It depends on how comfortable you are managing the technical side of your store.



WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, so setup involves securing hosting, installing WordPress, configuring WooCommerce, and then adding extensions for payments, shipping, security, performance, and more. For business owners who are technical, or have a developer, this flexibility can help. But for many small and mid-sized businesses, the ongoing plugin management, updates, and troubleshooting can become time-consuming.



BigCommerce is a fully hosted ecommerce platform designed specifically for selling online. Hosting, security, automatic updates, PCI compliance, and essential features like advanced promotions, multi-currency, and customer segmentation are built in. That means fewer integrations to manage and less maintenance behind the scenes.



This is where the day-to-day reality shows up.



With WooCommerce, you’re responsible for managing the entire stack. That includes hosting, installing updates, monitoring plugin compatibility, handling security patches, maintaining backups, and ensuring PCI compliance. Every new plugin adds flexibility, but also another moving part. Updates can feel risky, and when something breaks, you’re often coordinating between your host, your theme developer, and multiple plugin providers to figure out what happened.



BigCommerce takes a very different approach: Security, hosting, automatic updates, and PCI compliance are built into the platform — not bolted on. The infrastructure is managed for you, with 99.99% uptime and enterprise-grade protection working behind the scenes. That means fewer late-night fire drills, fewer “what broke?” moments, and more confidence during high-traffic events.



WooCommerce offers customization because it’s open source. With enough plugins and developer time, you can shape almost any experience. But that freedom often depends on layering extensions, custom scripts, and theme tweaks, which can introduce complexity as your business grows.



BigCommerce takes a powerful approach: flexibility without fragility.



Get robust, built-in features like Multi-Storefront, advanced promotions, customer group segmentation, and multi-currency support, all natively supported. No hunting for plugins. No stitching together tools from different vendors. When you want deeper customization, BigCommerce’s open-APIs and headless capabilities give your developers the freedom to build what your brand needs.



With WooCommerce, speed often depends on your hosting provider, how many plugins you’re running, your theme, your caching setup, and how well everything plays together. As your store grows, database bloat and plugin conflicts can slow down both the frontend and backend. Getting to “fast” usually requires optimization tools, CDNs, and ongoing developer oversight.



BigCommerce is built differently: It’s a fully hosted open platform designed for performance at scale, with 99.99% uptime and infrastructure optimized for high-traffic events. Speed isn’t something you patch together, it’s engineered into the platform. In fact, brands that migrate often see dramatic improvements. After switching to BigCommerce, GourmetFuel achieved a 39% increase in conversion rate, a 164% increase in orders, and a 239% increase in revenue — performance gains that compound as traffic grows.

WooCommerce runs on WordPress, which is widely known for its blogging and content capabilities. If content marketing is central to your strategy, WordPress offers deep control over blog structure, plugins, and SEO tools. With the right extensions and technical setup, you can fine-tune many on-page elements.



BigCommerce, however, is built specifically for ecommerce growth — and that focus matters.



You get SEO-friendly URLs, automatic sitemaps, customizable metadata, and fast page performance out of the box, all on a platform engineered for scale. Because hosting, performance, and security are built in, you’re less likely to run into technical slowdowns that impact rankings or user experience.



WooCommerce can support multichannel and international selling, but it typically relies on third-party plugins for marketplace integrations, multi-currency, multilingual storefronts, and cross-border tax handling. That flexibility is powerful, but it often means managing multiple extensions, and ensuring they continue to work together as your catalog, traffic, and regions expand.



BigCommerce approaches expansion as a built-in capability, not an add-on. There’s native features like multi-currency, customer group segmentation, advanced promotions, and Multi-Storefront, allowing you to run multiple brands, regions, or storefronts from a single backend. BigCommerce also integrates directly with major marketplaces and social channels, helping you centralize operations while expanding your reach.



WooCommerce can support B2B use cases, but typically through multiple extensions. Features like customer-specific pricing, bulk discounts, quote requests, net payment terms, and role-based access usually require third-party plugins and custom development. It’s possible to build a robust B2B experience, but often involves stitching together tools and maintaining custom logic as your needs evolve.



BigCommerce, on the other hand, offers B2B capabilities built directly into the platform, including price lists, customer group segmentation, advanced promotions, and support for complex catalogs. With B2B Edition, businesses can manage company accounts, assign user roles and permissions, enable quote management, and offer payment terms, all within a scalable, secure environment.

WooCommerce can scale, but it typically scales with effort. As order volume increases, you may need stronger hosting, database optimization, caching tools, and developer support to maintain performance. Adding new functionality like subscriptions, advanced promotions, international storefronts often means introducing additional plugins and ongoing maintenance.





BigCommerce is designed to scale by default. It’s a fully-hosted open platform with 99.99% uptime and infrastructure built to handle high-volume traffic and large catalogs, including 2M+ SKUs and 400+ API calls per second. Features like Multi-Storefront, multi-currency, advanced promotions, and built-in security are native to the platform, so growth doesn’t require layering on additional tools.



WooCommerce is open source, so you have direct access to the PHP codebase and WordPress architecture for customization. You have direct access to the PHP codebase, database, and WordPress ecosystem. For developers who want full control over the stack and are comfortable maintaining it, WooCommerce offers freedom. Extend functionality through custom plugins, hooks, and theme overrides.



BigCommerce takes a different approach: open platform with enterprise-grade infrastructure.



Experience a fully-managed backend: hosting, security, PCI compliance, updates, plus powerful APIs and webhooks for deep integrations. Developers can build headless storefronts, integrate ERPs and PIMs, customize checkout experiences, and extend functionality without managing core infrastructure. The platform supports high API throughput (400+ calls per second), and massive catalogs (2M+ SKUs), which is critical for complex environments.