BigCommerce vs Zenfolio: Comprehensive comparison guide for 2024

Final verdict

BigCommerce and Zenfolio cater to different audiences, each excelling in their respective domains.

• 
  BigCommerce (Overall Grade: 7.9/10)
  
  is a robust ecommerce platform designed for businesses of all sizes. It offers a wide range of customizable templates, advanced SEO tools, and multi-channel selling capabilities. BigCommerce stands out with its extensive support resources, user-friendly interface, and powerful marketing tools, making it an excellent choice for merchants looking to scale their online presence. When comparing BigCommerce vs Zenfolio, BigCommerce is ideal for users seeking a comprehensive ecommerce solution with advanced features and flexibility.
• 
  Zenfolio (Overall Grade: 6.4/10)
  
  is tailored specifically for professional photographers and visual artists. It provides elegant, mobile-friendly templates and integrated ecommerce capabilities for selling prints and digital downloads. Zenfolio excels in offering tools for marketing, client proofing, and secure photo storage, making it a versatile platform for managing and growing a photography business online. Considering BigCommerce vs Zenfolio, Zenfolio is perfect for photographers who need a specialized platform to showcase and sell their work.

Best for ecommerce

Verdict

: When comparing BigCommerce vs Zenfolio, BigCommerce emerges as the superior choice for comprehensive ecommerce needs, while Zenfolio is tailored specifically for photographers and visual artists.

• 
  BigCommerce
  
  : BigCommerce is a robust ecommerce platform suitable for businesses of all sizes. It offers a wide range of built-in features, including advanced SEO tools, various payment gateway integrations, and multi-channel selling capabilities. This makes it an excellent choice for merchants looking to scale their online presence. However, its extensive features might be overwhelming for those with simpler needs.
• 
  Zenfolio
  
  : Zenfolio is designed specifically for professional photographers and visual artists. It provides customizable website templates with integrated ecommerce features, allowing users to showcase and sell their work online. While it offers essential tools for selling prints and digital downloads, it lacks the advanced ecommerce functionalities and scalability that BigCommerce provides. This makes Zenfolio ideal for niche markets but less suitable for broader ecommerce needs.

Best for informational & business websites

Verdict

: BigCommerce is a more versatile option for informational and business websites, offering a broader range of features and customization options. Zenfolio, while excellent for photographers, may not provide the same level of flexibility for general business needs.

• 
  BigCommerce
  
  : BigCommerce is a robust platform that excels in creating professional and scalable websites. It offers a wide range of customizable templates and built-in features, making it suitable for various business types. With a score of 7.5, it provides extensive support resources and a user-friendly interface, making it a strong choice for informational and business websites.
• 
  Zenfolio
  
  : Zenfolio is tailored specifically for photographers and visual artists, offering elegant and mobile-friendly templates. While it includes integrated e-commerce capabilities and tools for marketing and client proofing, its focus on photography limits its versatility for other business types. With a score of 6.9, Zenfolio is ideal for those in the photography industry but may not meet the broader needs of other businesses.

Detailed comparison

🏆

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.

BigCommerce offers a variety of design templates for creating ecommerce websites, with a total of 240 themes available. Most of these themes come with up to four styling options, providing users with flexibility in design choices to match their brand’s aesthetic.

BigCommerce Themes

On the other hand, Zenfolio offers a variety of customizable templates and features specifically tailored for photographers, with a focus on showcasing and selling their work. While it provides several customization options, including blocks for different layouts and styles, it may not offer as much versatility outside of photography-specific needs.

Zenfolio Themes

🏆 Winner: BigCommerce

. Scoring 7.3, BigCommerce offers a user-friendly interface and a comprehensive set of built-in features, making it suitable for a broad spectrum of e-commerce businesses. Zenfolio, with a score of 6.3, offers a specialized platform for photographers, focusing on easy setup and customization for photo portfolios. However, it has limitations in design flexibility and might not fully cater to those seeking extensive customization or planning to expand beyond pure photography services.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: BigCommerce

. BigCommerce offers a wide range of learning resources designed to support e-commerce businesses at various stages of growth, including articles, guides, webinars, podcasts, and reports, along with specific training through BigCommerce University. On the other hand, Zenfolio’s learning resources are somewhat limited and users have expressed a desire for more comprehensive learning materials.

BigCommerce and Zenfolio cater to different ecommerce needs. BigCommerce is a comprehensive ecommerce platform with a robust set of built-in features, making it suitable for businesses of all sizes. Zenfolio, on the other hand, is designed specifically for photographers and visual artists, offering integrated ecommerce capabilities for selling prints, digital downloads, and other products.

BigCommerce ecommerce features:

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

Zenfolio ecommerce features:

• Multiple Currency Support
• Discount Coupons
• Order management
• Gift Certificates
• Tax management

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.

Zenfolio, on the other hand, provides customizable website templates with integrated ecommerce features for photographers, designed to showcase and sell their work across various genres. These templates include essential online selling tools such as secure payment options, product management, and marketing integrations, making it an all-in-one platform for photographers aiming to display and market their creations effectively.

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.

Zenfolio allows users to detail their product pages with descriptions, images, and options such as size or color. This allows for each product page to be adjusted to clearly display its unique attributes. Placing products in specific galleries or categories helps organize the site and improve navigation. The platform also supports customization in pricing and shipping settings, allowing sellers to cater to various needs effectively.

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. Furthermore, BigCommerce’s integration with various POS systems allows for seamless online and in-store sales management, offering a comprehensive solution for businesses looking to maximize their sales channels.

Zenfolio supports Stripe and PayPal for payment processing, integrating them seamlessly into its platform designed for photographers to sell their work online. The platform charges a commerce fee of 7% per order (excluding tax and shipping) and a payment processing fee for transactions through Stripe or PayPal. While Zenfolio offers robust e-commerce functionalities for online sales, including setting up price lists for prints and digital downloads, it does not explicitly mention POS capabilities for in-person sales, suggesting its services are tailored primarily towards online transactions.

🏆

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.

Zenfolio’s editor, scoring 7.6, offers an intuitive, no-coding-required website builder tailored for photographers, featuring drag-and-drop customization, a wide array of templates, and a powerful Custom Layout block for personalized designs. Its integrated eCommerce capabilities enable selling both digital and physical photography products, supported by comprehensive security features for protecting photographers’ work. However, it faces limitations in terms of storage space, with only its highest tier offering unlimited storage, and customization and SEO tools are considered limited.

Mobile editor/app

🏆

Winner: Zenfolio

. Both BigCommerce and Zenfolio offer mobile apps for managing your website, but they cater to different needs and skill levels. BigCommerce’s mobile app does not allow website editing, but provides access to the dashboard, analytics, orders, and the ability to add or edit products. This makes it a useful tool for managing an online store on the go, but it lacks the ability to make changes to the website’s design or layout.

Zenfolio, on the other hand, offers a mobile editor app that allows users to manage their websites and galleries directly from their mobile devices. It includes features for receiving notifications, managing galleries, handling sales-related tasks, and showcasing photos through a client presentation mode. Additionally, the app supports uploading and editing photos, as well as accessing various tools for reports, CRM, bookings, and blog management. While some features may still necessitate desktop use for full functionality, Zenfolio’s mobile app offers a more comprehensive set of editing tools compared to BigCommerce, making it the winner in this category.

In summary, Zenfolio receives a higher rating due to its comprehensive mobile app with a wide range of editing tools, while BigCommerce’s app is more focused on ecommerce management but lacks website editing capabilities.

Overall Result

:

Zenfolio Wins

. Zenfolio scores 8.4, outperforming BigCommerce which scores 7.3 in product testing options. Both platforms offer a 14-day free trial and allow testing of premium features during the trial period. However, Zenfolio stands out with its 30-day money-back guarantee, providing a longer safety net for users to evaluate the platform.

Zenfolio offers more affordable pricing plans, but BigCommerce provides a more comprehensive set of ecommerce features, especially for larger businesses.

🏆

Winner: BigCommerce

BigCommerce offers scalable cloud hosting with unlimited storage and bandwidth, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Zenfolio also provides cloud hosting with storage ranging from 15GB to unlimited, but does not disclose any information about its uptime statistics or guarantee. Both platforms do not disclose the locations of their data centers. Despite the lack of transparency about data center locations, BigCommerce’s uptime guarantee and unlimited resources give it an edge over Zenfolio.

🏆 Winner: BigCommerce

Both BigCommerce and Zenfolio are website builders that prioritize website performance and page speed. However, BigCommerce provides more strategies for speed optimization and tools for Core Web Vital improvements, giving it an edge over Zenfolio in this category.

BigCommerce provides a comprehensive set of strategies for website speed optimization, including image optimization, code minification, optimized templates, using AMP, and caching. These strategies, combined with the tools provided by BigCommerce, allow users to improve the load times and PageSpeed scores of their websites. BigCommerce also provides tools for Core Web Vital improvements, further enhancing the performance of their websites.

On the other hand, Zenfolio focuses on mobile responsive design for speed optimization. However, Zenfolio does not provide any information on their Core Web Vitals improvements, and it is not specified whether they provide any tools for improving website performance. Therefore, while Zenfolio websites can also achieve good load times and PageSpeed scores, BigCommerce provides more resources for website speed optimization.

🏆 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. Zenfolio, scoring 6.5, offers a focused set of plugins and integrations specifically designed for photographers. While Zenfolio’s offerings are more specialized, BigCommerce’s extensive range of integrations gives it the edge in this category.

BigCommerce Applications

🏆

Overall Winner: BigCommerce

. BigCommerce offers a more comprehensive set of marketing tools, especially in SEO, analytics and reporting, and ads and promotions. Zenfolio, while offering a decent set of marketing tools, is more limited in its SEO capabilities and analytics and reporting.

🏆 Winner: BigCommerce

. In the BigCommerce vs Zenfolio comparison, BigCommerce takes the lead with its robust 24/7 customer support available through phone, email, and live chat. This ensures that users can get help whenever they need it, regardless of their location. BigCommerce also offers dedicated phone lines for various regions and requires a support pin for personalized assistance, which adds an extra layer of security and customization. The extensive knowledge base and active community forums further enhance the support experience, making it easier for users to find solutions and share insights.

Zenfolio, on the other hand, provides customer support through email 365 days a year, LiveChat from Monday to Thursday, and phone support for Advanced plan subscribers during specific hours. While Zenfolio’s support is comprehensive, it lacks the 24/7 availability that BigCommerce offers. However, Zenfolio’s rich Support Center with articles and video tutorials is a valuable resource for users looking to resolve issues on their own. Despite these resources, the limited availability of live support options makes Zenfolio less competitive in this category.

🏆

Winner: BigCommerce

. BigCommerce takes a comprehensive approach to security, with adherence to international regulations like GDPR and CCPA, data encryption, secure data centers, regular security audits, and continuous monitoring. It also empowers merchants with resources for best practices in security management. BigCommerce’s security measures are particularly robust, including compliance with international standards like the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, SOC1 & SOC2 reports, PCI DSS, and ISO certifications for data and privacy management. It also uses technical measures such as GDPR compliance, PCI/DSS adherence, and the use of TLS, SSL, and HTTPS for secure data transmission. A partnership with Cloudflare further bolsters security.

Zenfolio, while not as comprehensive as BigCommerce, still takes security seriously. It processes personal data for various purposes, including service provision, security, and marketing, and limits third-party access to personal data. Zenfolio also adheres to data protection rights, allowing individuals in certain regions to access, limit use, and limit disclosure of their personal data. Zenfolio emphasizes security through SSL encryption for all its websites, provides SSL certificates for custom domains, protects users’ work with watermarking, offers password-protected galleries to control access, and provides cloud backup for additional data protection. These measures highlight Zenfolio’s commitment to data protection, website security, and privacy, catering specifically to photographers and visual artists needing a secure display platform.

🏆 Winner: BigCommerce

. BigCommerce, with a score of 7.3, offers a variety of AI features such as personalized product recommendations, AI on-site search, AI-powered chatbots, and AI content generation. These features are aimed at improving operational efficiency, enhancing customer experiences, and boosting sales for merchants.

Zenfolio, with a score of 2.4, only offers AI-driven eCommerce features aimed at enhancing the online selling experience for photographers. It does not have an AI website builder, AI content generation, or any other AI features.

🏆 Winner: BigCommerce

. BigCommerce and Zenfolio have different approaches to user management.

• BigCommerce allows an unlimited number of staff accounts with various roles and permissions, providing flexibility for businesses of all sizes.
• Zenfolio, on the other hand, only allows one user to edit and manage a website, which may limit its usability for larger businesses or teams.

BigCommerce User Roles and Access Levels:

Zenfolio does not provide user roles and access levels.

Additional Features

User Feedback

User feedback on BigCommerce highlights a mix of experiences, with positive remarks on its ease of use, SEO configuration, and strong support team. However, significant criticisms include its lack of suitability for businesses with brick-and-mortar locations, due to issues with POS integration and sales tracking, as well as its inflexibility with customization and additional costs for necessary features. Additionally, 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.

Users appreciate Zenfolio for its elegant and affordable site/portfolio designs, highlighting the platform’s suitability for photographers looking to showcase and sell their work online. The Starter plan is praised for its value, though some users express a desire to upgrade to the Pro plan for its enhanced client interaction features and customizable marketing tools. Criticisms include dissatisfaction with the platform’s handling of photo albums and a desire for more privacy and faster loading times. Overall, Zenfolio is valued for its ability to organize and share professional photographs and files, despite some navigational and performance issues.

FAQ