BigCommerce
vs Magento
vs Magento
BigCommerce or Magento? B2B, catalog depth, hosting, upgrades, and total cost compared, with a verdict for your business.
The short answer
Pick one.
Here's when.
Pick one.
Here's when.
Pick BigCommerce when
You want hosted operations, no gateway fee, multi-storefront from one catalog, and B2B Edition covers your wholesale. Catalyst if you want React without a from-scratch build.
Pick Adobe Commerce when
Contract pricing from the ERP, punchout, deep account hierarchies, or a catalog and attribute model B2B Edition cannot hold.
The tiebreaker
Punchout and live ERP pricing. If your buyers order through Ariba or Coupa, or the price must come from the ERP on every request, it is Adobe Commerce.
Row by row
Same criteria.
Both columns.
Same criteria.
Both columns.
Every comparison on this site uses the same eleven criteria, and each platform is described in the same words wherever it appears. The last column is the only opinion on the page.
Pricing model
How do you pay for the platform, and what grows with you?
BigCommerce
Subscription, no gateway fee
A monthly subscription by plan, tiered on sales volume, with no platform fee on outside gateways and your choice of processor.
Adobe Commerce
License on revenue, or free Open Source
A license priced on revenue for Adobe Commerce, or free as Magento Open Source. Hosting, patching, and upgrades are yours either way, and they are the larger cost.
Our read
BigCommerce is a subscription tiered on volume with no gateway fee. Adobe Commerce is a license or free Open Source, plus hosting and a team.
Catalog and variants
How deep can the catalog go before something has to be split?
BigCommerce
Higher variant cap, still a cap
A higher variant cap than Shopify, with modifiers for non-inventory choices. A configurable past the cap still gets split unless it is designed to the cap.
Adobe Commerce
No practical ceilings
Configurable and bundle products, attribute sets, layered navigation, and six-figure catalogs are what it was built for.
Our read
Magento has no practical ceilings. BigCommerce’s variant cap is generous and still a cap.
B2B and pricing logic
Company accounts, price lists, quotes, and where the price lives.
BigCommerce
B2B Edition, a separate app
Company accounts and roles, price lists, quotes, purchase orders, quick order. It runs as a separate app with its own portal; deep hierarchies and punchout get thin.
Adobe Commerce
The deepest B2B module
Company hierarchies, shared catalogs, contract pricing resolved at request time, quotes, requisition lists, purchase orders, punchout.
Our read
B2B Edition covers accounts, price lists, quotes, and purchase orders. The B2B module adds hierarchies, punchout, and live contract pricing.
Checkout control
How much of checkout can you change, and who tests it?
BigCommerce
Fast, mostly fixed, an SDK
An optimized one-page checkout that is fast and mostly fixed. The Checkout SDK allows some customization; custom fields and complex B2B terms hit its edge.
Adobe Commerce
Fully yours, including the testing
Fully customizable, and fully yours to test on every release. Extensions and years of checkout edits are the usual upgrade cost.
Our read
BigCommerce’s is fast and mostly fixed. Magento’s is anything you build and test.
Hosting and patching
Who owns the servers, the patches, and the upgrades?
BigCommerce
Hosted and patched for you
You own the theme or the Catalyst codebase, nothing underneath.
Adobe Commerce
Self-managed, versions have dates
Self-managed, on your hosting or Adobe’s cloud infrastructure. Versions carry support dates; patches, upgrades, and monitoring are your job or your agency’s.
Our read
Hosted against self-managed. The retainer that keeps Magento patched is the cost line BigCommerce does not have.
ERP and integrations
What the APIs give you, and where the middleware starts.
BigCommerce
Open APIs, per-store quotas
Open REST and GraphQL APIs with per-store quotas, webhooks, and connectors for the common ERPs and PIMs. Large catalogs sync in batches.
Adobe Commerce
Full APIs, queues, cron
REST and GraphQL APIs, message queues, cron, and a mature ERP connector market. Middleware for ERP pricing and inventory is normal work here.
Our read
Both have open APIs. BigCommerce has quotas to batch around; Magento has queues and cron to configure.
Apps and talent
How big the app and agency pool is, and where.
BigCommerce
Smaller than Shopify’s
A smaller app store and agency pool than Shopify. A well-known Shopify app may be a build here.
Adobe Commerce
Large, uneven, a shrinking pool
A large extension marketplace of uneven quality and a deep but shrinking pool of specialists. Fewer extensions is the best predictor of a cheap upgrade.
Our read
Both smaller than Shopify’s. Magento’s extension market is bigger and more uneven.
Frontend and speed
What the storefront is built with, and how fast it is by default.
BigCommerce
Stencil, or Catalyst on Next.js
Stencil themes, or Catalyst: a Next.js storefront framework that makes headless the shortest path on any hosted platform. Catalyst is a codebase you maintain.
Adobe Commerce
Slow on Luma, fast on Hyvä
Slow on the default Luma theme, fast on Hyvä or a headless storefront. The speed is decided by the build, not the platform.
Our read
Catalyst against Hyvä or headless: both reach fast storefronts, and both are codebases somebody maintains.
SEO and URLs
How much of the URL structure you control, and the platform habits to manage.
BigCommerce
Clean URLs, facets to control
Clean URLs, control of canonicals and metadata, and faceted navigation that has to be kept out of the index.
Adobe Commerce
URL keys, crawl budget to manage
URL keys you control, optional .html suffixes, and canonical and layered-navigation indexing to configure. Crawl budget is the scale problem.
Our read
Comparable control. BigCommerce facets and Magento layered navigation both need keeping out of the index.
Multi-store and international
Several brands, regions, or currencies under one admin.
BigCommerce
Multi-storefront, one catalog
Multi-storefront from one catalog is native, so brands and regions share products without syncing copies.
Adobe Commerce
Websites, stores, store views
Different catalogs, pricing, and payment rules per storefront under one admin. The strongest multi-store model here.
Our read
Both strong. BigCommerce shares one catalog across storefronts; Magento can vary catalog and pricing per store view.
Who it fits
The merchant this platform is genuinely the right answer for.
BigCommerce
Fee-sensitive, multi-brand, hybrid B2B
Merchants who want hosted operations without a gateway fee and expect to outgrow a theme, and hybrid B2B and B2C catalogs.
Adobe Commerce
Deep catalog, ERP pricing, procurement
Deep catalogs, per-account pricing from an ERP, procurement buyers, and multi-store rules that genuinely differ.
Our read
Hybrid B2B and B2C with straightforward wholesale to BigCommerce. Deep B2B to Adobe Commerce.
The big numbers
+30%
Avg. conversion rate lift within 12 months
+50%
Avg. order value lift
<1s
Page load speeds on the storefronts we build
+15%
Avg. revenue lift within 6 months
THE QUESTIONS YOU HAVE -
Get them out
of the way.
of the way.
Where to next
The pages behind
the verdict.
the verdict.
Each platform compared here has its own page, and the move between them is written up as a plan, in the direction merchants actually make it.
- View BigCommerce
BigCommerce
Open SaaS, with a headless path that does not fight you.
Learn more - View Adobe Commerce
Adobe Commerce
Where catalog depth and pricing complexity still decide it.
Learn more
Migration plans
Other comparisons
- Read the Shopify vs WooCommerce comparisonLearn more
Shopify vs WooCommerce
A hosted platform against a WordPress plugin. The store decides one way, the content site the other.
- Read the Shopify vs BigCommerce comparisonLearn more
Shopify vs BigCommerce
Two hosted platforms that convert well. One app, one fee, and the multi-storefront model usually decide it.
- Read the Shopify Plus vs Shopify comparisonPlusLearn more
Shopify Plus vs Shopify
Same storefront, different contract. Checkout, wholesale, and multiple stores are the reasons to step up.
- Read the Magento vs Shopify comparisonPlusLearn more
Magento vs Shopify
Depth against convenience. Where the price lives decides it more than anything else on the page.
- Read the Magento vs WooCommerce comparisonLearn more
Magento vs WooCommerce
Both open source, both yours to host. One is a commerce platform, the other is a blog with a store attached.
- Read the Salesforce Commerce Cloud vs Shopify comparisonPlusLearn more
Salesforce Commerce Cloud vs Shopify
Revenue share against a subscription. The one-estate case decides it, and it holds less often than it used to.
- Read the Shopware vs Shopify comparisonLearn more
Shopware vs Shopify
Open source against hosted. Geography and who owns the upgrades decide it.
- Read the Shopware vs Magento comparisonLearn more
Shopware vs Magento
Two open source PHP platforms. Depth against weight, and which continent your buyers are on.
- Read the Best ecommerce platform for B2B comparisonPlusLearn more
Best ecommerce platform for B2B
Ranked by where the price lives, how deep the catalog is, and who maintains it. The answer changes with each.
Free platform audit
Deciding?
Start here.
Start here.
Five business days, a senior engineer and a strategist, and a document you keep: what your store runs on, where the price lives, how deep the catalog is, which customizations would survive a move, and a straight recommendation.
The cost of staying is set against the cost of moving, on your numbers rather than a vendor’s. If the answer is stay put, that is what it says.