Compare E-Commerce models.
Our scoring process is applied and objectively evaluated according to strengths and weaknesses.
Compare vendors based on the five dimensions of the Composable Agility Score. Freely choose the solutions you want to compare to get an easy overview of their capabilities. You can adjust your selection at any time or click on any solution to read a more detailed explanation of their CA Score.
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How easy is it to quickly and scalably build the individual solutions you need for your business using the application? See also: Best of Breed versus Best of Suite.
How well can a cloud application be broken down into its individual parts and used? The best solutions can be combined based on specific customer requirements.
How well can this application be connected and controlled via standardized applications? A functional API interface is able to interact with any other software.
How natively can this application be operated in the cloud (updates, backup, porting)? An ideal cloud solution is available everywhere, accessible at any time, highly secure, flexible and agile.
How independent can the application be from the end user’s interface (desktop, mobile, on the go…)? A functional solution is able to operate with any frontend.
BigCommerce is an Open SaaS e-commerce platform for B2B and B2C retailers. Founded in 2009 in Sydney, Australia, BigCommerce is currently headquartered in Austin, Texas, USA. As of August 2020, BigCommerce is a NASDAQ-listed company. BigCommerce offers four pricing plans; Standard, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise. In order to fully assess its capabilities, this evaluation is based on their Enterprise plan.
Salesforce offers companies feature-packed solutions with a focus on powerful AI. While they offer a comprehensive e-commerce solution with their Commerce Cloud, they still have some catching up to do when it comes to some of the interfaces. For example, microservices are being introduced, but are not yet ubiquitous.
SAP Commerce Cloud, formerly known as SAP Hybris Commerce, is the latest e-commerce solution of the German software giant SAP. SAP Commerce Cloud was built mainly for large enterprises with advanced B2B, B2C, and B2B2C use cases. It has a large global customer base, and can be used to build end-to-end omnichannel commerce experiences.
7.0
5.8Composability
8Head-
less
less
8.7Cloud
Native
Native
7API
5.3Modu-
larity
larity
6.1
5.8Composability
6.5Head-
less
less
7Cloud
Native
Native
7.3API
3.9Modu-
larity
larity
5.5
5.9Composability
7.3Head-
less
less
4.3Cloud
Native
Native
5.3API
4.6Modu-
larity
larity
Modularity
5.3
3.9
4.6
BigCommerce began operations as a monolithic platform, although in recent years it has focused more on a modular system/microservices. As BigCommerce is a SaaS platform, customers do not consume or interact with microservices directly. Instead, these are utilized behind the scenes for easier customer implementation.
The Salesforce Solution is not based on a modular system/microservices. It’s a monolith that is making an effort to modernize its offerings—which doesn’t change the origins and nature of its core architecture.
SAP Commerce Cloud is a monolithic platform and not based on a modular system/microservices. Only a few microservices-based modules have been added subsequently. One positive example is the Context-Driven Services, a cloud-native system that provides function-based extension points for end user-facing applications like recommendations, A/B testing, or real-time user segmentation.
API
7
7.3
5.3
APIs via BigCommerce cover most use cases, but don’t offer full customizability. There are some areas where BigCommerce does not offer API coverage; however, because it is an Open SaaS platform, API coverage is fairly extensive.
With Salesforce, pre-configured API connections to 3rd party apps (e.g. ERP systems, inventory systems, accounting systems etc.) are not available. Due to their acquisition of the API platform Mulesoft and their very own tech infrastructure, Salesforce offers several APIs. Most are REST standard.
SAP Commerce Cloud is not an API-first solution — only newly-added features follow an API-first approach. Overall, the API coverage for business functionalities is quite extensive, but back-office APIs are very limited. In terms of the quality of existing APIs, SAP follows several modern standards like REST or OAuth 2.0 for authorization, and their documentation is comprehensive. Customization requires a great deal of effort as no API configuration features are available.
Cloud Native
8.7
7
4.3
Being an Open Saas platform, BigCommerce scores highest for being cloud native.
Salesforce offers a cloud-native solution. It mainly uses AWS and offers a very solid infrastructure. Updates can be done seamlessly for end-users, although there can be issues with elasticity, e.g. scalability.
At the beginning, SAP Commerce Cloud was a private cloud implementation running on a proprietary SAP infrastructure. Today, the platform is a public cloud solution, predominantly running on Microsoft Azure and — in only a few cases — on AWS. It allows a high degree of automation (using Kubernetes) and extensive self-service for operational tasks. However, the monolithic architecture limits the flexibility of the cloud, and updates to the application stack remain massive.
Composability
5.8
5.8
5.9
Although some aspects of the BigCommerce platform lend themselves well to scalability, composability is not something that was originally built into BigCommerce’s offering.
For functionality beyond standard integrations, additional coding is required. All customizations must be done in collaboration with existing features e.g. those delivered by salesforce.
SAP Commerce Cloud does not offer a central extension layer that exists outside of the core applications. New application features cannot be deployed independently of the core application, which significantly limits composability. However, SAP Commerce Cloud offers some practical options for extension. As part of the SAP Customer Experience suite, powerful out-of-the box integrations with other SAP products like Customer Data Cloud and SAP Marketing Cloud are available. Additionally, the Extension Factory was introduced in 2019 to simplify the development of extensions. As for high-code customizations, the possibilities are extensive.
Headless
8
6.5
7.3
BigCommerce scores well for Headless overall, with its presentation layer decoupled from the front-end commerce engine. Partly because it has incorporated so many APIs, BigCommerce can be seen as a truly headless solution.
Salesforce is not headless; backend and frontend are not decoupled. Therefore, it allows you to work with a page designer solution, which is designed to give merchants more control over templates and content. It comes with a powerful AI-powered personalization feature and, thanks to the acquisition of the PWA service Mobify, it also delivers an out-of-the-box PWA platform. Salesforce does expose APIs and offers a headless CMS, but that didn’t change the underlying architecture of the core platform. It is still not microservice-based.
The architecture of SAPCommerce Cloud is not fully headless. Even though the consumer-facing storefront is largely decoupled from the business logic, the backend is not decoupled at all. It is an interdependent legacy system which has grown over a long period of time. But in terms of frontends, SAP Commerce Cloud is well-suited for omnichannel or multichannel purposes and offers five default frontends for different verticals as well as Spartacus, an open-source JavaScript progressive web frontend.
Bottomline
7.0
6.1
5.5
As an Open SaaS platform, BigCommerce scores highest for being cloud native. This means that customers benefit from automatic and seamless updates. However, BigCommerce scores lowest for microservices. Although microservices are available, neither developers nor users can interact with them directly. BigCommerce also does not score highly in composability, since it was originally created as a monolithic platform. Although they are adding additional microservices to their offering and their headless options offer a certain level of decoupling and flexibility, improvements in this area will help to create a modern, flexible e-commerce experience.
Salesforce offers a robust solution with some unique functionality like powerful AI. Due to the many acquisitions, it feels a bit patched together — they mean that ecommerce is not Salesforce’s main area of focus. Salesforce is known as a global company and benefits from other Salesforce acquisitions and products. As one of the largest known monoliths, Salesforce is trying to modernize step by step especially with regards to microservices.
SAP Commerce Cloud is a monolithic commerce platform. It has been modernized and benefits from its integration into the larger SAP product portfolio, but only partially meets our criteria for modern commerce technology. It offers the decoupled Spartacus frontend and other solid APIs, but the backend is untouched and the core remains tightly coupled. Customization is only feasible as a high-code solution, and the lack of microservices significantly reduces composability.
FAQ
What is BigCommerce?
BigCommerce is a NASDAQ-listed e-commerce platform provided as software-as-a-service for retailers. The company’s platform includes online store creation, search engine optimization, hosting, marketing, and security for businesses of all sizes.
Who uses BigCommerce?
Tens of thousands of B2B and B2C companies across 150 countries and numerous industries use BigCommerce to create beautiful, engaging online stores, including Ben & Jerry’s, Molton Brown, S.C. Johnson, Skullcandy, Sony, Vodafone and Woolrich.
Is BigCommerce good for e-commerce?
BigCommerce is a renowned e-commerce builder, providing high scalability for online stores. It has more built-in sales tools than most of its competitors, and combines these features with SEO and multi-channel integration.
What code does BigCommerce use?
BigCommerce uses programming languages like PHP, Python, Java, and Ruby. BigCommerces default presentation framework is SCSS Framework Citadel, which is built on top of Foundation v5. 5.3 (Foundation v6. x not currently supported).
Is Big Commerce free?
BigCommerce free plan can be selected for a period of one month from the date of activation (the “Offer”). The free Offer period applies only to base monthly subscription fees and does not apply to other services or products. After one month you need to upgrade to a subscription plan.
What is Salesforce?
Salesforce is a cloud computing software as a service (SaaS) company that specializes in customer relationship management (CRM). The software has become the number one for customer success and helps businesses track customer activity, market to customers and many more services.
What does Salesforce do/offer?
Salesforce lets you efficiently unify different principal functions of your business so you can achieve customer success. You can sell, provide service, market, collaborate, know your customers, and build apps on a single platform.
How does Salesforce architecture work?
Salesforce has a multilayer architecture; it contains a series of layers situated on top of each other. In the multilayer Salesforce architecture, the users are at the topmost layer.
Does Salesforce store data in a cloud?
Salesforce is a cloud platform and hence all the data stored in Salesforce is stored in cloud. Like Google, AWS and Microsoft, Salesforce has multiple data centers across the globe where this data is actually stored. All of these data is stored at multiple locations for easy accessibility and backup purpose which means that each record that is created in Salesforce is stored at muliple data centers across the globe.
Is Salesforce free?
Salesforce does not offer a free version of their software, so users have to choose between the different pricing plans.
What is SAP?
SAP means “Systems Applications and Products in data processing”. The SAP Software portfolio offers end to end solutions and covers most of its clients’ business requirements whether it is a financial, operational, human resources or e-commerce concern.
What is SAP used for?
As one of the world’s leading software systems dedicated to the management of business processes, SAP facilitates effective data processing and information flow across organizations. SAP connects all parts of a business into an intelligent suite on a fully digital platform.
Who are typical SAP customers?
SAP customers by industry (declining in number and relevance): Computer Software, Information Technology and Services, Staffing and Recruiting, Retail, Computer Hardware, Machinery, Utilities, Telecommunications, Oil and Energy, Management Consulting.
What is difference between SAP and ERP?
ERP is a superset of SAP, whereas SAP is a Tier 1 ERP software offering. ERP is more like a methodology which follows a specific set of standards to link applications together in a single architecture based on functions. ERP helps an organization manage and consolidate its overall performance across various functions.
Is SAP free?
SAP offers a solution as software-as-a-service in the cloud. The amount of the monthly subscription fee depends on the revenue managed with the solution.
