BigCommerce vs Shopify for Mobile Apps: Which Platform Makes It Easier to Launch and Maintain an App?

If you're serious about launching a mobile app, are you better off on Shopify or BigCommerce?

The answer is closer to a tie than the platform marketing makes it seem. Shopify has the larger ecosystem of mobile app builders, the cleaner API documentation, and the baked-in architecture (Storefront API plus Checkout Kit) that makes mobile apps fairly accessible (assuming you have access to the right developers).

BigCommerce has more flexible APIs, a fully open checkout you can customize end to end, and deeper headless functionality for brands that want to build something more custom. 

Each platform has the ability to be a solid backend for a mobile app. But realistically, neither one has such a strong advantage that it alone should drive your decision to replatform your website.

Keep reading and I’ll break down how each ecommerce platform works as the backend for your mobile app, the mobile app ecosystem for each one, whether there’s any reason to switch platforms to cater to your mobile app, and how MobiLoud makes the Shopify vs BigCommerce decision irrelevant.

Why More BigCommerce and Shopify Brands Are Launching Mobile Apps

Global mobile commerce sales reached roughly $2.07 trillion in 2024, accounting for 57% of all ecommerce transactions. For most brands, whether on Shopify or BigCommerce or any other platform, mobile is the majority of the funnel and the bulk of repeat purchases.

Every brand has a fast and responsive mobile website. But a mobile app is less common, yet so much more powerful as a mobile-first surface.

Apps drive the highest-value behavior: more repeat purchases, larger orders, and give you push notifications - messages that land on your customer’s lock screen, instantly, with near-guaranteed visibility.

In a time where profit margins, retention and repeat customer engagement are more important than ever, a mobile app, too, becomes a crucial brand asset, whether you’re a DTC brand on Shopify or a B2B BigCommerce store.

BigCommerce vs Shopify for Mobile Apps at a Glance

Neither BigCommerce or Shopify has their own “mobile app builder” - both are primarily web platforms.

But both platforms have their own infrastructure for businesses looking to extend their store to a dedicated mobile app: dedicated mobile app documentation, headless frameworks (Hydrogen on Shopify, Catalyst on BigCommerce), and a vendor ecosystem of mobile app builders that handle the build for merchants who don't want to write the app from scratch.

The platforms are closer than the marketing makes them sound, but each has a real edge. Shopify wins on ecosystem breadth and out-of-the-box tooling for self-serve app builders. BigCommerce wins on API flexibility and headless freedom, including the ability to fully customize your checkout.

The table doesn’t tell the entire picture, of course. But it’s a helpful foundation for looking at the differences between how each platform powers your mobile app.

How BigCommerce and Shopify APIs Power a Mobile App

A mobile app needs to fetch products, manage carts, take orders, and read customer data from your store. 

Both Shopify and BigCommerce expose APIs to do that, but they're shaped differently and aimed at slightly different builds. Here's what you need to know about each, before deciding whether going custom is even the right call.

Shopify's APIs for Mobile Apps

Shopify exposes three things that matter for a mobile app: the Storefront API, the Admin API, and Checkout Kit.

• The Storefront API is GraphQL and customer-facing. It's how the app pulls products, search results, and cart state. 
• The Admin API handles back-office operations like order creation and customer management. 
• Checkout Kit is the newer piece, and it's the one most brands miss in their first reading: it renders Shopify's actual checkout natively inside your iOS, Android, or React Native app. You pass a checkoutUrl and Checkout Kit handles the rest, including Shop Pay, Apple Pay, and your store's branding.

Shopify's official mobile commerce documentation recommends Storefront API plus Checkout Kit as the canonical path for mobile apps, which means checkout itself runs through Shopify's infrastructure rather than something you fully control in your app. 

This is fine for the vast majority of brands. It's a real constraint for anyone who needs a fully custom checkout flow.

The older Mobile Buy SDK and JavaScript Buy SDK are out of the picture. Shopify deprecated the JS Buy SDK in January 2025 and discontinued support in March 2025. If you read older guides recommending the Mobile Buy SDK, ignore them. The current path is Storefront API plus Checkout Kit.

For deeper coverage of the Shopify side, see MobiLoud’s guide to the Shopify API for mobile apps, which includes a breakdown of the pros and cons of the API-driven approach itself.

BigCommerce's APIs for Mobile Apps

BigCommerce exposes both REST and GraphQL Storefront APIs, an Admin REST API for back-office operations, and a Catalog API specifically for managing products and categories. 

The dev docs explicitly call out native mobile apps as a supported use case: the front end can be a CMS, native mobile app, kiosk, or static site, and BigCommerce handles the order, payment, and catalog backend.

The structural advantage on BigCommerce is checkout. Where Shopify's checkout is locked to Shopify's surface, BigCommerce's is open: you can fully customize the checkout flow in a headless or app context, which gives more flexibility for brands with non-standard payment requirements, B2B quote-to-order workflows, or regional payment methods that don't fit cleanly inside a Shopify-rendered checkout.

Catalyst is BigCommerce's headless framework, built on Next.js and now integrated with the MakeSwift page-building tool BigCommerce acquired. 

Like Hydrogen on the Shopify side, Catalyst is a web-side framework, not a mobile app SDK. But the same Storefront API powering a Catalyst web build can also power a mobile app, which is why headless brands tend to find BigCommerce more flexible for ambitious cross-channel architectures.

The B2B Edition is the other place BigCommerce pulls ahead for app-relevant use cases. Customer-specific pricing, contracted catalogs, sales rep "act as" flows, and quote-to-order workflows are all exposed via API and survive the trip to a mobile app. 

On Shopify, B2B is improving, but it's less mature than many other platforms (including BigCommerce) for the same operations.

For more on BigCommerce-specific app builds, see the MobiLoud guide to BigCommerce mobile app development.

The Mobile App Builder Ecosystem on Each Platform

No-code mobile app builders are a major advancement in mobile app development for ecommerce brands over the last few years.

With these tools, you can launch a fast, functional mobile app, without the massive cost and time required to have a fully custom app developed from scratch.

It’s also the biggest difference to consider between BigCommerce and Shopify, when it comes to launching a mobile app.

Mobile App Builders on Shopify

The Shopify mobile app builder ecosystem is the largest in ecommerce by a wide margin. There are nearly 100 apps currently listed in the Shopify App Store under "mobile app builder," which all work primarily the same way.

These tools are virtually all DIY SaaS platforms, template-based drag-and-drop tools that let you compile a new front end for your app, which connects with your Shopify backend via the APIs mentioned above.

These tools have limitations and pain points, as is the nature of template-driven SaaS tools. But names like Tapcart and Shopney can produce a solid result for a lot of ecommerce stores, not to mention the dozens of similar tools competing with them.

Mobile App Builders on BigCommerce

BigCommerce's mobile app builder ecosystem is much thinner. The BigCommerce App Marketplace mobile app category lists a small handful of vendors, some with minimal or no reviews.

The reason is straightforward: Shopify has the wider customer base, so most app vendors build for Shopify, not BigCommerce.

App builders like Tapcart and Shopney don’t work with BigCommerce. To do so, they’d require an overhaul of their backend to be compatible with BigCommerce’s APIs, and for the majority of app builders, the demand from BigCommerce merchants is not big enough to justify the work to do this.

MobiLoud – Custom Mobile Apps for Shopify and BigCommerce

There’s an exception to the above.

Our company, MobiLoud, fits into the broad “mobile app builder” conversation. We help ecommerce brands launch their own mobile apps, without the cost and complexity of hiring a development team or a traditional mobile app development agency.

The biggest difference is, unlike a Tapcart or a Shopney, MobiLoud works for sites on any ecommerce platform. Including Shopify, BigCommerce, and any other platform you can name.

The reason is that MobiLoud doesn’t rely on platform APIs to power your app. We use your existing tech stack as the foundation for a custom mobile app - meaning it works the same no matter the platform.

You get a native, fully custom mobile app, with the core content and design all managed through your web backend (Shopify admin, BigCommerce dashboard, or a custom backend - it doesn’t matter).

"A custom app build for our setup would have been prohibitively expensive. MobiLoud was the only realistic option."
-- Nick Barbarise, Director of IT, John Varvatos

It’s comparable in cost to an app builder, with much less work required, much easier to manage, and it’s guaranteed to work no matter your backend, no matter how custom your site is.

The Cost of Building a Custom App from Scratch (on Either Platform)

Skip the app builder route and you're looking at custom development. That means hiring engineers (or an agency), writing iOS and Android code from scratch, integrating directly against either platform's API surface, and shipping the result through the app stores yourself.

The cost of building a custom mobile app is typically six figures plus - and could easily be $500K or more, for a store with a lot of custom parts.

Then there’s recurring maintenance and operating costs on top of the upfront cost, which could add another $100K+ in annual expenses, just to keep up with API updates, OS releases, and routine feature additions and bug fixes.

When it comes to building a custom app from scratch, the platform decision doesn’t make a huge amount of difference.

Shopify's API is well-documented; BigCommerce's is more permissive and gives you more checkout flexibility. 

Neither difference is large enough to make custom development meaningfully cheaper or faster. The custom app is a multi-year commitment regardless of which platform sits underneath it.

For the vast majority of ecommerce businesses, building a fully custom app from the ground up is rarely the best choice - not when there’s an ecosystem of more cost-efficient mobile app builders out there, plus MobiLoud as a tech-agnostic alternative for building custom mobile apps.

Should You Switch Platforms Just to Launch a Mobile App?

So, let’s say you’re on BigCommerce already, and thinking whether it’s worth moving to Shopify for the wider choice of mobile app vendors. Or you’re on Shopify, and considering moving to BigCommerce for better customizability and headless flexibility.

Is there any merit to replatforming, for the sake of your mobile app?

The answer: almost never. Replatforming is such a big project, especially for a well-established ecommerce brand. It’s not something you want to do on a whim.

It’s absolutely worth having your own mobile app. But it’s not worth spending six-seven figures to migrate your whole ecommerce operation, just because you think it’s going to be easier to do a mobile app on Shopify.

This is especially true when you’ve got MobiLoud, which lets you build a custom app for your brand no matter the platform you’re on.

It doesn’t mean there’s not a case to replatform - whether it’s moving to Shopify for the ease of use and wide ecosystem of vendors and tools, or moving off Shopify to BigCommerce for added flexibility or stronger B2B features.

But with MobiLoud powering your app, you can remove this part from the equation, and evaluate each platform on its merits - and know that your mobile app is solved either way. 

Choosing the Right Approach for Your BigCommerce or Shopify Mobile App

Both BigCommerce and Shopify can be powerful backends for a successful ecommerce store - and a successful mobile app.

Both have strong APIs, good documentation, decent flexibility. The vendor ecosystem is a big differentiating factor. But with MobiLoud existing as a tech-agnostic option, these questions are largely redundant.

Our answer: pick the platform that powers your core ecommerce operation the best. Build a strong website, make sure it’s fast, functional, and works well on both desktop and mobile: then extend it and launch a custom mobile app with MobiLoud.

Want to see what’s possible? Book a free strategy call to see what MobiLoud can do for your store.