BigCommerce vs iPage: Comprehensive comparison guide for 2024

Final verdict

Between BigCommerce and iPage, BigCommerce emerges as the more robust and feature-rich platform, particularly for users focused on ecommerce.

• 
  BigCommerce (Overall Grade: 7.9/10)
  
  excels in providing a comprehensive ecommerce solution with a wide range of built-in features, advanced SEO tools, and extensive customization options. It’s designed for businesses looking to scale, offering powerful marketing tools, reliable hosting, and strong security measures. Despite its higher learning curve and potential additional costs, BigCommerce is suited for merchants seeking to expand their online presence with a professional and scalable online store.
• 
  iPage (Overall Grade: 6.1/10)
  
  , while offering a user-friendly interface and affordable pricing, is more suited for small businesses and personal projects. It simplifies website creation with a drag-and-drop builder and provides basic ecommerce solutions. However, it lacks the depth of ecommerce features and scalability offered by BigCommerce, making it a less ideal choice for businesses aiming for significant growth online.

Best for ecommerce

Verdict

: For businesses focused on scaling and requiring a robust ecommerce platform, BigCommerce is the superior choice. iPage, while cost-effective and user-friendly, is better suited for smaller scale operations.

• 
  BigCommerce
  
  : Offers a comprehensive suite of ecommerce tools designed for growth, including advanced SEO, multi-channel selling, and extensive payment gateway integrations. Its platform is built to accommodate businesses of all sizes, making it ideal for those looking to expand their online presence.
• 
  iPage
  
  : Provides a simplified approach to ecommerce, perfect for beginners or small businesses not requiring complex ecommerce functionalities. While it offers basic ecommerce capabilities, it lacks the scalability and advanced features found in BigCommerce.

Best for informational & business websites

Verdict

: With closely matched scores, BigCommerce slightly edges out iPage for informational and business websites, offering a more robust set of features tailored for scalability and professional use.

• 
  BigCommerce
  
  : Known for its comprehensive e-commerce solutions, BigCommerce also shines in creating informational websites for businesses aiming to scale. Its wide range of customizable templates and advanced SEO tools make it a strong contender for businesses that need a professional online presence beyond just e-commerce.
• 
  iPage
  
  : While iPage offers a user-friendly platform ideal for small businesses and personal projects, its capabilities for informational websites are slightly overshadowed by BigCommerce’s advanced features. However, iPage remains a solid choice for those seeking simplicity and affordability in website creation and hosting.

Detailed comparison

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Winner: BigCommerce.

BigCommerce offers a comprehensive and flexible website builder that caters to a wide range of ecommerce needs, providing users with a variety of customizable themes, extensive product and category management options, and powerful marketing tools. It allows for detailed customization through a user-friendly Page Builder, advanced CSS/HTML editing, and API access for deeper integrations.

BigCommerce Themes

On the other hand, iPage offers a wide variety of templates and designs, catering to users with diverse needs and preferences. With hundreds of options available, ranging from simple and elegant to complex and dynamic, users can easily find a template that suits their specific project or business requirements. These templates are also customizable, allowing for a high degree of personalization in terms of layout, color schemes, and functionality.

🏆 Winner: iPage

. With a score of 7.6, iPage edges out BigCommerce (7.3) in terms of ease of use. iPage’s user-friendly interface and simple drag-and-drop builder make it a great choice for individuals and small businesses looking to establish an online presence. BigCommerce, while offering a robust set of features, may be overwhelming for beginners or small businesses on a tight budget.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: BigCommerce

. Both platforms offer a range of learning resources, but BigCommerce stands out with its comprehensive materials, including articles, guides, webinars, podcasts, and specific training through BigCommerce University. iPage also offers a variety of resources, but the availability of direct, personalized support might vary depending on the user’s plan.

BigCommerce and iPage both offer ecommerce solutions, but they cater to different needs and audiences. BigCommerce is a comprehensive ecommerce platform with a robust set of built-in features, making it a popular choice for merchants looking to scale their online presence. iPage, on the other hand, is a user-friendly web hosting and site builder platform that simplifies website creation, making it suitable for small businesses and personal projects.

BigCommerce ecommerce features:

• Unlimited Products
• Streamlined Single-Page Checkout
• Order Management
• Abandoned Cart Recovery
• Marketing and Sales Tools

iPage ecommerce features:

• Inventory Management and Tracking
• Coupon Codes and Promotions
• SEO Tools
• PayPal Integration

Ecommerce themes & templates

BigCommerce provides a wide variety of ecommerce templates designed to enhance online shopping experiences and cater to different industries. These templates feature advanced functionalities like quick view, product suggestions, and complex search filters but may require performance optimization for maintaining speed. The selection ranges from free to premium options, ensuring businesses can find a suitable design that aligns with their brand and product offerings.

iPage offers a variety of ecommerce-specific templates designed to cater to online stores and businesses. These templates are integrated with features such as shopping carts, product catalogs, and payment processing options to facilitate online transactions. However, users might find some limitations in terms of customization and advanced ecommerce functionalities compared to specialized ecommerce platforms.

Product page customization

In BigCommerce, you can extensively customize product pages to enhance customer experience and improve sales. This includes the ability to create detailed product variants, customize options like custom fields, and upload multiple images or videos for each product.

iPage’s website builder offers a range of ecommerce product page customization options, allowing users to design their storefronts with various templates, adjust layouts, and incorporate multimedia elements like images and videos to showcase products. Users can also edit product descriptions, manage inventory, and set up different payment options. However, limitations may include less flexibility in advanced customization or coding for those who require unique, highly tailored functionalities beyond the provided templates and settings.

Payment processing

BigCommerce supports over 65 pre-integrated online payment solutions, serving customers across 230 countries with more than 140 currencies, without charging additional transaction fees for using third-party payment gateways. This approach provides merchants with the flexibility to choose the best payment solution for their business needs, including the option for custom integration to cater to specific regional payment preferences.

iPage supports several payment options for ecommerce, including major gateways like PayPal, Stripe, and others, catering to a wide range of currencies and countries. iPage does not charge commissions for transactions, commissions are charged by the gateways themselves. While iPage offers flexibility in online payment processing, it does not explicitly mention integrated POS capabilities for in-person transactions.

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Winner: BigCommerce

. BigCommerce, with a score of 7.9, offers an extensive set of tools designed for creating professional and engaging online stores without requiring coding knowledge. It provides a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, robust eCommerce capabilities including product management and secure payment processing, and customizable templates to match brand aesthetics. The platform also features powerful SEO and marketing tools, app integrations for extended functionality, and comprehensive analytics to track website performance.

iPage’s editor, scoring 6.8, is designed for ease of use, catering to both beginners and those with some web design experience. It offers a drag-and-drop interface, allowing users to easily add, remove, and customize elements on their web pages without needing to code. Users can choose from a variety of templates that are responsive and customizable to fit their brand or personal style. Additionally, the editor includes features for adding social media links, integrating e-commerce functionalities, and optimizing for search engines.

Mobile editor/app

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Winner: BigCommerce

. Both BigCommerce and iPage offer mobile solutions for managing your website, but they cater to different needs and skill levels. BigCommerce provides a mobile app, but it doesn’t allow users to edit the website itself. Instead, it provides access to the dashboard, analytics, orders, and the possibility to add or edit products. This makes it a useful tool for managing an online store on the go, but not for making design changes to the website.

On the other hand, iPage does not have a dedicated mobile editor app. Users can edit their website on a mobile browser, but with some limitations. This might be a disadvantage for users who prefer to make changes to their website directly from a mobile app.

In summary, BigCommerce receives a higher rating due to its dedicated mobile app, even though it doesn’t allow for website editing. iPage, while offering mobile browser editing, lacks a dedicated mobile app, which might limit its usability for some users.

Overall Result

:

BigCommerce wins

. BigCommerce scores 7.3 in product testing options, significantly higher than iPage’s 2.5. BigCommerce offers a 14-day free trial during which users can test all premium features. iPage, on the other hand, does not offer a free trial but allows users to test all features during a 30-day refundable period.

BigCommerce and iPage have similar price scores, indicating comparable value for money. However, BigCommerce offers a more comprehensive range of plans, including an enterprise plan for large-scale businesses, while iPage does not.

Winner: BigCommerce

. BigCommerce offers scalable cloud hosting with unlimited storage and bandwidth, and a 99.99% uptime guarantee. iPage, on the other hand, provides a range of affordable hosting services with unlimited storage and bandwidth, but lacks an uptime guarantee and may not meet the performance speed and scalability needs of high-traffic sites. Despite BigCommerce not disclosing the locations of its data centers, its robust hosting services make it the winner in this category.

🏆 Winner: BigCommerce

Both BigCommerce and iPage have robust strategies for website speed optimization, but BigCommerce edges out iPage with a slightly higher score.

BigCommerce provides a comprehensive set of tools for website speed optimization, including image optimization, code minification, optimized templates, using AMP, and caching. These strategies, combined with BigCommerce’s robust set of built-in features, help to improve the load times and PageSpeed scores of websites built on the platform. BigCommerce also provides users with many tools for Core Web Vital improvements, further enhancing the performance of their websites.

iPage, on the other hand, focuses on web server optimizations, caching, CDN, database optimization, and SEO optimization to improve website speed. While these strategies help to achieve an average load time of 2.6s and an average PageSpeed score of 72/100, they fall slightly short of the performance achieved by BigCommerce. However, iPage does provide improvements in LCP, FID, and CLS, which are important metrics for website performance.

🏆 Winner: BigCommerce.

With a score of 7.7, BigCommerce offers a wide array of apps and integrations, including ERP and CRM systems, 3PL services, POS systems, and various marketing tools. These integrations facilitate operations like sales analytics, inventory management, customer relationship management, and marketing automation. On the other hand, iPage, with a score of 6.3, offers a variety of plugins and extensions, with options ranging from SEO tools to security enhancements. However, the overall score and the range of functionalities provided by BigCommerce give it an edge over iPage.

BigCommerce Applications

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Overall Winner: BigCommerce

. BigCommerce stands out for its comprehensive e-commerce marketing tools, especially in SEO, email marketing, and social media integration. iPage, while offering a robust set of marketing features, falls slightly short in comparison.

🏆 Winner: BigCommerce

. BigCommerce takes the lead in this category with a customer support score of 8.7, compared to iPage’s score of 6.9. BigCommerce offers 24/7 customer support through various channels, including phone, email, and live chat, ensuring global accessibility and convenience for users. The company provides dedicated phone lines for several regions and requires a support pin for personalized assistance, catering to customers worldwide. An extensive knowledge base and active community forums supplement these direct support options, allowing users to find answers and share experiences.

On the other hand, iPage provides 24/7 customer support through phone, email, and live chat. However, they do not offer enterprise support, which is a significant disadvantage for larger businesses. Despite this, iPage’s round-the-clock support ensures that customers can receive help whenever they need it, regardless of the time or day.

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Winner: BigCommerce

. BigCommerce takes security seriously, with a high security score of 8.9. It adheres to international regulations like GDPR and CCPA, employs data encryption, and hosts on secure data centers. BigCommerce conducts regular security audits and continuous monitoring to preempt vulnerabilities. It also empowers merchants with resources for best practices in security management.

Although it may not offer the same level of comprehensive security measures as BigCommerce, iPage, with a security score of 7.5, also offers measures to protect private data and implements several security measures to safeguard websites hosted on its platform.

🏆 Winner: BigCommerce

. Despite not having an AI website builder, BigCommerce’s AI capabilities are more comprehensive, focusing on improving operational efficiency, enhancing customer experiences, and boosting sales for merchants. These features include AI-powered writing tools for creating product descriptions, personalized storefronts through product recommendations, and AI-driven data analytics for deeper business insights.

iPage, with a score of 3.0, offers an AI-powered website builder, making it easy for users to create and customize their websites without needing extensive technical knowledge. However, it lacks built-in AI content generation tools and does not offer third-party integrations with AI capabilities.

🏆 Winner: BigCommerce

. BigCommerce and iPage offer different levels of user management capabilities.

• BigCommerce allows an unlimited number of staff accounts with various roles and permissions, providing a flexible and comprehensive user management system.
• iPage’s website builder offers very limited multi-user functionality and access levels compared to more sophisticated website builder platforms.

BigCommerce User Roles and Access Levels:

iPage does not provide detailed information about user roles and access levels.

Additional Features

User Feedback

User feedback on BigCommerce highlights a mix of experiences. Users appreciate its ease of use, SEO configuration, and strong support team. However, there are significant criticisms, including its lack of suitability for businesses with brick-and-mortar locations due to issues with POS integration and sales tracking. Users also mention its inflexibility with customization and additional costs for necessary features. Concerns were raised about the platform’s steep learning curve for beginners, limitations in product variation and design options, and difficulties with order management. Despite these challenges, some users appreciate the platform’s ability to quickly launch and reliably host stores, alongside its potential for scalability and e-commerce growth.

Unfortunately, there is no user feedback summary available for iPage.

FAQ