WP Engine Commerce Connect: Where WordPress Meets BigCommerce

Commerce Connect: The WordPress You Know, the BigCommerce You Trust

Trying to run an ecommerce business on the wrong platform is a lot like running a brick-and-mortar in a deteriorating structure. You can dress it up all you want, but at the end of the day, if the foundation isn’t there you’ll never be able to deliver the experience customers want and deserve. (And it’s likely to come crashing down eventually.)

This is why so many merchants choose WordPress. In fact, 41.2% of all websites run on WordPress. For good reason: It’s convenient, free to start, highly customizable, and easy to launch. It’s also arguably one of the best CMS platforms for businesses wanting to post content, which is increasingly important for visibility in the AI era, and historically a must for visibility where SEO is concerned. But, it’s not an ecommerce platform by default.

While WordPress allows many brands to get their start, like the 4+ million running on WooCommerce, the platform presents certain hurdles: security loopholes, performance struggles, and general scalability issues.

Should the above prevent ecommerce businesses from using WordPress? At BigCommerce, we think not.

This is why we partnered with WP Engine to create Commerce Connect, a new solution which  enables merchants to bring together the best of WordPress with BigCommerce’s scalable, secure platform.

The challenges of staying on WordPress

WordPress is a powerful platform, especially where content is concerned. As customizable as it is, it’s this same customizability and freedom that makes mid-market growth difficult for many brands, for a few reasons in particular.

Security 

PCI compliance is a must for ecommerce brands, and when you’re operating on WordPress it’s up to you to maintain it. As your payment volumes increase, so will your requirements for PCI compliance.

On top of PCI compliance, the open-source nature and overall popularity of WordPress have made it a target for cyberattacks. WordFence, one of the biggest WordPress security providers in the world, stopped roughly 6.3 million brute force attacks per hour in Q4 2025 alone.

There’s no magical plugin panacea, but shifting the ecommerce portion of your brand from WordPress can make a big difference in your security burden.

Performance

Google’s Core Web Vitals (CWV) are the gold standard for measuring site performance, and largely dictate how your site performs in search. Yet, only 50% of WordPress sites pass CWV.

The problem isn’t WordPress itself, but how easy it is to get swamped with plugins and place unnecessary performance bottlenecks. There’s also the server or hosting side of things to consider, as WordPress sites have to live somewhere. The right or wrong host can make a world of difference where performance is concerned.

Scalability

A heavy reliance on plugins can result in compatibility issues, while increasing traffic volumes require extensive database optimization. The larger your business, the more pertinent it is that you stay on top of updates, which eats more time and resources on top of it all.

There’s also the aforementioned role of your host to consider when scaling. Some hosts are capable of scaling to the moon and back, but this often comes with a ballooning cost.

The WP Engine and BigCommerce partnership

WP Engine, founded in 2010, is a WordPress and WooCommerce-focused managed hosting and development company. Serving as the foundation for more than 5 million websites around the globe, WP Engine knows both WooCommerce and WordPress inside and out.

With customers like Great American Cookies, Metcash, and Mitie (one of the UK’s largest facilities management companies), WP Engine is no stranger to commerce at scale. But, they also understand the unique challenges that come with mid-market brands stuck at a high-growth impasse. Something that isn’t unheard of with brands running on WooCommerce.

"Growing ecommerce brands shouldn't have to choose between the WordPress experience they've invested in and the commerce capabilities they need to scale. Our partnership with BigCommerce gives brands the flexibility to scale confidently, adapt as their business evolves, and build for what's next.”

— Heather Brunner, Chairwoman and CEO at WP Engine

Partnering with Commerce, WP Engine launched Commerce Connect, a plugin that enables merchants to capitalize on the powerful compliance and security features of the BigCommerce platform while retaining the same Wordpress experience they’re comfortable with.

With this plugin, you can continue using your Wordpress theme and content management, while changing the backend commerce experience to one that’s built for scale, PCI-compliant, and highly customizable with more than 1,200 apps and integrations.

How Commerce Connect works

Commerce Connect is technically a replatforming on the backend. But, this doesn’t mean it comes with the same, arduous journey. By maintaining your WordPress site and existing URLs, the process is simpler than a full replatforming.

1. Install the Commerce Connect plugin.

2. Start your 15-day free trial of BigCommerce.

3. Move your catalog, orders, and customer records into BigCommerce in a few clicks.

That’s it. Your WordPress site stays the same. Your checkout moves to BigCommerce. Scalability is yours.

The benefits of Commerce Connect

You’re likely already familiar with the benefits of WordPress, including extensive customizability, great SEO potential, and support for eye-catching themes. 

But, what about the benefits of integrating that experience with BigCommerce via Commerce Connect?

• The WordPress you know. Your site, theme, content management — none of it changes. Your marketing team doesn’t have to learn how to operate a new CMS, your customers don’t have to familiarize themselves with a new site, and all the hard work you’ve put into your existing design stays.

• Your SEO efforts remain intact. Unlike a replatforming effort, none of your URLs change. That means no loss of backlinks, no hit to organic traffic, only a more secure checkout experience.

• Scalability simplified. With BigCommerce, you can rely less on plugins, stop worrying about finding a host that can scale with your business, and focus on delivering the best customer experience possible. No matter the rush at checkout, BigCommerce can keep up.

• Security without the burden. BigCommerce takes care of PCI compliance on the backend, freeing up your team to focus efforts elsewhere. (Not to mention, reducing the likelihood of costly security breaches.)

• The same data, one unified dashboard. Forget hopping between one dashboard and another. With Commerce Connect, your order history and catalog sync on one unified BigCommerce dashboard.

Typically, a replatforming requires extensive developer rebuilds. Commerce Connect keeps things as simple as possible, without requiring the kind of rebuild you’d expect when changing your ecommerce platform.

The final word: Go big with Commerce Connect

WordPress helped you take your first steps. With Commerce Connect, your journey with the platform you know and trust doesn’t have to end.

BigCommerce has helped brands like Diono, GourmetFuel, and Ship It Appliances migrate from WooCommerce and find scalability that’s matched only by our platform’s stability. With global customers like BMW, Crest, and Nikon, BigCommerce is no stranger to the challenges that come with scaling globally, either.

With WP Engine Commerce Connect, you can benefit from the secure, scalable BigCommerce platform without losing the momentum you’ve worked so hard to build. And best of all, you can try it with a 15-day trial of BigCommerce.

Explore how easy it is to go big with Commerce Connect.