In 2009 a small merchant who wanted an online store usually bought a downloadable cart such as osCommerce or X-Cart for a one-time fee, then had to find a host, install it and keep it upgraded; the alternative was enterprise commerce software costing several hundred thousand dollars BC11 BC23 BC24. Web designers did much of that setup and support, and merchants tended to use the tools their designer recommended BC9. A few hosted services had begun to charge a monthly fee and run the software themselves: Shopify since 2006, and Volusion, which earned $23 million in 2009 BC11 BC25. For most small sellers the store still came with a server to look after.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce hosted its store three years after Shopify, kept its API, partners and payments neutral instead of making its merchants worth building for, and conceded small business in 2015, which won enterprise brands but left the platform and payments revenue to Shopify.
Why BigCommerce lost to Shopify
- 1 · 2009–11A hosted store, three years lateA downloadable cart went hosted in 2009; plans were later tiered by each merchant's yearly sales.Managed Service
- 2 · 2010–19An API few developers built onThe 2010 API drew little use; after 2015 it served merchants' own systems; a theme marketplace opened only in 2019.Platform Strategy
- 3 · 2009–25Partners paid BigCommerce, not the reverseAgencies got leads; technology partners paid revenue share in; app billing came only in 2025.Owned Media
- 4 · 2014–23Small business conceded in 2015It chose complex and enterprise brands, won some, such as Skullcandy, and grew ARR 8% in 2023.Focus Strategy
- 5 · 2013–26Every processor's partner, none its ownPayments left to partners until a PayPal-powered service in 2025; 74% of 2019 revenue was subscriptions.Transparent Pricing
Versus Shopify: Shopify made its merchants the most rewarding customers for app builders and designers, then earned on those merchants' sales through its own payments SH42 BC28. BigCommerce stayed a neutral host, collected revenue share from its partners instead of paying it out, and left small merchants to Shopify in 2015 BC1 BC13.
Arena: Market Conditions Before BigCommerce
How each step happened
Step 1 of 5 · 2009–11
A hosted store, three years late
BigCommerce began as a download. Mitchell Harper and Eddie Machaalani's company, Interspire, sold a shopping cart that customers installed on their own servers, with about 9,000 installs by 2009 BC9 BC24. Customers ran it on so many hosts that Interspire could not support them, and many asked it to host their stores, so the founders rebuilt it as a hosted service BC11 BC23. BigCommerce launched in September 2009 and replaced the one-time license with a monthly fee BC11 BC17. It had 20,000 stores by November 2011 BC17.
The same origin made BigCommerce a follower. Shopify had run hosted stores since 2006, and Harper later gave its four-year head start as the main reason for the revenue gap BC11 BC10. Prices also rose with success: by 2020 plans were tiered by yearly online sales, Standard under $50,000 and Plus up to $150,000, and higher plans were repriced on a merchant's trailing twelve months of sales BC1.
Rivals Shopify launched as a hosted service in June 2006 and in 2007 replaced a percentage of sales with a monthly subscription so that sellers who meant to grow were not penalized SH11 SH25. Bessemer counted Volusion the strongest hosted rival in 2010 BC25.
Step 2 of 5 · 2010–19
An API few developers built on
BigCommerce opened an API early but never built a market around it. Bessemer's 2010 diligence for Shopify found the APIs of BigCommerce, Volusion and Magento little used and "extremely difficult to develop against" BC25. A new API followed in 2011, and in 2012 a $2 million fund offered up to $20,000 per app BC17 BC18. With no store in which developers sold to its merchants and were paid through it, outside builders had little reason to build for BigCommerce.
From 2015 the interfaces served merchants' own systems. Brent Bellm, CEO from that year, says he opened every component, catalog, checkout and tax, through an API layer so complex businesses could swap in partners' functions BC13. By 2019 merchants ran BigCommerce behind front ends built in Adobe, Sitecore or WordPress BC1. That suited large merchants leaving customized on-premise software, but it made BigCommerce easy to connect to, not a place builders gathered. The theme marketplace opened to all agency partners only in 2019 BC33, and Bellm's successor said in 2026 that openness for its own sake had not always served merchants BC15.
Rivals Shopify opened its API and App Store to about 5,000 merchants in June 2009, handled app billing itself and recruited developers by hand; by October 2010 two thirds of its customers used at least one of 54 apps SH9 BC25. Its Theme Store opened in April 2010 SH37.
Step 3 of 5 · 2009–25
Partners paid BigCommerce, not the reverse
BigCommerce's partners sold it but did not earn from it for life. Interspire had sold through web designers who supported the software and recommended it to clients, and a 2009 makeover contest offered $35,000 of partner-donated services to a store willing to switch BC9. By 2014 about 2,500 design agencies sold BigCommerce, but Harper says search advertising took most of the marketing spend, beside guides and articles that built a mailing list of about 250,000 BC11 BC9.
Agencies were paid in leads. When eBay neglected Magento, BigCommerce offered Magento's agencies leads, customers and a share of revenue, and by 2020 agencies were its second-largest source of new mid-market and enterprise business BC10 BC1. Otherwise money flowed toward BigCommerce: partner and services revenue, $29.4 million in 2019, came mainly from revenue share that technology partners paid it BC1. App developers could bill merchants through BigCommerce only from March 2025 BC30. Nothing made a BigCommerce merchant the most rewarding customer for a builder's next project.
Rivals Shopify paid design firms 20 percent of each referred account's revenue for as long as it stayed, and they brought about 20 percent of its signups by 2010 BC26 BC25. Its partners earned about $800 million in 2017, more than Shopify's own $673 million in revenue SH42.
Step 4 of 5 · 2014–23
Small business conceded in 2015
Without an ecosystem pulling small merchants in, BigCommerce left the race for them. Harper says small merchants could not tell platforms apart because each copied the others' features: "it became kind of feature wars" BC10. The company turned to fast-growth brands with $1 million to $30 million in sales, launched an enterprise product in 2014 and became eBay's preferred migration path for Magento Go stores BC10 BC11 BC12. In June 2015 the founders hired Bellm to focus on enterprise products BC34; he says BigCommerce could not overcome Shopify's five-year head start in small business BC13.
The concession built a real enterprise business. By 2019 the Enterprise plan produced about half of annual recurring revenue (ARR), with net revenue retention above 100 percent BC1. Where products were equal, named account staff won deals: Skullcandy's CIO says both finalists could run its sites, but with Shopify it would have been "just a number" BC7. It bought what complex and B2B merchants needed, Feedonomics for product feeds in 2021 and BundleB2B in 2022, and in December 2022 cut non-enterprise sales and marketing and 13 percent of its staff BC19 BC20 BC21. Enterprise reached 73 percent of ARR in 2023, when total ARR grew 8 percent, to $336.5 million BC6. Shopify had launched Plus in 2014, so many growing brands moved up without leaving it BC29.
Rivals Shopify priced Plus between its own plans and enterprise software, and its first salespeople called existing merchants at risk of leaving BC29 SH48. By 2023 BigCommerce named Shopify Plus, Magento, Salesforce and commercetools its main mid-market rivals BC6.
Focus StrategyCustomer IntimacyM&A StrategyResource allocation
Step 5 of 5 · 2013–26
Every processor's partner, none its own
The payments choice ran beside the move upmarket from 2013 and decided who earned on merchants' sales. Steve Case, whose Revolution Growth led a $40 million round in 2013, named BigCommerce's "partnering with payment providers rather than trying to be a payment solution on their own" as a key reason to invest BC14. Bellm, who had run global product at PayPal, says Shopify was surcharging merchants who used another processor; he chose the best integration for every processor and no surcharge for anyone BC13. By 2020 BigCommerce earned revenue share from PayPal, Google and Stripe BC1.
Neutrality gave merchants choice and lower rates, and it left the revenue that grows with merchants' sales to the processors. In 2019 about three quarters of BigCommerce's $112 million revenue came from subscriptions, while Shopify earned $936 million of its $1.58 billion from merchant solutions BC1 GFB-11. It was not short of capital, having raised $155 million by about 2016 BC10.
BigCommerce has since moved part of the way back. Bellm left in 2024; his successor had managed Accenture's Shopify partnership BC22. In 2025 the parent renamed itself Commerce.com and announced BigCommerce Payments, powered by PayPal, and from June 2026 self-serve merchants paid a fee on orders through processors outside about 20 embedded providers BC4 BC31 BC15. It remains an open platform for enterprise and B2B merchants. The hosted store it opened three years after Shopify never became a platform that shared in its merchants' sales.
Rivals Shopify launched Shopify Payments in 2013 and set it up automatically for new stores; 65.6 percent of the sales on its stores went through it in 2025 BC27 BC28.
Key dates
- 2006Shopify opens hosted stores SH11
- 2009Interspire's downloadable cart reaches 9,000 installs
- 2009-06Shopify opens its API and App Store SH9
- 2009-09The cart relaunches as a hosted store
- 20109,850 paying stores One year after launch BC11
- 2011-1120,000 stores A new API after the first drew little use BC17
- 2013-08Revolution invests on a payment-partner thesis
- 2014An enterprise product for fast-growth brands
- 2015-06Bellm becomes CEO and concedes small business
- 2018Skullcandy picks BigCommerce over Shopify Plus
- 2019$112 million revenue Full year; about three quarters from subscriptions BC1
- 2019Shopify: $1.578 billion revenue Full year; $935.9 million from merchant solutions GFB-11
- 2019-05Theme marketplace opens to all partners
- 2020-07IPO filing: enterprise is half of ARR
- 2021-07Feedonomics bought for up to $145 million
- 2022-12Enterprise focus and a 13% layoff
- 2023$309.4 million revenue Full year; up from $279.1 million BC6
- 2024-10Bellm leaves; a Shopify-partnership veteran becomes CEO
- 2025-10BigCommerce Payments, powered by PayPal
- 2026-06A fee on outside payment providers
Sources
Oldest first.
- SH11 Shopify is live!. Primary source
- SH9 Shopify launches API platform and App Store. Primary source
- BC24 (Case study) Interspire: going Scrum improves dev speed 30-40%. Founder interview (vendor case study)
- BC9 BigCommerce: how two programmers who met in a chat room bootstrapped a $10 million ecommerce company. Founder interview transcript
- SH25 How Shopify Became Profitable By Helping Anyone Open An Online Boutique. Founder interview
- SH37 Shopify Theme Store launches. Primary source
- BC26 Q&A with Tobias Lutke of Shopify. Rival founder interview
- BC25 Shopify investment memorandum. Rival's investor memo
- BC16 BigCommerce closes $15M Series A financing from General Catalyst Partners. Contemporaneous report
- BC17 BigCommerce has helped online retailers process over $350M in sales. Contemporaneous report
- BC18 BigCommerce establishes $2 million fund for developers. Contemporaneous report
- BC27 Shopify launches Shopify Payments. Rival announcement
- BC29 Shopify launches Shopify Plus. Rival announcement
- BC12 Can Bigcommerce become the next big name in e-commerce?. Contemporaneous report
- BC11 Building a global software company from Australia: Bigcommerce co-founder Mitch Harper (parts 1 to 7). Founder interview
- BC14 Steve Case on SMB ecommerce; BigCommerce investment. Investor interview
- BC34 Former PayPal executive joins Bigcommerce as CEO. Contemporaneous report
- BC10 How Mitchell Harper built a $100,000,000 company, failed, and got back up. Founder interview transcript
- SH42 Shopify’s partner ecosystem. Trade report
- BC33 Before you build: what you need to know to launch a BigCommerce marketplace theme. Company employee post
- GFB-11 Shopify Announces Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year 2019 Financial Results. Press release
- BC1 BigCommerce S-1. SEC filing
- BC2 BigCommerce IPO: S-1 breakdown. Investor analysis
- BC8 BigCommerce follow-on prospectus. SEC filing
- BC19 BigCommerce invests in becoming world's most powerful platform for global omnichannel commerce with acquisition of Feedonomics. Company announcement
- BC32 SellersFunding partners with BigCommerce, opening direct-to-consumer channel opportunities for ecommerce sellers. Partner announcement
- BC13 The launch of multi-storefront on BigCommerce with Brent Bellm. CEO interview transcript
- BC20 BigCommerce further invests in becoming world's most powerful B2B ecommerce platform with acquisition of BundleB2B. Company announcement
- BC21 BigCommerce to restructure business and lay off 13% of workforce. Contemporaneous report
- BC6 2023 annual report. Annual report
- SH48 Book excerpt: The Shopify Story, how Shopify Plus was born. Company history
- BC23 Eddie Machaalani: "I always had this real passion for helping small businesses grow". Co-founder interview
- BC22 BigCommerce appoints Travis Hess as CEO. Company announcement
- BC3 Catalyst one-click storefront launch. Product announcement
- BC30 BigCommerce improves app development capabilities and functionality for third-party developers. Company announcement
- BC4 Introducing Commerce. Primary company record
- BC31 Commerce introduces BigCommerce Payments powered by PayPal. Company announcement
- BC28 Shopify 2025 Form 10-K. Rival SEC filing
- BC5 Commerce.com 2025 Form 10-K. SEC filing
- BC15 Setting the record straight: what's actually changing with our pricing on June 1. CEO post
- BC7 Skullcandy case study. Customer participant record