What the solution is
BigCommerce is an American SaaS commerce platform often chosen as an alternative to Shopify for two reasons: there is no transaction fee on sales, and the platform's APIs are open enough to build a headless frontend if you want one.
The integration to Business Central here is eConnect from Dynamics eShop, obtained from Microsoft AppSource. The same vendor stands behind a standalone storefront product in this catalogue, and eConnect is their connector line, which also covers Shopify, Magento, Amazon, WooCommerce and eBay.
How the integration works
The vendor describes Business Central as the system of record. Items, prices, stock, customers, orders and fulfilment information are synchronised between the store and the ERP, and updates happen continuously rather than in a nightly run.
It is a connector with a middleware layer, which means there is a place where an order can sit waiting to move on. That is not a weakness in itself, because it makes retry possible, but it makes it important to agree who monitors the queue.
Only Business Central online is documented. Both Essentials and Premium are supported. Note that the same vendor sells several connectors in the same family, which is a strength if you sell in several channels, and a fact to carry if you want to know how much resource sits behind the BigCommerce edition specifically.
Prices, discounts and agreements
Prices are synchronised from Business Central to BigCommerce. The agreed price therefore comes from the ERP, and that is the mechanism this site measures.
It is a transfer model, and the scaling trap applies. Customers times items quickly becomes many rows, and BigCommerce has historically had limits on the number of customer groups and price lists which are worth having confirmed against your own figures before signing the project off.
Campaigns and bundles belong in BigCommerce. The platform has a solid campaign engine, and for a consumer brand that is an advantage. It is at the same time the reason for the label about logic set up in two places. Company accounts, requisition lists and payment terms belong to BigCommerce's B2B Edition, and without it the B2B part is thin.
The order and the finance function
The order is created as a sales order in Business Central along with customer details, payment and shipping. That is more than several connectors in the catalogue cover, and it saves work in the accounts department.
Partial shipments, back orders and credit memos are handled in Business Central. Whether shipment status comes back to the store is worth having confirmed, because that is the piece of information customers phone about.
VAT is decided by BigCommerce on open selling, and an external tax engine is the ordinary solution when selling in several countries. Reconciling the payment provider's settlement is a separate job. In return there is no fee on revenue from the platform itself, and that is a real difference over three years.
Who the solution fits
The solution fits a company with mainly consumer selling and growing revenue, where a transaction fee would become expensive. That is BigCommerce's strongest argument, and it grows stronger the more you sell.
It also fits if you want the option of a headless frontend without leaving a SaaS platform. BigCommerce is built for both routes, and not every SaaS platform is.
The solution fits less well for a pure B2B business. B2B Edition is an add-on, and even with it, quote management and complex agreement logic are not in the same class as the dedicated B2B solutions in the catalogue.
What to settle before you decide
Pricing is not public for the connector, and BigCommerce's own plans are tiered with limits on annual revenue. Our bands are estimates with low confidence. Ask for prices on the platform, on B2B Edition if you need it, and on the connector.
Ask to have the limits on customer groups and price lists confirmed against your own number of customers. That is the one place this solution can prove too small, and it is information the vendor can give in a minute.
Finally, ask for a named European reference customer on BigCommerce and Business Central specifically. Both the platform and the connector are North American, and the combination is less widespread in Europe than in the United States.