BigCommerce alternatives: Why it might be time to switch

On June 1, BigCommerce renamed every plan, lowered the GMV thresholds, and added a fee of up to 2% on orders processed outside its approved payment list. Merchants got 60 days’ notice.

As this is Woo’s blog, our perspective is clear on a better alternative. However, not everyone affected by these changes should migrate. If migration is right for you, you deserve a transparent understanding of the costs and process before making a decision. That’s what we’ll talk about in this article.

BigCommerce bases its pricing on your revenue. Your costs increase as your revenue increases, and also when you use non-preferred payment providers or advanced features. As your business grows, so do your expenses.

BigCommerce makes money by taxing your success.

Higher monthly payments

Recent plan changes moved some merchants into higher-priced tiers. The Standard plan became Core, and its threshold dropped from $50,000 to $30,000 in trailing twelve-month (TTM) Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) — a real difference for smaller stores.

Larger stores got squeezed, too. Once your GMV passes $100,000, you’re moved to the Growth plan, which uses an overage model. BigCommerce states, “Scale uses a continuous 0.9% rate on GMV above $33,333/month, replacing the Pro plan’s fixed per-block charges.”

New transaction fees

Previously, BigCommerce promoted “zero transaction fees” as an advantage over Shopify. It now charges up to 2% in transaction fees for sales processed through payment gateways not on its Embedded Payment Providers list. Specialty and regional merchants who require unique gateways are most affected.

These fees also apply to offline and manual payment methods. For wholesalers, this can lead to significant fees on B2B purchases, sometimes exceeding the plan’s cost. However, if you use Stripe, PayPal, or another exempt provider and remain below the payment thresholds, you likely do not need to switch based on these changes.

Less access to features

Feature access follows the same pattern: less for more. Stored payment methods aren’t available on the Standard/Core plan, and product filtering requires an upgrade to Scale/Pro.

When considering switching to Woo, you should know that there are no revenue thresholds. The software is free and open source, so there are no higher-tier plans to be pushed into.

That doesn’t mean running a WooCommerce store costs nothing. You’ll still pay for the parts your business needs, like payment processing, premium extensions, and other operational tools. Some expenditures need to increase with growth. But there’s no approved or excluded provider list. Additional costs are tied directly to decisions you make and not someone else’s mandate.

What that adds up to depends on your store’s order volume, traffic, and whether you need development help. The TCO calculator gives you an estimate across hosting, transactions, extensions, and development based on your actual business.

This is the difference between paying for tools that improve your store and paying more simply because your store is successful.

BigCommerce gets to decide what growth costs because it controls more than pricing — it shapes how your store runs. Its rules, its tools.

As your store grows, the decisions that once simplified your setup start limiting you. Hosting is a good example.

BigCommerce hosts your store on its cloud servers, so performance decisions run through the platform. That’s convenient until Black Friday, when you want to control how resources scale, how caching works, and which infrastructure your store depends on. If the platform can’t keep up, every minute of downtime is lost revenue at the moment it hurts most.

WooCommerce works differently: your store runs in a WordPress environment you control. You choose your hosting provider, payment processor, and configuration.

When performance becomes the priority, you can move to a host built for high-traffic Woo stores. If you need to connect your data to reporting, fulfillment, or customer systems, you have direct access to the environment where that data lives.

Owning the foundation means you control your database, files, content, products, orders, customers, and everything connected to them. Your team can change pieces of the stack as the business changes.

When a store is starting out, connecting it to Google Analytics and an email marketing service may be sufficient. However, your technology stack will expand as your store grows.

As you grow, you need to integrate with inventory management, POS, fulfillment, subscriptions, tax, reporting, and customer systems. Reliable integrations are essential to business operations.

Both BigCommerce and WooCommerce offer apps, extensions, and APIs. However, if a required integration is missing or restricted to a workflow that doesn’t suit your business, BigCommerce requires you to adapt to its supported connections.

With an open foundation using WordPress, WooCommerce enables teams to connect systems according to business requirements. Middleware is still an option for complex operations, but it’s not the only option.

Subscriptions demonstrate this. BigCommerce has no native subscription billing, so merchants need a third-party platform. With another vendor comes another layer of transaction economics, and since BigCommerce doesn’t control those vendors, they can leave. Merchants don’t get a say and are sometimes left without an alternative to fall back on.

WooCommerce Subscriptions is $279 per year, has no per-transaction platform fee, and runs on infrastructure you control.

This is the advantage of building on WooCommerce. The open WordPress ecosystem is supported by developers, agencies, merchants, and software companies. Your roadmap is not dependent on external decisions.

Migrating from BigCommerce to WooCommerce is more manageable when you separate data migration from rebuild decisions. Moving data is straightforward; the more significant work involves design, integrations, and workflows. Most effort goes into deciding what to rebuild, not transferring data.

You can transfer product, customer, and order data to WooCommerce using CSV, API, or a migration service such as Cart2Cart. Before migrating, review the fields most important to your business, including SKUs, product variations, categories, customer records, order history, coupons, and any custom data your team relies on.

Elements requiring more consideration are those that should change after leaving BigCommerce. Your design will not transfer directly, which is expected. You’ll select a WordPress theme and replace outdated tools with WooCommerce extensions.

Your primary task is to determine which parts of your previous setup are worth rebuilding.

Retain existing URLs whenever possible. For any changed slugs, set up 301 redirects to ensure search engines and customers reach the correct pages.

Review category pages, product pages, metadata, and internal links before launch to avoid disrupting existing traffic paths to your store.

WooCommerce provides extensive migration documentation, and its community includes merchants, builders, and agencies experienced with similar transitions. While WooCommerce support does not perform migrations, you’re not starting from scratch.

Maybe it’s the fees. Maybe it’s the lack of control over hosting, payments, or data. Maybe it’s a catalog that keeps hitting BigCommerce’s 600-variant cap.

Here’s how to know: calculate everything you paid BigCommerce over the past 12 months — plan fees, overages, and the new payment fees — as a percentage of GMV. Then run your store’s numbers through the TCO calculator for the Woo side of the comparison.

Which costs on each list did you choose, and which were chosen for you? The ones chosen for you are the price of building on a platform you don’t control. On WooCommerce, you own the infrastructure, and you decide what growth costs. When you’re ready, we can help you plan the move.

About

Kathryn Marr

Kathryn Marr is the co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Blue Ivory Creative, where she combines design expertise with a deep understanding of ecommerce and WordPress. She helps brands turn complex ideas into clear, compelling content that connects with their audience — whether they’re just starting out or firmly positioned among the world’s leading companies.