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WooCommerce vs BigCommerce

When you’re about to launch an ecommerce store, the choice of platform is one of the most critical decisions you need to make. BigCommerce and WooCommerce offer two different paths. BigCommerce is an all-in-one SaaS solution, while WooCommerce is a flexible open-source platform.

In this comparison article, we examine the BigCommerce platform and Angry Creative’s Qala WooCommerce solution. We review the differences between them and what should be considered when choosing an ecommerce platform.

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BigCommerce vs WooCommerce vs Qala WooCommerce

BigCommerce

WooCommerce

Qala WooCommerce

Features

BigCommerce: BigCommerce is designed to offer a complete ecommerce solution suitable for all types of businesses, from small to large. With features that support omnichannel selling and global expansion, the platform is a great option for businesses that want to start selling internationally. It has advanced solutions for B2B commerce, headless commerce, and the ability to handle group and wholesale commerce, making it a flexible option.

WooCommerce: WooCommerce offers thousands of plugins. Users can customise everything from basic ecommerce functionalities to advanced SEO tools and create unique customer experiences using WordPress as a foundation.

Qala WooCommerce: Qala WooCommerce enhances standard WooCommerce with specific features, such as ready-made modules, improved payment solutions, intelligent search, fast filtering, and much more. This makes it easy to offer a seamless shopping experience for customers.

Ease of use

BigCommerce: BigCommerce is designed for simplicity, allowing users to get started quickly without technical expertise. The platform offers an intuitive admin panel, powerful built-in marketing tools, and extensive support resources that make it easy for users to manage their ecommerce business.

WooCommerce: WooCommerce requires more technical knowledge, especially in WordPress and web hosting management. However, the flexibility offered by WordPress allows for unbeatable, customised solutions.

Qala WooCommerce: Qala WooCommerce aims to simplify the user experience by offering a platform that is already customised with ready-made and tailored modules, adapted to your needs. This reduces the need for additional configuration and customisation.

Editorial content

BigCommerce: BigCommerce offers a wide range of features for managing content, including built-in tools for creating SEO-optimised product pages and blog posts. The platform provides the ability to integrate with various CMS for more dynamic content management, though not to the same degree as WooCommerce and WordPress.

WooCommerce: As a plugin for WordPress, WooCommerce offers great opportunities when it comes to content management. WordPress is known for its flexible features, such as Custom Post Type (CPT), extensive SEO tools, and the ability to integrate with all leading content management tools.

Qala WooCommerce: Qala WooCommerce enhances WooCommerce’s editorial capabilities by introducing specific tools and features optimised to facilitate all types of on-page content management.

Flexibility

BigCommerce: Provides broad opportunities for customisation via its API and an extensive app marketplace. This allows users to integrate their ecommerce solution with various external services and platforms, customise their stores and enhance functionality based on their specific business needs.

WooCommerce: WooCommerce excels in customisability, with access to an extensive collection of WordPress themes and plugins as well as the ability to directly modify code to create a completely unique online store.

Qala WooCommerce: With Qala WooCommerce, you get additional customisation options that are specifically targeted to meet specific requirements and preferences. You get access to ready-made modules, while the open source code offers great flexibility for personal customisations.

Performance

BigCommerce: BigCommerce guarantees high performance and availability, which is crucial for businesses that require reliability and the ability to handle large volumes of traffic and transactions.

WooCommerce: WooCommerce’s performance is dependent on the quality of hosting and configuration.

Qala WooCommerce: Qala WooCommerce offers specific performance enhancements tailored for ecommerce merchants that require a stable foundation. This includes optimisations for server configurations and caching that are particularly valuable during peak seasons and campaigns, ensuring a smooth customer experience even during traffic peaks.

SEO & Marketing

BigCommerce: BigCommerce offers comprehensive SEO features such as automatically optimised URL structures, metadata management and integrated tools to increase search engine visibility. The platform also offers a range of built-in marketing tools to help drive campaigns and analyse traffic.

WooCommerce: WooCommerce comes with access to a huge range of WordPress plugins for SEO and marketing. This includes everything from Yoast SEO for content optimisation to Google Analytics integrations for traffic analysis. The customisation options here are extremely high, giving companies the opportunity to tailor their SEO and marketing strategy.

Qala WooCommerce: With Qala WooCommerce, you can make all sorts of settings you can think of around SEO.

Scalability

BigCommerce: Designed to handle scaling efficiently, BigCommerce supports everything from small businesses to larger enterprises with complex needs. The platform offers a robust infrastructure that can handle high traffic and large product catalogues without performance issues.

WooCommerce: While WooCommerce itself can scale to a certain extent, much of its scalability depends on the underlying hosting solution and how the site is optimised. For larger operations, significant customisation and optimisation may be required.

Qala WooCommerce: Qala WooCommerce takes scalability into account through optimised performance settings and custom solutions that help you grow without technical limitations. Qala is developed with several unique components and solutions that enable high load and performance.

Price

BigCommerce: BigCommerce’s pricing model is based on subscriptions, where costs increase with the platform’s features and capabilities. This model can be beneficial for businesses that require scalability without large initial investments, but can be expensive if you plan to scale up in the future.

WooCommerce: Although WooCommerce is free to use, there are additional costs for hosting, themes, plugins and any custom development. These costs can vary depending on your needs and scale.

Qala WooCommerce: Qala WooCommerce offers a cost-effective solution with many advanced features included. Qala involves a slightly higher initial cost, but then transitions to a cost-effective pricing model where there’s plenty of room for your ecommerce business to grow.

Selling internationally

BigCommerce: BigCommerce supports international sales through multilingual storefronts, local currency and global payment solutions. The platform is great for businesses that want to start selling internationally.

However, the BigCommerce storefront solution fails to scale properly and needs to adapt multiple storefronts to many different markets.

WooCommerce: WooCommerce supports international sales through various plugins that allow multilingual functionality and integrations with international payment options. However, it requires a lot of customisation to implement.

Qala WooCommerce: Qala WooCommerce offers a multisite architecture, which includes features such as integrated translation tools and support for local payment systems customised for different international markets. This makes it easier to reach out to customers globally, while maintaining a local presence.

Support

BigCommerce: BigCommerce is known for its high-quality support, available 24/7 via phone, live chat, and email. They also offer online resources, including guides, webinars, and a community forum to help users solve problems and optimise their use of the platform.

WooCommerce: WooCommerce does not offer direct support.

Qala WooCommerce: With Qala WooCommerce, you get ongoing support, which includes maintenance, technical help, and consulting.

Brief summary

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is suitable for small and medium-sized businesses without an existing ERP system. The main advantage is the smooth management of products and orders in one place. The platform doesn’t offer the same customisation options and bespoke solutions as WooCommerce.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a powerful alternative, where a lot depends on the hosting solution and how the platform is built. As an open-source platform, it can be challenging to build an optimised e-commerce without technical knowledge.

Qala WooCommerce

Qala removes complex learning curves and expansion challenges by offering a ready-made set of developed solutions, ready to be implemented in your ecommerce store.

Qala uses a PIM system for product management. Thanks to Qala’s foundation in WooCommerce, you also get access to WordPress, a leading CMS that simplifies all content management on your website.

Content management and ease of use

BigCommerce

A prominent feature of BigCommerce is its centralised back-end management. The platform is designed to bring everything from product information and customer databases to order management together in one place, regardless of market. BigCommerce offers global blocks that can appear on all pages within a site, which is useful for consistent content like footers and navigation menus.

Their CMS has some features, but not to the same extent as WooCommerce and WordPress. The Storefront feature works well for a limited number of markets, but becomes less effective when advanced and specific customisations are required.

Qala WooCommerce

Qala offers ready-made modules that allow for a quick start and extensive customisation options. With WooCommerce also comes WordPress, an unbeatable CMS that is very efficient for creating and managing content. Qala supports multiple payment modules and customised checkout processes for local markets, which is not possible with BigCommerce.

Product management is done via a PIM system and thanks to WooCommerce’s open source code, you get a highly customisable website.

Selling internationally

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a great platform for businesses looking to expand internationally. The platform offers different storefronts to create customised versions of the website in multiple languages and supports local currency.

In addition, BigCommerce integrates global payment solutions, which includes support for different payment systems and credit cards used in different countries. The global and local blocks facilitate quick translations and minor changes on multiple pages.

Qala WooCommerce

Qala WooCommerce leverages WordPress’ multisite architecture to offer an optimal solution for international expansion. Multisite allows you to easily manage multiple sites from a single WordPress installation, which is particularly useful for centralising the administration of separate and customised sites for different regions or countries.

Qala also includes integrated translation tools and supports local payment systems, providing the ability to offer the most popular payment methods in each market.

Pricing structure

BigCommerce

BigCommerce uses a subscription-based pricing model that varies depending on features and capabilities. This allows for scalability without large upfront costs, which is beneficial for smaller businesses looking to grow gradually.

However, costs can quickly increase as the company expands and needs more advanced features.

Qala WooCommerce

Qala WooCommerce is a cost-effective solution that balances price and performance. Initially, Qala may have higher startup costs compared to BigCommerce, but over time this investment becomes more cost-effective.

Once your ecommerce platform is established, ongoing costs will be relatively low and the model supports sustainable growth without ongoing costs spiralling out of control.

Features

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is designed for global expansion and omnichannel selling, making it a great choice for businesses looking to reach international markets. The platform supports advanced B2B features and allows for easy integration with payment gateways, logistics providers, and CRM systems, which is critical for an effective omnichannel strategy.

You won’t have the same customisation options as with WooCommerce, but you’ll get a user-friendly interface and powerful administrative tools, making it easy for businesses to manage their website without extensive technical expertise.

Qala WooCommerce

Qala WooCommerce offers pre-configured modules for quick implementation and easy customisation. Integrated payment solutions enable smooth transactions across multiple markets. Features like intelligent search and fast filtering improve user experience and increase website efficiency.

Qala gives you great customisation options and is particularly effective in optimising the customer journey and ensuring a smooth shopping experience, regardless of the customer’s geographical location.

SEO and marketing tools

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is heavily focused on optimising SEO and offers powerful features to improve website visibility. The platform automates the creation of SEO-friendly URL structures and enables metadata customisation. BigCommerce also offers efficient campaign management.

Qala WooCommerce

Qala WooCommerce uses the WordPress platform to provide access to extensive marketing features. This allows users to effectively improve their website’s ranking and optimise marketing campaigns with various tools tailored to different needs.

Support

BigCommerce

BigCommerce offers high-quality support available 24/7 via phone, live chat, and email. In addition to direct support, there is a wide range of online resources, including guides, webinars and a community forum.

Qala WooCommerce

We are constantly alert to potential challenges and opportunities for improvement. We also handle regular maintenance of your site to ensure everything is working properly. As our customer, you also always have the opportunity to make ongoing suggestions for improvements or adjustments.

By providing dedicated support, we help our users to effectively deal with any challenges that arise during operation.

Scalability and performance

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is built to grow with your business. This means that the platform can not only scale up smoothly but also maintain high performance during periods of high traffic and large product catalogues.

This combination of scalability and performance allows BigCommerce to offer a reliable platform for businesses striving for growth without compromising on speed or availability.

Problems can arise with BigCommerce when you start scaling and selling to multiple markets. Because you don’t have a multi-store feature, everything has to be managed from one website, which can be problematic when you need to customise many different storefronts.

Qala WooCommerce

Qala WooCommerce offers features that promote growth and efficiency, including a multisite architecture. This structure provides great flexibility for each individual site and market, which is crucial in global expansion. With the introduction of WooCommerce 8.2 and High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS), the management of large volumes of customer orders is streamlined. Server optimisation and advanced caching solutions improve performance, which is critical during peak seasons and promotions.

For more information about Qala and how Angry Creative can help your business, fill out the form below and get in touch!

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FAQ

What are the most important factors to consider when choosing between BigCommerce and Qala WooCommerce?

It’s important to assess what your business needs will look like in the future. Are you planning to scale up your business and are you planning to expand globally, these are important questions to answer before making your choice.

How customisable are BigCommerce and Qala WooCommerce for unique business needs?

BigCommerce offers a great and stable platform to get started with, but it can become limiting when requiring unique solutions. WooCommerce along with Qala offers a ready-made framework that allows a quick start, while giving you an open-soruce environment to make whatever customisations you want.