Why Bigcommerce is the worst eCommerce software I've worked with!

3 months ago I decided to give Bigcommerce a chance, had a job designing a website for selling software licenses. It was far from easy to do since its not boxed products that are being sold but licenses them selves. Since I've started working with Bigcommerce I started noticing small problems, like the fact that I didnt have an option of displaying SKUs under the product boxes (had to fix that with JS) or the lack of decent looking layouts.

Im still learning web development and Bigcommerce seemed to provide a lot of help at the beginning but it turns out I have to do most of the work my self. The template they provide are terrible most are duplicated with different colours. Not only the that but the code it self is messy and some even contain errors from the start. The slide-show I had to recode fully my self because because the loading speed of the slide-show would slow down the main paid loading speed to
3-4 seconds on a really fast internet so you can imagine it on the slow one.

One of most annoying things is their Search. It does not provide filters or even correct results and often leaves customers going through 5-6 pages of results looking for the correct one. I've contacted Bigcommerce about this and they suggested SearchSpring, a 3rd party search app which does everything Bigcommerce should be doing from the beginning. Since they said this is the only option I contacted SearchSpring and they quoted me the monthly fee of £100 based on a low
estimated traffic (100 unique visitors a day), the fee ofcourse will go up once you start gaining more traffic. Bigcommerce of course get a great % of that since they are upselling these services to everyone.

Bigcommerce works on a principal of "Oh something doesnt work on the platform? theres an app for that!" for which you have to pay of course. The platform has ridiculous number of limitations, no access to PHP, NO in-house charging system, no decent customer support, as any other Bigcommerce customer will know if you have an issue you should probably search on their forum
for a solution or post it on IDEAS page where they will make to ignore it.

The number of problems goes on. But i would love to hear what you guys think! Did any of you had experience with Bigcommerce? Is there a better eCommerce platform that you can recommend?

The website that i created is www.licenses-direct.com would be great to hear what you guys think about the website as well! Any changes?

 

Woah, that is some pretty serious issues man, i will definitively stay clear of this software, i had actually considered for a site i'm thinking about, will not go with it now though, I have tested PrestaShop before, do you have any development experience with that?

 

I wouldnt advice this software unless your website sells clothing, even then Volusion is way better for that. From what i've heard Magento is more or less
an industry standard for an eCommerce website, will have to give that a go one day.

Never used PrestaShop, is it good? havent actually heard much about the software

 

I found the control panel in Magento to be quite confusing, PrestaShop i found to be more easy, although I only tested them for 10 minutes or so.
PrestaShop is Open Source so it would probably be more developer friendly.

 

Hi Andrii,

I know I have personally responded to a few of your inquiries a couple of times in the Bigcommerce forum. You are clearly really frustrated and unhappy. I'd really like to set up a time to chat with you and figure out what we can do to help you out moving forward.

From your initial posts in the Bigcommerce forum, almost all of them were about search. In terms of search functionality, many of our clients- including one of our client forum mods- chimed in with some good suggestions.

 

hosted solution 3/10 your ability to be human and awesome about a clearly untenable solution 7/10 you deserve a raise and a job with a better brand. Not bad for your first post in a minefield of crazy though

Nigel

 

Its not that bad, he just has a hair across his ass about not being able to deliver something he thought he could. This place is ripe with web firms who profess to do stuff but cant actually do anything.

Nigel

 

One of the best and with magneto features eCommerce software i have found so far is OpenCart . So why not give it a try and move from this troubled software .

 

Man my response to the OP was a tad snarky, sorry bro... shouldn't drink and surf the web lol..

Nigel

 

I haven't used BigCommerce before. As to your site, it looks good. Maybe you can add live chat to your site, which gives your customer real-time online support, such as Comm100 Live Chat, Live Person, etc.

 

I have never had a problem with BigCommerce and I always refer all of my clients to them. Honestly, BigCommerce is the best hosted shopping cart available on the market today. However, as with every service, some users will have bad experience.

If you would like a good alternative, I would suggest Shopify or even Volusion. Both of these are in the BigCommerce price range.

 

I recommend Volusion as an alternative to Bigcommerce as well. It's an all in one ecommerce platform and has much better features/usability then Bigcommerce. If you are looking for an open source platform then I suggest going with Magento. I haven't used it, but have heard good things.

 

I see an increase for volusion based ecommerce site.

 

I've been using Shopify and its not bad...the one thing that drive me crazy though is that you have to pay a monthly subscription for absolutely everything...coming from a wordpress background where its almost all free it drive me nuts...money grabbing........good platform though

 

my 2 cents.. been working with wordpress for 4+ years, php, mysql, jquery and even done some perl and ruby, but have found using bigcommerce to be frustratingly slow, the inability to use php is frustrating and their file system takes some getting used to.

when it comes to ecommerce platform I Will in most cases go for prestashop
magento is great for multiple store locations or you need to synchronize your POS to MYOB or you are stuck with a POS that is only written for magento

 

I seem to be at issue with some of this...

Firstly, shopify is a hosted solution much like big commerce or volusion so I fail to see the comparison with Magento.

More noteworthy... "Magento does not use best practice programming and coding for deeper level customization"

Can you please expound on that for me?

Unless I am missing something that statement is completely insane. Standards wise Magento follows the zend framework http://framework.zend.com/manual/1.12/en/coding-standard.coding-style.html

The logic is entirely separated from the visuals. So, I again ask, what are you talking about?

Nigel

 

I have to say I agree 100% and I could not have said it better! I have had so many problems with bigcommerce. First problem I had was the shopping cart area. After getting an order ready, making an account (or checking out as a guest) it would take all payment info and then circle my customers back to the beginning of the checkout process. ANNOYING! This is 1 of 7 things I have had happen in a matter of two months of using their service. Their customer service absolutely sucked. They wanted me to do all the footwork for them by uploading videos of the issue happening, Even getting to the point of them chewing me out in an email. When I was nothing but polite to them when trying to get help. I do not recommend this service to anyone. If you are good at using code I would go with magento or something else. As for the templates. I don't think mine is bad that I used. That was one thing I was happy about. If you want to go look feel free to let me know what you think. junglevape.com is the address. I'm not trying to spam or anything like that. I'm new to this group so I don't know if that is OK or not. If not I'll be happy to get rid of the link as it's not necessary anyway. But does anyone else know of a good one other than big commerce or magento? I'm in the market for a new company/software for my online store.

 

Incredibly useful for me!

 

I've never used Bigcommerce myself, but I will absolutely admit that the poor search functionality is enough to put me off of it already. Few things drive me more nuts in an online store than a bad search function, and bad search is probably one of the leading causes of people abandoning a store because they can't find what they want.

 

I have used many different types of shopping cart systems, both hosted versions like BigCommerce or Shopify, and self-hosted versions like OpenCart, Magento, PrestaShop, etc. There are pros and cons to each system. It just depends on your requirements, your technical expertise or how much you want to pay someone with technical expertise.

When you listed all of the problems with BigCommerce, it sounded like someone that is frustrated with the limitations of a hosted ecommerce platform. It sounds like you are ready to move your ecommerce system off the cloud and go with a more customizable cart system.

I would recommend something opensource like OpenCart or Magento. OpenCart is easier to use and has lots of affordable extensions. Magento is also an option but if you need the enterprise edition it is not cheap.

Hope this helps.