As a new online business owner, it may seem that open-source software is the clear winner — greater control, more customizations, free installation. However, there’s more to open source than meets the eye. With more control over your ecommerce environment comes more responsibility and expenses, especially when it comes to security and PCI compliance, ongoing site maintenance, licensing and hosting fees and integration with other systems. On top of your day-to-day operations, you’re responsible for all of these aspects of your website — and if you’re not equipped with the coding knowledge or IT team, you may find yourself blindsighted.
On the other hand, the beauty of SaaS solutions like BigCommerce is that all of these responsibilities are taken on by the platform provider. Many of these additional operating costs are already included in your monthly fee, so you can more easily estimate your total cost of ownership.