On 1 June 2026 BigCommerce renamed its plans, cut its GMV thresholds, and introduced a fee on non-embedded payment providers. If you chose BigCommerce because it had no transaction fees, the reason you chose it no longer applies. This guide covers what that costs you, and what actually breaks in the migration.
BigCommerce restructured its pricing on 1 June 2026. It renamed every plan, lowered the GMV thresholds that trigger automatic upgrades, and added an Open Payment Provider Fee on merchants using non-embedded payment processors — reported at 2% on Core, 1% on Growth and 0.6% on Scale, and applying even to offline B2B orders.
Two things about that are worth sitting with. The first is that "no transaction fees" was BigCommerce's central pitch for years, and the new fee is charged on payment volume, which is what a transaction fee is. The second is that lower GMV thresholds mean the platform decides when you upgrade, not you.
| Situation | Reported effect |
|---|---|
| Merchant at $150K annual GMV | Previously $79/mo; now on a $299/mo tier — a 278% platform cost increase |
| $1M GMV, 40% of orders via a non-embedded gateway | ≈$4,000/year in Open Payment Provider Fee alone |
| $2M GMV, same payment mix | ≈$8,000/year in OPPF alone |
| Most exposed segment | $400K–$2M GMV — the merchants who chose BigCommerce for the no-fee positioning |
| Automatic upgrade thresholds | Reported at $50K, $180K and $400K in trailing annual sales |
These figures are from third-party analysis published after the change, not from BigCommerce. Get your own numbers from your BigCommerce account and your gateway reporting before making a decision, and treat every published version of these — including this one — as an indication rather than a quote.
Shopify has no GMV-linked forced upgrades. A store doing seven figures can stay on Advanced at $399 per month if the feature set suits it, and there is no platform fee when Shopify Payments is your primary gateway. That is the structural difference, and it is the whole reason this page exists in August 2026. Our Shopify Plus cost guide has the full pricing picture including the four points at which Plus pays for itself.
BigCommerce gives you full control over URL structure. Shopify does not — it enforces /products/, /collections/, /pages/ and /blogs/ prefixes that cannot be changed on any plan. Migrating therefore means changing effectively every indexed URL, and reported organic dips of 15–20% are common where redirects are not handled precisely.
This is the honest cost of the move and most migration guides skip it. If technical SEO control is central to how you operate, and your URL architecture is a deliberate asset rather than an accident, that is a real argument for staying. Shopify's structure is not an SEO disadvantage in itself — Google handles enforced subdirectory patterns normally — but the transition is where the risk lives.
BigCommerce also remains genuinely strong for enterprise B2B and for merchants who want open-SaaS flexibility. We would rather say that here than have you discover it in week six.
BigCommerce has two separate concepts — variants, which create SKUs, and modifiers, which do not. Modifiers cover engraving text, file uploads, date pickers and personalisation fields. Shopify has no modifier equivalent. Those become line-item properties requiring theme work or a product options app, and automated migration tools will not convert them.
This is the single most common way a BigCommerce migration blows its timeline. The catalogue looks straightforward, an automated tool reports a successful import, and then someone notices that every personalised product has lost the field customers use to personalise it.
Audit your catalogue for modifiers before you budget the project, not after. If personalisation is part of your offer, the catalogue has to be redesigned before the storefront is rebuilt — do those in the wrong order and the theme work gets done twice.
Shopify raised its per-product variant limit from 100 to 2,048 in October 2025, across all plans. The option limit did not change and remains 3 per product. Several BigCommerce migration guides published in 2026 still quote the old 100-variant figure, which makes the constraint sound far tighter than it is — but the three-option ceiling is real, and BigCommerce has no equivalent limit. A product configured on four or more axes needs restructuring, combining, or splitting with Combined Listings.
BigCommerce is structurally closer to Shopify than Magento or WooCommerce, because both are SaaS platforms with similar data models. The data moves cleanly. The work concentrates on apps, modifiers and URLs.
| Asset | Transfers? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Products, variants, images | Yes | Images reference BigCommerce-hosted URLs during import — verify every one landed |
| Variant options | Partly | Map to Shopify's three-option structure; audit for products exceeding it |
| Modifiers | No | Rebuilt as line-item properties via theme work or an options app |
| Categories | Partly | No one-to-one mapping; each becomes a manual or automated collection |
| Custom fields | No | Mapped to Shopify metafields, usually with manual CSV work |
| Customers | Yes | Passwords cannot migrate from any platform |
| Customer groups | Partly | Map to Shopify customer segments, or to B2B companies and catalogs |
| Orders | Yes | Complete history including refunds and fulfilment status |
| SEO metadata | Yes | BigCommerce meta title and description map to Shopify's SEO fields |
| Blog content | Yes | Plus a redirect for every URL |
| Theme (Stencil) | No | Rebuilt in Liquid. Stencil themes cannot be ported. |
| Apps and integrations | No | Each assessed, replaced, rebuilt or retired |
| Price lists | Partly | Map to Shopify B2B catalogs — see the B2B note below |
| Redirects | Manual | Export existing rules and reconcile against a crawl |
If you run wholesale on BigCommerce price lists and customer groups, that maps onto Shopify's native B2B — company accounts and pricing catalogs. Worth knowing that Shopify moved native B2B onto all paid plans in April 2026, so you may not need Plus for it. Our Shopify B2B development page covers where the plan boundary actually falls.
BigCommerce lets you set URLs freely, which means there is no single pattern to map from — every store is different. That makes the redirect map more bespoke here than for Magento or WooCommerce, where the platform imposed a predictable structure.
The full sequence, including the nine steps that become irreversible after cutover, is in our 100-point migration checklist. For strategy across all source platforms, see Shopify Plus migration services.
A BigCommerce to Shopify migration typically runs 8 to 12 weeks — faster than Magento because the data models are similar, and comparable to WooCommerce. The variables are modifier complexity, the number of apps needing replacement, and how bespoke your URL structure is.
A published example gives a sense of scale: 2,800 SKUs and four years of order history migrated in nine weeks, including a full theme rebuild and a 380-URL redirect map, with organic traffic recovering to pre-migration levels within three weeks of launch.
Where the migration needs custom middleware rather than off-the-shelf apps — ERP connections, bespoke pricing logic, modifier replacements — that is scoped separately. See Shopify app development. If you also run physical retail, Shopify POS should be scoped into the same project.
| From | Timeline | Hardest part |
|---|---|---|
| BigCommerce | 8–12 weeks | Modifiers, bespoke URL mapping, app replacement |
| WooCommerce | 8–12 weeks | Page-builder rebuilds, plugin triage, Yoast metadata |
| Magento / Adobe Commerce | 12–16 weeks | Attribute triage, extension replacement, .html URLs |
Platform-specific detail lives in the guides: Magento to Shopify Plus migration and WooCommerce to Shopify migration.
Solo Media Group is a Platinum-tier Shopify migration agency — the top of Shopify's Service Track — with 75+ replatforms and new builds delivered since March 2018, rated 5.0 from 37 reviews on the Shopify Partner Directory. BigCommerce is one of five source platforms we migrate from regularly.
BigCommerce restructured on 1 June 2026: plans were renamed, GMV thresholds for automatic upgrades were lowered, and an Open Payment Provider Fee was introduced for merchants using non-embedded payment processors — reported at 2% on Core, 1% on Growth and 0.6% on Scale, including on offline B2B orders.
Not in the way it did. The Open Payment Provider Fee is charged on payment volume when a non-embedded gateway is used. Shopify charges no platform fee when Shopify Payments is your primary gateway.
It depends on your GMV and payment mix. Reported examples include a merchant at $150K annual GMV moving from $79 to $299 per month, and a $1M GMV merchant processing 40% through a non-embedded gateway paying roughly $4,000 a year in the new fee alone. Model your own numbers rather than relying on averages.
Not if the redirect map is complete and live at cutover. BigCommerce allows free-form URLs while Shopify enforces fixed prefixes, so effectively every URL changes. Reported dips of 15–20% happen where redirects are handled loosely; they are not inevitable.
Modifiers are product options that do not create SKUs — engraving text, file uploads, date pickers. Shopify has no equivalent, so they become line-item properties built through theme work or a product options app. Automated migration tools do not convert them, and this is the most common cause of timeline overrun.
Usually, with restructuring. Shopify allows up to 2,048 variants per product since October 2025, but still only 3 options. BigCommerce has no option limit, so products configured on four or more axes need combining or splitting.
Eight to twelve weeks for a typical store. Faster than Magento because the data models are similar. Modifier complexity, app replacement and URL mapping are the main variables.
Yes — complete order history including refunds and fulfilment status, alongside customers, addresses and marketing consent state. Passwords cannot transfer from any platform, so customers receive account activation invitations.
Price lists map onto Shopify B2B pricing catalogs and customer groups onto customer segments or B2B companies. Shopify made native B2B available on all paid plans in April 2026, so you may not need Plus for wholesale alone.
Migrate when a constraint you can name is costing you — the new fees, forced plan upgrades, or app limitations. If the repricing has not changed your bill and the store is stable, there is no urgency. We would rather tell you that than sell you a project.
