Making the work
Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover digital products & storefronts. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
A hosted store priced against how much you sell
Digital delivery billed flat, with no cut of sales
BigCommerce | SendOwl | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $29 | From $32.50 |
| Pricing model | Free trial, then paid | Free trial, then paid |
| Free tier | No | No |
| Billing | Not stated | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Data export |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
A hosted store priced against how much you sell
BigCommerce is a hosted storefront whose tiers are drawn around sales volume rather than around features, so the question at signup is what a shop turns over rather than which capabilities it needs. Crossing a tier's ceiling moves the account up on its own, which is worth knowing before the first busy quarter. The platform adds no transaction fee of its own on top of the payment provider's. Anybody below the first threshold is paying for headroom they will not use for a while.
Our note
The automatic upgrade is the thing to plan for, because a good quarter moves you a tier without anybody approving it and the jump from $29 to $79 arrives at $30,000 of sales. Compare with Shopify on the card rate rather than the subscription, since that is where the two platforms actually differ.
Only on this side
Digital delivery billed flat, with no cut of sales
SendOwl delivers digital files after payment and prices that on volume rather than on a share of the sale, which is the difference that matters to anybody selling a high-priced product. Every feature is on every plan, so the tier only decides how many orders, how much revenue and how much bandwidth are covered. Products and storage are uncapped at all levels. The flat fee is worse than a percentage for somebody selling very little, and better for everybody above that crossover.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.
| Not stated |
| Not stated |
| Their cut | Not stated | None |
|---|
| Runs on | Web | Web |
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| Covers | Digital Products & Storefronts, Monetization & Payments | Digital Products & Storefronts |
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| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
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| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
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| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
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| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
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Our note
Work out where the flat fee beats a percentage on your own numbers, because the crossover against a platform charging 5 to 10 percent arrives at a few hundred dollars of monthly sales. Watch the revenue ceiling rather than the order count, since a dear product hits the sales cap long before the order cap.