Why BigCommerce is the ideal replacement for your Magento webshop

In practice, we still encounter many organizations with outdated Magento websites. Continuing to work with Magento 1, a commerce platform for which support stopped back in June 2020, is a bad idea: it is in fact relatively slow and without updates the Magento shop is more susceptible to online threats.
So now is a good time to look at alternatives. BigCommerce is an innovative and headless commerce platform that presents itself as a full-fledged and more modern alternative to Magento. In this blog, we'll tell you why BigCommerce is an interesting replacement for a legacy Magento web shop.

Why switch from Magento?

When it became clear that Magento 1 was unable to move with the changing needs of the market, Magento 2 was launched in 2015. An advance over the first version, but even the updated platform still has some significant drawbacks. We therefore give a few reasons why switching to an alternative like BigCommerce is wiser than migrating to Magento 2.

Higher costs

Magento is often seen as a synonym for big budgets. The open source version is free to download, but too basic in functionality for many professional organizations. On top of that, there are significant costs for design, hosting and technical maintenance. 

The more professional and comprehensive Magento Commerce 2 starts at $22,000 per year, regardless of implementation costs, and rises to $125,000 per year for larger and more complex shops. The Commerce Cloud variant is even pricier.

Magento can be completely curated using customization. This also means that it is a very complex platform. Do you want to make changes and keep the webshop and integrations working at the same time? Then you quickly need a whole team of developers who know the complex Magento infrastructure inside out. There are many factors and points of interest (patches, bugs, updates and interdependencies) that must be taken into account if the performance is to remain optimal. Magento is therefore not only expensive to buy, but especially expensive to develop and maintain. 

Less revenue

When choosing a new commerce platform, the range of functionalities is an important factor. Magento offers many additional features in addition to the standard functionality through third-party extensions. Often for a fee. When many of these extensions are added to a webshop, it can negatively affect the speed and therefore your income.
The complexity of Magento also makes the platform slow. The amount of extensions and plug-ins used is at the expense of the loading speed of the webshop. This is an SEO nightmare, because Google increasingly determines your ranking based on loading speed. And as everyone within retail knows: every millisecond counts!

Security and updates

Since Magento 1 no longer receives updates, it is becoming increasingly insecure and susceptible to online threats. Magento 2 is being actively developed and patches and upgrades are released regularly. However, rolling out an upgrade costs time and money. It is not uncommon for customizations or extensions to no longer function properly after an upgrade and additional development work is required to fix this.
Platforms delivered as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) do not have this problem, as this software is managed and updated by the vendor. BigCommerce is an example of this.
Want to know more about the differences between BigCommerce and Magento? Download the fact sheet!

Why BigCommerce?

Although there are many commerce platforms, certainly not every platform is suitable as a replacement for Magento. We explain the main advantages of BigCommerce and the main reasons for choosing this commerce platform here:

BigCommerce is complete, but not complex

• Thanks to the not too steep learning curve and valuable integrations, a BigCommerce webshop can be launched very quickly. All building tools for developing a shop and storefronts can also be found in one central location.

• BigCommerce is cost-effective. It helps businesses reduce costs and complexity and provides the enterprise-level features you need to continue growing.

• Because BigCommerce is a SaaS (Software as a Service) platform, users are almost completely unburdened. This is because it means paying a fixed price per month for the software and it is automatically updated by the vendor.

Innovative and future-proof technology

BigCommerce has an API-first architecture. This means that all functionalities in the platform can be accessed via an API (Application Programming Interface). This offers significant advantages:

1. Possibility of a headless storefront, giving full freedom to build the ideal customer journey for your customers and your products.

2. Modern and simple links on the back end. External systems communicate with BigCommerce via its APIs. Because integration with external software is actually realized outside the BigCommerce codebase, there is no risk that integration or extension will no longer function after a new (fully automated) release of BigCommerce.

3. Omnichannel - Native apps, marketplaces, external vendors or retailers can be linked to the BigCommerce backend.

• It is scalable and technically future-proof. The cloud-native SaaS scales automatically and without performance loss with an increase in the number of visitors and transactions.

• Theme store - In addition to the headless capabilities, BigCommerce also offers a large number of customizable standard themes, which can be used to quickly design a modern and feature-rich shop.

• Social Media integrations - selling via Instagram or Amazon, for example, can be accomplished in a few clicks.

• BigCommerce provides access to a wealth of data and valuable analysis about the performance of your webshops through analytics.

• The platform delivers both b2c and b2b solutions. As we see that in the modern digital shopping landscape the line between the two is increasingly blurred, this will bring many benefits.

• BigCommerce offers an ecosystem of over 600 verified apps that allow retailers to quickly expand their capabilities

• Powerful open APIs link internal systems (ERP, OMS, WMS) and allow you to customize the platform to your needs.

In conclusion

BigCommerce delivers a good balance between functionality, versatility and usability. You invest in a platform that gives your organization maximum business agility, both now and in the future and without the complexity of Magento. 

Would you like to get acquainted with the advantages and features of BigCommerce and are you looking for a reliable partner to help you with this? Then Touchtribe is the right partner for you. Touchtribe helps you with the implementation of BigCommerce and together we set up a future-proof e-commerce structure that is ready for fast and continuous growth. Curious about the possibilities? Please feel free to contact us.