Kaizen or BigCommerce? Built for how Europe sells.
Kaizen is an online store platform made for selling in the EU. The legal parts, the extra ways to sell and the numbers you steer by are part of the product, not a list of add-ons to find and pay for one by one.
Why store owners choose Kaizen
Eight reasons, each one something you can look for in the admin. Where a comparison with BigCommerce is fair, it says what BigCommerce offers itself and what comes from an app.
The legal side of EU selling is built in
VAT follows the buyer's country, with OSS and IOSS figures ready for your accountant. Legal invoices and credit notes come in a gap-free series. You also get the 14-day withdrawal function, the 30-day lowest-price indication, product safety information, and customer-data export and erasure. BigCommerce's own blog post of 1 July 2026 says it has no native withdrawal function yet. The lowest-price indication is an app.
Sell more than parcels
Appointments, stays, rentals, subscription boxes and downloads share one catalogue, one cart and one checkout with ordinary products. Let outside hosts list their own stays and rentals for a commission, with the DAC7 report included. On BigCommerce, a marketplace with outside sellers is an app.
An AI manager that works from your own data
Ask about orders, stock or sales and it answers from your store's numbers, with the arithmetic done in code. It drafts product texts, translates the whole store and builds pages from a short interview. Anything that changes your shop, emails customers or spends money waits for your yes. Use Kaizen's AI or bring your own provider.
Know why your numbers move
Profit by order and product, customer lifetime value, cohorts and a monthly forecast, with alerts and a plain-words account of what changed. Send reports to your accountant on a schedule.
Made for Nordic shops
Book and print labels with Bring, Porterbuddy and Helthjem, offer pickup points from Bring, PostNord and Helthjem, and let customers pay with Vipps and MobilePay. Look up a Norwegian company in Brønnøysundregistrene and send your books to Tripletex. Shopper-facing texts are written by hand in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and English. On BigCommerce, Vipps and MobilePay go through Adyen or Stripe.
Your data stays in Europe
Your store's database and servers are in Dublin, and every service we add is chosen to keep customer data in the EU. Staff sign in with two steps, roles limit who sees what, and an activity log records who changed what. The BigCommerce pages we read state no data location.
Grow without an app bill
Wishlists, refer-a-friend rewards, loyalty credits, product reviews, back-in-stock emails, pre-orders and tiered or volume discounts are part of the product. On BigCommerce, reviews, pre-orders and bulk pricing are built in. Loyalty, referral and back-in-stock notices come from apps.
Run several stores, and move in easily
See every store you own in one control center, copy a store with its content, and show your products inside a WordPress site while checkout stays in Kaizen. Bring your products over from a CSV file and keep old links working with redirects. BigCommerce has multi-storefront built in, at an added monthly fee for each extra storefront.
Kaizen and BigCommerce, line by line
Where BigCommerce needs an app or a higher plan, the right-hand side says so. What we say about BigCommerce comes from BigCommerce's own help pages, documentation and listings. A line is left out where we could not verify what BigCommerce does.
Selling in the EU
Legal invoices and credit notes
Kaizen. Issued for every paid order and refund, in a gap-free series, as PDF and on a page the customer can open.
BigCommerce. Printable invoice templates are built in. The page describes no credit notes or numbering series. An app, Sufio, lists credit notes at 7 USD a month after a trial, by the vendor's own description.
30-day lowest-price indication
Kaizen. Kept for every price and shown only on a real reduction.
BigCommerce. An app: Omnibus Pricing, listed at 349.90 EUR a month.
Right of withdrawal
Kaizen. A two-step function for customers, the 14-day clock from the recorded delivery, exclusions and a digital-content waiver, with refunds and returns in one queue.
BigCommerce. BigCommerce's own blog post of 1 July 2026 says it does not offer a native withdrawal function yet, and that merchants set one up themselves for now.
VAT across the EU, reverse charge, OSS and IOSS
Kaizen. VAT follows the buyer's country. A business buyer's VAT number is checked before VAT is left off, and OSS and IOSS figures are ready for your accountant.
BigCommerce. Tax zones and rates are set by hand, or through a tax provider such as Avalara AvaTax, which calculates VAT for EU states.
Selling more than goods
A marketplace with outside hosts
Kaizen. Hosts list stays and rentals, get paid through their own Stripe account, and you take a commission.
BigCommerce. An app: Webkul's Multi Vendor Marketplace from 10 USD a month, or MarketCube at 399 USD a month.
Several stores under one owner
Kaizen. One control center for every store you own.
BigCommerce. Built in as multi-storefront, with an added fee for each extra storefront: 30, 50 or 100 USD a month depending on the plan.
Growing the shop
Loyalty and rewards
Kaizen. Credits that customers earn and spend, with expiry reminders.
BigCommerce. An app. Yotpo's loyalty and referrals app is listed from 0 USD a month.
Refer-a-friend
Kaizen. Customers refer customers, with a welcome discount and a reward in credits.
BigCommerce. An app, the same Yotpo app.
Wishlists
Kaizen. Built in, for signed-in and guest customers.
BigCommerce. Built in.
Product reviews
Kaizen. Verified-purchase reviews with moderation and structured data.
BigCommerce. Built in, on all plans.
Back-in-stock emails and pre-orders
Kaizen. A notify-me list on sold-out products, and pre-orders with a release date.
BigCommerce. Pre-orders are built in, with a release date. BigCommerce's help article says there is no built-in back-in-stock feature, and an app such as Swym is listed at 59.99 USD a month.
Tiered and volume discounts
Kaizen. Part of the discount rules.
BigCommerce. Built in as bulk pricing.
Nordic shops, AI and your data
Vipps and MobilePay
Kaizen. Offered at checkout.
BigCommerce. Through Adyen: Vipps in NOK at checkout, and MobilePay in DKK or EUR, or MobilePay through Stripe for shoppers in Denmark and Finland.
An assistant that runs the shop with you
Kaizen. An AI manager in the admin that answers from your store's own data and asks for your yes before it changes anything.
BigCommerce. BigCommerce Companion is built in to the control panel at no extra cost. It can update order statuses and issue store credits with your approval.
Where your data is kept
Kaizen. The database and the servers are in Dublin.
BigCommerce. BigCommerce runs on Google Cloud and lists PCI DSS and ISO certifications. The pages we read state no data location.
What it costs
BigCommerce's plans were listed at 29 USD (Core), 79 USD (Growth) and 299 USD (Scale) a month billed annually, with higher monthly prices if billed monthly. A store moves up a plan automatically as its sales over the last twelve months pass a limit (30,000 USD for Core, 100,000 USD for Growth).
On orders through payment providers outside its 21 embedded ones, BigCommerce charges a fee of 2.0% (Core), 1.0% (Growth) or 0.6% (Scale). Apps are billed on top. Kaizen has no app bills for what this page describes. The plans and the fee per sale are on the pricing page.
Where BigCommerce is the better fit
Kaizen is not the right choice for everyone. Choose BigCommerce if:
- You want a headless shop. BigCommerce's Catalyst storefront is open source, built on Next.js and GraphQL.
- You want several storefronts from one account, even on the cheapest plan.
- You sell with bulk pricing and pre-orders and want them built in.
- You want a free data migration tool that moves products, customers and orders into BigCommerce from another platform.
- You want no BigCommerce fee on orders through its embedded payment providers.
If your customers are in Europe and you want the legal parts, the extra ways to sell and the numbers in one product, Kaizen is built for you.
Who Kaizen is for
Shops selling in the EU
You sell to consumers in more than one EU country, you carry the VAT, invoices and withdrawal rights yourself, and you would rather have them handled in the product than in several add-ons.
Businesses that sell time, space and subscriptions too
Salons and studios with a booking calendar, a cabin or a bike rental, a farm with weekly boxes, a shop that also sells downloads: one store, one checkout, one set of figures.
Agencies and owners of several stores
One control center, copies of a store, roles with per-section permissions, two-step sign-in, an activity log, and collaborator access that ends on a date you set.
Moving over from BigCommerce
- Import your products from a CSV file, with a dry run that shows what will be created and what is wrong before anything is saved. Kaizen reads Shopify's product layout and its own.
- BigCommerce exports products, customers and orders as CSV. A direct importer for BigCommerce is not built yet, so arrange the export in Kaizen's layout first.
- Bring your old addresses over as redirects from a CSV file, so links and search rankings keep working.
- Use your own domain when you are ready. Nothing you export from Kaizen is locked in: orders, customers and reports download as files.
Questions
Can I move my BigCommerce store to Kaizen?
Your products and your old addresses, yes, through CSV files and a dry run. A direct BigCommerce importer is not built yet, so you arrange your product export in Kaizen's file layout first. Your theme does not move, because Kaizen's pages are built in its own page builder.
Do I need apps?
Kaizen has no app store. What this page describes is built in, and Kaizen connects to Slack, Zapier, Make, Tripletex and the carriers named above.
Where is my data kept?
The database and the servers are in Ireland, and every service we add is chosen to keep customer data in the EU.
Does Kaizen give legal advice?
No. Kaizen provides the tools, and starting texts for terms, privacy, returns and shipping pages in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and English, each marked for review. Have a lawyer read them before you publish: you are responsible for what your shop says.
What does it cost?
The plans and the fee per sale are on the pricing page. There are no separate subscriptions for what this page describes.
Try Kaizen with your own products
BigCommerce's features, plans and prices change. What this page says about BigCommerce comes from BigCommerce's own help pages, documentation and listings, last read on 6 October 2026. Prices are list prices on that day, in the currency shown, and prices of extensions and apps are the listing partners' own. Check BigCommerce's pages for today's.