BigCommerce vs Shopify Plus: Enterprise Ecommerce Compared For 2027
David Roberts
Founder and CEO
11.02.2026
BigCommerce vs Shopify Plus for enterprise brands: compare pricing, payment fees, B2B, headless, multi-storefront, checkout control and API limits for 2027.
Once a brand outgrows a self-serve ecommerce plan, the shortlist usually narrows to two SaaS platforms: BigCommerce and Shopify Plus. Both are hosted, both handle security and uptime for you, and both now sell themselves on headless, B2B and AI features. The buyers comparing them are typically ecommerce directors, CTOs and finance leads at brands doing seven to nine figures a year, often in the middle of a replatforming project from Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud or an older BigCommerce or Shopify plan.
The one-sentence difference: Shopify Plus is a published-price, opinionated platform with the largest app and agency ecosystem, while BigCommerce sells its enterprise tier on custom contracts and positions itself as the more open platform, with no platform fee on a wide set of payment providers and stronger native B2B tooling.
This comparison covers the enterprise tiers only. If you are a smaller merchant weighing the self-serve plans, our general Shopify vs BigCommerce comparison is the better starting point. Every price and limit below was checked on the vendors’ own pricing pages, help centers and developer docs in November 2026.
One naming note before we start. In August 2025, BigCommerce’s parent company rebranded as Commerce (Nasdaq: CMRC), the umbrella over BigCommerce, Feedonomics and Makeswift. BigCommerce itself kept its name as a product. Then on June 1, 2026, BigCommerce renamed its plans, and the old Enterprise plan is now called Performance. You will still see “BigCommerce Enterprise” used widely, including on BigCommerce’s own enterprise pricing page, so we use both names here.
BigCommerce vs Shopify Plus At A Glance
Factor
BigCommerce Performance (Enterprise)
Shopify Plus
Starting price
Custom pricing, starting at $1,499/month billed annually
$2,500/month on a 1-year term or $2,300/month on a 3-year term (USD)
How cost scales
Quote based on volume; Performance applies from $250K monthly GMV
Variable platform fee based on revenue and business model; rate not published
Free plan or trial
No free plan; 15-day free trial on self-serve plans
No free plan; paid trial offer shown on the pricing page
Fee for outside payment gateways
0% on embedded providers; 0% open provider fee under a Performance contract
0.2% per transaction when not using Shopify Payments
Shopify B2B with unlimited catalogs, payment terms, deposits on Plus
Headless framework
Catalyst (Next.js) with Makeswift visual editor
Hydrogen with free Oxygen hosting; 25 headless storefronts
Multiple stores
Multi-storefront from one control panel (Contact Sales)
Up to 9 free expansion stores
Checkout control
Checkout SDK, open-source Open Checkout, headless checkout APIs
Checkout UI extensions and Shopify Functions; step customization is Plus-only
API limits
Set per Performance plan; unlimited rate plan for some clients
1,000 GraphQL Admin points per second
Best for
B2B and hybrid sellers, multi-brand catalogs, gateway flexibility
D2C brands that want speed, a huge app market and predictable list pricing
The Core Difference: Packaged Platform vs Open Platform
Shopify Plus is built around one way of doing things. Checkout is Shopify’s checkout, extended through sanctioned extension points. Payments default to Shopify Payments, and using any other gateway costs a 0.2% fee per transaction. In return you get a platform that a huge number of developers, apps and agencies already know, and a list price you can put into a budget before speaking to sales.
BigCommerce takes the opposite position on several of those points. Its enterprise pricing page states that it charges no payment fees on orders processed through its 20+ embedded payment providers, and Performance customers under contract are exempt from the newer open payment provider fee. It exposes more of the checkout as source code, ships a headless storefront on Next.js, and runs multiple storefronts from a single back end. The trade-off is less pricing transparency and a smaller, more specialized ecosystem.
In practice, the choice often comes down to business model. A D2C fashion or beauty brand chasing conversion and marketing speed tends to land on Shopify Plus. A manufacturer, distributor or multi-brand group with complex price lists, company accounts and an ERP at the center tends to take BigCommerce more seriously.
Pricing Compared
BigCommerce Pricing
BigCommerce restructured its plans on June 1, 2026. The self-serve tiers are now Core ($39/month, or $29/month billed annually), Growth ($105/month, or $79 annually) and Scale ($399/month, or $299 annually). Scale charges a continuous 0.9% overage on GMV above $33,333 a month, and accounts move to Performance once trailing 12-month GMV reaches $2 million. BigCommerce’s plan update page says Performance applies at $250K in monthly GMV, evaluated on the first of each month.
Performance, the former Enterprise plan, is custom priced. The pricing page lists it as “starting at $1,499 per month, billed annually,” with contracts required and “custom payment terms that fit your volume.” The GMV cap and inventory locations are also listed as custom. BigCommerce does not publish how the quote scales beyond that floor, so treat $1,499 as an entry point rather than a likely number for a large brand.
Three things drive the BigCommerce bill up:
Sales volume. BigCommerce measures plans on “Inclusive GMV,” which it defines as gross order value after a 10% reduction, and your contract will be sized against it.
Add-ons. B2B Edition is listed as “Contact us for pricing,” and multi-storefront on Performance is “Contact Sales.” Neither price is published.
Services. BigCommerce sells Enterprise Launch and Enterprise Growth packages separately and says migration costs vary by scope.
On payments, the published card processing rate starts at 2.89% + $0.29 per transaction across BigCommerce plans, but you are free to choose a different embedded provider without a platform fee.
Shopify Plus Pricing
Shopify publishes a Plus price. Its help center lists $2,500 a month on a 1-year term and $2,300 a month on a 3-year term in USD, and notes that Plus pricing varies by term and billing currency. The public pricing page shows “from $2,300/mo,” which is the 3-year rate. There is no month-to-month Plus option; you can cancel when the term commitment expires.
The bigger cost lever is the variable platform fee. Shopify’s help center says that more complex, higher-volume businesses may pay “a variable platform fee based on your revenue and business model,” and that it differs between B2B and D2C companies. Shopify does not publish the percentage or the revenue level at which it starts. Ask for both in writing during negotiation, because at high volume this fee can outweigh the base subscription.
Payment costs on Plus, per the pricing page:
Shopify Payments online standard rate: 2.25% + 30¢ (premium cards 2.95% + 30¢, international cards +1%)
In-person card rate: 2.3% + 10¢
Third-party transaction fee when using another gateway: 0.2%
Plus includes up to 9 free expansion stores, unlimited staff accounts, 200 inventory locations and POS Pro for 20 locations (up to 200 with Shopify Payments). Each live expansion store needs its own theme license, which is a real cost if you buy premium themes.
What You Actually Pay
Take a D2C brand doing $15 million a year online (about $1.25 million a month) that already processes cards through Adyen and wants to keep that contract.
On Shopify Plus with a 3-year term, the base subscription is $2,300 x 12 = $27,600 a year. Keeping Adyen as an outside gateway adds the 0.2% third-party fee: 0.2% of $15 million is $30,000 a year. That is $57,600 before any variable platform fee, which Shopify sets per merchant and does not publish. If the brand moves to Shopify Payments instead, the 0.2% fee disappears, but its processing rate then depends on Shopify’s terms rather than the Adyen contract.
On BigCommerce, $1.25 million a month is well past the $250K Performance threshold, so this brand is on a custom contract. The published floor is $1,499 a month billed annually, or $17,988 a year, but a brand at this volume should expect a quote above that. If Adyen is one of BigCommerce’s embedded providers in the brand’s region, there is no platform payment fee, and the open provider fee does not apply to Performance under contracted terms.
The takeaway: Shopify Plus is easier to forecast up to the variable fee, while BigCommerce can be cheaper for brands that want to keep their own payment processor, but only a written quote tells you by how much. Get both proposals with total platform, payment and add-on fees for your actual GMV before comparing.
B2B Commerce: B2B Edition vs Shopify B2B
This is where the two platforms differ most for enterprise buyers.
BigCommerce B2B Edition
B2B Edition is BigCommerce’s dedicated B2B layer, described on its app listing as taking the Enterprise plan “to the next level.” BigCommerce’s developer docs and product pages list company accounts, a customizable buyer portal (open source), sales quotes with negotiated pricing, invoice management with purchase orders on net terms, and sales agents who can work on behalf of a client. The app listing adds shopping lists with approval flows for junior buyers, three buyer roles (Company Administrator, Senior Buyer, Junior Buyer), a company address book, a quick order pad and an invoice portal where buyers can pay by card, ACH or purchase order.
The product page also lists multi-company hierarchies with role-based access, credit management per company account and custom pricing by company, subsidiary, department or role. Price lists for SKU-level customer group pricing are a Performance-only feature on the main pricing page. B2B Edition pricing is not published.
Shopify B2B on Plus
Shopify B2B is built into the core platform and available on all plans, but the deeper features are Plus-only. Shopify’s help center says Basic, Grow and Advanced stores get up to 3 active catalogs, while Plus gets unlimited catalogs, direct catalog assignment to specific company locations, customer-specific deposits and partial payments for B2B orders.
Shared features include company profiles with separate locations, payment terms (Net 7 to Net 90 or due on fulfillment), quantity rules, volume pricing and draft orders that let you review and negotiate before confirming. You can run B2B in a blended store alongside D2C or as a dedicated wholesale store.
Shopify’s B2B tools are strong for D2C brands adding wholesale. BigCommerce’s B2B Edition goes further on buyer hierarchies, quoting, invoicing and sales rep workflows, which matters more for manufacturers and distributors where B2B is the main business.
Headless: Catalyst vs Hydrogen
Both platforms now ship their own headless storefront frameworks, so you no longer have to build a decoupled front end from scratch.
BigCommerce Catalyst is optimized for Next.js and React Server Components. It can be used on its own or pre-integrated with Makeswift, the visual editor that is now part of the Commerce group, so marketers can edit pages without a developer. The code lives on GitHub and Catalyst works with hosts such as Vercel. The B2B Edition app listing says it is compatible with Catalyst.
Shopify Hydrogen provides commerce building blocks (cart, products, money, accounts) that work with React Router and other JavaScript frameworks. Shopify offers free hosting on Oxygen, its edge network, and says Hydrogen also runs on Vercel, Cloudflare or your own Node server. The Plus pricing page includes 25 headless storefronts, versus 1 on lower plans.
Teams already standardized on Next.js and Vercel will find Catalyst more familiar. Teams that want hosting bundled at no extra cost and a tight link to Shopify’s checkout will lean toward Hydrogen and Oxygen.
Multi-Storefront and International Selling
BigCommerce runs multiple storefronts on different domains from a single control panel. Its multi-store page says you can make products available on one or several storefronts, set a different default currency per storefront and create localized stores with their own language and domain. The self-serve plans cap extra storefronts (up to 8 on Scale at $100/month each), while Performance is listed as “Contact Sales,” so the number and cost are negotiated.
Shopify Plus takes a different approach. Each of the up to 9 free expansion stores is a separate store with its own admin, theme and settings, used for regions or brands. Shopify also offers Markets for selling to multiple countries from one store. For a group with many brands that share one catalog, the single back end on BigCommerce is easier to manage. For a single brand expanding into a handful of regions, Shopify’s model works well and the expansion stores are included in the price.
Shopify has moved all checkout customization to checkout extensibility. The developer docs say checkout.liquid is no longer supported on the information, shipping and payment steps, and script tags on the Thank you and Order status pages were sunset for Plus stores on August 28, 2025. Customization now happens through checkout UI extensions, Shopify Functions, web pixel extensions and payments extensions. Shopify’s help center marks apps that customize the information, shipping and payment steps, and the Checkout Branding API, as Plus-only. This is one of the main reasons brands upgrade to Plus.
BigCommerce exposes more of the checkout as code. Open Checkout is the open-source version of its one-page checkout and can be forked as a starting point. The Checkout SDK lets you build a custom presentation layer, though BigCommerce notes it does not let you introduce new shipping or payment methods. For fully headless builds, the GraphQL Storefront API and the REST Management API can create a checkout and convert it to an order. The docs do not list plan restrictions for these options.
API Limits
Shopify publishes its limits. The GraphQL Admin API allows 100 points per second on standard plans, 200 on Advanced, 1,000 on Shopify Plus and 2,000 on Shopify for enterprise (Commerce Components). Shopify’s developer docs also note that buyer traffic on the Storefront API is not rate-limited, and the variant creation throttle that applies after 500,000 variants does not apply to Plus stores.
BigCommerce publishes self-serve limits (60,000 requests per hour on Scale, 20,000 on Growth and Core) but says Performance quotas vary by plan and resource. Some Performance clients are on an Unlimited Rate Plan with no request rate limit, though physical infrastructure may still cap throughput. If heavy ERP or PIM syncs are part of your plan, ask BigCommerce to state your API quota in the contract.
Apps, Agencies and Support
Shopify’s ecosystem is its biggest advantage. Its Partner Directory groups agencies into Select, Plus, Premier and Platinum tiers, and the Plus pricing page highlights Plus Certified apps. Hiring Shopify developers and finding an app for a niche need is generally easier than on any other SaaS platform. Plus includes priority 24/7 phone support.
BigCommerce’s Partner Directory lists more than 750 partners, filterable by Elite, Preferred and Partner tiers and by certification. The ecosystem is smaller, but it is concentrated on mid-market and enterprise work, especially B2B, and BigCommerce owns Feedonomics for product feed management across marketplaces and ad channels. Performance includes a dedicated Customer Success Manager and 24/7 live phone and chat support, according to the pricing page.
Whichever you choose, budget for an agency. Enterprise replatforming projects on either platform are rarely done in-house, and the partner you pick will shape the result as much as the platform.
Which Should You Choose
Choose BigCommerce If…
B2B is a large share of revenue and you need company hierarchies, quotes, invoicing and sales rep tools out of the box.
You want to keep your own payment processor without paying a platform fee on it.
You run several brands or regional stores that should share one catalog and one admin.
Your engineering team is on Next.js and wants an open checkout codebase to modify.
You are comfortable negotiating a custom contract rather than buying from a price list.
Choose Shopify Plus If…
You are a D2C brand where conversion rate, launch speed and marketing tools matter most.
You are happy to use Shopify Payments, which removes the third-party transaction fee.
You want the largest pool of apps, developers and agencies to hire from.
You want a published base price and included expansion stores and headless hosting.
Your wholesale channel is secondary and fits within catalogs, payment terms and volume pricing.
On published entry prices, yes: BigCommerce Performance starts at $1,499 a month billed annually, while Shopify Plus starts at $2,300 a month on a 3-year term. Real enterprise costs depend on your quote, Shopify’s variable platform fee and how you process payments. Brands that keep a third-party gateway often see the biggest difference, because Shopify Plus charges 0.2% per transaction for it.
Does Shopify Plus Charge a Percentage of Sales?
It can. Shopify’s help center says higher-volume businesses may pay a variable platform fee based on revenue and business model, with different terms for B2B and D2C. Shopify does not publish the rate or threshold, so you need to get it in your proposal.
What Happened to BigCommerce Enterprise?
On June 1, 2026, BigCommerce renamed its Enterprise plan to Performance as part of a wider plan restructure. BigCommerce says existing Enterprise stores are not affected other than the name change. Separately, the parent company became Commerce (Nasdaq: CMRC) in 2025, while BigCommerce continues as the product brand.
Which Is Better for B2B Ecommerce?
For B2B-first businesses, BigCommerce B2B Edition offers more depth: buyer roles, approval flows, quoting, an invoice portal and sales rep tools. Shopify Plus handles B2B well for brands adding wholesale to D2C, with unlimited catalogs, payment terms, deposits and partial payments. Compare both against your real ordering workflows before deciding.
Can I Go Headless on Both Platforms?
Yes. BigCommerce offers Catalyst, built for Next.js, with an optional Makeswift visual editor. Shopify offers Hydrogen with free Oxygen hosting, and Plus includes 25 headless storefronts.
How Long Is a Shopify Plus Contract?
Shopify Plus is sold on 1-year or 3-year terms, at $2,500 or $2,300 a month in USD respectively. You can cancel when the term commitment ends. BigCommerce Performance also requires a contract, with terms set in your agreement.
Conclusion
BigCommerce vs Shopify Plus is less about which platform is better and more about which business model you run. Shopify Plus gives D2C brands a published price, a locked-down but powerful checkout, the biggest ecosystem in SaaS commerce and included headless hosting. Its weak points are the 0.2% fee on outside gateways and a variable platform fee it does not publish.
BigCommerce, now operating under the Commerce parent brand, suits B2B and multi-brand sellers who want payment freedom, deeper native B2B tools, an open checkout and Next.js-based headless builds. Its weak points are custom pricing and a smaller partner pool. Get written quotes from both, model them against your real GMV and payment setup, and choose the platform whose trade-offs your team can live with for the length of the contract.
