big headache but I just have to bite the bullet and do it now.

There needs to be a way to operate multiple stores or fronts like they do with shared hosting services. I think it would be cool

My thought was once I pick a new platform, I will just hire a VA to do 90% of the migration, and I can put the finishing touches on it.

I need to do research into the open source availability of back-end and front-end E-commerce shells.

I'm almost positive that they should have some. I'm not a programmer, but with how fast open source platforms are growing, I would be surprised if there wasn't at least a basic framework that you could implement. (Read Peers, Inc. by Robbin Chase, its the bomb)

Someone needs to build an E-Commerce platform that doesn't act as the middleman, but instead acts as a support to reaching your means to an end. Kind of like GoDaddy, where it is mostly hands-off.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[biophase]

OpenCart. Cost is $0/mo with my own processing.

Cool, I think I will go with this. I remember liking your store and thought it was shopify. I'll have to get my own server again, but in the end I think I'll save some money.

 

[Greyson F]

@MJ DeMarco Volusion REALLY wants me to not take your advice...

 

[biophase]

Cool, I think I will go with this. I remember liking your store and thought it was shopify. I'll have to get my own server again, but in the end I think I'll save some money.

Damn, Stitchlabs does not integrate with Opencart.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Vigilante]

Cool, I think I will go with this. I remember liking your store and thought it was shopify. I'll have to get my own server again, but in the end I think I'll save some money.

And gain Control

 

[ilrein]

What platform would you suggest then for long-term positioning?

Truthfully, I think the right answer is a fully open source solution that uses APIs to handle processing, for example: this guy.

You would pay nothing for the code, your only fee is hosting and the domain name. You only pay a credit card processing fee when you make a sale, and the tradeoff is you don't have to address PCI compliance. And of course, like vig noted above, you would have 100% control.

The problem is when it comes to extending the site with code -- you will have to hire someone if you can't do it yourself. This is why I suggest Shopify to open with, and to progress to a fully custom solution when you have the wiggle room.

Here's a few honorable mentions for open source eCommerce (you will struggle without dev-expertise though):

From the creator of Ruby on Rails: https://github.com/drhenner/ror_ecommerce
MeteorJS meets eCommerce: https://reactioncommerce.com/
Highly sophisticated Rails project by a huge team: https://spreecommerce.com/

 

[Vigilante]

I need something off the shelf. It's just one tool in my toolbox.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[ilrein]

I need something off the shelf. It's just one tool in my toolbox.

I certainly think for as far as off the shelf solutions go, Shopify is a monster contender.

 

[Greyson F]

What if users could build their own E-Commerce store on their phones through an app, instead of requiring businesses to spend the time creating a storefront?

Ya know, similar to how marketing transitioned from splash advertising and annoying telemarketing to Inbound Marketing, where they passively wait to be the right choice for the user.

Idea time over.

 

[sWALK90]

So no one sees an opportunity to hire a dev team and make a ecomm host with less fees?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Greyson F]

So no one sees an opportunity to hire a dev team and make a ecomm host with less fees?

Unfortunately, as shitty as it sounds, scaling revenue fees are one of the best components to their revenue model.

It pisses people off, of course, but it is fool-proof.

If their users suck at life: they make a flat monthly rate

If their users rock at life: they also rock at life.

E-Commerce hosts remind me of Celebrity Agents. Nobody likes them, but you need them until you become Will Smith.

 

[ilrein]

So no one sees an opportunity to hire a dev team and make a ecomm host with less fees?

Software has by far got to be one of the most difficult products to bring to market. A group of oversea coders @ ~$10/hour against a company where half of the executives are massively accomplished engineers and employ over 300+ people since 2013.

Best of luck.

 

[sWALK90]

Software has by far got to be one of the most difficult products to bring to market. A group of oversea coders @ ~$10/hour against a company where half of the executives are massively accomplished engineers and employ over 300+ people since 2013.

Best of luck.

Sooooo if a cheaper solution was not posted here would users not jump on it?

The change is coming....everyone is looking to jump ship...why not make the life boat?

Starting a business is difficult...if it was'nt ...... everybody would do it..

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Phillipbro]

There needs to be a way to operate multiple stores or fronts like they do with shared hosting services. I think it would be cool



I need to do research into the open source availability of back-end and front-end E-commerce shells.

I'm almost positive that they should have some. I'm not a programmer, but with how fast open source platforms are growing, I would be surprised if there wasn't at least a basic framework that you could implement. (Read Peers, Inc. by Robbin Chase, its the bomb)

Someone needs to build an E-Commerce platform that doesn't act as the middleman, but instead acts as a support to reaching your means to an end. Kind of like GoDaddy, where it is mostly hands-off.

There is an open source platform called Spree, check it out.

P.S I'm currently on Shopify and I like it so far, rapid speeds, huge support community on FB, and there is an app for almost anything you need, or someone will eventually make it for you.

btw you would be paying around the same amount $80-140 monthly using Opencart + private VPS (because you don't want shitty site performance)

 

[juan917]

really the FASTLANE thing to do is applying the experiences you have taken from BigCommerce usage and applying them towards a better product that can directly compete with them. All you need to do is make the mockups and the right person will know what to do to make the sketches come to life.

 

[JasonR]

UltraCart seems to fly under the radar here, but there are some multi-million dollar ecommerce businesses that run it. I've used it, and was happy with it.

The downsides is they don't have as many templates as Shopify/Big Commerce, BUT you can do upsells and build major funnels with UltraCart, which you can't really do with BC/Shopify.

Their pricing is a bit less aggressive than Shopify/BC, and you can use your own merchant accounts.

Don't overlook them!
https://www.ultracart.com/pricing/

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[IGP]

It's been a long time, but I used x-cart. I bought the lifetime license and customized the theme myself. The company I sold to still uses it to this day. Also, used my own processing via eMerchant....

Never saw the point in paying monthly fees.

 

[Greyson F]

Ultracart's mobile page is horrible. Anyone see anything wrong with their main pricing page?
View attachment 11495

Ewwww unresponsive E-Commerce themes are very unattractive.

 

[biophase]

UltraCart seems to fly under the radar here, but there are some multi-million dollar ecommerce businesses that run it. I've used it, and was happy with it.

The downsides is they don't have as many templates as Shopify/Big Commerce, BUT you can do upsells and build major funnels with UltraCart, which you can't really do with BC/Shopify.

Their pricing is a bit less aggressive than Shopify/BC, and you can use your own merchant accounts.

Don't overlook them!
https://www.ultracart.com/pricing/

I just talked to them on the phone. They are at $50/mo, but they charge by items and each variation is an item. So if I had a shirt with 3 colors and 3 sizes, that would be 9 items. Using this terminology, I would have well over 250 items and that would put me into the $70/mo category.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[IGP]

I just talked to them on the phone. They are at $50/mo, but they charge by items and each variation is an item. So if I had a shirt with 3 colors and 3 sizes, that would be 9 items. Using this terminology, I would have well over 250 items and that would put me into the $70/mo category.

So every SKU! That's craziness...

 

[biophase]

BTW, to me this is a plain math issue. And delving deeper into this it looks like staying on Bigcommerce vs Shopify is actually better. Here's why.

On BC let's say I go from $40/mo to $80/mo. And increase of $480/yr per store. I have 3 stores that will jump to this pricing. So a $1440 annual increase.

If I go to Shopify and move 3 stores to their $30/mo program. I would save $30/mo total or $360 annually.
But then I use Shopify's payment processor which is 2.9%. Say these 3 stores gross $375,000 a year. My current processor is charging me $2.2%. So using Shopify's processor my processor charges go up by $2625. So my net increase in going with Shopify is $2625-$360 = $2265.

In my case, sticking with BC is actually cheaper.

The reason I used $375k is because once an individual store goes over $125k gross, BC monthly fees goes to $200/mo. In this case Shopify would become a clear winner if any single store hit $125/yr in gross.

Break even point between BC and Shopify is grossing $257k a year.

Now I will say that this is a slippery slope. For me, if I have to migrate one store from BC to Shopify, I would probably move them all. I don't want to have stores on different platforms.

 

[JasonR]

I just talked to them on the phone. They are at $50/mo, but they charge by items and each variation is an item. So if I had a shirt with 3 colors and 3 sizes, that would be 9 items. Using this terminology, I would have well over 250 items and that would put me into the $70/mo category.

Hmm never dealt with having a store with that many SKUs, but yah that kind of sucks. But....$80 is a drop in the bucket if your store is doing even decently and you need their features.

Like you said, BC is probably the best choice for you.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Phillipbro]

I'm on a 20% OFF Shopify lifetime deal offer. Let me know if you guys want it as well.

 

[Andyc2288]

I'm on a 20% OFF Shopify lifetime deal offer. Let me know if you guys want it as well.

Does it work if I already have a monthly sub to shopify?

 

[Vigilante]

I inquired with the BigCommerce executive whose name was on the press release about the pricing increase (along with her email address!) about getting a refund for the custom template that BigCommerce sold me in light of their decision to double their subscription fees. After two emails, I received a response. A copy of her helpful form letter response is below for your viewing pleasure.

My name is Lauren Clevenger and I am the Social Media and Community Manager at Bigcommerce. While I am familiar with the pricing model and frequently answer our merchant's questions in the Community Forum, I am not the best person to discuss your particular plan or process billing requests such as refunds. For questions about your specific plan and price increase, I would suggest that you contact our Billing team.

If you have additional questions about our new pricing model, you can also consult our FAQ, and view our pricing page for more information. If you'd like to speak with someone, feel free to call us at your convenience at 1-888-699-8911 Monday thru Friday, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm CST.
Thank you,

Thanks for your help, BigCommerce! I love form letter responses from company executives regarding specific inquiries on topics their name is listed as a contact for! Made my day. With that level of attention to detail and customer service, there is no WAY you are going out of business--- ever! Legendary customer service.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Vigilante]

I'm on a 20% OFF Shopify lifetime deal offer. Let me know if you guys want it as well.

Hell yes. Please post.

 

[Ramble On]

I'm on a 20% OFF Shopify lifetime deal offer. Let me know if you guys want it as well.

Do you know if they would give you 20% off on more than one store?

 

[MJ DeMarco]

@biophase have you looked into Pinnacle Cart? They are in Phoenix.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[biophase]

@biophase have you looked into Pinnacle Cart? They are in Phoenix.

I have another issue with going to a different cart. I currently integrate with Shipstation and Stitchlabs. Most of the other carts are not supported by these guys. Stitchlabs is $200/mo and quite honestly I don't know if I get my money's worth. Shipstation on the other hand is worth every penny at $15/mo.

Maybe I'll take this time to overhaul my entire process. I could go self hosted, nix the Stitchlabs and save $5000 a year. I'd have to implement an excel spreadsheet to track inventory.

 

[biophase]

Does anyone know of an ecommerce platform that allows multiple ecommerce stores (multiple URLs) to have the same backend database so that they all share inventory and order management? Doesn't Magento do this?