Miva vs BigCommerce

[lancermedia]

We've had a client currently on Miva to ask us to investigate potentially moving their store over to BigCommerce. I'm hoping some people on here might be able to give me some thoughts on good vs. bad on doing this. We have been developing Miva for a long time now, and we enjoy it. I believe Miva is by far one of the most customizable carts out there, and has a decent module community to extend it. With v9, it's getting better at some core features as well.

Personally, if it was just a checklist battle between Miva and BigCommerce, I'd say BigCommerce wins just because it seems like they can do everything.

We've dealt with BigCommerce in the past, and quite frankly we weren't overly impressed, especially with the speed of the host. Very slow stores in loading both frontend and admin. And I'm not the biggest fan on fully hosted platforms where you have to do what they want.

Hoping to get some people to share some good or bad experiences so I can have a broader view of each platform.

Thanks!

-Kevin

[Brennan]

Re: Miva vs BigCommerce

Hi Kevin -

I have some insight on Big Commerce which you can share with your client. Big Commerce does a great job of marketing. Their product checks all the boxes in terms of features, however once you really dig into them and start using them, they typically fall short or are poorly implemented.

Beyond that there are a few things which really hold them back.

1. They have no/limited FTP. With Miva, you get full access to the file system on the server to upload files for your site. Big Commerce uses a FTP like potocall called WebDAV. However you are locked down to a limited set of folders you can access.

2. No Database Access - Because of the BC architecture, all database access is restricted.

3. No Template Logic - This is by far the biggest and most painful. If you need to add a simple conditional statement "if product code is X then show this" you're out of luck with big commerce. This is a big deal. Imagine all the customization you can't do because you don't have the ability to do conditional logic in the templates.

4. No 3rd party functionality - While Big Commerce does have a Web Services API, it is purely for pushing and pulling data. You can't add new functionality to the platform. With Miva, if you need a feature that is not part of the core platform, most likely there is a 3rd party developer who has built it as a module. With BC that is not possible. Their API does not allow for this. This creates a support nightmare for them because as they add new features they will never catch up to every individual customer needs/wants. You see this clearly in the comments and blog posts online.

5. Downtime/support - The have historically had poor uptime and poor support.

See the comments:
http://stylefactoryproductions.com/b...ommerce-review

Hope this helps.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: Miva vs BigCommerce

Think BigCommerce = BigGovernment...yea, bout the same results.

[cway]

Re: Miva vs BigCommerce

I recently tried-out BigCommerce with their free 14-day trial. I've written a quick review on it with lots of screenshots. A sales person confirmed that only BigCommerce can host your BigCommerce store and that you don't have access to php, only the HTML and CSS. I've asked the sales person about FTP and database access, but haven't gotten a response, yet. BigCommerce has a lot of bells and whistles, most of which Miva has. What Miva doesn't have, can easily be added, such as a blog (That's what WordPress is for.) I haven't contacted BigCommerce technical support, so I can't comment on that. I was disappointed that I couldn't get access to php, not that I'm a php programmer. I was also confused by BigCommerce's "options" (attributes). I couldn't figure that out. I was also disappointed to see all the inline coding and all the links to external files, such as css. Doesn't that slow search engines and page loads?

In the end, I was impressed by what all came with BigCommerce, but I haven't been won-over. I'll still take Miva over BigCommerce.

https://trentstudios.com/2015/03/big...t-impressions/

[lancermedia]

Re: Miva vs BigCommerce

Interesting writeup. I'll share some of my experiences since I recently did the 14-day trial. I came away from BigCommerce not impressed at all. Sure, it's a nice interface and easy to use.....but when you try to do anything advanced, it falls flat compared to Miva.

Compared to Miva v9, BigCommerce is awful at discounts/promos. Some things BC can't do that Miva can:

- Buy One Get One Free is FREE only. You can do Buy One Get One 50% off
- Buy One Get One Free can't be used with any product that has a variant
- You can't do Buy One get another product for $1
- Spend X get X% off - in BC you can only do Spend X get X$ off
- Spend X$ get a free product
- You can't limit shipping methods per product. If you offer a super saver method, it HAS to apply to all products
- Can't do template conditionals. No advanced support like in Miva with displaying exactly what you want based on IF statements
- BC does NOT backup user data. You have to export
- Images on a product page show ALL variants all the time. Unlike Miva where if you click on the Blue Product, you only see the Blue images and additional thumbnails.
- No scripting
- No FTP access - Their WEBDAV was slow
- Can't customize any shopping engine feed (Shopzilla, Nextag, etc)


In my 14 days with BC, I left with the impression that:

- It's fine for the do-it-yourselfer
- It's tailored to the store owner, not the developer
- Tier 1 support only knows the basic answers. Anything remotely complex they have to escalate and often I have to wait for the answer


Miva hit it out of the part with the v9 Marketing Price Groups. There are SOOOO many discount scenarios you can do now in Miva.....I'm truly impressed. For example, we just had a client offer 15% off all green products and 10% off the rest of the store. With BC, unless we wanted to go in and adjust prices manually, we couldn't do that. Miva made it easy!

Being able to dive into the Miva templates and use real code and conditionals is also priceless. Want to have a custom field in Miva and do a conditional off the value.....easy. In BC....no way.

Overall I think Miva v9 is a fantastic step forward and a great overall e-Commerce value.

EDIT: Oh and there is NO comparison between the BC forums and these Miva forums. Here you can get actual answers from real developers, including Miva reps (Shout out to Brennan!). Over at BC, it's basically just a bunch of store owners offering advice.

-Kevin

[cway]

Re: Miva vs BigCommerce

Agreed - Miva Rocks!

The sales representative I've been emailing with at BigCommerce has confirmed no ftp access, no database access, and no php access. I've updated my blog post with this.

BigCommerce - BigLimitations.

[Rick Wilson]

Re: Miva vs BigCommerce

Also no Template Language or other extensible features. If they don't build it in for you, you can't do it. It does make for good Checklist marketing though