3dcart vs BigCommerce

3dcart and BigCommerce may seem very similar when you quickly glance at their websites, but take a closer look and you’ll notice major differences between the two. One platform may be way better than another for your specific needs. You may need lightning fast web pages, whereas another user may prefer high quality SEO functions.

That’s where our review of these two eCommerce platforms comes in handy. With our in-depth side by side comparison of these two eCommerce solutions, you should easily be able to find the ideal solution for your needs. We’ve researched both platforms intensively in order to gather as much information as possible. While they do have similar features and dashboards, 3dcart and BigCommerce are two very unique platforms. Keep reading our comparison article in order to find out all there is to know about these two incredibly popular eCommerce solutions for online merchants.

3dcart and BigCommerce Compared

While BigCommerce is certainly a more powerful and SEO-conscious platform, 3dcart delivers more affordable pricing structures and a much better selection of themes. Knowing which one is the ideal solution for your needs may not be a simple task, which is why we made it our mission to bring you as many facts as possible about these two platforms. Below you will find a comparison of these two eCommerce solutions among a variety of different aspects, allowing you to easily make an educated decision on which platform is the best for your business.

Technical Comparison

Website loading speed is a huge concern these days. Not only do faster-loading sites tend to rank higher in the various search engines, but faster-loading sites also tend to retain more customers. Both BigCommerce and 3dcart have fast-loading environments, but when we compared both of them, we noticed that 3dcart has the fastest platform of the two. During our tests, BigCommerce had an average loading time of 2 to 2.5 seconds per web page, which remains a very great score. 3dcart on the other hand had an average loading time of 1.5 to 2 seconds per web page, making it much faster than BigCommerce.

Another technical aspect we compared was reliability. This includes the frequency of incidents that occur on these platforms along with the uptime scores of each platform. BigCommerce came out stronger in this department with an uptime guarantee of 99.99%, whereas 3dcart’s uptime guarantee is 99.94%. This minor difference may seem little, but it’s actually huge. Additionally, 3dcart’s incident status page displayed numerous incidents and site outages over the past month, whereas BigCommerce seems to be a much more stable environment.

Overall, if you’re looking for faster loading websites, 3dcart is the way to go, but if you prefer having more website stability, BigCommerce is the better option for you.

Customer Support

A quality support team is essential when running a website, but it becomes even more vital when you’re operating an online shop. Imagine having a customer about to checkout when all of a sudden your website crashes. You would definitely enjoy having a support team that can get your website back up and running within minutes.

BigCommerce has a solid support team that includes live chat, email and phone support. Their team was extremely friendly and helpful every single time we contacted them. Furthermore, the information provided was useful and we received lightning fast responses to our inquiries. For 3dcart, the platform is a little different, rather than providing email support, they have support tickets. However, they too offer phone and live chat options. As far as friendliness and helpfulness is concerned, they are just about on par with BigCommerce.

Overall, both BigCommerce and 3dcart offer superb customer support teams that can help get you out of a bind when you need it the most. It really comes down to this - do you prefer having email support or support tickets? If you prefer email, BigCommerce is the way to go, if you prefer support tickets, 3dcart is the better option.

Features

A large selection of features can certainly go a long way. Not only do built-in features help you hit the ground running, but they also prevent you from having to install too many plugins, which in turn helps speed up your website. This makes it crucial for you to pick an eCommerce solution that delivers as many core features as you need as possible.

At 3dcart, you will get to enjoy over 200 built-in tools, which is a massive amount when compared to many other eCommerce solutions. They have awesome functions such as simple shipping calculators, the ability to easily handle returns, waiting lists for out-of-stock products, excellent user-generated content sections and so much more. Along with tons of store features, you’ll find a massive amount of marketing tools such as the ability to create coupons, being able to launch your very own affiliate program, being able to setup email/drip campaigns and more. 3dcart is truly packed to loads of amazing tools.

BigCommerce also has a nice selection of built-in features, but not quite as many as 3dcart. They tend to have better tools for merchants to analyze their visitors and perform marketing than actual tools to improve the front-end. While they do have a ton of great front-end customization options, their strong-suit truly lies with optimizing and understand key metrics of your business.

When it really comes down to it, 3dcart is the better option for built-in features. They have over 200 tools for you to enjoy and most of them are of very high quality. BigCommerce is the better option if you plan on relying more heavily on third-party apps and integrations.

Design

One area that seems to be quite hard to compare is the designing aspect. Both BigCommerce and 3dcart are pretty much equal in this department. They aren’t the best in the industry and they aren’t the worst either. Both platforms offer free and premium themes for you to choose from and both of them are equally simple to install. One key difference is the quality of free themes at BigCommerce - their free themes are of much higher quality than the free themes at 3dcart. However, when you compare the paid themes of both these platforms, the results are pretty much the same. They both have high quality paid themes and a similar selection in terms of quantity.

Overall, you shouldn’t let the designing aspect determine your choice between these two platforms because they both offer a rather similar experience. If you need incredibly high quality themes, neither one of these options is truly the best, but if you just need good themes that look decent and function properly, you should be satisfied with either one of these eCommerce platforms.

Prices

One of the main areas that separates these platforms from one another is the pricing structure. 3dcart is by far the most affordable option between these two solutions and it’s actually among the cheapest eCommerce solutions available on the internet. While their pricing plans may seem to be quite similar on paper, you only truly notice the difference when you start comparing the included perks. You get a lot more out of 3dcart for the same price you would pay at BigCommerce. Another important factor to consider is the price of the themes at BigCommerce, which are incredibly steep. 3dcart’s premium themes are slightly more affordable on average. Overall, the difference may be slim, but it’s certainly worth considering - 3dcart is the more affordable option.

The Final Verdict: 3dcart or BigCommerce

Now that you’ve read through our comparison of 3dcart and BigCommerce, you should have a much better understanding on which direction to take. We tried to stick to the facts in order to help you make an unbiased selection in order to gain the most benefit for your business.

BigCommerce is the ideal choice if you seek powerful SEO and marketing tools. They are also the much better option if you’re looking for powerful built-in tools that cater to analyzing metrics and optimizing your traffic to its highest potential.

3dcart becomes the better option if you want a massive amount of built-in tools that work more towards improving the functionality of your website. They provide much more in terms of functions and features for your online shop such as being able to easily create loyalty programs or being able to set up your own affiliate program.

Both of these platforms are similar when it comes to the design of your site and the choice of themes, but when we look at the pricing, you get a little bit more out of 3dcart for the same price point. Overall, both of these platforms are very similar and using the information provided in this comparison article, you should be able to narrow down the selection more easily.