Why did BigCommerce Change its Pricing and Charging Some Clients Much More?

Please scroll below to see a Migration Guide from BigCommerce to Volusion, Magento and Shopify

BigCommerce recently started informing its most successful client clients (by volume) that they would be charging them 3-10+ times more per month. At Optimum7, we work with ecommerce platforms such as Volusion, BigCommerce, Shopify and Magento. Since August of 2015, we have migrated close to 20 ecommerce sites from BigCommerce to other shopping carts.

So, why is BigCommerce doing this, considering that it is hurting their reputation and their core base of customers since some of these stores that we have migrated have been with BigCommerce for over 5 years? Here are some answers for frustrated BigCommerce customers who do not want to pay more;

1) Profitability

It’s hard for an ecommerce platform to function efficiently and be profitable. BigCommerce’s overhead along with support staff, bandwidth and other costs are high. Since BigCommerce did not initially have an enterprise solution, they might be trying to milk their top performing customers who do a lot of volume. It might just be a strategy to bring in additional revenue through their top subscribers. Yes, it does suck to go from paying $200 to $2,000 a month, however the alternate option of having to migrate might look too painful for most storeowners.

2) A Change in Direction

BigCommerce might be trying to step into the enterprise ecommerce niche along with systems like Magento Enterprise and Mozu by Volusion. There’s a lot of money to be made in enterprise ecommerce and this might be a step in the right direction. BigCommerce is a big company and they probably weighed the pros and cons of upsetting their core customer base before making a decision like this.

3) A Wrong Decision by a C-Level Executive Who Does Not Understand the Ecommerce Business

Sometimes, a change in management will force decisions such as this one to improve efficiency, revenue or to show promising numbers or forecasts. This might be one of those mistakes that will hurt BigCommerce in the long term. This whole thing might be an idea from a few top-level individuals who do not really understand the significance of core subscribers.

4) Eliminating High Maintenance Clients
Bigcommerce might just be eliminating the 1-5% of clients that take up most of their resources. It’s a lot easier to increase the price than to fire a customer. Therefore, this might be a specific strategy to just get rid of the unprofitable client base for Bigcommerce.

So, How Many People Are Migrating Away from BigCommerce?

According to the stats that we have, we see that approximately 1,000 sites have migrated away from BigCommerce in the past 6 months. Most of this business was picked up by Volusion and Shopify.

What Should You Do if BigCommerce Is Trying to Charge You More for Your Ecommerce Store?

That really depends on the following;

• How comfortable are you with BigCommerce now?
• Do you think that the value proposition is there to pay 3-10x more per month?
• How painful will it be for you to migrate in the short term?
• How painful will it be to pay 3x-10x more in the next 5 years?

I think that after you consider the above, you will have a clear answer on what you should do. In our experience, we have seen that the monthly increase in fees charged by BigCommerce is significant and a migration to another platform makes sense. However, please bear in mind that each store is different.

Can I Keep My Customizations and Same Functionality / Design If I Migrate from BigCommerce to Volusion, Shopify or Magento?

Absolutely! There are many other ecommerce platforms that are also capable. However, the migration process can be complex especially if you have a lot of product options, customizations and thousands of products, orders and customers. You must either have very experienced in-house staff, or you must seek the expertise of an Ecommerce Consultant to handle this migration for you.

At Optimum7, we have migrated hundreds of ecommerce sites with success and we have a very efficient migration execution that addresses every single element that’s essential. A basic list is below:

• Migration of Products, Product Options, Swatches, Images (to save bandwidth), customers and orders. (Some ecommerce platforms make transferring orders very difficult and this can only be done through API)
• Migration of design. Addition of a responsive theme unless you already have one to improve mobile conversion rates
• Migration of customizations or 3^rd party tools / integrations. This is a key if you sell on 3^rd party platforms such as Amazon, Jet, EBay, Google Shopping etc. Also, you might have custom functionality that you have build may need to be re-structured at another ecommerce platform.
• Changing URLs and 301 Redirects. You would be amazed at how many people miss this detail and mess up their Google ranking that took them years to get. You need to let a professional handle this very carefully.
• 404 errors, advanced search and filter, email templates, payment system setup, checkout rules and conditions etc. These are all very essential for your business to keep running efficiently.
• Shipping operation and integration of batch shipping options. This is also a key element since various ecommerce platforms batch orders differently.

If you would like to have the original list with over 50 elements to pay attention to during a migration, please contact us. We can assist you and handle with your migration process end to end. You will be happy that you did.