BigCommerce vs OpenCart
BigCommerce
bigcommerce.comOpenCart
opencart.comSide by side
| Figure | BigCommerce | OpenCart |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $29/mo | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 2 |
| Spec score · Ecommerce platforms | 9.2 (#8) | 8.9 (#31) |
| Spec score · Website Template Marketplaces | 9.2 (#1) | 8.6 (#6) |
| Spec score · B2C eCommerce Software | 9.2 (#1) | 8.8 (#6) |
| Spec score · Shopping Cart Software | 9.1 (#3) | 8.7 (#5) |
| Spec score · Small Business eCommerce Software | 9.2 (#3) | 8.8 (#6) |
| Abandoned cart recovery | Yes | No |
| App marketplace | Yes | Yes |
| Digital products | Yes | Merchants can upload downloadable products and set their selling price. |
| Free plan | No | Yes |
| Hosting model | hosted | hosted |
| Payments | BigCommerce supports 250+ local payment methods across 100+ countries and 65+ payment providers, including 20+ embedded providers without added fees. | The features page says 36 payment methods are integrated and additional methods are available through the marketplace. |
| Support | 24/7 technical support by chat and email is available on all plans, while included 24/7 phone support is available on Growth, Scale, and Performance. | OpenCart offers community forum support and dedicated technical support, which it describes as commercial support. |
| What it does | BigCommerce is an open ecommerce platform that helps businesses build, manage, and scale online stores. | OpenCart is a PHP-based open-source shopping-cart and online-store management system that supports multiple stores from one administration area. |
Plans
BigCommerce
- Core$29 a month
- Growth$79 a month
- Scale$299 a month
- Performance$1,499 a month
- PerformancePriced on request
In their own words
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a hosted ecommerce platform for building and managing online stores. Store design tools include templates, drag-and-drop editing, real-time collaboration, and storefront customization. Merchants can manage multiple brands, regions, and customer segments from one backend, and synchronize products across channels such as Google, Meta, TikTok, Amazon, and eBay. The platform supports digital products, abandoned-cart recovery, and eight inventory locations. Payment support includes more than 250 local methods across over 100 countries and more than 65 providers. B2B features include customer-specific pricing, quotes, purchase orders, invoicing, net terms, buyer accounts, and company hierarchies. Other offerings include AI product-content generation, AI discovery across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Copilot, and Catalyst, a composable storefront framework built on Next.js and React. BigCommerce advertises over 1,200 apps and integrations. Plans start at $29 a month when billed annually, and a 15-day trial is available. If users do not upgrade, store data is kept for 90 days after the trial before deletion.
OpenCart
OpenCart is free, open-source software for managing one or more online stores. Its administration dashboard presents orders, sales, customers, people online and sales analytics. One interface can manage multiple stores with separate themes, localized settings and per-store product prices. Catalogs support unlimited categories and products, including downloadable products. Customer features include reviews and ratings, reward points, filters, multiple currencies and more than 40 languages, with guest and registered-user checkout. OpenCart lists 36 integrated payment methods and shipping connections for Australia Post, FedEx, Royal Mail, UPS and USPS. Its marketplace offers more than 13,000 modules and themes, including service integrations, payment providers and conversion modules. An API lets third-party applications communicate with a store, and the software is described as SEO friendly. Users can configure their own backups and restorations. Self-hosting requires a web server, PHP, cURL and a database. There are no monthly fees.