BigCommerce vs Zoho Sites: What’s the Best Builder in 2024?

BigCommerce vs Zoho Sites: Final verdict

BigCommerce and Zoho Sites both offer robust website building solutions, but they cater to different needs and user bases.

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  BigCommerce (Overall Grade: 7.9/10)
  
  is a comprehensive ecommerce platform ideal for businesses looking to scale their online presence. It offers a wide range of customizable templates, advanced SEO tools, and multi-channel selling capabilities. BigCommerce excels in ecommerce functionalities, providing extensive support resources and a user-friendly interface. When comparing BigCommerce vs Zoho Sites, BigCommerce stands out for its robust set of built-in features and superior ecommerce capabilities.
• 
  Zoho Sites (Overall Grade: 7.6/10)
  
  is a user-friendly website builder that caters to various purposes, such as blogging, photography, and business. It offers a collection of customizable templates and a visual editor for easy customization without coding. Zoho Sites integrates seamlessly with other Zoho products, making it a great choice for small businesses looking for a cost-effective and integrated solution. In the BigCommerce vs Zoho Sites comparison, Zoho Sites is ideal for users who prioritize ease of use and integration with other business tools.

Which one is the best for ecommerce: BigCommerce or Zoho Sites?

Verdict

: BigCommerce is a powerhouse for ecommerce, offering extensive features and scalability, while Zoho Sites is more suited for simpler, smaller-scale online stores.

• 
  BigCommerce
  
  : With a score of 9.0, BigCommerce excels in providing a comprehensive ecommerce solution. It offers unlimited products, advanced SEO tools, and multi-channel selling capabilities, making it ideal for businesses looking to scale. Its robust set of built-in features, including various payment gateway integrations and extensive customization options, positions it as a top choice for serious ecommerce ventures.
• 
  Zoho Sites
  
  : Scoring 7.4, Zoho Sites is a user-friendly platform that integrates with Zoho Commerce to offer basic ecommerce functionalities. It is best suited for smaller businesses or individuals who need a straightforward, easy-to-use website builder with essential ecommerce features. While it lacks the depth and scalability of BigCommerce, it provides a solid foundation for those starting out in ecommerce.

Which one is the best for informational and business websites?

Verdict

: Zoho Sites slightly edges out BigCommerce for informational and business websites, thanks to its user-friendly interface and diverse template options. However, BigCommerce remains a strong contender with its robust design functionalities and extensive support resources.

• 
  BigCommerce
  
  : BigCommerce is a comprehensive e-commerce platform that offers a wide range of customizable templates and design options. While it excels in creating professional-looking websites with advanced SEO tools and multi-channel selling capabilities, it may be more complex for users primarily seeking to build informational sites. BigCommerce scores 7.5 in this category.
• 
  Zoho Sites
  
  : Zoho Sites is a user-friendly website builder that enables the creation of websites for various purposes, including business. It offers a collection of customizable templates and a visual editor for easy customization without coding. Zoho Sites is particularly suitable for users looking for a straightforward platform to create responsive and visually appealing websites. Zoho Sites scores 7.9 in this category.

BigCommerce vs Zoho Sites: Detailed comparison

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Winner: BigCommerce.

If you’re looking for a platform that offers more creative control and a wide array of design features, BigCommerce is the preferred choice.

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. There are 12 free themes, while the rest range in price from $150 to $300 each.

BigCommerce Themes

Compared to BigCommerce, Zoho Sites offers a diverse collection of over 150 templates, thoughtfully categorized into industries like Restaurants, Architecture, Health, and more. Each template provides a pre-designed layout with responsive design for various screen sizes. Customization options include visual elements such as colors, fonts, and images, as well as the ability to modify layouts and content using the visual editor. For advanced users on the Advanced Plan, there’s the option to leverage HTML and CSS for deeper customization.

Zoho Sites Themes

🏆 Winner: BigCommerce

. Scoring a 7.3, BigCommerce edges out Zoho Sites, which scored a 7.0. 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. However, Zoho Sites also offers a positive user experience with a clean interface and logical workflows, making it suitable for those with basic needs.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: Tie

. Both BigCommerce and Zoho Sites offer a wide range of learning resources designed to support their users. BigCommerce provides articles, guides, webinars, podcasts, and reports, along with specific training through BigCommerce University. Zoho Sites provides a detailed beginner’s guide, comprehensive user guides, video tutorials, blogs, FAQs, community forums, and webinars.

BigCommerce is a comprehensive ecommerce platform known for its robust set of built-in features, including advanced SEO tools, various payment gateway integrations, and multi-channel selling capabilities. On the other hand, Zoho Sites, while primarily a website builder, integrates seamlessly with Zoho Commerce to provide ecommerce functionality.

BigCommerce ecommerce features:

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

Zoho Sites ecommerce features:

• Product and Inventory management
• Order management
• Payment Processing
• Marketing and Promotions
• SEO and Analytics
• Security

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.

Zoho Sites offers a range of ecommerce website templates and themes designed to cater to various industries and business needs. These templates are customizable, allowing businesses to tailor their online stores to their brand and product offerings. Zoho Commerce, in particular, provides beautiful and highly customizable ecommerce store themes, aiming to enhance the online shopping experience.

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.

Zoho offers extensive product page customization options, allowing users to tailor the display of their products. This includes features like image galleries, sliders, and video integration, enabling businesses to present their products in a visually appealing manner. Additionally, Zoho facilitates the configuration of product variants like size and color options, as well as efficient inventory management directly from the product pages.

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.

Zoho Sites, in conjunction with Zoho Commerce, offers robust payment processing capabilities and supports integration with multiple payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, and Square, facilitating secure online transactions. While direct POS system integration and commission management might require leveraging additional Zoho tools or custom solutions, the Zoho ecosystem provides a comprehensive suite for businesses to manage both online and in-store sales efficiently. This integration ensures flexibility and security for businesses aiming to provide a seamless shopping experience across multiple channels.

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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.

Zoho Sites, scoring 7.5, is a user-friendly website builder that enables both businesses and individuals to create professional, responsive websites without coding skills, through its drag-and-drop interface. Integrated within the Zoho ecosystem, it offers customizable templates, SEO tools, social media integration, and ecommerce features, along with connectivity to other Zoho applications for enhanced functionality.

Mobile editor/app

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Winner: BigCommerce

. Both BigCommerce and Zoho Sites offer mobile capabilities, but they cater to different needs. BigCommerce provides a mobile app that, while not allowing website editing, offers 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.

On the other hand, Zoho Sites does not have a dedicated website editor app. It allows users to edit the visual aspects of the mobile version of their website, such as font size, color, background, and shadow, but does not allow content changes through the mobile interface.

In summary, BigCommerce receives a higher rating due to its more comprehensive mobile app, despite the lack of website editing capabilities, while Zoho Sites falls short due to its limited mobile editing capabilities.

Overall Result

:

Zoho Sites Wins

. Zoho Sites scores 8.8, outperforming BigCommerce which scores 7.3. Zoho Sites offers a longer trial period, the ability to test all features of each plan during the trial, and a more flexible refund policy.

Zoho Sites offers more affordable pricing plans compared to BigCommerce, but BigCommerce provides more advanced ecommerce features, especially for larger-scale operations.

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Winner: Zoho Sites

Zoho Sites edges out BigCommerce with its efficient hosting focused on speed, demonstrated by a high Google PageSpeed Insights score. It also boasts 12 global data centers and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. BigCommerce, on the other hand, offers scalable cloud hosting with unlimited storage and bandwidth, but falls short with undisclosed data center locations and limited backup possibilities.

🏆 Winner: BigCommerce

Both BigCommerce and Zoho Sites prioritize website performance and page speed, but BigCommerce’s comprehensive strategies for speed optimization give it a slight edge.

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 platform’s robust set of built-in features, make it a strong contender in terms of website speed optimization. BigCommerce also provides users with many tools for Core Web Vital improvements, further enhancing the performance of their websites.

On the other hand, Zoho Sites focuses on regularly testing and implementing updates, optimized code and libraries, and cache balancing for speed optimization. While these strategies are effective, they may not be as comprehensive as those offered by BigCommerce. However, Zoho Sites still manages to maintain an average load time of below 2-5 seconds and an average PageSpeed score of 70-80/100, indicating a strong focus on performance 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, to enhance eCommerce functionalities. Zoho Sites, scoring 7.3, also offers a diverse range of plugins and extensions, but BigCommerce’s robust set of built-in features gives it the edge.

However, it’s worth noting that Zoho Sites integrates many extensions into their paid plans, providing users with access to more features as they upgrade. This could be a more cost-effective solution for some users.

BigCommerce Applications

Zoho Sites Applications

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Overall Winner: BigCommerce

. BigCommerce stands out for its robust set of built-in features, including advanced SEO tools, various payment gateway integrations, and multi-channel selling capabilities across social media and marketplaces. Zoho Sites, while offering a range of marketing tools, is more suited for users who prioritize ease of use.

🏆 Winner: BigCommerce

. In the comparison of BigCommerce vs Zoho Sites, BigCommerce takes the lead with a customer support score of 8.7. BigCommerce offers 24/7 support through phone, email, and live chat, ensuring users can get help whenever they need it. The platform also provides dedicated phone lines for various regions and requires a support pin for personalized assistance. Additionally, BigCommerce’s extensive knowledge base and active community forums are valuable resources for users seeking answers and sharing experiences.

Zoho Sites, with a customer support score of 8.3, also provides 24/7 support through live chat, email, and phone. The platform’s comprehensive knowledge base and community forum are helpful for users looking for quick solutions and peer interactions. While Zoho Sites offers reliable and prompt support, BigCommerce’s more extensive support options and higher customer support score make it the winner in this category.

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Winner: BigCommerce

. BigCommerce takes a comprehensive approach to security, adhering to international regulations like GDPR and CCPA, employing data encryption, and hosting on secure data centers. It also partners with Cloudflare to further bolster security and emphasizes a shared responsibility model for account security. Regular security audits and continuous monitoring help preempt vulnerabilities, and merchants are provided with resources for best practices in security management.

Although it may not offer the same level of specialized ecommerce security features as BigCommerce, Zoho Sites also prioritizes security, offering advanced encryption, secure data storage, and two-factor authentication. Regular software updates help address potential vulnerabilities. However, compared to BigCommerce, Zoho Sites’ security measures seem less extensive, which is why BigCommerce takes the lead in this category.

🏆 Winner: Zoho Sites

. Zoho Sites, with a score of 7.5, offers a slightly more comprehensive set of AI capabilities, particularly in sales predictions, workflow automation, and customer service enhancements.

BigCommerce, with a score of 7.3, also offers a robust set of AI features, particularly in personalized product recommendations, on-site search, chatbots, and content generation. However, it lacks in areas like sales predictions and workflow automation compared to Zoho Sites.

🏆 Winner: BigCommerce

. Both BigCommerce and Zoho Sites offer different levels of user management capabilities.

• BigCommerce allows an unlimited number of staff accounts with various roles and permissions, providing flexibility for businesses of all sizes.
• Zoho Sites, on the other hand, limits the number of users who can edit a website based on the chosen plan. The Free Plan allows only the owner to edit, while paid plans like Pro, Business, and Enterprise offer access for up to 10, 25, and 50 users respectively.

BigCommerce User Roles and Access Levels:

Zoho Sites does not provide a detailed breakdown of user roles and access levels.

Additional Features

BigCommerce vs Zoho Sites: 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.

Zoho Sites receives mixed reviews, with users praising its user-friendly interface, extensive template library, and seamless integration with other Zoho products, which simplifies website development and management for small businesses. However, some users express dissatisfaction with its limited design flexibility and the inability to create custom features. Overall, Zoho Sites addresses the need for cost-effective website solutions, particularly for those without coding knowledge, offering a one-stop-shop for building and managing websites with varying degrees of customization and integration with other business tools.

BigCommerce vs Zoho Sites: FAQ