A rival to Shopify, BigCommerce, just filed to go public. It’s headquartered in Austin, Texas and was started in 2009.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BigCommerce
https://www.bigcommerce.com/
https://seekingalpha.com/news/3591132-shopify-rival-bigcomme…
https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/13/bigcommerce-files-to-go-pu…
Here’s a comparison to Shopify:
https://www.websitebuilderexpert.com/ecommerce-website-build….
The conclusion seems to be that Shop is easier to use but BigCommerce offers a better value.
Its revenue growth was only 22% y/y in 2019 but this accelerated to about 30% in the first quarter of this year. It’s not profitable but cash burn decreased in the most recent quarter. The current growth isn’t exciting but it might accelerate further with current ecommerce tailwinds.
Do any SHOP fans here have any thoughts or any interest in this smaller Shopify-like company? Any thoughts on how its product compares to SHOP’s? Does SHOP have enough of a moat to defend against BigCommerce or similar competitors?
Dave
8 Likes
Shopify seems to have positioned itself to control the entire experience of online selling. From payments to capital lending to shipping/fulfilment
It’s hard to see how there is any oxygen left in the room for a new competitor to take market share but this will be interesting to watch
3 Likes
I was just coming over to post about this after reading this article:
https://www.barrons.com/articles/as-shopify-rallies-online-r…
“in the latest quarter, Big Commerce’s revenue was about 5% that of Shopify, and it is growing more slowly. If you ding Big Commerce for slower growth, and give it 4% of Shopify’s market capitalization, you’d get a potential valuation of $4.6 billion.”
Something to remember about Shopify is it is not only about their own SaaS. Shopify is more like an Amazon displacer (also can be used in addition to). They have other ways to make money - payments, app store (more SaaS), Shopify+ services, etc - and are even getting in to distribution services and shop aggregation (like Amazon). Plus Shopify has amazing customer service there to lend a hand. They are growing fast for a reason.
6 Likes
oops I forgot to mention anything about BigCommerce. They are a different model. They are not a purely cloud based platform where you make your site and everything is right there. It can be more complex and offer more flexibility. For example you can use it to power custom built website front ends and apps with a single backend. I guess it is easy to just think of it as “more hardcore”
From their website:
https://www.bigcommerce.com/solutions/headless-commerce/?_ga…
“Your choice of front-end experience (whether a CMS, a PWA, or any custom build) is a key consideration in your business strategy. At the end of the day, the ecommerce technology you plug in needs to do one thing: work the way you need it to. That’s why we’ve partnered with best-in-breed agencies, developers, and technology partners to build integrations and APIs for headless implementations without compromise.”
- “Headless” means “without user interface”, or “bring your own interface”.
- They do have cloud hosting.
- They do have a designer to build a site like Shopify (I haven’t used theirs so I can’t comment on differences.
- They do have multi-channel options (social media integrations are the big examples)
Again I do not have first-hand experience with them but I think it is safe to say BigCommerce is for big commerce; companies that need to build something deeper with more modular chunks and layers and perhaps developers and designers to push the whole thing.
2 Likes
Dave, Both companies are well-established providers in the DIY SMB eCommerce platform sector. Both have been in business for a number of years. As someone in the industry for 15 years, Shopify is more widely used.
1 Like
Dave, Both companies are well-established providers in the DIY SMB eCommerce platform sector. Both have been in business for a number of years. As someone in the industry for 15 years, Shopify is more widely used.
Thanks.
Obviously, it looks like SHOP is clearly the top dog with an apparently superior product preferred by a majority of companies at this time. BigCommerce seems far behind but there may be room for a duopoly with the current growth in ecommerce. There is another thread on the MF SHOP board comparing the two that just popped up. The opinion seems to be that BigCommerce has made significant improvements to their platform over the past couple years and may have some advantages over SHOP. It will be interesting to see the IPO valuation - it might be overvalued with tech IPO’s and ecommerce being so overheated right now. I will keep BigCommerce on my watch list.
Dave