The 8 best BigCommerce alternatives in 2026

Why merchants are leaving BigCommerce in 2026

Let me be fair to BigCommerce first, because it deserves it. It's an "open by design" SaaS platform with full API and code access, headless storefronts, native multi-currency and multi-storefront, and a genuinely strong B2B feature set. Big brands like BMW and The RealReal run on it for a reason. For years its headline advantage over Shopify was simple: no card transaction fees when you use one of its embedded payment providers.

So what changed? In 2026 BigCommerce restructured its pricing. The old Standard, Plus, and Pro plans became Core, Growth, and Scale, and the old Enterprise tier became Performance. On paper the sticker prices look normal: Core at $29/mo, Growth at $79/mo, Scale at $299/mo (annual billing). The problem is how you land on a plan. Your tier is set by your trailing-12-month sales, and crossing a threshold triggers an automatic upgrade to the next one.

When BigCommerce lowered those thresholds in 2026, merchants who hadn't changed anything about their business suddenly qualified for a much pricier plan. The reaction on BigCommerce's own community forum was blunt:

"My monthly cost increased from $129 to $423 per month after BigCommerce lowered the sales threshold for my plan... I've been a loyal customer for over 10 years and was disappointed to learn that there is no grandfathering option available."

Dawn Stahl, BigCommerce Community

Another merchant did the math out loud:

"My June invoice was $111.83. My July invoice was $521.84... This represents a 366% month-over-month increase... I'm getting away from BigCommerce."

Sci-Supply.com merchant, BigCommerce Community

That's the switch trigger. It's not that BigCommerce got worse as a product, it's that the bill became unpredictable and detached from the value you're getting. When your platform cost climbs because you had a good year (or because someone moved a line), it's reasonable to ask what else is out there. For the full breakdown, we keep a running BigCommerce pricing post updated, plus a fuller BigCommerce review.

How I picked these alternatives

I weighted four things a real buyer cares about, not a feature checklist:

• Real, current pricing, including the fees that don't show on the sticker (transaction fees, hosting, add-ons).
• Who it's actually for, because "best" is meaningless without a use case. A solo maker and a $50M brand want opposite things.
• The specific gap it fills versus BigCommerce, whether that's cheaper, simpler, more powerful, or zero-fee.
• What real users say on G2, Capterra, and vendor forums, not marketing copy.

Here's how the eight land against each other on the two axes that matter most: how much technical lift they need, and how far they scale.

The 8 best BigCommerce alternatives at a glance

Now the detail on each, in the same shape every time: what it's best for, the features, pros, cons, pricing, and my verdict.

1. Shopify

Best for: merchants who want the biggest app ecosystem and the smoothest setup, and who'll either use Shopify Payments or accept the third-party gateway fee.

Shopify is the default BigCommerce alternative, and for good reason. Merchants have collectively made $1.1 trillion in sales on it, and its checkout (Shop Pay) is the platform's genuine flagship. The 21,000+ apps mean almost any feature gap is one install away, and its newer Sidekick AI assistant and agentic-commerce push keep it ahead on the AI-shopping curve. If you want deeper reading, we cover Shopify AI and the best Shopify chatbot apps separately.

Features: highest-converting checkout, an AI store builder, Sidekick AI in the admin, Shopify Markets for international selling, POS for in-person retail, and Hydrogen/Oxygen for headless builds.

Pros: the largest app ecosystem, the easiest admin in the category (G2's most-praised trait), strong multichannel and POS, and a deep enterprise tier in Plus.

Cons: the classic knock is cost creep. G2's most-cited complaint is simply "Expensive."

"Monthly costs add up quickly. The base subscription is only one part of the total cost, and merchants often end up paying extra for premium themes, apps, transaction fees, email tools, additional subscriptions, and advanced analytics."

Shopify review, G2

Pricing: Basic $29/mo, Grow $79/mo, Advanced $299/mo, and Plus from $2,300/mo (annual). The catch versus BigCommerce is the up-to-2% fee on third-party payment gateways unless you use Shopify Payments.

Verdict: if BigCommerce's pricing spooked you and you just want the safest, most-supported platform, Shopify is the pick. Just model the total cost honestly, because apps and gateway fees are where the real bill lives. We keep a dedicated list of Shopify alternatives if it's not quite right either.

2. WooCommerce

Best for: teams that want full control, no platform fee, and no revenue share, and that have the technical resources to run it.

WooCommerce is the free, open-source ecommerce plugin for WordPress, and it's the polar opposite of a locked SaaS. It powers 4M+ stores and around 31% of the top million ecommerce sites, mostly because 43% of the web already runs on WordPress. Its whole pitch against BigCommerce is 0% revenue share and no platform fee. For the deeper dive, see our WooCommerce review and WooCommerce AI writeups.

Features: an open-source core with unlimited products, orders, and API calls, bring-any-payments with no gateway penalty, a huge extension marketplace, and deep WordPress content and SEO integration.

Pros: total control over code, data, and checkout, no lock-in, unlimited product variants (BigCommerce caps at 600), and it scales from a tiny shop to a $300M+ merchant.

Cons: you own hosting, security, updates, and uptime. The real cost is hidden in development and plugins, and a serious store is a build project, not a sign-up. WooCommerce's own total-cost examples show a $2M-revenue brand spending roughly $139,000 in year one, most of it dev labor and payment fees.

Pricing: the core is $0. Budget $25 to $350/mo for hosting, $29 to $299/yr per paid extension, and standard processor fees (WooPayments runs about 2.9% + 30¢). No platform fee, ever.

Verdict: if the thing that burned you about BigCommerce was paying a platform for the privilege of your own growth, WooCommerce removes that entirely. The trade is that you (or an agency) are now the infrastructure team.

3. Adobe Commerce (Magento)

Best for: large merchants with complex, high-SKU, multi-brand, or B2B catalogs, especially those already in the Adobe ecosystem.

Adobe Commerce is the platform formerly known as Magento, and it comes in two flavors people constantly conflate: the paid, quote-based enterprise edition, and Magento Open Source, the free self-hosted core. Neither is a like-for-like SaaS swap for BigCommerce, but for genuinely large catalogs it's a step up in raw power. It rates 4.0/5 across 625 reviews on G2. If content generation at scale is your angle, we wrote up Magento AI separately.

Features: effectively unlimited customization, multi-site and multi-brand at scale, strong native B2B (company accounts, quoting, custom catalogs), content staging, and deep Adobe Experience Cloud and AI integrations.

Pros: the most flexible platform here, genuinely built for scale and complexity, with a free entry point via Open Source for teams with dev capacity.

Cons: it's expensive and heavy. G2's average implementation time is about 5 months, and developer dependency is the top complaint.

"The developer dependency is the most frustrating part honestly. A lot of customizations that feel like they should be manageable through the admin panel end up requiring developer involvement, which slows things down and adds cost."

Praney M., Product Design Manager, G2

Pricing: Adobe publishes nothing. Third-party estimates put licenses at roughly $22k to $190k+/yr, with total cost of ownership often $120k to $450k+/yr once you add hosting, dev, and extensions. Magento Open Source has no license fee but still needs paid hosting and developers.

Verdict: only worth it if you've genuinely outgrown SaaS. If you're leaving BigCommerce to save money, Adobe Commerce is the wrong direction. If you're leaving because you've hit a scale ceiling, it's one of the few real answers.

4. Wix

Best for: small, simple, design-forward stores run by non-technical owners.

Wix is an AI-powered website builder with a bolt-on store, and its calling card is a freeform drag-and-drop editor that lets you place anything anywhere. Where BigCommerce is commerce-first, Wix is design-first with commerce as one module. It holds a 4.2/5 from 1,883 reviews on G2, and notably charges no added Wix transaction fee on business plans.

Features: the most layout freedom of any mainstream builder, hundreds of templates, built-in AI content tools, and bundled bookings and marketing for service businesses that also sell.

Pros: the fastest, most flexible no-code design experience, genuinely all-in-one (site, store, blog, bookings), and no Wix transaction fee.

Cons: ecommerce depth is shallower than BigCommerce, support is a recurring gripe, and its historical SEO and site-performance scores are weak.

"I really like how easy Wix is to use... This simplicity helps lower the barriers to entry for new website builders like me, reducing anxiety and fear."

Wix review, G2

Pricing: the $17/mo Light plan can't sell online, so real ecommerce starts at Core $29/mo, then Business $39/mo, then Business Elite $159/mo (annual).

Verdict: great if your store is small and your brand's look matters more than catalog depth. If you're moving off BigCommerce because you need more commerce power, Wix is a downgrade, not a fix.

5. Squarespace

Best for: design-led and creator stores, artists, boutiques, and course or membership sellers.

Squarespace is the design-quality pick. Its templates are the reason people choose it, and it does portfolios, blogs, scheduling, memberships, and donations alongside the store. It's served 14M+ entrepreneurs and, like BigCommerce, has restructured its plans: the current lineup is Basic $19, Core $29, Plus $49, and Advanced $99 per month.

Features: best-in-class templates, sales of physical and digital products plus memberships and subscriptions, built-in AI copy tools, and store management (shipping, tax, payments) in one place.

Pros: the best design polish out of the box, a true all-in-one, and 0% platform transaction fee from the $29 Core plan up.

Cons: it's not built for large-catalog or high-volume merchants, the entry Basic plan adds a 2% store fee, payment-gateway choice is limited, and the Commerce APIs are gated to the top $99 plan.

Pricing: Basic $19/mo (2% store fee), Core $29/mo (0% fee), Plus $49/mo, Advanced $99/mo (annual). Card processing starts at 2.9% + 30¢ and drops with tier.

Verdict: if your store is a beautiful storefront for a focused catalog, Squarespace is a lovely home. If you're on BigCommerce because you needed faceted search, B2B, or multi-storefront, Squarespace won't replace that.

6. Ecwid by Lightspeed

Best for: sellers who already have a website and want to add checkout without rebuilding, and anyone who wants the cheapest possible entry.

Ecwid (now Ecwid by Lightspeed) isn't a full website platform, it's an embeddable store widget you drop into an existing WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace site. That "add a store to what you already have" model is genuinely different from everything else here, and it charges $0 transaction fees on every plan. It rates 4.6/5 from 582 reviews on Capterra.

Features: the add-to-any-site widget, a code-free Instant Site builder, omnichannel selling across Instagram, TikTok, Amazon and more, and standard store ops (inventory, tax, shipping).

Pros: the cheapest entry in this set, no transaction fees, the best "bolt a store onto an existing site" experience, and the stability of Lightspeed's POS ecosystem.

Cons: it's not a standalone website platform, SEO controls are basic, lower tiers cap product counts (10 / 100 / 2,500), and inventory-sync friction shows up at scale.

Pricing: Starter $5/mo, Venture $29/mo, Business $49/mo, Unlimited $119/mo (paid annually), all with $0 transaction fees. (Ecwid's March 2026 pricing change shifted the old forever-free plan toward the $5 Starter, so confirm the current free status when you sign up.)

Verdict: if you don't want to leave your current site at all and just need a checkout, Ecwid is the least disruptive move on this list. For a large, standalone catalog, you'll outgrow it.

7. Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Best for: global enterprise brands (roughly $10M+ online revenue) that need deep omnichannel and are already invested in Salesforce.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is the heavyweight end of the spectrum, spanning B2C, B2B, order management, POS, and payments, all wrapped in Salesforce's Agentforce AI layer. Salesforce claims 99.99% uptime and a 10-year run as a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader. It's far more capable, and far more expensive, than BigCommerce. If you're weighing the broader Salesforce stack for support too, we compared Service Cloud and Zendesk.

Features: B2C and B2B commerce, distributed order management, a modern POS, composable/headless storefronts, and deep native ties to Salesforce CRM, Marketing, and Data Cloud.

Pros: enterprise-grade scale and omnichannel depth, the strongest ecosystem integration if you're already a Salesforce shop, and a serious AI story.

Cons: pricing is quote-only and historically a percentage of your gross merchandise value, so the bill scales with your sales. Total cost of ownership is high, and it needs a dev team or implementation partner.

Pricing: every edition shows "Contact for pricing." Partner-reported rates land around 1% to 3% of GMV, and most guidance says it only pencils out above roughly $10M in annual online revenue.

Verdict: overkill for anyone leaving BigCommerce to simplify or save. But if you're leaving because you've become a global, omnichannel enterprise, this is the tier you're graduating into.

8. Shift4Shop

Best for: US-based merchants willing to use Shift4 Payments in exchange for a genuinely free platform.

Shift4Shop (formerly 3dcart, acquired by Shift4 Payments in 2020) has the most distinctive offer here: its End-to-End plan, pitched as a $229/mo value, is free when you process payments through Shift4. The processor makes its money on your transactions, so the software comes free. It rates 4.1/5 from 129 reviews on Capterra.

Features: unlimited products and bandwidth, no revenue caps, a built-in CRM, real-time shipping, 100+ free themes, and included SSL and domain registration.

Pros: a feature-rich store at $0 for US merchants, no setup or transaction fees beyond normal processor rates, and a lot bundled in out of the box.

Cons: the free tier locks you to Shift4 Payments, the model is effectively US-only, the free status is tied to an (undisclosed) minimum monthly processing volume, and there are post-acquisition reports of downtime and slow support.

"They had an excellent plan where you got the cart free if you used their payment processor."

Kelly H, Web specialist, Capterra

Verdict: if you're a US merchant with no strong processor loyalty, the free platform is a real deal. If you're outside the US or want processor choice, the math falls apart fast.

The one thing every platform on this list leaves you to solve

Here's the part that gets lost in every platform comparison. Picking a store is the easy half. The moment you're live, you inherit a support queue: where's my order, I need a refund, the discount code didn't work, can I change my shipping address. That queue is the same brutal tier-1 grind whether you're on Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce.

I've watched this pattern for years running AI on live ecommerce support queues. One thing that surprised me early: the confident-sounding bots were the dangerous ones, because they'd answer a shipping question with a wrong policy and nobody noticed until the refund requests spiked. That's why every rollout we do now gets simulated against past tickets before it ever replies to a customer. It's also why a merchant like Design.com can run 50,000+ tickets a month through AI on Freshdesk without the wheels coming off.

The point for this post: replatforming your store doesn't have to mean replatforming your support. Your helpdesk and your store are separate layers, so switching off BigCommerce doesn't touch your support stack at all.

Try eesel for your store

Whichever platform you land on from this list, eesel AI is the layer that handles the tickets it creates. It plugs into the helpdesks ecommerce teams already run (Gorgias, Zendesk, Freshdesk, and more), learns from your past tickets and help docs on day one, and connects to Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce order data so it can actually answer "where is my order" instead of deflecting it.

The part I'd point a nervous switcher to is the simulation mode: before it goes live, eesel runs against your historical tickets so you see exactly what it would have said and what it would have resolved, no guessing. Pricing is usage-based at 40¢ per resolved ticket with no per-seat fees, which is a refreshing contrast to a platform bill that jumps because you had a good quarter. Here's what eesel looks like working directly inside a Shopify support flow:

You can try eesel free, connect it to your helpdesk in a few minutes, and see it resolve real tickets before you commit to anything.