BigCommerce Rest In Peace (Alternatives Re: Price Increase)

[biophase]

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)

Yes, I am going with Sparkpay. They do integrate with MailCheat(Chimp). They put mail chimp in their email section instead of their Apps section so I couldn't find it. LOL

Sparkpay has alot of challenges. There are some things that they did that make you scratch your head. BUT... You can pretty much mess with almost everything, so if you are HTML savvy you can customize it to your needs. Their support has been really good. I just call them and ask them a bunch of questions and they answer them and I fix my issues in real time.

I'm pretty much a Sparkpay backend expert now.

But I still can't figure out international shipping!!! They are telling me it's my USPS integration login and password and I need to call the USPS. I can't imagine calling USPS to ask them about technical integration questions.

Whether it's better than Shopify? I don't know.

But here is why I will never use Shopify:

• Lack of your own SSL URL checkout at the lower level subscriptions. That is just going backwards. This will lower your conversion rate. Not good for you.

• Forcing you to use Shopify payments or 2% fee. They are bleeding money from you guys and you don't even know it. You guys are paying .8% to .5% higher in fees per transaction. So if you are doing $100,000 a year, you are paying an extra $500-$800. Add that to your monthly bill and thats $40-$70 a month more! You are really paying +$100/mo to use Shopify because of this.

• Real-time carrier shipping only at $179/mo level? WTF, this is so basic that most $20/mo carts do this.

Based on these lack of features that are so critical, I can only conclude that Shopify is not in the business of helping ecommerce stores remain successful. I really feel like they care about themselves only and how much they can take from you.

I just did a calculation and if I switched from BC to Shopify AND I wanted to keep all the same features, Shopify would cost me $840/mo to run 4 stores. Sparkpay is costing me $160/mo for 4 stores. It's a no brainer for me.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Shopify is not in the business of helping ecommerce stores

Yup, they are now in business to appease shareholders and investors with perpetual growth, rising margins, and increasing profitability. The aforementioned is not good for you and your business. Such re-prioritization compresses value in what I call a value-squeeze where customers become no better than cows to be milked.

http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/shop

 

[rc08234]

Yes, I am going with Sparkpay. They do integrate with MailCheat(Chimp). They put mail chimp in their email section instead of their Apps section so I couldn't find it. LOL

Sparkpay has alot of challenges. There are some things that they did that make you scratch your head. BUT... You can pretty much mess with almost everything, so if you are HTML savvy you can customize it to your needs. Their support has been really good. I just call them and ask them a bunch of questions and they answer them and I fix my issues in real time.

I'm pretty much a Sparkpay backend expert now.

But I still can't figure out international shipping!!! They are telling me it's my USPS integration login and password and I need to call the USPS. I can't imagine calling USPS to ask them about technical integration questions.

Whether it's better than Shopify? I don't know.

But here is why I will never use Shopify:

• Lack of your own SSL URL checkout at the lower level subscriptions. That is just going backwards. This will lower your conversion rate. Not good for you.

• Forcing you to use Shopify payments or 2% fee. They are bleeding money from you guys and you don't even know it. You guys are paying .8% to .5% higher in fees per transaction. So if you are doing $100,000 a year, you are paying an extra $500-$800. Add that to your monthly bill and thats $40-$70 a month more! You are really paying +$100/mo to use Shopify because of this.

• Real-time carrier shipping only at $179/mo level? WTF, this is so basic that most $20/mo carts do this.

Based on these lack of features that are so critical, I can only conclude that Shopify is not in the business of helping ecommerce stores remain successful. I really feel like they care about themselves only and how much they can take from you.

I just did a calculation and if I switched from BC to Shopify AND I wanted to keep all the same features, Shopify would cost me $840/mo to run 4 stores. Sparkpay is costing me $160/mo for 4 stores. It's a no brainer for me.

I went to sparkpay the other day and none of their templates would load, that was worrisome.

I also notice on all their plans that it's a free shared SLL, don't you need a dedicated SLL for your domain name to show up?

The fees for shopify don't bother me, the SSL URL does. I'm sure it spooks less savy buyers when the purchase domain is different. I remember it worrying me back in the day.

 

[biophase]

I went to sparkpay the other day and none of their templates would load, that was worrisome.

I also notice on all their plans that it's a free shared SLL, don't you need a dedicated SLL for your domain name to show up?

The fees for shopify don't bother me, the SSL URL does. I'm sure it spooks less savy buyers when the purchase domain is different. I remember it worrying me back in the day.

Yes, the shared SSL is free, but you have the option to purchase your own SSL for your domain and keep the checkout URL with your domain.

For their templates, I am just using their barebones template and modifying it. It seems easier to modifying a stripped down stock template.

 

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[Vigilante]

Found an interesting app to migrate stores from BigCommerce to Shopify.

I haven't used it yet, but likely will pull the trigger on it for one of my stores on Monday.

http://ecommerce-platforms.com/ecom...migrate-your-shop-from-bigcommerce-to-shopify

I will report back to you all if this is worthwhile or not. I was going to hire a VA to do it, but this seems pretty organized. Haven't come across many reviews on it yet though.

 

[Vigilante]

Found an interesting app to migrate stores from BigCommerce to Shopify.

I haven't used it yet, but likely will pull the trigger on it for one of my stores on Monday.

http://ecommerce-platforms.com/ecom...migrate-your-shop-from-bigcommerce-to-shopify

I will report back to you all if this is worthwhile or not. I was going to hire a VA to do it, but this seems pretty organized. Haven't come across many reviews on it yet though.

For anyone that needs to migrate a eCommerce platform, I can't recommend this company and their apps enough. With about 4 minutes of setup, they digitally migrated hundreds of products (images, copy, videos, and more) and thousands of customer records from BigCommerce to Shopify. They have a similar app for just about any platform you want to leave, and just about any destination you want to go to. For $200 (including a few upgrade features) I estimate I saved about 40 hours of outsourced labor, plus instructions, maintenance time, etc...

They saved me a week, saved me the need to outsource this, saved me the need to supervise this, and saved me all of the pain in the a$$ of fleeing away from BigCommerce. I highly recommend this company. We now have a few days of cleanup and financial integration (merchant accounts, etc...) but the heavy lifting was all done by this app, and seamlessly.

I am super impressed. Obviously they saw a need, created a SAAS solution, and solved a huge problem. So glad I didn't outsource this, when a turnkey solution exists.

 

[Ev1]

This thread is gold. Getting all my ducks in line to start a ecomm site in the next few months and this is exactly what I needed. I jumped from BC, to shopify, never really liked the shopify set up but sparkpay seems to be the winner for what I need.

Thanks to all that contributed.

 

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[Bananas]

Regarding Shopify.

A few months ago I spent several hours setting up a store with 50 products and then launched. I invited about 50 customers to check it out, someone bought. I bought shipping right on Shopify. Of course there are many other ways to purchase shipping but the whole idea was to test Shopify. Package goes off.

Next day I get a message from the customer who wants to know if I can give her the real tracking number since the one she was automatically emailed by Shopify when I shipped didn't work.

Oh shit.

I rush into my account and click the tracking number and it's invalid. I copy/paste to USPS and it's invalid.

Quickly compose email to customer, looking like a total idiot while I apologize my a$$ off and don't provide her a tracking number.

Write to Shopify to ask why the F*ck they gave me a bad tracking number?

Wait for a response. And wait. And wait.

Meanwhile two days later, customer writes me, she has the package, thanks for the package. I apologize my a$$ off again. Do you understand how freaking incompetent I now look?

Finally hear back from Shopify where some total idiot told me that it was my fault I got a bad tracking number and I should never expect a tracking number on First Class packages because the USPS did not provide tracking numbers on First Class packages. Which is the biggest bunch of bullshit on the planet. I even went back and checked everything I imput when I bought that shipping label, it was all correct, not my error.

I immediately cancelled Shopify. If I can't even ship an order they are useless. The customer service was useless. In the first place they took way too long to get back to me and in the second place they gave me incorrect information.

When I got the little email asking me why did I leave I wrote in and said something like, Listen I sold over 400 products last month on other venues and about 90% of those went First Class USPS with tracking and you've got some idiot in customer service telling me the USPS doesn't provide tracking on First Class and to buy Priority if I want tracking.

 

[BlakeIC]

Regarding Shopify.

A few months ago I spent several hours setting up a store with 50 products and then launched. I invited about 50 customers to check it out, someone bought. I bought shipping right on Shopify. Of course there are many other ways to purchase shipping but the whole idea was to test Shopify. Package goes off.

Next day I get a message from the customer who wants to know if I can give her the real tracking number since the one she was automatically emailed by Shopify when I shipped didn't work.

Oh shit.

I rush into my account and click the tracking number and it's invalid. I copy/paste to USPS and it's invalid.

Quickly compose email to customer, looking like a total idiot while I apologize my a$$ off and don't provide her a tracking number.

Write to Shopify to ask why the F*ck they gave me a bad tracking number?

Wait for a response. And wait. And wait.

Meanwhile two days later, customer writes me, she has the package, thanks for the package. I apologize my a$$ off again. Do you understand how freaking incompetent I now look?

Finally hear back from Shopify where some total idiot told me that it was my fault I got a bad tracking number and I should never expect a tracking number on First Class packages because the USPS did not provide tracking numbers on First Class packages. Which is the biggest bunch of bullshit on the planet. I even went back and checked everything I imput when I bought that shipping label, it was all correct, not my error.

I immediately cancelled Shopify. If I can't even ship an order they are useless. The customer service was useless. In the first place they took way too long to get back to me and in the second place they gave me incorrect information.

When I got the little email asking me why did I leave I wrote in and said something like, Listen I sold over 400 products last month on other venues and about 90% of those went First Class USPS with tracking and you've got some idiot in customer service telling me the USPS doesn't provide tracking on First Class and to buy Priority if I want tracking.

Oh golly, support reps like that drive me nuts

Just like amazons support reps

 

[Vance]

The goal of Bigcommerce since at least 2011 was to go public at all costs. They've propped themselves up with massive VC money and looks like the boys are wanting to collect and speed things up. Everyone I know who worked there back in 2012 has quit or been fired.

Good luck in your switch. Smart move IMO.

 

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[Vigilante]

The goal of Bigcommerce since at least 2011 was to go public at all costs. They've propped themselves up with massive VC money and looks like the boys are wanting to collect and speed things up. Everyone I know who worked there back in 2012 has quit or been fired.

Good luck in your switch. Smart move IMO.

My communication with them was met with such indifference on this transition, that I almost can't believe they are even still in business. Zero regard for a four year customer with multiple sites. If I treated my customers with the same callous indifference, I would recognize that someone would fill the void in service and expectation that I was leaving.

It feels to the customer like a money grab. It's transparent. They'll happily extort more revenue from less customers.

 

[biophase]

So I'm about 75% migrated to Sparkpay. My experience with them has been pretty decent. They seem like a small company. I get the same couple of tech guys on each support call. They answer my questions and change CSS stuff for me on the fly while I'm on the phone. Feels like a small business vs the support ticket and waiting.

Found a few really odd things on their design though. I wouldn't call them a design flaw, but it does make me question their designers and engineers and doubt if any of them ever ran an ecommerce store.

For example, on a failed credit card transaction the customer goes to the same screen as if their order went through. They get an order number and in tiny print it says their card was declined. But everything else on the page makes them think their order was completed. I went to try to change this page but not all the text is editable. Truly a WTF moment. I ended up making their credit card declined text red and 64 pt font as I could not change other parts of the page.

 

[Vance]

My communication with them was met with such indifference on this transition, that I almost can't believe they are even still in business. Zero regard for a four year customer with multiple sites. If I treated my customers with the same callous indifference, I would recognize that someone would fill the void in service and expectation that I was leaving.

It feels to the customer like a money grab. It's transparent. They'll happily extort more revenue from less customers.

Changing platforms is a PITA, and all companies know this. So yes they'll still collect revenue but at what cost? Will be interesting to see the outcome.

Good luck in your switch, I've been out of the E-commerce space for quite some time so unfortunately I can't help on recommendations on a better solution.

 

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[Vigilante]

When you search Google for

BigCommerce Price Increase, this thread comes up 4th on the first page. LOL.

Great job BigCommerce. Hope you are out of business soon.

This thread has eight thousand, eight hundred views. It will get more over the next few months as people realize they are being screwed with no lube from BigCommerce.

I called today to cancel my account, on the four year anniversary of opening it.

The guy who took my call could barely speak english, and I had to repeat everything about 4 times.

He asked why I was canceling, and I told him. Like he gives a shit. He just works for some remote call center in the middle of a jungle somewhere in the world. He was just filling out a form.

Good riddance, BigCommerce. The Shopify template is BETTER, and it is a FREE template compared to the one I bought from you. Plus, their live chat is fantastic.

Friedrich Stegmann, thanks for the survey you sent me. To see why I, and hundreds of other people fled BigCommerce, feel free to read this thread. It's like a basic rule of business that when you F*ck your customers over, they leave. Feel free to log in here and add your comments, Friedrich.

You can get a 20% lifetime discount for Shopify if you contact the guys from eCommerce Fuel. Register HERE http://www.ecommercefuel.com/shopify-vs-bigcommerce/

I used the link he sent me, and it worked and I locked in with Shopify for a 20% lifetime discount on multiple stores. He is NOT yet an advertiser on the Fast Lane Forum, but he should be. Andrew Youderian come play with us. (http://www.ecommercefuel.com/author/adminecf/)

 

[rc08234]

So I'm about 75% migrated to Sparkpay. My experience with them has been pretty decent. They seem like a small company. I get the same couple of tech guys on each support call. They answer my questions and change CSS stuff for me on the fly while I'm on the phone. Feels like a small business vs the support ticket and waiting.

Found a few really odd things on their design though. I wouldn't call them a design flaw, but it does make me question their designers and engineers and doubt if any of them ever ran an ecommerce store.

For example, on a failed credit card transaction the customer goes to the same screen as if their order went through. They get an order number and in tiny print it says their card was declined. But everything else on the page makes them think their order was completed. I went to try to change this page but not all the text is editable. Truly a WTF moment. I ended up making their credit card declined text red and 64 pt font as I could not change other parts of the page.

Have you got the failed credit card thing figured out? I would watch making it 64 pt. I know it's the only way you can make it so they realize it, but I would probably be a bit offended if my CC got declined and it told me in huge a$$ letters. Just something to think about.

 

[rc08234]

Is anyone using a platform with a dedicated ssl? I'm scared to go with one that redirects to their proccessor like shopify does. Am I worrying about it to much?

 

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[biophase]

Have you got the failed credit card thing figured out? I would watch making it 64 pt. I know it's the only way you can make it so they realize it, but I would probably be a bit offended if my CC got declined and it told me in huge a$$ letters. Just something to think about.

I didn't think of that. But I'd rather have them offended than not see it and wait around for a week thinking that they are going to receive a shipment.

 

[biophase]

Is anyone using a platform with a dedicated ssl? I'm scared to go with one that redirects to their proccessor like shopify does. Am I worrying about it to much?

Yes, I always go with a domain specific SSL for all my stores.

 

[rc08234]

Yes, I always go with a domain specific SSL for all my stores.

With big commerce it's like 2g's a month right? You need the enterprise plan? Or is there a way around that?

 

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[biophase]

With big commerce it's like 2g's a month right? You need the enterprise plan? Or is there a way around that?

I don't think so. I think you are talking about shopify.

 

[LateStarter]

Question for all you ecommerce gurus. If you look at your traffic, how much of it is coming from mobile vs tablet vs desktop? I'm in the process of starting something new and am thinking of designing it from a 'mobile first' perspective instead of just a 'mobile friendly' responsive theme.

Does anyone know of a solid 'mobile first' cart solution? Google searches don't show me anything more than responsive solutions. Similarly has anyone used a 'mobile first' theme that they would recommend? There don't seem to be that many out there, which is surprising to me.

Thanks!

 

[Wisith]

I read this thread a couple of times, and jotted down notes. Here comes newbie questions:

For someone who is new and/or not selling too many product variations, are certain carts preferred? I saved the mentioned carts in this thread and plan on calling them myself to get more info, but raw/unfiltered feedback from you guys are always appreciated.

I plan on doing FBA, but since I'm making my own products, I don't want to rely solely on Amazon in case that channel gets closed for whatever reason. So far I just bought the domain name and haven't set anything yet since I'm still waiting for my first product run to be sent to me.

Does anyone have experience with companies like SquareSpace? I mention that one because I see it being advertised a lot on social media.

 

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[V8Bill]

Plus, their live chat is fantastic.

I was hoping you'd mention that. I'd class their live chat 24/7 support as possibly the best live chat support I've received...ever (over 18 years online). They were friendly, fast and thorough. Often they handed over custom code and helped with everything I needed. I also got 20% lifetime discount and 45 days free link which made the whole experience surprisingly pleasant.

 

[Vigilante]

Question for all you ecommerce gurus. If you look at your traffic, how much of it is coming from mobile vs tablet vs desktop? I'm in the process of starting something new and am thinking of designing it from a 'mobile first' perspective instead of just a 'mobile friendly' responsive theme.

Does anyone know of a solid 'mobile first' cart solution? Google searches don't show me anything more than responsive solutions. Similarly has anyone used a 'mobile first' theme that they would recommend? There don't seem to be that many out there, which is surprising to me.

Thanks!

Shopify's mobile platform is excellent, and over 60% of our traffic emanates from mobile devices.

 

[QDF]

www.clickfunnels.com

I'm curious if anyone here has used ClickFunnels before and how they liked it?

Have not used it myself yet, but IMO seems to be one of the best, easiest options if you're building any time of marketing funnel.

 

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[PortlandJon]

Hello!
I am just finishing up a migration from Bigcommerce to Opencart.
My client was already paying for multiple domains and hosting packages, bigcommerce and webgility.

They were using a self hosted site as a portal to the ($200/mo) bigcommerce store and webgility's ($40/mo) eCC desktop program for quick-books integration product/order/customer management.

I have gotten them set up with an opencart site running in a windows desktop store manager program that is integrated with their quickbooks.

The migration of 250 products 800 customers and 1400 orders cost $150 and took about a day to set up and do through cart2cart's automated service. They didnt' transfer everything, product options most notably. But it did get the most of it. Customers, orders, categories, descriptions, images, thumbs.

3 years bluehost hosting, opencart install, store migration, mobile responsive theme install and customization, connected payment gateway, connected shipping module, windows desktop store manager, quick books integration, custom documentation, url management... coming in right at $2200 total, has taken about three weeks.

3 years for less than one year of BC's costs.

They would have had to pay me to update their BC store as it was, BC is not mobile ready by default and is a do it yourself program.
OpenCart has more options for customization also extensions and themes are far less expensive compared to big commerce.

Some people say shared hosting like Bluehost's basic is insufficient for eCommerce sites, but it must be user error because with our current server set up $5/mo, serving a 1.2mb+ home page, when we turn on cloudflare and browser caching we score faster than a 2 sec load time with 50+ elements & less validation errors than Amazon. 0.1 sec faster than the Bigcommerce page, .5mb larger front page (bigger nicer pictures) and fully mobile responsive.

BTW
100% Perfect URL redirects are impossible coming from a BigCommerce Site.
IE bigcommerce stores images on a separate img server with a proprietary filing system unique to bigcommerce. Even if your logo's url looks like joestacos.com/logo.jpg in your browser the actual bigcomerce url is more like img.statbigcom.il/us4454jjhi/uui_887u/img/logo.jpg.1280 usually these changes are made by the htmaccess file but as big commerce does not allow access to config files and the core at all, there's no way to find out how their file mapping is working.

So getting those outside sources url's and links to match perfectly is not possible. We have gotten the category/product/account pages to match just fine which is more than enough for my client.

TL|DR $2200 to get away from BigCommerce. We can start on Monday.

Oregon Jon

 

[biophase]

for shared hosting you may want to check the number of Simultaneous connections to your database. Mine used to go down during Xmas because too many people were adding to carts on the site at once.

 

[Jake]

I was hoping you'd mention that. I'd class their live chat 24/7 support as possibly the best live chat support I've received...ever (over 18 years online). They were friendly, fast and thorough. Often they handed over custom code and helped with everything I needed. I also got 20% lifetime discount and 45 days free link which made the whole experience surprisingly pleasant.

I switched to shopify 5 or so days ago and am pleased thus far but I tried to use their chat and it said nobody was available. No option to wait. Recommended I send an email and it took them 5 days to respond.

So support has been subpar for me.

 

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[PortlandJon]

for shared hosting you may want to check the number of Simultaneous connections to your database. Mine used to go down during Xmas because too many people were adding to carts on the site at once.

If you have set up the PHPfast script like ioncube are serving cached pages and your miniaturizing your code the load on the server should be no problem.

With the basic Bluehost shared hosting sets the MySQL max simultaneous connections to 81 different users with a 60 sec timeout limit per command.

After a bunch of research into the extended database stats I do find the default Opencart table indexing is weak resulting in alot of queries. But right now the 8g in 30 days of db queries isn't even a blip on their unmetered/though monitored basic hosting plan. This large amount of internal server traffic is not effecting the front end speed while the windows store manager is lightning fast at mass database edits no matter how poorly the tables are indexed.

I have also found a few different php scripts for automatically applying better indexing to the sql tables. I will have to do some test runs before i can offer this to my client but it looks like by what iv read it will take less than two mins to fix the indexing issue. If it becomes an issue.

 

[Paul Thomas]

While I don't own my own store/webiste - I was scrolling through LinkedIn and saw the following solution released (and thought of this thread that I saw on the forum)

"First Data Launches Clover Online Store, An All-In-One eCommerce Solution"

http://www.businesswire.com/news/ho...ches-Clover-Online-Store-All-In-One-eCommerce

Some excerpts:

"“Clover Online Store provides business owners with an ‘all-in-one’ integrated solution that includes shopping cart functionality, web design and all of the business management features that come with Clover,” ... “Better yet, Clover Online Store is backed by First Data, the eCommerce industry leader that powers 28% of global online transactions.”

"“Clover is unique in the marketplace because it has always operated as an open platform, which we feel is critical to the evolution of our SMB portfolio.” .... “Clover Online Store demonstrates the flexibility of the Clover API and is an example of the power and ingenuity of the new First Data.”

Apologies if this has been discussed before - but has anyone checked this out as a platform?