We came from Shopify hoping to get a little bit more baked in from the start. Big mistake. Analytics, Shipping Polices, Theme Editing are all handled by third party integrations with two of those being an additional $50+ per month.Let me start off with the good. Some of the free templates seem a little nicer and more professional than Shopify however they are mostly uncustomizable without additional software with another monthly charge or going into the code. We also liked the way MSRP and Sale prices work and importing/exporting is handled much easier and I like the Products editing screen although some setting are hidden.Now for the bad. Again, templates allow some minor edits and appearance choice but are mostly non-editable. The footer is just a mirror of the main menu bar of which again is very limited however the footer is basically non-editable without going into the code or paying at least a $50 monthly fee for additional software for the rest of time as any edits made by the software erases if you stop paying. BigCommerce is touting a new template drop and drag feature they are rolling out and it is very bad. Also, support told me there was no way to move sections around after you created them and the only way was to delete and start from scratch. This is not true. More on that later.The first thing you'll see when you sign into the admin is the dashboard which is basically non-existent. Some minor specks of info and that's it. We also came to find out that BigCommerce does not consider an order placed until a payment is made so, if you authorize only and then charge at shipping, your sales figures for the day are basically useless. You have to to Google Analytics for the simplest snippet of useful metrics. The orders screen is a mess of accordion style views It doesn't show any fraud details or acquisition info. Checkout registration kicks the user back to the homepage and even the checkout fields are in a strange sequence.There was a hard pitch to get on the $1,500 enterprise plan and pay $3,000 to migrate data that we did ourselves in minutes. Sales is sales. It's understandable. The worst thing of all about BigCommerce is the 24/7 phone and chat support. It is 24/7 which is nice to have but no one knows anything except for one person that we have started asking for. Otherwise every answer is "I think", "I think", and usually wrong or just plain wrong right away. You can hear the reps clicking through the admin trying to find an answer that then ends up being incorrect as you find the solution or menu or feature on your own a day or two later and do not expect any guidance at all with anything theme related. BigCommerce kind of laughs at Shopify for being basic and needing add-on for simple things but those things are typically minor tweaks for a few dollars. With BigCommerce, you cannot even work well without several $50 integrations. Thanks for reading. I'm going back to try and make the homepage look like we want.
