BigCommerce development for merchants who did the math.

Custom builds scope with catalog size, B2B complexity, and integration count — the same drivers as any platform. Where BigCommerce changes the math is the ongoing column: no transaction fees on any plan, and features like customer groups and price lists included where Shopify merchants pay for apps or Plus. The audit puts build cost and three-year running cost side by side for your volume.

Typical projects run eight to twelve weeks, in line with our other platform builds. Catalog size and integration count set the pace; B2B configuration — customer groups, price lists, quote flows — adds structured setup time in the middle weeks but rarely moves the launch date, because it runs parallel to theme development. Migrations add a data-mapping phase up front, reconciled on staging before anything cuts over.

Three concrete reasons, all arithmetic. One: no transaction fees at any tier, which compounds as volume grows. Two: features in the platform that Shopify sells as apps or reserves for Plus — customer groups, price lists, staff accounts, real B2B tooling. Three: open APIs that make going headless later an upgrade rather than a re-platform. The honest counterweight is Shopify's larger ecosystem. If the fee math and feature list don't favor BigCommerce at your volume, we'll recommend Shopify — we build both.

Yes — natively, which is precisely why mid-market B2B merchants land on it. Customer groups with distinct price lists per group, hidden pricing for logged-out visitors, quote-based workflows, and purchase-order terms are platform features, not app subscriptions. We configure them from your actual price-list logic during the build. If your B2B rules go beyond what the native tooling covers — per-contract pricing engines, ERP-driven quoting — that's where BigCommerce's APIs or a custom build come in, and the audit tells you which side of that line you're on.

Yes, and this is one of the platform's quiet advantages. BigCommerce's catalog, cart, and checkout are all exposed through APIs, so a headless front end — Next.js, for instance — plugs into the same store data your Stencil theme uses. Products, customers, and order history stay put; only the presentation layer changes. That makes 'start on the standard theme, go headless when traffic justifies it' a real roadmap, not a re-platforming project. We build both ends of that path.