Shopify vs BigCommerce for NetSuite

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• Michael Mueller, e-Commerce Account Executive at Anchor Group
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Podcast Recap:

Michael explains how to choose between Shopify and BigCommerce for your NetSuite ERP.

Shopify for B2C and D2C

Shopify excels for B2C and D2C with strong marketing tools and a massive app ecosystem. Native features get you 80% there, but you'll need apps like Klaviyo for the final 20%. Shopify is investing in B2B capabilities but still catching up to native buyer portal functionality.

BigCommerce for B2B

BigCommerce offers built-in B2B features through their B2B Edition app—sales masquerading, quoting, and buyer portals out of the box. For NetSuite merchants in manufacturing or wholesale, it's a natural fit with a manageable learning curve similar to Shopify.

Integration is critical

Simple businesses can use the NetSuite Connector. Complex operations need middleware like Celigo or iPass.com for partial increments, advanced pricing, and multiple system connections.

Bottom line

Shopify for B2C/D2C with growing B2B needs. BigCommerce for B2B-first operations. Plan for three to five years out, and prioritize integration quality. Anchor Group helps NetSuite merchants select, implement, and integrate the right platform.

Podcast Transcript:

Michael (00:00)

Everybody, thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Anchor Group Podcast. Today we're going to be talking about NetSuite and how NetSuite pairs well with modern e-commerce engines. We've been working with a lot of NetSuite merchants that have had historically a strong buyer portal or a small e-commerce presence. But as the tides change on what customers want and what they're looking for, we're getting more and more questions about what modern e-commerce engine should I pair with my NetSuite environment. There's a lot that goes into that. So today on the podcast, that's what we're going to be diving into. And by the end of this podcast, you're going to know based on your type of company what route you should start exploring first. So stay tuned. This is going to be a good one. Lots of good information. Let's get rolling.

So here at Anchor Group, really the bread and butter of what we do is NetSuite work. And I'm sure if you're listening to this, you probably have NetSuite and we do a lot of things. We implement NetSuite. We can optimize it. We offer managed service plans, that sort of thing. And a lot of times when we work with clients, we work with prospects, they are wondering how do we modernize our entire tech stack? And since the ERP, the NetSuite ERP is really the brain of a business, a lot of that modernization always needs to touch that foundation, that cornerstone of the business. Ultimately, at the end of the day, your P&L matters. Your accounting practice matters. How you're managing that matters. You want to make profit. You want to make revenue. That all ties back into the core functions of NetSuite.

So everything we build tech stack related, we always recommend is built off of that cornerstone of the ERP. Now in NetSuite, there's wonderful capabilities to be able to put product information, to be able to manage your warehouses there, manufacturing processes, service processes. And we can take all that information and connect it to a high-end, fast, modern e-commerce system. And that's what we do over here at Anchor Group. We manage the NetSuite side, the integration side, and the e-commerce side. So today I just want to speak about a couple of the trends that we're seeing with the e-commerce engines different merchants are opting into or exploring as really good options. I'm happy to share feedback on how those experiences go migrating to those platforms.

So the first modern e-commerce platform we hear a lot of people ask about is Shopify. Chances are if you've been on YouTube lately, there's a chance that you've seen a Shopify ad come across one of your YouTube videos. There's a chance if you've gone to a sporting event recently, you potentially have seen a Shopify ad somewhere in that arena. Shopify is a very popular modern e-commerce platform and there's good reason for why it's popular. It's very easy to set up and that's really what they pride themselves on at Shopify. They're really on the leading edge of some of the B2C or D2C focused elements of an e-commerce website and they have a ginormous app ecosystem. They've got a really marketing focused kind of tech stack over there and I'm speaking natively to what's available on Shopify.

And so for companies that have NetSuite and have a large marketing team, maybe sell more in that B2C, D2C space, Shopify legitimately can be a very strong option for that tech stack, that NetSuite tech stack as a foundation having Shopify as modern e-commerce. Also, the Shopify ecosystem is just massive. So if you're looking for apps, if you're looking for partners to support you, there's going to be plenty of options out there for you.

And just to kind of cover our bases, if you're thinking about going to Shopify, a Shopify website for many companies, the native elements are going to get an established company that currently has NetSuite about 80% of the way there to a complete website. Your expectation should be to rely on apps or third party software to finish and complete the rest of that website for you to really build out your tech stack. Let me give an example. You can use NetSuite for the ERP. You're going to need some sort of integration, but on the Shopify side, you might be using the native functions and forms, the marketing channels. But if you really want to maximize your use of Shopify, you're going to want to connect it to something like Klaviyo or Mailchimp, or you are going to want to connect it to potentially a third party pricing software to help you better manage the prices and the ecosystem and the vertical that you're selling in. Once again, focus more on the D2C and B2C markets.

And that's where the Shopify app ecosystem comes in handy because there's a lot of apps already in that ecosystem that you can lean on, that you can rely on to build out and complete that last 20% of your website. Once again, referencing the idea that native Shopify is going to get you about 80% of the way there. The expectation should be custom work will be needed or apps and integrations to third party software are going to be needed in order to finish out that last 20%. Okay, once again, that's for B2C and D2C brands.

Recently, one thing we have seen at Anchor Group in the Shopify ecosystem is that Shopify is putting more time, energy, and talent, more effort into the way they serve their B2B customers. If you're in NetSuite and you're used to NetSuite's My Account or NetSuite's Buyer Portal, Shopify is attempting and making a push internally to develop their software and their systems to be able to support customers in a similar capacity. And that's something that we have seen change over the years in the past two to three years. So it's becoming a stronger player in that field which a lot of companies on NetSuite that we work with are in that B2B space. And so Shopify is becoming part of the conversation as we look at more modern e-commerce tech stacks for B2B merchants that are on NetSuite and want that modern tech stack. A lot more can be said about that which we can dive into on a later episode.

But I want to shift the conversation from Shopify over to BigCommerce. Guys, BigCommerce is always in the conversation for NetSuite companies that want a more modern e-commerce tech stack. And it's because BigCommerce right now, we feel, blends very well that B2C and B2B experience on an e-commerce platform. For example, years ago, BigCommerce, which is now under the parent company commerce.com, BigCommerce acquired a smaller company at the time that was an app and they've built that app into what's called their BigCommerce B2B edition. It's now a commerce owned app that you can go to your BigCommerce website app store, download it onto your website and essentially it builds out the buyer portal for you. So a lot of what we would consider some of the standard B2B features that a B2B merchant on e-commerce needs, that app automatically gives your website that functionality needed.

This is going to be things like a sales masquerading tool. So for example, if you have an outside or inside sales team and they need to log in on behalf of a customer to create a quote, to look at the invoices, to update the customers on that account, downloading this app is just one of the things that it gives you access to be able to do. And so BigCommerce has already arrived there in the B2B space with tacking on that app to your BigCommerce instance in order to give you that functionality. And if you are a NetSuite merchant using NetSuite for a B2B capacity, then BigCommerce as of right now feels like a very natural modern fit for an e-commerce website or a buyer portal.

Think about that. If you need a good blend between a buyer portal and an e-commerce website, BigCommerce can be a really good fit for you. Now, BigCommerce, one last thing about this. If you've ever managed a Shopify website, which many people have, many people in this industry have managed either a personal Shopify website at some point or some sort of Shopify website, they've been part of the team managing Shopify. BigCommerce, the admin dashboard, the backend of BigCommerce, feels and operates similarly to that Shopify admin experience. So the learning curve is not quite as steep on BigCommerce as it is, say for example, if you're using something like SuiteCommerce. That learning curve is a little bit steeper right at the beginning. For some merchants, still a wonderful platform, but the learning curve can just be a little bit steeper. BigCommerce acts, feels, looks much more like Shopify when we put them all into the playing field and compare them to one another.

Now the last thing I want to mention about modernizing the tech stack, if you have NetSuite as your foundation, your cornerstone, is that when you take e-commerce outside of NetSuite, the integration tying all of those software platforms together is going to be that much more critical. So NetSuite is a wonderful platform that can get very, very complex, which is why it works so well in the B2B manufacturing space or wholesale distribution, because you can really create NetSuite how you need it to be in many ways through custom work. Not saying it's all going to look like that out of the box, but through custom work, you can really shape shift it in order to set up the whole system how you want it to be.

Now, sometimes when you try to take that ERP data and bring it over into e-commerce, sometimes you're trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. This could look like different types of product data. In your ERP, you might have product data set up in increments. Say for example, you're selling cloth or you're selling yards of a product and you need to offer partial yards. Maybe your ERP handles that, but many e-commerce platforms only sell to the nearest whole increment and you can't do like a 0.25 or 0.5 yard of cloth fabric, for example. And that's where the integration comes in. And through integration work, through good integration work, you're able to cater e-commerce to the way that your ERP functions. And that's a really important distinction.

If you have what I would consider a cut and dry, simple business where there's not too much difficulty or complexity going on with your products, the integration between NetSuite and Shopify or BigCommerce can be pretty standard. The native integrations out of the box that are out there can get you most of the way to complete integration with the data the way that you want. When your business starts to become more complex, that's when you're going to need a good integration.

And at Anchor Group, we help companies set up these integrations. So from our experience, we see a lot of companies using NetSuite's NetSuite Connector. Many of you might know it as the FAR app from years past. That's now the NetSuite Connector and that works for Shopify and for BigCommerce. Other options that we see often are something called iPass.com or Celigo. It's a true middleware that sits in the middle between NetSuite and e-commerce and acts like a hub and spoke model. And that is important if you are going to be using other software systems besides just NetSuite and an e-commerce platform like Shopify or BigCommerce. For example, if you want to connect to HubSpot, if you need to connect to some external pricing software, you need to tie that all back into that middleware, into that connector to be able to share that data between them all. And once again, that's where an iPass.com, a Celigo, something like that can be very helpful.

And there's lots of different integration companies. MineCloud is one that we've had on our podcast as well. They're an integration company. They can set those integrations up for you. But just know there's a lot of different options and you're going to want to explore your options the more complex your business needs become.

And the last thing I'll add is that as you vet out these options and as you think about modernizing your e-commerce tech stack, don't be too nearsighted. What's going to fit for the next year, in this year 2026, what's going to fit well now? Think about where your brand and where your company is going to grow three years, five years from now. Now, none of us have a crystal ball to tell us where things are going to be in five years from now. We can't see that. But if you're going to be investing your time, energy and talent and working with agencies and software providers to set up your tech stack, by all means, make sure you're setting up in your best interest for the next three, five or more years. You want to make sure you're agile as industries grow and as your company grows. You want to be able to be nimble with that. And there are different ways you can do that.

So I know I went on just a little bit of a rant here sharing some information about how you can modernize your e-commerce tech stack with NetSuite. Just real quick once again, we see Shopify working very, very well for NetSuite companies that play in the direct to consumer or B2C space and have some B2B capabilities as well. If you're a more B2B facing company, maybe you're a manufacturing company, wholesale distribution company, something like that, then BigCommerce might be a good option for you to explore just because of some of the easier to access features on their platform that you can tap into right out of the box.

Regardless, for both platforms, you're going to want to make sure that you understand what's needed from your integration. Depending on how complex your NetSuite environment is, that integration is going to be easier or more complicated depending on your business. And so by all means, internally, your team can work on this, but that's also where Anchor Group can come in. We can walk with you through that process. You can talk with myself or somebody else from the Anchor Group team. We can help you understand what are some things you want to be looking out for, some red flags, some orange flags. What are things you want to be thinking about as you gather requirements and go through the process of understanding what's possible.

But just know, updating your tech stack is important. And in this day and age, technology is improving. I mean, some people say faster than ever, especially with the dawn of AI. Things are improving all the time. And so it's a wonderful time to be seeking out updating a tech stack and that sort of thing. It's an exciting time to be part of those projects and to be pushing them forward.

So I appreciate you all listening to this episode of the Anchor Group Podcast. If you've got questions, by all means, feel free to reach out. And if you've listened to a couple of these episodes and you're thinking I wish these people would talk about this topic, by all means, send us an email. If you're watching on YouTube, drop it in the comments section below. Ultimately, we want to make sure that this is valuable for you and where you are in your business. We're happy to share our experience and our expertise with you on those topics. So thank you for tuning into this episode of the Anchor Group Podcast and looking forward to connecting with you on the next one.

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Oracle NetSuite Alliance Partner, BigCommerce Certified Partner

As both a BigCommerce Certified Partner and an Oracle NetSuite Alliance Partner, Anchor Group is ready to handle BigCommerce and NetSuite projects alike! Whether you already have one platform and are looking to integrate the other, are considering a full-scale implementation of both platforms, or simply need support with ongoing customizations, our team is ready to help answer any questions you might have! Get in touch!