Magento Guide → Vs BigCommerce

Magento vs BigCommerce

Key takeaways

• BigCommerce is a hosted SaaS platform built for easier launches and maintenance.
• Magento offers more control, but needs stronger hosting and technical support.
• BigCommerce fits teams that want predictable platform management.
• Magento fits complex catalogs, B2B workflows, integrations, and enterprise growth.

If you’re building an ecommerce store, you’ve probably come across two heavyweights: BigCommerce and Magento. Both are powerful platforms, but they’re built on very different philosophies.

One is a hosted solution with everything included. The other gives you full control, but with more responsibility. Let’s break down the key differences to help you figure out which one fits your business goals, technical skill level, and growth plans.

Magento vs BigCommerce: quick answer

BigCommerce is usually the better fit for businesses that want easier setup, built-in tools, managed hosting, and less infrastructure responsibility.

Magento is usually better for businesses that need more control over catalog structure, B2B workflows, custom pricing, integrations, hosting, and long-term flexibility.

BigCommerce reduces operational burden, while Magento gives complex stores more ownership with the right hosting and technical support.

What is BigCommerce?

BigCommerce is a fully hosted SaaS ecommerce platform. It handles hosting, platform updates, security, and much of the technical environment for the merchant.

BigCommerce can be useful for fast-growing stores that want strong built-in ecommerce features without managing servers directly.

What is Magento?

Magento is an open-source ecommerce platform, now connected to Adobe Commerce, that gives merchants and developers more control over the ecommerce environment.

Magento Open Source is free to download, but stores still need hosting, development, maintenance, and security management. Adobe Commerce is the paid enterprise version with additional features and support options.

Magento vs BigCommerce comparison

Hosting and maintenance

BigCommerce is designed to be simple from the start. You sign up, choose a template, and your store is live. Hosting, security, and updates are handled for you. Its drag-and-drop editor lets you create pages without writing any code.

Magento Open Source gives merchants more hosting control, but that also means more responsibility. Magento stores need hosting that can support catalog size, checkout activity, traffic spikes, indexing, caching, extensions, and admin workflows.

Hosting isn’t just a background technical choice for Magento. It affects performance, reliability, security, and the ability to scale.

Ease of use and setup

BigCommerce is generally easier for non-technical teams. It includes a guided setup and user-friendly admin experience that doesn’t require server configuration.

Magento (especially the Open Source version) isn’t beginner-friendly out of the box. You’ll need to install it on a server, configure your database, and often hire a developer. It offers a much steeper learning curve, but far more freedom.

Adobe Commerce, the enterprise edition, offers managed cloud hosting, but it still requires development skills to use effectively.

Cost and total cost of ownership

BigCommerce uses subscription-based pricing, which can make platform costs easier to estimate. However, total cost can still increase with premium themes, apps, payment fees, enterprise plans, custom development, and ongoing support.

Magento Open Source is free to download, but store owners still need to budget for hosting, extensions, maintenance, security updates, and developer support when needed. Those costs can vary depending on store size, catalog complexity, traffic, and customization needs.

Managed Magento hosting can make Magento Open Source costs more predictable by bundling hosting, infrastructure support, monitoring, backups, and performance help into a clearer monthly cost. Adobe Commerce adds enterprise licensing and support costs, so it is usually the higher-investment Magento option.

For both platforms, compare total operating costs, not just the monthly subscription fee or software price.

Customization and flexibility

Magento offers more control over code, backend logic, hosting, product structures, checkout workflows, integrations, and B2B requirements.

BigCommerce themes are visually appealing and responsive, and the editor lets you tweak layouts, colors, and content with no coding. But for deeper customization, you’re limited by what the platform allows.

Magento gives you full control. You can build completely custom themes, use frontend frameworks like PWA Studio, and modify every bit of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The tradeoff is that it requires more technical skill or developer support.

Performance and speed

BigCommerce offers strong out-of-the-box performance because it manages the hosting environment and platform infrastructure. The other side of that coin, however, is that there isn’t much you can do to optimize BigCommerce speed/reliability at the hosting level, because you don’t have that access.

Magento performance depends entirely on how you host and configure it. A well-optimized Magento store on a powerful server can handle millions of SKUs and high-traffic events. But it takes effort, especially for caching, asset minification, and CDN setup.

Security and PCI responsibility

BigCommerce handles more platform-level security as a hosted SaaS provider, including infrastructure maintenance and updates.

Magento Open Source merchants need to manage more of the security stack, including hosting security, Magento patches, extensions, backups, admin access, SSL/TLS, monitoring, and PCI-related responsibilities.

SEO and marketing

Both platforms support ecommerce SEO and marketing.

BigCommerce supports SEO best practices out of the box, with limited editing flexibility. Its marketing tools include email integrations, Google Ads sync, and abandoned cart recovery at higher tiers.

Magento offers more control over product metadata, category content, URL structure, redirects, promotions, customer groups, merchandising, upsells, cross-sells, and catalog-driven SEO.

B2B and complex ecommerce

Magento, especially Adobe Commerce, is often strong for B2B requirements such as customer-specific pricing, company accounts, purchase orders, approval workflows, custom catalogs, and complex product structures.

BigCommerce has continued to build strong B2B and enterprise capabilities. It can be a good fit for merchants that want SaaS convenience with B2B tools included or available through enterprise options.

Payment, shipping, and checkout

BigCommerce supports payment gateways, shipping methods, tax tools, and checkout features within a managed SaaS setup.

Magento can support more advanced or custom checkout, shipping, pricing, and order workflows, but these may require development, extensions, and careful hosting support.

Migration and replatforming considerations

Businesses may compare Magento and BigCommerce when they outgrow their current setup or want to reduce maintenance. Replatforming requires planning for product data, customers, order history, URLs, redirects, SEO, integrations, theme or storefront design, checkout, shipping rules, and hosting or SaaS responsibilities.

Magento vs BigCommerce FAQs

Magento vs BigCommerce next steps

Magento and BigCommerce can both support serious ecommerce stores, but they are built for different operating models.

Start by reviewing your catalog complexity, technical resources, B2B needs, budget, launch timeline, hosting preferences, and long-term growth plans before choosing.

Magento works best when the hosting environment can support its catalog, checkout, admin workflows, integrations, and growth. Liquid Web Magento hosting gives ecommerce teams the performance, support, and reliability they need to run Magento with confidence. Explore Liquid Web Magento hosting to find the right fit for your store.