Create your own ecommerce website and start selling successfully with ShopWired today
Considering or currently using BigCommerce for your UK business?
ShopWired is the best alternative ecommerce platform to BigCommerce in the UK -
and we're the favourite for small businesses too.
ShopWired is a UK ecommerce platform with a UK focus and UK based support team. We provide the best rated support team for any ecommerce platform and are rated 4.8/5.0 on independent review websites like Trustpilot compared to BigCommerce's 1.9/5.0.
The ShopWired platform is a full service ecommerce platform including all of the features you'll need to create and manage a successful ecommerce store.
BigCommerce UK Pricing
The features can you expect on each package
Feature restrictions
On BigCommerce's Standard Package you don't get access to Abandoned Basket Recovery apps, you cannot allow customers to save their cards, use Google customer reviews or even have product filters on your website. They also don't support any basic trade customer/wholesale features on the Standard or Plus packages. On ShopWired, you get access to all of these features on all of our packages.
Card processing fees
BigCommerce's pricing page advertises special payment gateway rates for gateways like Braintree at 1.85% + £0.18 per transaction. Processing fees on ShopWired provided gateways like Stripe are significantly cheaper (1.5% +20p per transaction).
Additional transaction fees
Unlike some ecommerce platforms, neither BigCommerce nor ShopWired charge a transaction fee on your sales. You will still pay a processing fee to your payment gateway for each card payment you receive but no additional charge is levied.
Turnover limits
BigCommerce and ShopWired both impose turnover limits on their users, the turnover limit dependent on the package you are on. If your store has orders over the limit in the previous 365 day period you'll be upgraded to the next package up.
BigCommerce's Standard Package has a turnover limit of $50,000 per year (approximately £37,000) compared with ShopWired's £50,000 per year limit.
Advanced package pricing
BigCommerce's Pro package, on which they are no feature restrictions and a turnover limit of $400,000 per year costs $299.95 per month compared to ShopWired's equivalent package which only costs £149.95 per month.
We've written a full review of BigCommerce's pricing which you can find here.
BigCommerce Customer Reviews
BigCommerce scores very poorly on customer review websites like Trustpilot. BigCommerce's review score on Trustpilot is 1.9/5.0 with customers regularly complaining about poor quality support, additional costs for themes and apps, and bugs with the platform.
In sharp contrast, ShopWired is reviewed as 4.8/5.0 stars on Trustpilot - making ShopWired the best rated ecommerce platform in the UK. Customers regularly praise the support and customer service provided by ShopWired as 'best in class'.
Already using BigCommerce?
Choose the best BigCommerce alternative and replatforming your online business to ShopWired might just be the best decision you've ever made.
Migrate your website
in 7 days or less
ShopWired has automatic migration tools to make moving across your product and customer data from BigCommerce to ShopWired and job you can complete within just a few minutes. Just download your BigCommerce data and upload it straight into ShopWired.
Find out more information about how easy it is and make the move today.
Themes - BigCommerce vs ShopWired
Your websites look and feel is very important, and so is how easy it is for your website visitors to use it. Potential customers have to be convinced to make a purchase from you so your website's design is one of the most important aspects of your business.
ShopWired's themes are all built with a 'mobile first' approach, taking into account the rapidly increasing dominance of mobile devices in the ecommerce sector. All of ShopWired's themes are built to work seemlessly on mobile, tablet and laptop/desktop devices.
ShopWired only offers free of charge themes, all the themes we have available are completely free of charge for you to use, install and customise. Whilst BigCommerce does have a bigger range of themes, they can be pricey. They only have 12 free themes and the other themes have pricing from $150 to as much as $300.
Why ShopWired is the best alternative to BigCommerce
ShopWired doubled in size in 2021, 2022 and 2023. We predict to double in size in 2024 which would make ShopWired the largest UK ecommerce platform.
A quick summary of the main reasons customers move to ShopWired from platforms like BigCommerce are shown here.
Many of you will already be familiar with Shopify, so you may like to take a look at our comparison of Shopify vs BigCommerce for a short comparison.
BigCommerce pricing is expensive
BigCommerce has a lot of hidden costs from low turnover limits, expensive higher tier packages and extra costs for apps, themes and help from a Bigcommerce Expert.
ShopWired is based in the UK
ShopWired is a platform that's been built and is managed and supported from the UK. Customers often tell us that they prefer to use a UK company with a UK support team and most users switching from BigCommerce to ShopWired tell us this.
ShopWired support is rated 4.8/5.0 on TrustPilot
ShopWired prides itself on the level of support we provide, always striving for perfection. Our ratings on indepdendent review websites like TrustPilot place us as the best rated ecommerce platform in the world.
ShopWired themes are free of charge
BigCommerce offers 12 free themes and many tens of other paid for themes that cost anywhere from $150 to $300 - which doesn't include the price of any customisations that you might need to get done on the theme.
ShopWired doesn’t charge transaction fees
Some ecommerce platforms like Shopify charge additional transaction fees (in addition to the fee merchants pay to their payment gateway) - which can be as much as 2%. ShopWired charges no transaction fees at all.
Frequently asked questions
- What makes ShopWired better than BigCommerce?
The main reason customers migrate from BigCommerce to ShopWired is that we are a UK company, with a platform built and developed in the UK and supported by a UK based support team. We're proud to be British.
- BigCommerce is a bigger company, doesn't that mean it's safer to use them?
BigCommerce have over 50,000 customers, so they're a bigger company compared to ShopWired. But we believe bigger isn't always better, in fact we'd say our smaller size (hosting around 10,000 websites in the UK) makes us an ideal choice for any UK company because we value each and every customer that we have.
- How does BigCommerce compare on price with ShopWired?
BigCommerce's basic package is $29 a month, compared with ShopWired's charge of £34.95 + VAT per month. Looking at the monthly fee alone, BigCommerce is slightly cheaper. You should however also look at other factors like the cost of any theme you might use (on ShopWired all themes are free), the additional fees you have to pay to process payments from your customers, and BigCommerce's expensive app charges.
- Can I use a BigCommerce theme on ShopWired?
Unfortunately BigCommerce themes can't be used on other platforms like ShopWired so instead you'll need to pick a new theme from ShopWired's collection and customise its look and feel. If you want something a little more bespoke please contact us and we can discuss your requirements.
- What POS solution does ShopWired offer?
ShopWired doesn't provide its own POS system, instead we'd recommend that you use Vend which is one of the largest POS systems in the world. Your ShopWired account can connect seamlessly with Vend to sync products, stock and orders.
- Will I lose my search engine rankings when my ShopWired website goes live?
No, there is no reason for you to lose any search engine rankings. If you have a good position in search results then we have some guidance for you to follow when migrating to make sure the process is as smooth as it can be and that your rankings are not disrupted. For more details see here.
- Will customers who have accounts on my website be able to keep those accounts?
You can use ShopWired's migration system to copy your customer accounts across from your current website. All the customer information will be preserved but they'll need to use a new password to access their account information. We can place a notification on the account login page giving customers an easy way to create a new password.
- Will my site load at the same speed it did before?
Absolutely. In fact many users migrating from BigCommerce report a quicker download time for their website because of our server locations and overall platform architecture.