BigCommerce Rest In Peace (Alternatives Re: Price Increase)

[LateStarter]

I've been up and running with one Shopify store for about a month and a half. Not that long really...but I've been working on it's development for much, much longer. It's evolved into a very custom template. At first I loved Shopify. The UI, templates and app store are really where it shines. It's back-end is really intuitive. Rich templates are plentiful and the app stores has just about anything you could ask for. Integrations with other platforms really help to expand insights and capabilities (I'm a data mining geek and I'm ok with that).

But now as I start dealing with more orders, it's flaws really come to light. Printing invoices, pack lists, ...and in my case product labels... are done through a clunky HTML-based app. The app is really impacted by browser dependencies and in-line with my experience for all things Shopify so far, it too lacks the sustaining engineering support to adequately address any customer issues let alone establishing product roadmap that makes sense to customers. The app store seems pretty light in this area and short of building my own app that uses the API to pull order data, it falls short of my needs and causes me to burn a lot of time doing 'stupid shit' I shouldn't have to.

Some other simple features are completely missing. Order modification doesn't exist. Once an order is taken, that's it. It's either cancelled, fulfilled or partially fulfilled. No ability to do quantity adjustments or item modifications. So if a customer decides they want a different size, or if your fulfillment group needs to make a product substitution, forget it. Either you put the change in the Order Notes or cancel the order, create a new one and get payment details resubmitted by the customer. If you go the former route, tracking these changes difficult. It complicates fulfillment and you have to direct your customer to the notes field to see it rather than the invoices and emails with line item order details. Elect to go the latter route and you're likely to loose customers since it makes the customer service side feel clunky and disjointed.

Yes, someone created a $20/mo app that claims to be able to do modifications, but the reviews are really hit and miss. It's a caveat emptor situation for this in my view.

These are of course on top of the payment processing and SSL issues already pointed out by @biophase.

I started to build a second store for another business coming in 2017. But after putting so much effort into the first store front and experiencing these issues, I'm starting to look at other solutions for both of them. I'm always open to suggestions and feedback based on other experiences.

Has anyone tried Clover noted in the last post?

 

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[amp0193]

Printing invoices, pack lists, ...and in my case product labels... are done through a clunky HTML-based app.

I think a ShipStation integration would help this out a lot. SS is pretty powerful, cheap, and I love it.

 

[ilrein]

@LateStarter your insight into the flaws of Shopify and the apps that have been developed to address shortcomings is really valuable. I'm well versed in Shopify's API and have been seriously wracking my brain trying to come up with an app idea. My issue is that I'm a coder, not a merchant -- so I haven't experienced firsthand the real issues that come when you rely on software for a significant period of time. Your feedback on existing pain points is pure gold to me. If you would care to elaborate on your major struggles as a Shopify merchant and how you've attempted to address them -- it would definitely help me spot some market openings. And hey, maybe my work will ultimately make your life easier too.

 

[fhs8]

I've been with WooCommerce for this year since I moved from BC and it's been very good. Costs are low and will stay low. I also have a lot more control over my website. Was able to do things not possible on managed platforms such as Shopify even if I were to get an enterprise account. I wouldn't even consider other platforms. Order modifications can be done as well as custom order statuses, emails, checkout, etc... Anything that can't be done on Shopify can be done on WooCommerce. No BS with paying X per month for an app or per order fee.

Shopify lost 18 million in 2015. You need control over your business/website. I wouldn't want to have a ton of time/money invested in Shopify if they were to ever raise prices significantly.

 

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[IGP]

I've been up and running with one Shopify store for about a month and a half. Not that long really...but I've been working on it's development for much, much longer. It's evolved into a very custom template. At first I loved Shopify. The UI, templates and app store are really where it shines. It's back-end is really intuitive. Rich templates are plentiful and the app stores has just about anything you could ask for. Integrations with other platforms really help to expand insights and capabilities (I'm a data mining geek and I'm ok with that).

But now as I start dealing with more orders, it's flaws really come to light. Printing invoices, pack lists, ...and in my case product labels... are done through a clunky HTML-based app. The app is really impacted by browser dependencies and in-line with my experience for all things Shopify so far, it too lacks the sustaining engineering support to adequately address any customer issues let alone establishing product roadmap that makes sense to customers. The app store seems pretty light in this area and short of building my own app that uses the API to pull order data, it falls short of my needs and causes me to burn a lot of time doing 'stupid shit' I shouldn't have to.

Some other simple features are completely missing. Order modification doesn't exist. Once an order is taken, that's it. It's either cancelled, fulfilled or partially fulfilled. No ability to do quantity adjustments or item modifications. So if a customer decides they want a different size, or if your fulfillment group needs to make a product substitution, forget it. Either you put the change in the Order Notes or cancel the order, create a new one and get payment details resubmitted by the customer. If you go the former route, tracking these changes difficult. It complicates fulfillment and you have to direct your customer to the notes field to see it rather than the invoices and emails with line item order details. Elect to go the latter route and you're likely to loose customers since it makes the customer service side feel clunky and disjointed.

Yes, someone created a $20/mo app that claims to be able to do modifications, but the reviews are really hit and miss. It's a caveat emptor situation for this in my view.

These are of course on top of the payment processing and SSL issues already pointed out by @biophase.

I started to build a second store for another business coming in 2017. But after putting so much effort into the first store front and experiencing these issues, I'm starting to look at other solutions for both of them. I'm always open to suggestions and feedback based on other experiences.

Has anyone tried Clover noted in the last post?

All very good points, and their order system does suck. I have been using ShippingEasy recently and it is pretty awesome for shipping purposes. It can also handle your inventory, although I have not completely set that up yet.

Their support is superb too!

 

[LateStarter]

I think a ShipStation integration would help this out a lot. SS is pretty powerful, cheap, and I love it.

I'll look at them again, but I believe the problem with them is that I can't print my product labels with them. I print a full-colour 3" x 4" label that's applied to my 'custom' product at the time of fulfillment. Product labels have been a paint point for sure, but with so many variant combinations it's been a necessity to help identify the product once packaged.

EDIT: Confirmed. They can't do 3x4 labels, only 4x6. Also it's not easy to print one label per product with this. Even if I could accommodate the 4x6 label, then I'd have to figure out a way to take their 'Packing Slip' template and modify it to get one product per label and tweak it to get the look right for a label.

 

[LateStarter]

@LateStarter If you would care to elaborate on your major struggles as a Shopify merchant

If you're looking to provide value to merchants, scour the Shopify forums. On this issue you can start by looking here.

 

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[LateStarter]

I've been with WooCommerce for this year since I moved from BC and it's been very good.

I used Woo for a business prior to this one. It may just be my experience but I found it less accommodating than Shopify. I was newer to ecommerce then too so it could just be that I didn't have the skills/insight I needed. The Shopify UI to dig into front-end to make code changes is well organized and easy to navigate. The historical records and reversion capabilities are nice when you're tweaking often.

 

[ilrein]

If you're looking to provide value to merchants, scour the Shopify forums. On this issue you can start by looking here.

Thanks for this one, it was an interesting skim. I also noticed that a lot of other hackers have offered apps in place of this missing core feature.

Notably:

- "Edit Order" https://apps.shopify.com/edit-order
- "Editify" https://apps.shopify.com/order-editor

They seem to skew on the side of 5 stars, with a percentage of users leaving 1 stars. A cursory glance suggests a lot of binary looking reviews -- it worked, or it didn't. Either way it's only a few apps and maybe a fresh one that doesn't have 1 stars could do well. And I don't see why this is such a struggle...Shopify API docs clearly show a PUT endpoint on orders -- which means the backend for editing order-objects without removing them is already in place. Interesting...

 

[LateStarter]

Thanks for this one, it was an interesting skim. I also noticed that a lot of other hackers have offered apps in place of this missing core feature.

Notably:

- "Edit Order" https://apps.shopify.com/edit-order
- "Editify" https://apps.shopify.com/order-editor

They seem to skew on the side of 5 stars, with a percentage of users leaving 1 stars. A cursory glance suggests a lot of binary looking reviews -- it worked, or it didn't. Either way it's only a few apps and maybe a fresh one that doesn't have 1 stars could do well. And I don't see why this is such a struggle...Shopify API docs clearly show a PUT endpoint on orders -- which means the backend for editing order-objects without removing them is already in place. Interesting...

That's another point against the Shopify ecosystem now that you mention it. I'm constantly getting emails from Developers to leave a review for their App that I've used...even if I've already left one.

Leaving reviews helps build some SEO backlinks, which is nice... but here's the wrinkle. I try to give an honest review and try to provide value to other potential customers through the comments and explaining my experience. For EVERY review I've left that's been lower than 5 stars, I get a contact from the Developer asking me to change my review! Since they are also the ones supporting the App it makes me nervous. If I don't modify my review will my level of service from them be affected somehow? Several have even offered to drop my app subscription price if I do, all with the caveat that it's done because of my comments about their price, not that they're buying a higher review. From this experience I now know that any app review is not to be trusted.

 

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[MitchC]

Just going to quickly suggest something that you probably tried and is too clunky but anyway.

You can export orders to excel spreadsheet, then connect the spreadsheet to your label maker software and automatically pull the data from the spreadsheet to create labels.

I too am looking to change from Shopify, I would like a hosted platform with one click upsells after the checkout, nice mobile themes like shopify and maybe more options with pricing for buying 2 of the same product and making landing pages. I'm thinking one checkout, but their site is so ugly I don't want my store to look like theirs. Woocommerce will do what I want but I don't want to F*ck around with updates and hosting.

Neto seems better than shopify, nice hosted platform, same price, mobile friendly, but the added bonus of no transaction fees. No one click upsells is the reason I dont change.

Does anyone know a hosted (or not) platform thats mobile friendly and does one click upsell after the checkout?

 

[LateStarter]

Just going to quickly suggest something that you probably tried and is too clunky but anyway.

You can export orders to excel spreadsheet, then connect the spreadsheet to your label maker software and automatically pull the data from the spreadsheet to create labels.

Yeah...it's a clunky option. My challenge is that I've got this running like a drop-ship and my fulfillment location is about 3 hr drive away. I don't want them to have to think. That's why I like the idea of just logging in and printing the unfulfilled order list with all the default documents that I select. It's literally like 5 button pushes for them to login and get everything they need to fulfill the orders. Invoices, packing lists, shipping labels, product labels, marketing inserts etc. Just two print operations - one 3"x4" on the label printer and 1 Letter size on the office printer. Done!

I've created a few subdomains on another site to play with. I'm going to load up Magento and Opencart for now. I'd prefer a hosted site, but they all seem to have drawbacks and I'm not looking to make trade offs just to be frustrated again.

 

[Niptuck MD]

@Keithrtay

 

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[Paul Williams]

I bought a custom web design from one of their designers. You can bet your a$$ they'll be giving me a refund, either the easy way or happily in small claims. The forgot to mention to me when I bought the customization that they were doubling their rates.

PureLocal are receiving a large number of complaints about BigCommerce , their comparatively poor functionality/features coupled with their ever-growing prices. We predict BigCommerce will fall away within a short period of time leaving the market open to more professional operations such as Volusion , Shopify etc.

The reviews we've collected about BigCommerce.com can be found here - we also have staff and associated who have been ripped off by this company hence our public statement :

BigCommerce.com Reviews | Marketing & Advertising

 

[MJ DeMarco]

The reviews we've collected about

So do you work for Pure Local?

 

[Goodfella999]

Its been years now, I read the thread in its entirety. What is everyone currently using? @biophase Im curious to see if you're still using the same setup

 

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[biophase]

Its been years now, I read the thread in its entirety. What is everyone currently using? @biophase Im curious to see if you're still using the same setup

Yup still on shopify.