BigCommerce Rest In Peace (Alternatives Re: Price Increase)

[Vigilante]

We have a few BigCommerce stores on a medium price tier. We currently pay $39.99/month for use of their platform. I've been using BigCommerce for four full years.

They just announced they are DOUBLING their prices, effective 7/1/16. They can kiss my a$$.

Their platform is inferior to Shopify and several others. The ONLY reason they made sense previously was price.

I'll be getting my money back for the custom template I purchased from them, and migrating to greener pastures. I'll hire a VA to rebuild things on a new platform, and then sit back and watch BigCommerce finish their going out of business strategy.

There are several alternatives which we will be posting about in the forum in the weeks to come. My hope is to have every single forum member here to leave BigCommerce and let them implode from within.

As this thread will be indexed and alerted to BigCommerce, let me be amongst the first to tell you :

 

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[Vigilante]

This forum is turning into a Political Action Committee for Entrepreneurs.

Always has been. It's just been a while since an external stimulus has served as a catalyst. The forum gets hundreds of thousands of visits a month. The value of advertising here for the right (www.Shopify.com) advertiser is tremendous. The return on investment for the right (Shopify) advertiser is a no brainer. Our members RALLY around great advertisers (https://www.shopify.com/)

Please note this post is NOT an official solicitation of https://www.shopify.com/ to become an advertiser. To do that, they would want to email mj@thefastlaneforum.com for special rates. All rights reserved. BigCommerce can F*ck off. Shopify should maybe create a PROMO CODE to go along with their forum advertising campaign here.

 

[biophase]

That. That is what I want.

Dave,

I just talked to Sparkpay and their software seems to hit all the bells and whistles that I need. They do multi stores with a single backend. I think my cost for 4 stores would be $120/mo and I'd get rid of Stitchlabs. So it would save me a ton of money.

It also integrates with Shipstation. So far, this is my front runner. Going to look at a few more other cards tonight.

 

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[biophase]

BTW, for those asking why we don't go to a self hosted cart and get rid of the monthly fees... The reason is because with a self hosted cart, you may need to do updates and deal with bugs and software issues. And there is no support. I've done the self-hosted route and yes, $40/mo was important to me when I was just starting out in ecommerce in 2007. Shit, I didn't even want to pay $295 once for Interspire back then.

But now, I don't want to mess around with any of that. The actual store is NOT as important to me now, because it is my BRAND that is important. I spend more time on my products than worrying about increasing my conversion rate by 1%. I just want an ecommerce store that works and is current in its look and feel. For you guys starting out, all you have to differentiate is your store and its design because you are selling someone else's product. So you need to compete via your storefront.

I don't mind pay $50/store/month. I've got more EV things to do than mess around with the store itself. The monthly fee is worth it to me to not have to deal with server issues, updates, software bugs. However, there is a point where the pricing becomes ridiculous to keep on going. At some point the cost of the cart becomes to high and you begin to look at other options.

This is what Bigcommerce's increase is doing to many folks who have been happily trudging along with their ecommerce stores. This price increase has probably made Shopify and all the other carts very happy. It's not like Bigcommerce was the best or #1 cart out there. That would be different because I believe you can charge for value. But they aren't worth their monthly fees anymore. So personally I think it's such a bad move to increase pricing and drive your customers to the better solutions that are now cheaper than you because you will never get them back. Even if you lower prices afterwards.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

BigCommerce pissed me off years ago when I was running an Interspire cart (paid for an infinite license) and they bought the company, or did some kinda corporate switcheroo.... I got a notice that support would stop for Interspire and I would need to upgrade to BigCommerce. Of course, that switch would come with a new monthly bill which I didn't have before.

Told them to pound sand.

They died for me years ago.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

My guess is BC is now owned by VC's who are trying to squeeze the towel, and they don't care if it's sucked nearly dry... meaning, they are trying to squeeze every piece of margin out of the business entity to earn an ROI or Revenue target. At this point in a company's lifecycle (as it is for most public companies) the stakeholders change from customers (where you are #1 priority) to investors (customers exist to serve investors).

It marks the downward slide for pretty much every company that encounters a stakeholder change-- you cannot serve two masters.

I mentioned this last year at the Summit when Etsy went public... the offering will not improve the service, it will become more deleterious as their priority shifts from customers to appeasing Wall Street expectations. As such, one should expect less value, more cost.

 

[JasonR]

UltraCart seems to fly under the radar here, but there are some multi-million dollar ecommerce businesses that run it. I've used it, and was happy with it.

The downsides is they don't have as many templates as Shopify/Big Commerce, BUT you can do upsells and build major funnels with UltraCart, which you can't really do with BC/Shopify.

Their pricing is a bit less aggressive than Shopify/BC, and you can use your own merchant accounts.

Don't overlook them!
https://www.ultracart.com/pricing/

 

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[Vigilante]

Found an interesting app to migrate stores from BigCommerce to Shopify.

I haven't used it yet, but likely will pull the trigger on it for one of my stores on Monday.

http://ecommerce-platforms.com/ecom...migrate-your-shop-from-bigcommerce-to-shopify

I will report back to you all if this is worthwhile or not. I was going to hire a VA to do it, but this seems pretty organized. Haven't come across many reviews on it yet though.

For anyone that needs to migrate a eCommerce platform, I can't recommend this company and their apps enough. With about 4 minutes of setup, they digitally migrated hundreds of products (images, copy, videos, and more) and thousands of customer records from BigCommerce to Shopify. They have a similar app for just about any platform you want to leave, and just about any destination you want to go to. For $200 (including a few upgrade features) I estimate I saved about 40 hours of outsourced labor, plus instructions, maintenance time, etc...

They saved me a week, saved me the need to outsource this, saved me the need to supervise this, and saved me all of the pain in the a$$ of fleeing away from BigCommerce. I highly recommend this company. We now have a few days of cleanup and financial integration (merchant accounts, etc...) but the heavy lifting was all done by this app, and seamlessly.

I am super impressed. Obviously they saw a need, created a SAAS solution, and solved a huge problem. So glad I didn't outsource this, when a turnkey solution exists.

 

[biophase]

Ok, so I've been migrating over to Sparkpay for the past 2 weeks. Here are my thoughts:

Pros:

You can customize the backend alot. I mean, waaaay more than BC. Their backend is not super user friendly. It's slow and everything takes alot of clicks. The good news is that once you get used to their import and export, you can do everything via Excel and upload.

After getting to know their HTML and CSS structure. It is fairly easy to customize templates. Now, I am doing 4-6 stores, so I will be customizing a bunch of templates so my stores don't all look the same.

The multi-store is a huge deal for me. Since now I'm just entering each product once and it populates to all stores. The downside is that all stores have all the same descriptions and photos. You can link products, so that each store has different descriptions and photos but pulls from the same inventory.

I got Shipstation integrated and Authorize.net working. The paypal I haven't figured it out yet.

Shipping is a little odd. I can tell that UPS is their preferred vendor as they seem to push it onto you. I haven't gotten all the bugs out of it yet.

The cons:

The big downside is that store seems a little slow to me. I haven't tested it yet. I should probably run a test comparing my current BC store to my dev store to see if it is actually slower.

Their free themes are sort of crappy. Nobody would use them stock. But then again BC and shopify, do the same thing with crappy free themes so that you have to buy one.

My trial is ending so I'm going to start paying tomorrow. I'll keep you guys updated.

 

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[biophase]

Are you still going with sparkpay? Checking them out now, do you think it's a better option then shopify?

Also, it might intergrate with MailCheat(Chimp),
https://www.sparkpay.com/MailCheat(Chimp)

Yes, I am going with Sparkpay. They do integrate with MailCheat(Chimp). They put mail chimp in their email section instead of their Apps section so I couldn't find it. LOL

Sparkpay has alot of challenges. There are some things that they did that make you scratch your head. BUT... You can pretty much mess with almost everything, so if you are HTML savvy you can customize it to your needs. Their support has been really good. I just call them and ask them a bunch of questions and they answer them and I fix my issues in real time.

I'm pretty much a Sparkpay backend expert now.

But I still can't figure out international shipping!!! They are telling me it's my USPS integration login and password and I need to call the USPS. I can't imagine calling USPS to ask them about technical integration questions.

Whether it's better than Shopify? I don't know.

But here is why I will never use Shopify:

• Lack of your own SSL URL checkout at the lower level subscriptions. That is just going backwards. This will lower your conversion rate. Not good for you.

• Forcing you to use Shopify payments or 2% fee. They are bleeding money from you guys and you don't even know it. You guys are paying .8% to .5% higher in fees per transaction. So if you are doing $100,000 a year, you are paying an extra $500-$800. Add that to your monthly bill and thats $40-$70 a month more! You are really paying +$100/mo to use Shopify because of this.

• Real-time carrier shipping only at $179/mo level? WTF, this is so basic that most $20/mo carts do this.

Based on these lack of features that are so critical, I can only conclude that Shopify is not in the business of helping ecommerce stores remain successful. I really feel like they care about themselves only and how much they can take from you.

I just did a calculation and if I switched from BC to Shopify AND I wanted to keep all the same features, Shopify would cost me $840/mo to run 4 stores. Sparkpay is costing me $160/mo for 4 stores. It's a no brainer for me.

 

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[Vigilante]

When you search Google for

BigCommerce Price Increase, this thread comes up 4th on the first page. LOL.

Great job BigCommerce. Hope you are out of business soon.

This thread has eight thousand, eight hundred views. It will get more over the next few months as people realize they are being screwed with no lube from BigCommerce.

I called today to cancel my account, on the four year anniversary of opening it.

The guy who took my call could barely speak english, and I had to repeat everything about 4 times.

He asked why I was canceling, and I told him. Like he gives a shit. He just works for some remote call center in the middle of a jungle somewhere in the world. He was just filling out a form.

Good riddance, BigCommerce. The Shopify template is BETTER, and it is a FREE template compared to the one I bought from you. Plus, their live chat is fantastic.

Friedrich Stegmann, thanks for the survey you sent me. To see why I, and hundreds of other people fled BigCommerce, feel free to read this thread. It's like a basic rule of business that when you F*ck your customers over, they leave. Feel free to log in here and add your comments, Friedrich.

You can get a 20% lifetime discount for Shopify if you contact the guys from eCommerce Fuel. Register HERE http://www.ecommercefuel.com/shopify-vs-bigcommerce/

I used the link he sent me, and it worked and I locked in with Shopify for a 20% lifetime discount on multiple stores. He is NOT yet an advertiser on the Fast Lane Forum, but he should be. Andrew Youderian come play with us. (http://www.ecommercefuel.com/author/adminecf/)

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Wonder if Shopify will follow suit... like airline ticket pricing. Lets hope not.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

@MJ, what are you running?

OpenCart. Cost is $0/mo with my own processing.

 

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[Phillipbro]

I'm on a 20% OFF Shopify lifetime deal offer. Let me know if you guys want it as well.

 

[Vigilante]

I inquired with the BigCommerce executive whose name was on the press release about the pricing increase (along with her email address!) about getting a refund for the custom template that BigCommerce sold me in light of their decision to double their subscription fees. After two emails, I received a response. A copy of her helpful form letter response is below for your viewing pleasure.

My name is Lauren Clevenger and I am the Social Media and Community Manager at Bigcommerce. While I am familiar with the pricing model and frequently answer our merchant's questions in the Community Forum, I am not the best person to discuss your particular plan or process billing requests such as refunds. For questions about your specific plan and price increase, I would suggest that you contact our Billing team.

If you have additional questions about our new pricing model, you can also consult our FAQ, and view our pricing page for more information. If you'd like to speak with someone, feel free to call us at your convenience at 1-888-699-8911 Monday thru Friday, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm CST.
Thank you,

Thanks for your help, BigCommerce! I love form letter responses from company executives regarding specific inquiries on topics their name is listed as a contact for! Made my day. With that level of attention to detail and customer service, there is no WAY you are going out of business--- ever! Legendary customer service.

 

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[Vigilante]

Are you planning on going with shopify or do you have any others in mind? I was planning on setting shop up with shopify initially, simple, clean design and quite reliable as per a few folks I know who use it.

Going to start some research now. Open to opinions. I like Shopify. I specifically like their Amazon FBA integration which BigCommerce doesn't have. Like most changes, this one will likely be for the better in the long run. Short term pain for long term gain.

 

[Vigilante]

Hey BigCommerce, this thread has 250 views in the last two hours. www.bigcommerce.com

 

[Phones]

Does anyone know of an ecommerce platform that allows multiple ecommerce stores (multiple URLs) to have the same backend database so that they all share inventory and order management? Doesn't Magento do this?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

The two main reasons I never ditched magento was:

1.Multi-Stores on the same backend easy as f*ck
2.I hate monthly plans, Shopify has monthly plans, heir add-ons have monthly plans, everything is made to suck your wallet. I'd rather pay 500$ upfront and have something custom coded to my needs than paying 50$/month for a standardized extension. What has made Shopify so attractive is that their extensions are really good and beat anything else available, upsells, rewards, pop-ups, integrations etc.

With magento you can run multiple store fronts with different domains .com/store2/ or even newdomain.fr , running from the same backend.

I'd avoid any small/medium platforms, they can't just compete with the big guys in terms of extension and integrations marketplace

 

[Nick314]

There are *dozens* of completely free, open source shopping cart solutions available.

If you simply buy a cheap virtual server plan (you can get a minimal, but adequate server w/static IP address for as low as $4/month) you can then:
- install Linux for free (ubuntu, fedora, centos, debian, whatever)
- install tinydns (aka djbdns) and host your own DNS for as many domain names as you purchase--for no extra $ (you just set your nameserver as your IP address in your registrar account for each domain name you own--no more paying for hosted DNS solutions--only pay to register/renew the names, that's it!)
- install apache/nginx/lighttpd and host a webserver for as many domain names as you purchase--for no extra $
- install mysql/mariadb/mongodb/some database and host as many databases as you want/need--for no extra $
- install a mail server and host as many email accounts as you want for any domains you own--for no extra $
- install wordpress/drupal/django/magento/opencart/saleor/any number of CMS and/or shopping cart solutions as you want/need--for no extra $
- get a free SSL cert from letsencrypt.org and configure your web server for HTTPS on every domain you want--for no extra $

Then get a merchant account, and using their API connect your shopping cart directly to it.
- no extra $ or any more per-transaction fees go to shopify, bigcommerce, or any other middleman that isn't actually adding any value

I pay ~$10/month for my merchant account with CMS which includes all 4 major credit cards and full API support to integrate to any one of several existing shopping cart solutions (plus docs on how to do custom integration for carts not already supported). I actually have a static IP address at my home from my ISP--so I can host my own virtual server also without any extra $. This is something that may already be available to you if you just ask your provider. I pay nothing additional for it. Some may charge extra--obviously if it's more than $4/month it may not be worth it. If your server usage gets too much, it's usually trivial to expand its capabilities for additional monthly $--of course the need to do so would obviously justify the added expense.

Even w/the above options it doesn't preclude combining other services anywhere in the mix--mix and match as you migrate--but you can see where a lot of savings can be had.

The number of domains you can host this way is for all practical purposes unlimited--and the cost is *capped*. Many modern linux distros even have fully GUI admin tools for configuring all of these things. If you aren't comfortable doing it yourself, just find your nearest linux user group or college CS department and offer to pay any student to help you admin it--they will be happy to do it for the experience and a few bucks. You may even get the price down to pizza and soda.

Configuring all these parts can seem like a daunting task. Linux hobbyists welcome the task/challenge, and combined with ego most will not give up until they succeed in delivering a working system for you. Furthermore, most enjoy *teaching* (a form of showing off their knowledge)--you can even advertise your project as asking for mentorship up front. Play to these personality traits and you can get your computing needs met for minimal outlay, as well as bundled training how to do it yourself in the future. Most of the tasks are not difficult--once you see how they are configured it's easy to do yourself from there--and if you do ever get stuck google for answers or call your mentor/admin for more help.

IMO, the only value these hosted service providers are giving is charging a price to delay your own education--paying them to *not* learn how to do it yourself. Why not pay someone to teach you to do it yourself--pay once up front and then never again, rather than pay a recurring fee to remain ignorant (not pejoratively, just factually).

 

[Vigilante]

Hey BigCommerce... this thread has two thousand, three hundred views as of tonight.

You sure this is what you want to do?

http://www.bigcommerce.com, https://www.bigcommerce.com/about-us/,
Brent Bellm,
Robert Alvarez,
Tim Schulz,
Alexandra Shapiro,
Russell Klein,
Paul Vaillancourt,
Cheri Winterberg,
Leo Castro

 

[million$$$smile]

So I just got off the phone with Big$$$Commerce. I currently have three websites on that platform, with two of them under the Enterprise Tier 1 plan.
I have been paying $225/mo on each of these websites. I finally found out how much they planned to raise my monthly subscription --per website.

$400.00/month!!! Per website!!!

They are nuts if they think I will continue paying nearly 6k per year. I might just bring someone on inhouse to develop a platform that I can utilize for what I need as I haven't found anything yet that will meet our needs unless I drop 25k-40k for a magento enterprise solution that I am not so sure would meet our criteria.

Someone needs to develop a platform that is capable for multi channel, multiple websites, a POS for B&M stores & a inventory system that will simplify the entire process over all platforms. Oh ya, it should include or integrate a program/app for USPS commercial rates, etc. and maybe even a nice CRM management system.

Maybe in 10 years....

 

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[biophase]

Ok, I am now a paying customer on Sparkpay. I can't figure out their international shipping. That is the only thing holding me back from migrating my first store over. Also, there are alot of little template things that I need to get done like padding and margin stuff.

I'm not a big fan of their one page check out. Just too much white space. Need to fix that.

One big downside is that I don't think they integrate with MailCheat(Chimp). I don't use my list alot, but I don't want to just give it up either.

More to come...

 

[biophase]

So I'm about 75% migrated to Sparkpay. My experience with them has been pretty decent. They seem like a small company. I get the same couple of tech guys on each support call. They answer my questions and change CSS stuff for me on the fly while I'm on the phone. Feels like a small business vs the support ticket and waiting.

Found a few really odd things on their design though. I wouldn't call them a design flaw, but it does make me question their designers and engineers and doubt if any of them ever ran an ecommerce store.

For example, on a failed credit card transaction the customer goes to the same screen as if their order went through. They get an order number and in tiny print it says their card was declined. But everything else on the page makes them think their order was completed. I went to try to change this page but not all the text is editable. Truly a WTF moment. I ended up making their credit card declined text red and 64 pt font as I could not change other parts of the page.

 

[ddzc]

Going to start some research now. Open to opinions. I like Shopify. I specifically like their Amazon FBA integration which BigCommerce doesn't have. Like most changes, this one will likely be for the better in the long run. Short term pain for long term gain.

Initially, I was planning on being cheap and self hosting Wordpress with Woocommerce, but I decided that it may not be worth the headaches. I'd rather deal with a simple, reliable and powerful platform which Shopify seems to be, judging by many users I know who do high volume sales.

I remember @JasonR posted a thread with a 25% discount from Life Hacker. I see it went down to 15%, but nonetheless, savings! https://www.shopify.ca/lifehacker

Credit goes to Jason for the link.

 

[Vigilante]

If I end up with Shopify, I am going to invite them here as an advertiser. They should be a forum sponsor.

Shopify seems like the natural winner of the migration.

 

[Greyson F]

Told them to pound sand.

My hope is to have every single forum member here to leave BigCommerce and let them implode from within.

This forum is turning into a Political Action Committee for Entrepreneurs.

 

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[Greyson F]

Always has been. It's just been a while since an external stimulus has served as a catalyst. The forum gets hundreds of thousands of visits a month. The value of advertising here for the right (www.Shopify.com) advertiser is tremendous. The return on investment for the right (Shopify) advertiser is a no brainer. Our members RALLY around great advertisers (https://www.shopify.com/)

Please note this post is NOT an official solicitation of https://www.shopify.com/ to become an advertiser. To do that, they would want to email mj@thefastlaneforum.com for special rates. All rights reserved. BigCommerce can F*ck off. Shopify should maybe create a PROMO CODE to go along with their forum advertising campaign here.

Hahaha I literally didn't notice your cute fine print until I quoted your post. and then the last "F*ck off" made the rest of my evening in this snowy hell I call a temporary home.

Well, back to work! I suck at product research on Amazon, but as they say, "Rome wasn't built by Bigcommerce"

*Man I'm bad at jokes

 

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[ilrein]

@Vigilante

@biophase and I discussed some of the merits of Shopify versus WooCommerce here.

We both found it to be an unattractive long term option, because of hidden transaction fees. Otherwise a solid platform, but really greedy.

I think it's good to start off with, but too expensive in the long haul.

 

[biophase]

Yeah, their new pricing sucks. But Shopify's is not any better. Both these companies are trying to make money on credit card processing. Both their rates are higher than what I currently pay.

Maybe I'll dust off the Interspire software. I have 5 BC stores right now. There's no way I'm staying with them at $80/mo.

Volusion's pricing looks decent, but their templates are hard to modify.

Shopify has an insane 2% fee if you use an external payment gateway.

@MJ, what are you running? It's being self hosted right?

IMO, Bigcommerce is not run be people who have online stores. I met them in Texas a few years ago and also spoke to their support when I went from Interspire to BC. Their support does not know how to use their own stores and their training department has given really bad advice in how to run an online store. I've stuck with them for almost 5 years now. But it's probably time to move on. Or course migrating 5 stores will be a big headache but I just have to bite the bullet and do it now.

 

[biophase]

"better platform: Because merchants who use more platform resources pay accordingly, we’re able to reinvest more in new features, enhancements and stability."

This is a joke. Processing a few more orders does not take up that much more resources. They are basically saying that as you make more money, we want more of it.