BigCommerce Rest In Peace (Alternatives Re: Price Increase)

[wilddog]

My guess is BC is now owned by VC's who are trying to squeeze the towel, and they don't care if it's sucked nearly dry... meaning, they are trying to squeeze every piece of margin out of the business entity to earn an ROI or Revenue target. At this point in a company's lifecycle (as it is for most public companies) the stakeholders change from customers (where you are #1 priority) to investors (customers exist to serve investors).

Couldn't agree with this more. I work in one of North America's biggest corporations. The corporate newsletters ALWAYS talk about "pleasing shareholders", "shareholder expectations", etc. But rarely mentions customer satisfaction and customer initiatives.
It's baffling that public companies spend significantly more effort trying to meet shareholder targets than focusing on the customer. They want to milk the cow before actually feeding it.

Shopify recently went public, which does not bode well to me.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Shopify recently went public, which does not bode well to me.

I did not know that. For me that would be a reason not to go with them.

I'd expect the value equation to start skewing downward as shareholders become front-and-center.

 

[Ron Dee]

Currently I am using an optimized WordPress site with woocommerce. I only have 2 SKUs. It was fine when I started but need to make a switch to something else. Perfect timing to read this thread and as always great info.

 

[LateStarter]

Currently I am using an optimized WordPress site with woocommerce. I only have 2 SKUs. It was fine when I started but need to make a switch to something else. Perfect timing to read this thread and as always great info.

I'm using WordPress and Woo also along with their subscription plug-in. I have about 40-50 different products but a ton of SKUs because each colour and subscription frequency is another variant. I don't have a lot of sales yet so I'm not in the position of @biophase @Vigilante and others... but hopefully that too will come in time.

I checked out Volusion, 3Dcart, BC, Shopify, Crate and others. The subscription aspect (by product variant) was the Achilles Heel for most of them. So far, Woo is working OK for me for now. I take a deep breath and cross my fingers whenever I update a plug-in or theme. Right now, it's the only solution I've found that works for me though.

 

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[fhs8]

Bio has a point with bugs & updates

There is CC frauders looking 24/7 for shopping carts/platforms that are not up to date to exploit and steal data


Just checkout the fraud forums on the darknet and you will see

Which is why you need to keep all your software such as LAMP, shopping cart, and plugins up to date. Also themes and plugins from some sites might be outdated or come pre-hacked. Plugins also might have vulnerabilities. I doubt the closed source shopping software is just as safe. There's probably a lot more holes yet to be discovered due to security through obscurity.

http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/40559/hacking/shopify-rfd-attacks.html

Shopify recently went public, which does not bode well to me.

Shopify has been losing money and it's expected that they'll continue to lose money FY 2016. They're going to do something about it at some point.

 

[LateStarter]

Shopify has been losing money and it's expected that they'll continue to lose money FY 2016.

Yes they will continue to lose money.

They're still focussed on growth.

They're hiring like crazy right now and have plans to expand the engineering team from 13-80 here in Toronto over the next 2 years. Their goals are to push more rapid development and expand the capabilities of the platform quickly to respond to the market's dynamic needs. They're still process building at this point.

 

[Greyson F]

Good news on the topic of E-Commerce Ventures

My friend is a representative for a major industry retailer and distributor. I asked him to forward my Value Proposition and Sales Video to the CEO of the company to see if he would be interested in making me a vendor.

HE REPLIED!!! He told my friend that he is going to wait and see how my Amazon Launch fares, and he will be observing it and getting in touch with me once that begins to show.

Even more pressure to continue developing a great framework and launch for Amazon!

 

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[ddzc]

Does anyone know what the best platform is for maximizing upsells during the checkout phase? I have a main product with multiple secondaries which go hand in hand with the primary product.

For eg, if a customer chooses product A and goes to checkout, multiple upsell products are proposed with a No Thanks option, as you continue further, another set of products are proposed and then the phase after is the final checkout page. Dollarbeardclub has this exact setup in place.

 

[jjrs79]

Pardon my inexperience, but could you elaborate a little more on these disadvantages? I don't necessarily understand some of them. And these are disadvantages for choosing or not choosing Spotify?

Hi Greyson,

These are disadvantages of Shopify compared to other hosted carts. And to be fair, Shopify does offer these important features like Reports, Real time shipping rates, Dedicated SSL Certificate, but exclusively in their higher plans.

- Payment Providers, as a new business you might want to choose the payment processor that works better for you, and this might not be the preferred Shopify Payments/Stripe, for example you might want to use Braintree, WePay, Authorize.net, etc. With Shopify, you'll be charge an additional % of your sales if you decide not to use their 1 preferred payment solution.

- Real Time Shipping Rates. This refers to the ability to calculate the shipping or delivery cost at the time of checkout in real-time directly from the shipping carriers. If you charge a flat fee, you risk having higher shipping rates than your competitors or undercharging and losing money on shipping. With 3dcart, your store can communicate directly to UPS, USPS, FEDEX, CANADA POST, TNT, DHL, Freight Carriers (Freightquote, LMI, Echo, SAIA, etc.). So the rates are as accurate as possible at the time of checkout.

- Dedicated SSL certificate. This allows your website to work under HTTPS. With Shopify you cannot have your custom domain as HTTPS, only the checkout will be HTTPS and under their Shared SSL which will change from your domain to a subdomain of shopify. This is important for 2 reasons, if possible you should make your entire website HTTPS since Google now sees this as a ranking factor, and at the time of checkout it has been shown that a dedicated SSL or the fact that the checkout remains under your custom domain provides a higher conversion rate compared to having the checkout under a shared SSL on a subdomain.

Hope this helps clarifying the differences. Feel free to email me (jimmy@3dcart.com) or send me a direct message with additional questions.

 

[jjrs79]

Tell you what. Make a chart for us if you want comparing the pros and cons of each. It will be a bit biased towards your paycheck, but it would still be interesting to see how your company sees everything stacking up. If you want...

You'll have the most credibility if you give an honest comparison/assessment.

I assume a google alert brought you here.

Your're right about the Google alert, I'm sure you got BC's attention with this post!

I'll be glad to help by providing an unbiased comparison between the different platforms. I'm well aware of the strengths and weakness of each, and the best fit really depends on the type of business and their unique needs.

Let me know what are the top platforms you're comparing, and some of the main areas that you want to differentiate. Perhaps a shared google doc would be the best approach, something you can create and I'll fill in the blanks.

Drop a 6 month free trial to our members and you will probably get a ton of people to give you a workout.

hahaha, I'm sure we can work some special deal for Fast Lane members. Not sure if I can post a link here directly, but a 50% off the first month should be a good start http://www.3dcart.com/pricing.htm?promo=50off (we also have a standard discount on the monthly service for multiple stores, since I know you mentioned that).

Jimmy

 

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[fhs8]

I wouldn't recommend 3dCART. I've tried a ton of carts about 3 months ago and 3D cart was near the bottom of my list. Unfortunately I don't really remember why I didn't like it.

Just looking at a demo theme right now the "slicknav" hamburger icon is just by itself lacking text that says "menu" also it looks like there is an extra space between the bottom line and the middle line for the hamburger icon, the cart just has an "x" to remove a product but some people get confused so the word "remove" should be there, checkout layout sucks, product layout sucks, website layout in general sucks, css width = 980px for the template I'm looking at which is too thin seriously most people have 1920x1080 screens. So it looks like 3Dcart isn't decent out of the box so I hope that this is all customizable and changeable without paying a couple thousand. I think there were a laundry list of problems with the admin cp, guest checkout, product options, visitor quotas, etc... but I forgot what they were and don't have time to find out again.

 

[iAmTrade]

I find it weird...

Why would you spend money monthly to use a site?
When you can get something else, free?

I started an eCommerce store last year selling custom lingerie (I just love being able to give a woman some free clothing article, and have her model in it so I can use it on my site..and its profitable so might as well have fun during business)...

But, I use Prestashop. No monthly fee. They have modules you can buy/download for free to do basically everything.

Will take some getting used to, but you got to get used to using anything new anyways.

Only downside I see is that its not hosted someone elses server...but than, I do recommend http://x10hosting.com (their plan of 3.95 a month or around 150$ for 3 years is AWESOME...unlimited everything..... need I repeat?... UNLIMITED ANYTHING, DOMAINS, DATA, BANDWIDTH ETC...support is SUPERB.)

Note: I gain nothing from prestashop or x10hosting for referring anyone to them.

But yea, try it out, before you oust it. Shopify can wake up one day- and say...okay... we will charge 200$ a month...OH AND if you want to migrate your things out...that'll be ANOTHER $1,000, just for the heck of it.

I dunno about you all, but I like control over everything.

Just my cents, you tell me if its worth dollars.

 

[Greyson F]

But, I use Prestashop. No monthly fee. They have modules you can buy/download for free to do basically everything.

Could you elaborate more on the differences between Prestashop and other platforms like Shopify? Anything that is free usually has major drawbacks on the back-end, so it would be nice to know about it in advance before I try it out in the coming months.

 

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[iAmTrade]

Here you go...

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=What+is+the+difference+between+prestashop+and+shopify

Shopify's business model is simple= get people to signup and pay monthly, what they can find for free.

Same as other info-related subscription websites.

They do a great job retaining customers because it is simpler for people to use their system, and the 20$-100$ a month isn't much for a customer with a business.

I will be honest, I have not used Shopify. When I look at starting a business it comes from the perspective of -

I have no $ & want to start a business so I can have $.

Hence, even an extra dollar in costs is not the route I would go. Those dollars add up, won't explain how, it just definitely does.

Prestashop I think is fine in terms of backend, tells me my sales, number of visitors, impressions, average sale per customer, number of repeats, average cart value and so on and so forth.

I saw Prestashop as free.
I saw shopify as costly, with limitations for site use, transferring ownership, servers, etc. DOES ANYONE even read terms and conditions?!!

Yea...I'll stick to owning everything I can, I don't want someone at shopify to say " hmm I dont like this guys shopify site, delete." (As he thinks...yay I just deleted the competition to my brothers eccomerce site.

Get my point? Do you even get a backup for your site as its on their servers?

Call me paranoid. I'll choose starting a business with minimal cash, as opposed to spending cash on things I dont in some sense even need.

Regardless, wish you luck [emoji6]




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[rc08234]

I assume shopify and big commerce work by pointing your domain to their server correct? I would like to attach a blog to my ecommerce store but guessing I won't be able to with big commerce?

 

[million$$$smile]

So I just got off the phone with Big$$$Commerce. I currently have three websites on that platform, with two of them under the Enterprise Tier 1 plan.
I have been paying $225/mo on each of these websites. I finally found out how much they planned to raise my monthly subscription --per website.

$400.00/month!!! Per website!!!

They are nuts if they think I will continue paying nearly 6k per year. I might just bring someone on inhouse to develop a platform that I can utilize for what I need as I haven't found anything yet that will meet our needs unless I drop 25k-40k for a magento enterprise solution that I am not so sure would meet our criteria.

Someone needs to develop a platform that is capable for multi channel, multiple websites, a POS for B&M stores & a inventory system that will simplify the entire process over all platforms. Oh ya, it should include or integrate a program/app for USPS commercial rates, etc. and maybe even a nice CRM management system.

Maybe in 10 years....

 

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[Get Right]

I have a site on Volusion. Super happy.

 

[G_Alexander]

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.

This is how I broke it down as well.

I did $440K with my one store on BC last year...so they are kicking me from $79.95 a month to $199.95 a month. Unbelievable. I called and asked them to justify the value I would be receiving for $120 a month more -- then asked them to quantify it for me into real sales dollars...

When they couldn't, I bitched them out. I guess it's a "good" problem to have so many sales that I'm in the top bracket... but it doesn't make it fun to get charged $1,440 a year more with no warning and only 2 months to comply (April is when new pricing takes effect). I just hired an employee and did not budget for this increase.

Worse yet, I can't even check orders from a mobile phone with BigCommerce because they are too half-brained to have an app (even though they have 80,000 stores online).

Seriously not happy with them. And I just built a second store over the last three months on their platform.

Speaks to @MJ DeMarco 's rules of controlling your own destiny... can't do that while you are tied to an external provider as your lifeblood (BC, Shopify, Amazon, Suppliers, or any of it).

Will stay tuned to this thread. I'm not opposed to migrating my whole store.

 

[biophase]

Ok, so I've been migrating over to Sparkpay for the past 2 weeks. Here are my thoughts:

Pros:

You can customize the backend alot. I mean, waaaay more than BC. Their backend is not super user friendly. It's slow and everything takes alot of clicks. The good news is that once you get used to their import and export, you can do everything via Excel and upload.

After getting to know their HTML and CSS structure. It is fairly easy to customize templates. Now, I am doing 4-6 stores, so I will be customizing a bunch of templates so my stores don't all look the same.

The multi-store is a huge deal for me. Since now I'm just entering each product once and it populates to all stores. The downside is that all stores have all the same descriptions and photos. You can link products, so that each store has different descriptions and photos but pulls from the same inventory.

I got Shipstation integrated and Authorize.net working. The paypal I haven't figured it out yet.

Shipping is a little odd. I can tell that UPS is their preferred vendor as they seem to push it onto you. I haven't gotten all the bugs out of it yet.

The cons:

The big downside is that store seems a little slow to me. I haven't tested it yet. I should probably run a test comparing my current BC store to my dev store to see if it is actually slower.

Their free themes are sort of crappy. Nobody would use them stock. But then again BC and shopify, do the same thing with crappy free themes so that you have to buy one.

My trial is ending so I'm going to start paying tomorrow. I'll keep you guys updated.

 

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[Phones]

They are nuts if they think I will continue paying nearly 6k per year. I might just bring someone on inhouse to develop a platform that I can utilize for what I need as I haven't found anything yet that will meet our needs unless I drop 25k-40k for a magento enterprise solution that I am not so sure would meet our criteria.

Someone needs to develop a platform that is capable for multi channel, multiple websites, a POS for B&M stores & a inventory system that will simplify the entire process over all platforms. Oh ya, it should include or integrate a program/app for USPS commercial rates, etc. and maybe even a nice CRM management system.

Maybe in 10 years....

Why Magento Enterprise solution? The community version does whatever you need, multi websites is already done, POS there are also already extensions for it, if you can't find exactly what you want, either have someone code it from scratch or buy an extension and modify it. What's the point of 25k-40k on a "enterprise solution" that doesn't have benefits over the regular one?

Your biggest concern should be having a programmer on retainer, a good backup and restore system, and hosting, thankfully there are a bunch of players doing magento on AWS so, just like Shopify or BigCommerce, no need to worry about hosting. Example: https://www.mgt-commerce.com

 

[fhs8]

Why Magento Enterprise solution? The community version does whatever you need, multi websites is already done, POS there are also already extensions for it, if you can't find exactly what you want, either have someone code it from scratch or buy an extension and modify it. What's the point of 25k-40k on a "enterprise solution" that doesn't have benefits over the regular one?

I know. Don't people think things through before spending 25k-40k??? From what I've heard Magento is very complicated and changing simple things such as templates can cause errors which may take hours for an experienced php coder to fix. Don't even touch Magento enterprise unless you're an experienced PHP coder or you have an IT team on staff.

 

[lovecharm]

I have left BC a while ago and moved to shopify. Mind you need a VA to stream line the site though!!

 

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[Vigilante]

I am building out a "test" store in Shopify now.

I have to say, I like one of their free templates more than one that I purchased from BigCommerce.

It is clean and easy to build items in Shopify.

I am doing it myself for two reasons :
1. I want to know every aspect of the Shopify platform if we are going to use it and
2. Cutting and pasting from the old platform to the new one won't improve the quality of the listings themselves. I am taking the opportunity to redo some copy points, headlines, and marketing features as we go. It will take a lot longer to migrate, but in the end the result will be much better.

When you move to a new house, use it as an opportunity to purge the shit that shouldn't have been in the old house to begin with. Fresh start.

 

[biophase]

Ok, I am now a paying customer on Sparkpay. I can't figure out their international shipping. That is the only thing holding me back from migrating my first store over. Also, there are alot of little template things that I need to get done like padding and margin stuff.

I'm not a big fan of their one page check out. Just too much white space. Need to fix that.

One big downside is that I don't think they integrate with MailCheat(Chimp). I don't use my list alot, but I don't want to just give it up either.

More to come...

 

[CommonCents]

I'm just starting to dink around on a new ecommerce spinoff for a mostly contract manufacturing company I have. I don't know jack and have wasted a lot of time looking at all this junk just like everyone here, except for I really don't know shit.
My particular niche has to do much with automated mass customization in a sense and noticed a similar non competing local biz written up in the local media. Sent the CEO an email complimenting him on the writeup and asked for his recco on what I'm trying to do. After a couple emails and a phone call, he ends up offering to host and do the whole enchilada for 120 bucks a month. And he just rolled into a 50k a year custom publishing software package(he does buku revenue) and offered to let me piggy back on it. It's nothing for him, and has everything set, just a copy and paste for them.

So it might be an idea to seek out similar non competing biz to network with and maybe it could eliminate the challenge of reinventing the wheel for someone else as well. I hate reinventing the wheel! I'm too old and lazy for that shit.

 

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[rc08234]

Ok, I am now a paying customer on Sparkpay. I can't figure out their international shipping. That is the only thing holding me back from migrating my first store over. Also, there are alot of little template things that I need to get done like padding and margin stuff.

I'm not a big fan of their one page check out. Just too much white space. Need to fix that.

One big downside is that I don't think they integrate with MailCheat(Chimp). I don't use my list alot, but I don't want to just give it up either.

More to come...

Are you still going with sparkpay? Checking them out now, do you think it's a better option then shopify?

Also, it might intergrate with MailCheat(Chimp),
https://www.sparkpay.com/MailCheat(Chimp)

 

[Shades]

I found Shopify too restrictive. Too hard to do simple edits to code. But I guess thats how its meant to be and its appeal. They use liquid language. If you are paying someone to do the site then I guess that doesnt matter either way. I like the full control of Woo vs Shopify. But I can see Biophases point that you may be at a point where you dont even want that. You just want a nice looking store that functions well.

Nothing is stopping Shopify from a increase then you have to go through what Vig is doing with moving sites over. Which really, they probably figure once they get all these people locked in to having spent time setting up their sites and money on plugins they got um.

Processing fees are the same, well assuming you are using Stripe on Woo as well. Simplify Commerce by Mastercard is a free plugin that charge .05% less. Keep in mind that Shopify charges a 2% transaction fee if someone pays through a third party like Paypal or Authorize.net. But that does drop to 0.5% with the top plan.

 

[Vigilante]

Other than the fact that the pricing comparison on this review is now obsolete, I found this comparison between BigCommerce (RIP) and Shopify to be pretty accurate. I am building out the first of several Shopify stores right now, and there are many Shopify advantages which to me more than offset the weaknesses and price increase on BigCommerce which was the catalyst to my making the change.

http://www.ecommercefuel.com/shopify-vs-bigcommerce/

 

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[Ikke]

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?

A bit late to the party I know. I have been using Prestashop for several years now and it is really solid. It's free and comes with loads of features and you can also get it hosted with one of their partners.
A few standard features which may be important to you guys are importing CSV files, multiple stores with a single back end payment processors are a simple plug in installed in a few clicks. There are also a lot of other plugins for almost everything, most are paid but on the upside these are a one time purchase.

 

[Tiger TT]

For those who are concerned about security issues with
self-hosted eCommerce software such as WooCommerce,
you can (and I think you should) use a proxy website firewall
which basicly protects all the applications running
on your site.

I use WooCommerce on my self-hosted website and I also
make use of a website firewall and malware scanning
service:

https://sucuri.net/website-antivirus/

This is also one of my secret weapons against
my competitors. It makes my website faster and
Google likes faster sites.

Note: If you're using a good hosting service such as
Synthesis, or if you have your own server, then it
probably won't make a difference in terms of speed.