Global eCommerce solution BigCommerce is one of the top-billed choices for organizations of all sizes looking to power their online stores. Not only is it used by more than 60,000 companies, but it also has a Forbes rating of 4.6 stars and a TrustRadius Top Rated award for customer satisfaction, further adding to its credibility.
As with the procurement of any SaaS tool, however, price is likely to be a key consideration. Now more than ever perhaps, thanks to soaring price increases and proliferating software stacks.
Having a solid understanding of just how much BigCommerce is likely to set you back is therefore crucial. And we’re not just talking about their list prices, we’re talking about the actual prices companies like yours are paying.
With this in mind, here’s everything you need to know about BigCommerce pricing and more specifically, how you can secure a discount on your subscription.
How much does BigCommerce cost?
While BigCommerce does offer a 15-day free trial, those wanting to utilize the platform beyond this are required to subscribe to one of its four paid plans.
Fortunately, BigCommerce is pretty transparent with its costs, at least for three of these plans. It does, however, obscure pricing for its enterprise-level offering, which tends to be the norm for most software providers and is a symptom of the wider issue of pricing transparency in the SaaS market – a problem that’s resulting in as many as 90% of organizations overpaying for their software by an average of 26%.
So, how do you prevent this from happening? More specifically, how do you ensure you’re paying a fair price for your BigCommerce subscription?
Well the first step is to determine which type of plan is the right fit for your business.
BigCommerce pricing plans
BigCommerce offers four separate pricing plans, each catering to users that meet different thresholds for annual sales. This does, however, mean that you’ll be automatically upgraded to the next pricing tier if you exceed the designated sales threshold, with the exception of a jump to the enterprise plan.
Despite this, downgrades between subscription tiers don’t happen automatically. If you’re not exceeding the sales threshold of the cheaper tier and want to downgrade, you’ll need to contact the team to do so.
Knowing – or at least anticipating – how much you plan to make in sales in the following year is important for determining which plan type to opt for. So, what do these pricing plans look like?
Standard
This entry-level BigCommerce plan is suitable for stores in the early stages of growth, generating up to $50,000 in annual sales. The Standard plan costs $39 per month when billed monthly or $29 per month when billed annually, and offers unlimited staff accounts, support access, integrations with major payment gateways, multi-currency support and more.
Plus
BigCommerce advertises Plus as its most popular plan, suitable for eCommerce ventures generating up to $180,000 in sales per year. It costs $105 per month on a monthly basis or $79 per month on an annual subscription. This tier includes everything available on the Standard plan, as well as additional features such as customer segmentation, abandoned cart saving and card detail storing.
Pro
BigCommerce’s Pro subscription is suitable for scaling businesses with advanced needs and a higher threshold of sales up to $400,000 per year. Pro costs $399 per month or $299 per month when billed annually. It includes everything from the previous tiers as well as product filtering, custom SSL support and more.
BigCommerce Enterprise pricing
The most advanced tier of BigCommerce subscription available is the Enterprise plan, which requires prospective buyers to contact the sales team for pricing details. Enterprise users can access the full feature set offered by the previous tiers, as well as BigCommerce’s full-service open platform, supporting price lists, unlimited API calls, custom pricing, priority support and a dedicated account manager.
There is no automatic upgrading from Pro to Enterprise based on sales thresholds. Unless they choose to upgrade to BigCommerce Enterprise, users of Pro will pay an extra $150 fee for every additional $200,000 they procure in annual sales.
So, if your sales projections are in excess of $400,000 per year, you should be looking for an Enterprise plan to power your store. And if this is the case, your next logical step is to reach out to a member of the BigCommerce sales team.
However, as we’ve touched upon, entering into a sales conversation without any frame of reference on pricing could make it challenging to get a good deal for your organization.
The question is, how else can you find out what you’ll be expected to pay for BigCommerce Enterprise?
How to work out what you’ll pay for BigCommerce Enterprise
Arming yourself with pricing intelligence before entering into a sales conversation is a smart move, but what exactly are your options for gaining this intel?
Well, one approach is to scour the internet for anecdotal information about what other companies are paying.
One article, for example, places the cost of a BigCommerce Enterprise subscription at up to $10,000 per year, but doesn’t offer a specific figure.
Another article, however, claims that this plan type is based on two key factors: the average number of monthly orders and the average value of each order. Once more, the article casts a fairly wide net and suggests that Enterprise pricing can range anywhere between $400 and $20,000 a month.
An actual look at what other companies have been quoted sheds a bit more light.
A post on this forum suggests that one company with a revenue of $65 million, doing around 23,000 transactions per year, was quoted just under $40,000 per year – roughly $3,200 per month. The poster did, however, indicate that this was the price after a discount had been applied and that the price they’d originally been quoted was significantly more.
A response to the post found that a different customer was being charged a percentile amount of their total sales in monthly fees – close to 1% which could be a substantial outlay for many organizations. In fact, if the original poster was charged this, they would be paying way more than the $20,000 per month cap that several articles suggest.
While this information can be useful in providing a benchmark of how much an enterprise-level plan could cost, the exact cost will of course be unique to each individual business.
Then there’s the fact that the intel you obtain could well be contradictory and even outdated – these particular examples were from a post published two years ago and with SaaS prices increasing by an average of 12% annually, it’s likely that these price points are no longer relevant.
So, is there a way to source reliable enterprise-grade pricing information?
Yes – with Vertice. But we’ll come to that shortly.
Can you get a discount on BigCommerce pricing?
Even when price points are publicly listed, SaaS prices are rarely set in stone. While the final price you pay will be determined in part by your sales threshold and usage needs, there may be additional savings to be had regardless of the type of plan you subscribe to.
Taking a closer look at our pricing insights for BigCommerce, we’ve determined that there is a possibility of users securing a discount on their contract. What’s more, additional data from Vertice further indicates that eCommerce platforms offer average discounts in the region of 24% – often substantially more.
The exact discount you stand to obtain will, however, depend on the success of your negotiation strategy.
Here are our top recommendations for negotiation tactics that work.
Commit to a longer subscription period
BigCommerce offers commitment savings of 25% on each plan when users opt to be billed annually instead of monthly. So, when negotiating your contract, signing up for a longer commitment period will secure you a discounted fee.
But that’s not where the discounts end. According to our data, SaaS vendors will generally offer an extra 5% discount for each additional year you subscribe to. In fact, the decision to commit to a three year plan may well have helped the customer mentioned above secure a more lucrative deal.
The decision to sign up for the long-haul shouldn’t be taken lightly though. Only once you’re confident that it’s the right platform for your store – and that it’s able to scale with your mid-term growth plans – should you inquire about a multi-year subscription.
Allow ample lead time
Whether you’re signing up for BigCommerce for the first time or renewing your subscription, you should allow yourself ample time to research and gather the leverage you need to secure the best possible deal.
What’s more, if vendors know that you need a fast turnaround as you’ve left it late to negotiate, they may be less flexible in the terms they offer you. So, if you know that you have an approaching deadline to launch or upgrade your store and that you’ll need to be fully onboarded with BigCommerce by this date, it makes sense to start negotiating your plan far in advance, supporting you to secure the best deal for your business.
Leverage pricing benchmarks with Vertice
By gaining an understanding of what organizations similar to your own are actually paying for BigCommerce, you’ll be well-equipped to secure the most competitive rate for your business. Which is where Vertice comes in.
With access to transactional data for over 16,000 software vendors worldwide, BigCommerce included, we can provide you with the necessary leverage to secure you the best possible deal. But that’s not all we do — we can also handle negotiations on your behalf, saving your team a significant amount of time and energy spent on the procuring and renewing software.
Why not see for yourself how much you could be saving on your annual SaaS spend. Alternatively, browse through our vendor database for exclusive pricing insights on thousands of software providers.
