Aigency vs BigCommerce: what BigCommerce's AI covers, and what an agent site adds
The short answer
Aigency is not a BigCommerce alternative: it runs alongside a BigCommerce store, and a brand that adds it keeps BigCommerce for its catalog, checkout, and orders.
BigCommerce, whose parent company is now called Commerce, reaches AI shopping channels through integrations rather than one generally available switch: PayPal Store Sync for Microsoft Copilot, Meta, and Perplexity, your Google Merchant Center feed for AI Mode and Gemini, and Feedonomics catalog exports, an enterprise service, for ChatGPT and others.
Its own shopper-facing AI is on the way: as of late September 2026, Shopping Agent is in early access, and Commerce expects to launch a B2C Brand Agent and conversational search early in the fourth quarter.
None of BigCommerce's generally available features gives AI-referred shoppers a page of their own, since they land on the same storefront pages as every visitor, and that landing is what Aigency builds: an agent site on your own domain that answers product, price, and fit questions, then hands the shopper back to your BigCommerce checkout.
Verified sources
The short answer: BigCommerce and Aigency do different jobs
First, the disclosure this page owes you: it is published by Aigency. Aigency is not a BigCommerce alternative and never asks you to re-platform. It is an agentic commerce layer that runs alongside the platform you already sell on, so the useful question is not which one to pick. It is which parts of the AI shopping journey BigCommerce handles for you today, which parts it has announced, and which part is still yours to solve.
The journey has three moments that matter to a merchant: an AI assistant recommends your product, the shopper clicks through, and the shopper buys or leaves. BigCommerce's work so far concentrates on the first moment and the third. Integrations carry your catalog to AI assistants, though each assistant decides what it recommends, and on several of them the shopper can buy inside the AI app while the order lands in BigCommerce. The middle moment, the page the shopper lands on when they click through, is still your regular storefront, and that is the moment Aigency builds for.
BigCommerce on its own
- AskA shopper asks an AI assistant for a product
- RecommendThe assistant picks from what your integrations share
- LandYour storefront, the one every visitor sees
- DecideWhat the page says, plus a chat app if you run one
- BuyYour checkout, on your store or in the channel
BigCommerce with Aigency
- AskA shopper asks an AI assistant for a product
- RecommendThe assistant picks from what your integrations share
- LandAn agent site on your own domain
- DecideProduct, price, and fit questions answered
- BuyYour BigCommerce checkout
On its own, the shopper who clicks through gets what your storefront page says, plus a chat app if you run one. With Aigency, the same click lands on an agent site on your own domain, where product, price, and fit questions get answered in conversation before the shopper returns to the same BigCommerce checkout. Adding Aigency changes nothing upstream of the click: each assistant still decides what to recommend.
What BigCommerce offers for AI shopping today
A naming note first. In 2025 BigCommerce's parent company renamed itself Commerce (Commerce.com, Nasdaq: CMRC), and BigCommerce, the Feedonomics product-feed business, and Makeswift continue as brands under it. So BigCommerce's AI shopping features arrive from three places: the platform itself, Feedonomics, and partners such as PayPal, Google, and Stripe. Status labels here come from BigCommerce's agentic commerce page where it lists a feature, and otherwise from the linked source, as of September 2026; BigCommerce's own pages do not always agree.
Getting into AI channels: several routes
There is no generally available single switch yet: BigCommerce's own Agentic Shopping feature, which prepares catalog data for AI shopping experiences, is in early access. Today there are routes, and they overlap. PayPal's Store Sync, added to the BigCommerce App Marketplace and Channel Manager in April 2026, makes products "discoverable and purchasable" across AI shopping surfaces including Microsoft Copilot, Meta, and Perplexity, and trade coverage in July described it as available to US-based merchants that use PayPal for payment processing. On Commerce's first-quarter 2026 earnings call, the company said that when a shopper completes a purchase on one of those chat surfaces, the order lands in BigCommerce. For Google, products reach AI Mode and Gemini through your Merchant Center feed, and checkout on eligible Google listings runs on the Universal Commerce Protocol, which Commerce backs for eligible US merchants; Commerce's momentum page labels that agentic checkout a beta. For ChatGPT, the documented route is Feedonomics Agentic Catalog Exports, launched in April 2026 as an enterprise service that delivers catalogs to surfaces including OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, and Amazon, so it overlaps the other routes. BigCommerce also says Stripe's Agentic Commerce Suite is available to its stores, connecting catalogs to AI agents without BigCommerce naming which ones.
Catalog quality: making products readable to agents
The second investment is the product data itself. Feedonomics Enrichment, available now, turns incomplete catalog data into richer content for advertising, marketplaces, search, and "emerging shopping destinations." Inside the platform, Catalog Enrichment is a paid AI tool in the control panel that generates content for seven product fields, including FAQs, optimized for search engines and answer engines: four update attributes your storefront already displays, and three are written for machines. BigCommerce's agentic commerce page lists it as early access, and its docs describe a beta enabled for a subset of stores. On its second-quarter call, Commerce said it expected to introduce offerings in the third quarter that "improve and measure how products are discovered across traditional and AI-driven channels."
On the storefront: early access, and apps today
BigCommerce is building shopper-facing AI of its own. Two storefront features are in early access through its Commerce AI Labs program: conversational search, where shoppers "search using natural questions instead of exact keywords," and Shopping Agent, which BigCommerce says "answers questions, compares options, and guides each shopper toward the right product and purchase." On its second-quarter 2026 earnings call, Commerce said it expects to launch the B2C Brand Agent and conversational search for BigCommerce in early Q4 2026. Until they ship, generally available shopper chat comes from two places. BigCommerce's own Companion FAQ points merchants to dedicated customer-chat apps in the App Marketplace, and Storefront MCP, which BigCommerce made "available to every store on the platform" in May 2026, gives AI agents access to shopping flows grounded in live catalog data, including product discovery, product details, and cart creation, so a development team can build or bring its own agent.
For the merchant: Companion
BigCommerce also ships AI that works for the merchant rather than for shoppers. BigCommerce Companion is, in BigCommerce's words, "a merchant-facing AI assistant that works inside your control panel" for catalog, customer, and operational tasks, and it comes included with every BigCommerce store.
BigCommerce and Aigency, job by job
| The job | BigCommerce, built in or integrated | Aigency |
|---|---|---|
| Getting your products into AI answers | PayPal Store Sync for Copilot, Meta, and Perplexity (US merchants using PayPal); your Merchant Center feed for Google AI Mode and Gemini; Feedonomics exports for ChatGPT and others, as an enterprise service; Agentic Shopping in early access | Not its job. It works with the visibility you already have, and the free scan shows where ChatGPT sends your shoppers today. |
| Checkout | In the AI app through Store Sync or Google's agentic checkout (beta), with the order landing in BigCommerce, or on your own storefront | Returns the shopper to your BigCommerce checkout. Checkout never moves. |
| Where an AI-referred shopper lands | Your existing storefront pages, the same ones every visitor sees | An agent site on your own subdomain (ai.yourbrand.com), built for the shoppers AI assistants send |
| Answering questions after the click | Shopping Agent and conversational search in early access, with a B2C Brand Agent and conversational search planned for early Q4 2026; today, Marketplace chat apps or a custom build on Storefront MCP | The whole page is the conversation: product, price, and fit, continuing what the AI assistant started |
| Shaping the answers shoppers get | Catalog Enrichment (paid, early access) generates product content, including FAQs, that search engines and answer engines read | A Policy and Control Agent: what the agent site may recommend, what it must never say, and where it routes shoppers |
| What you learn | Orders from AI checkouts land in BigCommerce; Commerce has said offerings to improve and measure AI-driven discovery are coming | Every question shoppers ask the agent site after the click: demand data you never see inside ChatGPT |
| Storefront technology | Stencil themes, or headless with Catalyst or your own frontend | Any of them: it reads your storefront as rendered, from the outside |
| Setup | Per route: a PayPal integration, a Merchant Center feed with a checkout beta, an enterprise quote, or an early-access request | A sales conversation, then days: each agent site is built per brand, runs off-site in parallel, and goes live when you point AI-referred traffic at it |
Read the table by row and the overlap will grow. The row to watch is the fourth: once BigCommerce's shopper-facing agents ship, BigCommerce stores will have a native agent that answers questions and compares options, where today that takes a Marketplace app or a custom build. BigCommerce describes its brand agents as knowing "your catalog, customers, and policies" and deployed "on your store and where you sell," and detail beyond that was not public when this page was written. Aigency's agent site is a different shape: a separate destination on its own subdomain, built for the one visitor who arrives mid-conversation from an AI assistant, and it works the same way on any platform.
What BigCommerce leaves to you today: the page after the click
Commerce's own research points the same way. Research from Commerce and PayPal, a survey conducted by Logica Research in March and April 2026 and published in June, found that consumers "primarily want AI assistance during product research and comparison rather than during checkout," and that shoppers want AI to help them discover products and compare options while they "remain in control of final purchasing decisions." Commerce's senior vice president of AI for products put it plainly:
Consumers want the time and money savings that agentic commerce can deliver, but they aren't ready to trust agents as an autonomous buyer.
Research and comparison do not stop at the click. A shopper an AI assistant sends to your storefront arrives mid-conversation. If a question is still open (will this fit, how does it compare, does it work with what I already own), your product page can only answer it if its author anticipated it. AI-referred shoppers are worth that effort: Adobe measured them converting 54% better than other traffic to US retail sites in May 2026. When the page lacks the answer and no chat is running, the easiest next step is back to the assistant.
Aigency changes where that click lands. The shopper an AI assistant sends arrives at an agent site on your own subdomain (ai.yourbrand.com), built to continue the conversation the assistant started: it answers product, price, and fit questions in plain language, with a working path to buy. Vision crawling agents build it from your live storefront as rendered, so it does not matter whether that storefront is a Stencil theme, Catalyst, or a custom headless build. A Monitoring Agent keeps it in step as products, prices, and policies change, and a Policy and Control Agent enforces what it may recommend, what it must never say, and where it routes shoppers.
The agent site also produces a record of what shoppers asked after the click. Every question it answers is demand data you never see inside ChatGPT, and it is a useful input to the catalog work BigCommerce is investing in, because the questions shoppers ask can point to details your pages lack.
When BigCommerce's own tools are enough
An honest comparison names its own losing conditions. For plenty of BigCommerce brands, the platform's routes and roadmap are the right answer for now:
- AI assistants are not sending you much traffic yet. Set up the channel routes and enrich your catalog first. Aigency converts AI-referred shoppers; it does not create them. GEO vs SEO covers the visibility work.
- Your product pages already answer what shoppers ask. If you sell replenishment or single-spec products where the page says everything a buyer needs, a conversational landing adds little.
- Your AI sales happen inside the channel. If most AI-driven orders complete in Copilot, Meta, Perplexity, or Google through Store Sync or UCP, fewer shoppers ever reach your pages, and the landing matters less.
- You want the agent inside your BigCommerce storefront, built by your own team. Storefront MCP is designed for that, and BigCommerce's own Shopping Agent is in early access if you would rather wait for the native version.
The fit for Aigency is a BigCommerce brand whose AI referrals are growing, whose products take a conversation to buy (fit, sizing, compatibility, comparison), and whose analytics show those visitors landing on storefront pages and leaving, especially one that does not want to wait for a roadmap or staff a build. The wider decision, including approaches other than ours, is laid out in Aigency vs the alternatives.
How to run BigCommerce's AI and Aigency together
The two touch different parts of the journey, so running both is mostly a matter of order:
- Pick your channel routes. Store Sync covers Copilot, Meta, and Perplexity for US merchants using PayPal; your Merchant Center feed covers Google AI Mode and Gemini, with UCP checkout for eligible US merchants; Feedonomics exports reach ChatGPT and others at enterprise scale.
- Enrich the catalog. Complete product fields are what every agent reads, whichever route it uses.
- Let the crawlers in. Feeds are not the only way assistants read your store: the ChatGPT shopping user agents lists the bots that should reach your pages.
- Measure AI referrals on their own. Build the analytics segment described in how to convert AI traffic, so AI-referred sessions and bounces are visible.
- Run the free scan. It shows where ChatGPT sends your shoppers and whether the page it sends them to can answer what they asked.
- Point AI-referred traffic at the agent site. Every agent site is built per brand, so how the routing works for your store, and how those visits show up in your analytics, is settled with our team during setup. Checkout and orders stay in BigCommerce.
Comparing platforms, or selling on Shopify too? The same comparison for Shopify is in Aigency vs Shopify.
Frequently asked questions
Is Aigency a BigCommerce alternative?
No. Aigency does not replace any part of BigCommerce: your catalog, checkout, orders, and storefront stay exactly where they are. Aigency hosts a parallel, agentic version of your store on your own subdomain (ai.yourbrand.com) that receives the shoppers AI assistants send you, answers their product, price, and fit questions, and hands them back to your BigCommerce checkout to pay.
Does BigCommerce put my products in ChatGPT?
Not through a generally available built-in switch yet; BigCommerce's own Agentic Shopping feature is in early access. The documented route to ChatGPT is Feedonomics Agentic Catalog Exports, which launched in April 2026 as an enterprise service and delivers catalogs to OpenAI's ChatGPT and other AI surfaces, and BigCommerce also offers Stripe's Agentic Commerce Suite without naming which AI agents it reaches. ChatGPT can also find your products by crawling your pages, which is why your crawler settings matter.
Does BigCommerce have an AI shopping assistant for shoppers?
It is building one. Shopping Agent, which BigCommerce says answers questions, compares options, and guides each shopper toward the right product and purchase, is in early access, and Commerce said on its August 2026 earnings call that it expects to launch the B2C Brand Agent and conversational search in early Q4 2026. Until then, generally available shopper chat on a BigCommerce storefront comes from App Marketplace apps or a custom build on Storefront MCP. BigCommerce Companion is a merchant-facing assistant, not a chatbot for shoppers.
Do I need Aigency if BigCommerce ships its own shopping agent?
It depends on where the agent lives and who it is built for. BigCommerce describes its brand agents as deployed on your store and where you sell. Aigency's agent site is a separate destination on your own subdomain, built for the shoppers AI assistants send, with a policy engine for what it may say and every question captured as demand data, and it works the same on any platform. Evaluate both on the same three questions: where AI-referred shoppers land, what the agent is allowed to say, and what you learn from the conversations.
Does Aigency work with Catalyst or other headless BigCommerce storefronts?
Yes. Aigency reads your storefront as rendered, from the outside, so it makes no difference whether the frontend is a Stencil theme, Catalyst, or a custom build on BigCommerce's APIs. It runs in parallel on a subdomain you own, with no migration, no re-platform, and no big engineering lift.
Where does checkout happen when Aigency runs alongside BigCommerce?
On your BigCommerce checkout, exactly as it does today. The agent site answers the shopper's questions and then sends them to your store to pay, so your payment methods and checkout settings apply as usual, and the order lands in BigCommerce like any other.