Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to BigCommerce's 4th Quarter and Fiscal Year 2020 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your first speaker today, Daniel Lentz, VP of Finance and Investor Relations.
Thank you. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and welcome to BigCommerce's 4th quarter and fiscal year 2020 earnings call. We will be discussing the results announced in our press release issued after the market closed today. With me are BigCommerce's President, CEO and Chairman, Brent Bellum and CFO, Robert Alvarez. Today's call will contain forward looking statements, which are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward looking statements include statements concerning financial and business trends, our expected future business and financial performance and financial condition and our guidance for the Q1 of 2021 and the full year 2021.
These statements can be identified by words such as expect, anticipate, intend, plan, believe, Seek, will or similar words. These statements reflect our views as of today only and should not be relied upon as representing our views at any subsequent date, and we do not undertake any duty to update these statements. Forward looking statements, by their nature, address matters that are subject to risks And uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. For a discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our actual results, Please refer to the risks and other disclosures contained in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. During the call, we will also discuss certain non GAAP financial measures, which are not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles.
A reconciliation of these non GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, as well as how we define these metrics and other metrics, is included in our earnings press release, which has been furnished to the SEC and is also available on our website at investors. Bigcommerce.com. With that, let me turn the call over to Brent.
Thanks, Daniel. Welcome everyone and thanks for joining us today from ice cold Austin, Texas. I hope everyone has had a great start to the New Year. Let's jump right into our Q4 performance. Our results reflect the success of our open SaaS strategy, Product innovation, execution and best of breed partner ecosystem.
We had a strong 4th quarter with Q4 revenue coming in at 43,100,000 up 39% year over year and ARR of $181,200,000 up 41% year over year. Our success meeting the needs of fast growing and large businesses was reflected in the Q4 growth in ARR from enterprise accounts, Which grew 51% year over year. More broadly, ARR from accounts with more than $2,000 in annual contract value, which includes both enterprise and pro accounts, grew 48% year over year. Q4 capped off a landmark year in the history of BigCommerce. We completed our initial public offering in August and concluded our 3rd successive year of accelerating revenue growth rate.
Most importantly, our employees and partners work tirelessly to help our customers weather the storm of the COVID-nineteen pandemic. We believe the pandemic accelerated the migration to e commerce and selling online is no longer a nice to have, but a must have. The growth opportunities before us are greater than ever, and I couldn't be more excited to build upon our platform, team and partnerships as e commerce continues to evolve. Our strategy has 3 core pillars. First, we are focused on disruptive innovation, adding functionality and performance to our core product that enables us to serve the needs of businesses from the smallest to the world's largest.
2nd, we are pioneering in e commerce, what we call Open SaaS. Open SaaS is our strategy for incorporating flexibility, configurability and extensibility in every area of our SaaS platform, So that each customer can easily assemble an optimal approach to e commerce for their specific needs in conjunction with our best of breed partners. Finally, we build our business using a repeatable growth strategy with 4 components. First, we invest in the success and growth of existing customers. 2nd, we acquired new customers across an ever widening range of business categories, size ranges and use cases.
3rd, we earned incremental revenue from partners and services on top of our core subscription revenues. And 4th, We replicate our growth model in geographies around the world. For the full year, revenue was $152,400,000 up 36% year over year. Net revenue retention for accounts with more than $2,000 in annual contract value finished at 113% in 2020, up from 106% in 2019. We added new SMB, mid market and enterprise customers had an estimated LTV to cap ratio of 4.9:one, up from 4.4:one in 2019.
We also made continued progress on margins. Gross margins improved to 78% in 2020, a 2 point improvement compared to 76% in 20 While adjusted EBITDA margins improved to negative 16% in 2020, a 16 point improvement compared to the negative 32% Adjusted EBITDA margin in 2019. Let me walk you through the highlights that contribute to the success we saw in 2020 And provide some insights to the plans we have for the coming year. We deployed Page Builder, our easy to use widget based drag and drop Page design tool, which helps merchants tell their brand story and bring their products to life without the complexity of editing HTML files. Further, this tool is open to enable developers to create custom widgets such as AI powered merchandising or social media feeds The plug into Page Builder, allowing marketing managers and merchandisers to publish rich website pages without having to write any code.
In the area of headless commerce, we invested heavily in opening APIs that power headless storefronts and shopping experience, which gives merchants and developers choice of frameworks and tools to create unique shopping experiences. We now have reference implementations for most Major progressive web apps, content management systems and digital experience platforms. We also invested in cross border features. To help merchants reach new markets and grow their businesses, we introduced support for multi currency across our top payment solutions, which is the ability to display, transact and settle in multiple currencies. We also launched integrations with top global tax providers such as Avalara, Vertex and TaxJar, Helping merchants collect tax and geographies around the globe in a compliant way.
To further build our omnichannel offering, We introduced Channel Manager, which allows merchants to promote and sell their products wherever consumers are branded e commerce stores, offline stores, Content sites, social networks such as Facebook and Instagram and marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay, while enabling merchants to Discover, install and manage these channels centrally. This enables merchants to drive growth through an omnichannel strategy. In support of this, we released our channels toolkit, which allows third parties to build channel integrations in a manner that feels native to our platform. Using the channels toolkit, we'll work with partners to efficiently increase selling channels for our customers and partner revenue for BigCommerce. In social commerce, we partnered with Facebook to build native integrations to Facebook Shops and Checkout on Instagram, which enable our customers to advertise and sell their products to consumers on Facebook and Instagram.
For merchants, orders automatically synchronize back to BigCommerce for Fulfillment and management. We enhanced our open checkout features by giving developers access to the source code of our feature rich and highly tuned checkout, enabling them to create bespoke checkout experiences, which is important for many large merchants and especially for merchants in the rapidly expanding B2B market. 2020 also brought market advancements in our international expansion strategy through the launch of new country specific websites in France, Italy, the Netherlands and more recently in Mexico, Germany and Spain and more to come in 2021. We continue to invest in our global presence BigCommerce is proud to be a partner centric platform. Since launching in 2009, BigCommerce is focused on creating the world's best open SaaS e commerce platform for all stages of business growth, building on and enhancing That core functionality has and will continue to be our primary focus.
Unlike our closest competitors, BigCommerce does not act like a conglomerate Competing with partners in adjacent categories. We focus instead on building the world's best platform and we partner with the world's best in every other category. In 2020, BigCommerce welcomed many new and In 2020, BigCommerce welcomed many new and expanded technology and solution partnerships, including Adyen, Barclays, Clover, Deliver, Facebook, Vercel, Wish and many others. In November, BigCommerce joined the Mach Alliance, A newly formed group of independent tech companies dedicated to advocating for an open, That is API first, cloud native SaaS and headless enabled. In 2020, we received significant industry wide recognition.
BigCommerce was recognized by a number of influential technology analyst firms, including placement as a leader in IDC's market scape For both B2C and headless digital commerce, we also received similar placements from Forrester, Gartner and Paradigm B2B. As a company that followed the disruptive innovation model of moving up market only after first building scale serving small businesses, ecommerce has worked hard to earn tech analyst recognition for our enterprise capabilities. With that recognition, we now compete aggressively And with credibility for the e commerce business of the world's largest and most complex companies. I'd like to turn now To highlight a sample of the exciting new stores that launched in Q4, an established leader in home health wellness innovations, HomeDx migrated 3 enterprise stores to BigCommerce, thanks to BigCommerce's superior ease of use compared to other platforms. HMD Global, the official licensee of Nokia brand mobile phones and services chose BigCommerce for its first direct to consumer offering.
Already, HMD has launched 9 regional sites on BigCommerce, including nokia.com/phones. The Artisanal Spirits Company Limited, owner of the Scotch Malt Whiskey Society, needed an intuitive, easy to use e commerce platform that could business growth and selected BigCommerce after receiving a recommendation from a trusted partner. Spiceology, 1 of the fastest growing private spice companies in America moved to BigCommerce. We believe their selection of BigCommerce will help them gain more control over Prema Supply, a B2B supplier of coffee equipment accessories, Needed a flexible and scalable platform that would give them the ability to manage complex data and order flows. We believe they selected BigCommerce for Our ability to support intricate B2B workflows and fulfillment processes, which can give the Prima supply team back time needed to focus on servicing and growing their customer base.
Looking ahead, 2021 will be a year of continued product innovation and global expansion. At the heart of this is an unwavering commitment to the success of our customers, which we believe to be the fundamental prerequisite to all components of our business strategy. Our product team has outlined an ambitious roadmap for the year that extends and strengthens our platform for customers of all sizes And our partner team is pursuing new partnerships that unlock innovation, growth and flexibility across our ecosystem. Over time, I'm particularly excited about and committed to geographic expansion, including current initiatives in Continental Europe and Latin America. I'll end by saying a sincere thank you.
2020 marked a historic year for BigCommerce. It's nearly impossible to have reached this point without the dedication of our employees We faced a challenging year with both grace and fortitude as well as the ongoing trust placed in us by our amazing customers and partners who inspire us each and every day. Now, I'd like to turn over to Robert for a deeper discussion of our financial results.
Thanks, Brent, And thanks again to everyone for joining us today. Before discussing our detailed financial results, I'd like to point out that in addition to our GAAP results, I'll also be discussing certain non GAAP results. Our GAAP financial results along with the reconciliation between GAAP and non GAAP results can be found in our earnings release. As Brett mentioned, we generated total revenue in Q4 of $43,100,000 up 39% year over year. Total revenue in the U.
S. Grew 33% in Q4, while we also continue to build on our strong international momentum, Growing international revenue 65% year over year in Q4 with 97% year over year revenue growth in EMEA and and 42% year over year revenue growth in APAC. Subscription revenue was $29,700,000 in Q4, up 33% year over year and accounted for 69% of our Q4 total revenue, led by new merchant subscriptions and growth adjusted upgrades from existing merchants. Partner and services revenue was $13,500,000 in Q4, up 54% year over year, which accounted for 31% of our Q4 total revenue. The increase in partner and services revenue was primarily a result of increased e commerce activity across our platform, driven by a combination of new and growing merchants, the COVID-nineteen pandemic related changes in consumer behavior and the related increases in e commerce adoption, as well as our continued improvements in the monetization of partner revenue share.
Since the onset of the pandemic, we have generally experienced a shortening of sales cycle time and an improvement in lead conversion and competitive win rates. Our teams are also working hard to maintain strong platform performance and the uptime necessary to help our merchants in these challenging times. While we expect the macroeconomic shift towards e commerce to continue after the COVID-nineteen pandemic abates, Uncertainty remains with respect to transaction volumes and associated subscription revenue and partner and services revenue As pandemic related restrictions begin to ease. Given this uncertainty, we will continue to take a prudent approach in forecasting the COVID impact to our business, while continuing to make the structural investments necessary to fuel our long term growth strategy. Moving on to our key business metrics.
First, let's discuss ARR, our annual revenue run rate. Q4 ARR was 181,200,000 up 41% year over year, resulting from strong new merchant bookings, continued strength in the retention of existing merchants and increased subscription fees from higher merchant sales volume and order volume growth adjustments. As we've talked about at length before, We focus on providing the best open SaaS solution in the market to disrupt outdated legacy providers in the mid market and enterprise segments. We measure increasing mix shift of our enterprise accounts by tracking our enterprise account ARR. Our enterprise account ARR grew 51% year over year to $100,800,000 in Q4 and enterprise accounts represented 56% of total ARR as of December 31, 2020 compared to 52% as of December 31, 2019, further demonstrating our increased enterprise mix shift and growing traction in this segment of the market.
We also track key metrics for accounts with annual contract value or ACV greater than $2,000 as of the end of a monthly billing period. These accounts include all merchants on either Retail Pro Plans or Enterprise Plans as well as any merchant that may have a combination of Retail Standard or Plus Plans, Which together exceed $2,000 in ACV. For these accounts, we track total ARR, the number of accounts, Average revenue per account and what percentage of total ARR these accounts represent. We ended Q4 with 10,184 Customers over the $2,000 ACV threshold, which was a sequential increase of 407 accounts compared to Q3 and a year over year increase of 10.94 accounts or up 12%. Accounts above the $2,000 ACV threshold represented 82 percent of our total ARR in Q4, up from 78% in Q4 2019.
Another key metric we track is ARPA or Average revenue per account for accounts above the $2,000 ACV threshold. ARPA for accounts above $2,000 in ACV for was $14,615 up 32% year over year, driven by both a mix shift towards higher end retail pro plans and enterprise plans as we closed a strong mix of enterprise deals in Q4 in addition to stronger net revenue retention results with existing accounts. Net revenue retention for accounts was more than $2,000 in ACV finished at 113% in 2020, up from 106% in 2019. In discussing the remainder of the income statement, please note that unless otherwise stated, All references to our expenses, operating results and share count are on a non GAAP basis. In Q4, our gross profit was 33,400,000 representing a gross margin of 77%.
This compares to a gross margin of 74% a year ago and 79% last quarter. The year over year increase in our gross margin was impacted in part by the high margin revenue share we earned from a subset of our strategic technology partners, Which is a reminder, we record on a net revenue basis. Sales and marketing expenses for Q4 were $18,600,000 or 43 percent of Total revenue compared to $15,000,000 48 percent a year ago. We made significant investments in sales and marketing in 2020 To expand our market reach in the U. S.
And abroad, even while investing, we've been able to drive leverage because of stronger LTV to CAC metrics and associated sales and marketing efficiencies with the further mix shift towards enterprise accounts. We added new SMB, mid market and enterprise customers at an estimated LTV to CAC ratio of 4.9:one, up from 4.4:one in 2019. Most of our mid market and enterprise leads come from inbound marketing, tech and agency partner referrals as well as our outbound sales motions, which means we expect to continue growing in this segment without having to spend large sums on less efficient variable digital marketing programs. Our research and development expenses for Q4 were $12,700,000 or 29 percent of revenue compared to $10,700,000 35 percent a year ago. We are committed to our disruptive innovation strategy and have invested aggressively in product engineering to add additional enterprise functionality, while also showing improved leverage General and administrative expenses for Q4 were $9,700,000 or 22 percent of revenue compared to $6,100,000 20 percent a year ago.
This increase was driven largely by public company external cost and the associated headcount increases. Operating loss for Q4 was negative 7,600,000 or a negative 18% operating margin compared to a negative $8,800,000 or a negative 28% operating margin in Q4 2019. Adjusted EBITDA was negative $6,800,000 or a negative 16% adjusted EBITDA margin, a 10 point improvement from a negative 26 percent adjusted EBITDA margin a year ago. These results exceeded our expectations And we're primarily driven by the significant increase in high margin partner and services revenue and our ability to manage spend effectively to drive leverage across the areas I previously mentioned. Non GAAP net loss for Q4 was negative $8,000,000 or negative $0.12 per share compared to a non GAAP net loss of negative $9,400,000 or negative $0.52 per share a year ago.
Turning to the balance sheet and cash flow statement. We ended 2020 with $219,400,000 in cash and cash equivalents. Our remaining performance obligations or RPO totaled approximately $86,900,000 up 82% from 47 point $8,000,000 last year. We expect to recognize approximately 55 percent or $47,800,000 of the total RPO as revenue over the 12 months. Operating cash flow for 2020 was negative $26,500,000 compared to negative $40,000,000 A year ago, free cash flow was negative $28,500,000 or a negative 19 percent free cash flow margin compared to negative $45,500,000 and a negative 41% free cash flow margin a year ago.
The nearly 22 point improvement in free cash flow margin was driven by ability to realize more leverage in the business, growth in high margin partner and services revenue and our continued mix shift to enterprise. I will now provide a brief summary of our full year 2020 results. As Brent mentioned, revenue totaled $152,400,000 up $40,300,000 or 30 6% compared to 2019. Gross profit was $119,000,000 up $33,700,000 or 40% compared to 2019. This represented a 78% gross margin in 2020 compared to a 76% gross margin in 2019.
2020 operating loss was negative $27,400,000 or a negative 18 percent operating margin compared to negative $37,800,000 or a negative 34% operating margin in 2019. Adjusted EBITDA was negative $24,500,000 or a negative 16% adjusted EBITDA margin, a 16 point improvement from a negative 32% adjusted EBITDA margin a year ago. I will now conclude the call by providing guidance for Q1 and for the full year of 2021. For the Q1, we expect total revenue in the range of $41,800,000 to $42,300,000 Our Q1 guidance assumes that our Subscription revenue will grow in the high side of mid-20s, while partner and services revenue is expected to grow in the mid-20s range year over year. Partner and services revenue has more quarter to quarter variability than subscription revenue, and we will continue to take a prudent approach to forecasting partner and service Revenue, given that it is more difficult to predict partner related transaction volumes during the COVID-nineteen pandemic.
We expect a non GAAP operating loss in the range of negative $8,200,000 to negative $7,900,000 For the full year of 2021, we expect total revenue in the range of $189,000,000 to $191,000,000 or a year over year growth rate of 24% to 25.3%. We expect our subscription revenue year over year growth rate to accelerate slightly compared to the 25% year over year We expect a non GAAP operating loss in the range of negative $34,500,000 to negative $33,300,000 Our investment plans for 2021 result in a non GAAP operating loss margin of negative 18% at the midpoint of our range, roughly the same as our 2020 operating margin. We believe continued investment in the business to drive long term growth is the right decision Given the acceleration in e commerce, the momentum in our business and our unique position in a large addressable market. With that, Brent and I are happy to take any of your questions. Operator?
Thank Our first question comes from the line of Stan Zlotsky with Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.
Sorry, I was on mute. Thank you so much for taking my question and congratulations on a strong quarter guys. From my end, the thing that really kind of stood out to me was the international That was a very nice growth that you guys just put up. What's driving that, especially in EMEA? Is there something specifically that's happening in that geography that's driving some strong adoption?
Hey, Stan. It's Brent here. And thanks to everybody on the call for taking in stride the rescheduling of the earnings call after the Giant outages this past week across Texas and especially here in Austin. We're grateful that we're back at you a couple of days later. So Internationally, our European business really is on fire and has been for quite some time.
The ability in particular to sell mid market and enterprise successfully Out of our U. K.-based office has been going extremely well. We're finding kind of success across the board. It's At both manufacturers and brands as well as retailers, it's B2B and B2C. The thing that's a little bit different about Europe for us Is that because we formally entered it late in the game, meaning we only put our first people in Europe in mid-twenty 18, we had thousands Customers there, because they had all self served or had signed up with American Day salespeople.
Ever since we put a team in there, the demand and need for our product has been really exceptional. And we entered more as a mid market enterprise brand than our origins as an SMB solution. And so from the beginning, they have really put us head to head with the Magento's and the sales forces of the world and we're selling very successfully Against those other legacy competitors. I'm also really excited about Continental Europe. So our strength up until now has Out of the U.
K. And Northern Europe, we now have, as indicated, marketing and self serve websites up in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, we've added new control panel translations. And so the Continental opportunity is Very early days for us and will be upside there.
Okay, perfect. And then maybe a quick follow-up. On the PSR revenue in Q4, very strong year on year result obviously, but sequentially Going from 13.2 to 13.5, is there something that happened in Q4 you would have expected a slightly bigger Seasonal benefit on that line. Was there anything to note maybe from that advertising partnership On the negotiation or is it just like the variability quarter to quarter?
Yes, I'll jump in on that one. Hey, Stan. Yes, as we mentioned last quarter, the timing of the ad revenue under the new agreement was more ratable. So When you factor that in for Q4, if you actually back out the impact of that, our PSR revenue would have grown North of 70%. But again, it's just that renegotiation that we went through and the timing of that revenue.
But Super pleased with the performance of the platform and really the elevated transactions that occurred really throughout the quarter.
Okay, perfect.
Thank you so much. That's really helpful. Sure.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Cree Gady with Barclays, your line is now open.
Hey, thank you for letting me ask the question. Wanted to see if you could give us some more color on the B2B side of the market, kind of sizing it or how fast
Yes, we don't break out and disclose B2B as a segment of customer accounts, and sometimes it's not even all that Yes, easy to track because you can have somebody selling B2B, but for all intents and purposes, the site they put up Is using the product the same way as the B2C merchant would use it. We do know that B2B though is doing extremely well. We've been helped in the last year From great reviews from the tech analysts, Forrester called us out as a strong performing enterprise B2B platform. We won 7 out of 10 category awards in the paradigm, B2B Combine, IDC also Rated us a strong performer. And so we're getting a lot of recognition and traction from the most thorough evaluations B2B platforms and that's notable for us because most of our competition are purpose built meaning exclusively for B2B platforms And among the generalist platforms, it's really us and Magento who seem to be doing the best in those reviews.
And so That recognition, but of course, we're a lot easier, faster, cheaper and simpler to implement than Magento. Therefore, there's a big segment of that market where we're a nice fit.
Got it. Thank you. And I guess, Working off of that, Magenta, they sunsetted their 2.1 version June of last year. Since That's happened. Has your growth, new business versus replacement kind of shifted a little bit more towards Magento ex Customers, has that created an opportunity for you?
I think that's been going on, yes, for years because the announced Sud setting of Magento 1 was done years ago. The date when they stopped servicing it finally hit last year, but you can go into built with and see that there are still many, many, many tens of 1,000, if not 100,000 or more Clients that are on versions of Magento 1 or Old Community Edition and that haven't migrated yet. And therefore, That opportunity, though it's been a great tailwind for us so far, probably is not done.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Samad Samana with Jefferies. Your line is now open.
Hi, good evening and thanks for taking my questions. Hope everybody down in Texas is doing okay and glad to hear you guys are doing well on your end specifically. Brent, maybe one to start off with Brent for you on channel manager, clearly an important feature With all of the different third party sales channels that exist, I'm curious how you've seen maybe either volume or orders going through those channels Since the rollout of that feature and does that change is there a different set of monetization for volume that goes through these channels versus The direct website?
Yes. So Channel Manager is The part of the BigCommerce product that lets our customers go in and activate Different sales channels that are either outside of BigCommerce or connect into it with typically integrated product catalog, Orders and ability to fulfill. These channels can be marketplace channels like eBay, Amazon, Wish. They can be social media channels like Instagram and Facebook. They can be advertising channels like Google Shopping.
And what we have seen is that every time we add a new channel or enhance an integration into 1 like we also recently did Into Facebook, we see a very nice adoption of that because customers are always trying to take advantage of incremental ways to sell, but with very streamlined and coordinated operations. Again, Single catalog, single view of order, single ability to fulfill. When we announced Wish, there were just Enormous amounts of interest immediately after that. And then we keep adding additional channels into The channel manager and one of the notable things is that we also have a channel's toolkit and that channel's toolkit facilitates 3rd party tech partners think the said Commerces and Codistos and Channel Advisors and Pheonix of the world to add additional linkages and channels Using that common framework and bring the experience into the control panel rather than be external to BigCommerce and out of our apps marketplace. And answer your question about the economics, the economics are different in the sense that Fundamentally, what we're selling in our core product is a store for merchants and then the 3rd party connectors Are incremental to that.
And whether we directly get economics or not from a given channel is always going to be channel specific and What we negotiated with an individual partner, if anything.
Very helpful. And then maybe, Robert, a follow-up for This is the first set of guidance from an annual perspective that we're getting entering a new year. And I just wanted to maybe wanted to see How the 1st couple of months of the year shaking out? We're almost 2 thirds of the way through the Q1. And just maybe Even qualitatively, what you're seeing in terms of either activity in terms of order volumes or Merchants in terms of activity, just to help us think about what's in that early guidance for 2021?
Yes. So for the year last year subscription revenue increased a little over 25%. We've got a lot more visibility into that heading into 2021. We are guiding to Accelerate that a bit further. On PSR, I mean, again, if we're going to provide guidance for PSR, we're going to set it to a point where we're very confident that we'll achieve it.
So as far as Q1 goes, It's reflected in our guide. We feel really good about where we're setting things for Q1 and for 2021.
Great. Thank you. And nice to see the strong close to the year.
Thanks, Samad. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Our next question comes from
the line of Josh Beck with KeyBanc. Your line is now open.
Thanks, Steve, for doing the call and being flexible with the timing. Hope everyone is doing good and we all Look for a swift recovery there in Texas. Thanks, Jeff. I wanted to ask about Yes, of course, all right. I wanted to ask about the sales cycle.
So it certainly seemed like when The pandemic onset, there was a shortening, but unclear if that was going to be durable or If it was maybe more transitory, but you're still talking about that commentary. So just Maybe help us understand the client conversation, what's going on? And secondarily, I don't know if the RPO, I believe it was up over 80% is maybe a good metric to think about on the enterprise success, but just will be curious on those aspects.
Yes. I don't think urgency for Enterprise leads to close exist in the same way today as it did 8, 9 months ago. However, in general, we are definitely seeing shorter sales cycles today than a year ago this time still. And we are seeing more opportunities than in the past enter a sales cycle in a month And then close within that month or quarter. So we like those trends, both the win rate And the shorter sales cycles relative to pre pandemic.
Yes. Only thing I'd add to that, Josh, Is on the RPO front. RPO for us captures all of our enterprise contracts, So the ones that are multi year, 2 year, 3 year. So not only have we increased enterprise ARR at 51% for the quarter, but we've definitely added Larger enterprise deals that are multi year deals that we have to capture in that RPO number. But remember for us, if you want to get a view of bookings, the best view of bookings is That change in ARR.
So I would still point you to that change in ARR as the best measure of bookings, but Very pleased to see the increase in RPO and that's a real good indication of size of enterprise deals that We're starting to
sign. Okay. So some duration impact there, but that all makes sense. And maybe just following up a little bit on To Mahd's question and thinking about subscription revenue growth for next year, certainly talking about some acceleration, but like you said, The visibility has improved. So should I be thinking about maybe the less than 2 ks ACV That's an area where you'd look to be more conservative.
Just curious on maybe what is driving some of the conservatism around Subscription revenue growth.
Yes. When I was responding to Samad's question, it was more on the PSR front. But remember, our pricing plans for subscriptions include programmatic upgrades from growth adjustments and Folks exceeding their GMV threshold. So, when you factor in a kind of more prudent view of GMV and how we lap 2020, that does impact subscription a bit, but most of the conservatism is baked into the PSR number.
Okay. That's really helpful. Thanks, Steve.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of DJ Hynes with Canaccord. Your line is now open.
Hey, thank you guys and congrats And a strong quarter. I want to ask about the enterprise pipeline. And I guess the essence of the question is, are you filling it up as Fast as you're drawing it down, right? I mean, we've had 3 quarters in a row where that 2 ks plus ad is hovering around 400. So really, really strong customer adds.
And I don't know what the frame of reference might be for pipeline, but how do you feel about the enterprise pipeline entering 2021? How should we think about these quarterly customer adds? I'm not trying to hold you to guidance, but just maybe qualitatively any comments.
Yes, D. J. So we track our pipeline as a multiple of the numbers that we're trying to hit. And I can say Q4 we entered Q4 with a strong pipeline and it resulted in, as you can see, really great results that we're proud of. In Q1, we have an equally strong pipeline heading into Q1.
But we measure it based on kind of a multiple of where we need to land.
Yes. Okay. That makes sense.
So you
feel good about coverage ratios.
And feel great about the enterprise sales teams and reps that We've hired here in the U. S. And abroad. We've got a tremendous amount of talent on our enterprise sales teams and they're doing a great job at converting the pipeline.
Yes, good to hear. Okay. And then Brent, maybe one for you, just a follow-up. Like what categories in the partner ecosystem Are you investing in the most? And I guess, like how aggressive are you with respect to that tech partner build out versus those folks Coming to you guys because of the momentum that they see BigCommerce having in the market.
I mean, we've seen a very material Uptick in excitement, commitment and investment in BigCommerce since the time of IPO, any ambiguity about whether we were one of the couple of long term winners was erased by that. Our partner or tech partner team is divided up by category. And consequently, We have really experienced dedicated pros committed to doing everything we can And all of the major categories of partners. And so we have giant programs going With our top payments partners, our top point of sale partners, our top channels partners, marketplaces, advertising, Social network, our top back office partners, ERP, our top shipping and fulfillment partners, Site tools, checkout redirects, I mean subscriptions, it's really all of these headless giant programs with each of them. And I would just encourage, if for the partners in our ecosystem, the more that they invest in a great integration with us and Coordinated go to market, the more we'll both get out of everything we do together.
Great. Thanks for the color, guys. Congrats. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Scott Berg with Needham. Your line is now open.
Hi, Brent and Ari. Congrats on a good quarter and thanks for taking my questions.
I guess the first question
is on your enterprise business, Brian, Cinno. As we've discussed Couple of times in the last, I don't know, 6 or 9 months or so. That business was a little bit slow initially coming out of the pandemic in terms of New customer acquisitions as customers froze a little bit, but it's been starting to heat up obviously pretty significantly the last quarter Or 2, but do you think demand in that area is at pre pandemic levels or is it maybe exceeded or maybe trailing What you saw 12 months to 18 months ago?
I think it was back and ahead of trend line materially by June Of last year. And we wouldn't be growing our year on year enterprise Plans 51% if it hadn't picked up a lot. Remember, the ARR a year ago was an enterprise lower than that. So it just keeps gaining momentum. And in particular, the part that additive are The large end of large enterprise.
We're seeing ever bigger prospects start to consider us ever bigger organizations And that's really additive to the great strength and health of the mid market pipeline, Which has been going gangbusters throughout the pandemic.
Got it. Helpful. And then from a follow-up Question, Arie, we know the renegotiated marketing contract was going to be a headwind to the Q4 'twenty PSR revenues, we can calculate maybe what an approximate impact on that is. But how should we think about that renegotiated contract in fiscal 2021? Is that kind of net neutral to what the PSR revenues will be?
Maybe it's going to be a headwind for at least the 1st 3 quarters, don't know the magnitude. Just trying to be Helping understand that would be great. Thanks.
Yes. Well, it's definitely more predictable based on the terms of the contract And how we're going to ratably recognize it. I mean, I would just characterize it, Scott, is going back to what I said earlier. Had that headwind not For Q4 and PSR would have grown in the mid-70s, based on the amount of transactions flowing through the platform in Q4. As we think about 2021, it's all factored into the guide, is what I would say.
Great, helpful. Congrats again on a good quarter.
Thanks, buddy. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Peterson with Raymond James. Your line is now open.
Hi, everyone. And I hope your families are all safe. I know it's been a very tough week in Texas. So With you and your family. So, with that said, so Brent, a lot's been asked, but I wondered if you could kind of bifurcate maybe a little bit between, I'd say older retailers that are trying to reconfigure and really adjust within the normal versus maybe some of these digitally native brands that are up and coming.
When you referenced the win rates in the pipeline, is there any difference between those two categories or maybe you see the Venn diagram a little different? Just curious to get your thoughts there.
I mean, we're finding strength serving all of the above. If you just take the examples of The merchants that we had announced in the earnings script, you see pure play Digital native like HomeAdix, you'll see 3rd party retail sites like Prima Supply selling lots of great Coffee equipment and then a relaunch of a legacy brand in Nokia going direct to consumer For the first time on BigCommerce. So plenty of great examples across the board of each of the various categories. I think our platform is flexible And really is the best on the market for any of these various types of businesses Who wants to really optimize their e commerce strategy and their e commerce technology stack to their specific business.
Got it. And R. A, maybe one for you. So the just it's kind of a follow-up to Samad's question. But Yes, just thinking on the 2021 guide, if I look at the $2,000,000 range, that's kind of some Steph Curry like precision from deep.
I'm just curious, what kind of visibility Yes, 2020 1 guidance. Thanks.
Yes. Thanks, VP. Well, subscription, a lot of Visibility, I mean, as our mix continues to shift to enterprise, we've got a really You got it pretty dialed in, in terms of the retention profile, the churn metrics, Potential upgrades, downgrades, where we have to just be careful is really again just forecasting GMV this year, Especially China lapped last year. And so I think subscription pretty dialed in, in terms of Our ability to predict that, the visibility that we have on that front. And then PSR is really since It's so much driven by GMV and the number of transactions, that's where we just have to be careful.
Great. Thank you.
Thanks, P. P. Thank you.
Our next Question comes from the line of Terry Tillman with Truist Securities. Your line is now open.
Hey guys, this is actually Nick on for Terry. Thanks for taking our questions. So just the first one, I guess in terms of recent enterprise plan adoption, are you seeing more of these enterprise plan customers graduating from lower price plans as a result Higher volumes or are these more net new enterprise customers? Thanks.
Yes, we're definitely seeing a good amount of retail plans graduate, But the vast majority of this growth that you're seeing, we're seeing is net new sign ups. And then also, there's also the factor of enterprise plans that are growing because they're exceeding their initial growth Adjustments and so we're seeing great new sign ups, large merchant sign ups as well as Upgrades from the great growth that they're seeing on BigCommerce.
Got it. That's helpful. Just a follow-up from us. So I guess, Are you guys seeing any changes in competitive dynamics? And then I know Magento has mentioned earlier, but are you seeing an increasing number of opportunities Due to replatforming overall from on premise potentially less flexible platforms?
Thanks.
I think That's been a continuous trend for at least the last 5 years. That's why the fastest growing platforms are all SaaS, it's us, Shopify and I presume Salesforce still. But that's been going on for some time. I mean most businesses would rather be on SaaS than on prem. And especially now that we have become So flexible, so open and so adaptable, we can serve a very wide range of use cases that historically a business would have to go to on premise software To implement.
And so has there been a meaningful change in the last year? Clearly, our business has been doing great and so is Shopify. So how much of that is A shift in share relative to before versus a rising tide in all boats, kind of hard to say.
Got it. That's helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Yigal Aronian with Wedbush Securities. Your line is now open.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. I want to go back to
the comment, Brent, you made About the parts that are additive coming
from larger and larger enterprises that are considering BigCommerce. Yes, I think that was Brent, may have been all right. Can you talk about and you mentioned before about Ease of use and getting signed up and getting onboard quickly as being one of the reasons. But can you talk about More broadly, aside from that, when you're winning from Salesforce or other larger Providers and you're winning those accounts more and more. What are the big things that are attracting those customers to BigCommerce versus some of the other providers in that space?
We really think that among the 3 leading SaaS platforms, BigCommerce has The most flexible, adaptable and scalable set of APIs. And so the bigger the enterprise, the more They need to really adapt their full e commerce stack, not just the platform, but everything integrated into it With legacy system and with systems that they've been using online, offline before, that really then speaks to A SaaS platform that has turned itself into microservices, has the API layers everywhere and has the ability to integrate and Do things the way an individual enterprise wants to do them. 1 of our competitors wants these big enterprises to do it their way. We excel at letting them do it in the way that's best for their business. And even though I would say Salesforce is Larger than BigCommerce and it's been around a lot longer than we have.
I think as a general rule, our Platform openness, adaptability, flexibility is stronger than theirs and certainly our apps marketplace is much larger as well. And so for a lot of large enterprises who just want the nimbleness and adaptability with all of the benefits of SaaS, We're the best platform for them.
Thanks. And I wanted to follow-up on another You made about structural investments and obviously continuing to invest
in the business with What we're
seeing from e commerce and the trends there. Can you talk about as we head into 2021, what your Biggest investment priorities are over the course of the year, maybe in a little bit more detail. Thanks.
Sure. I'll take that one. International, clearly, you can see the growth rates that we're seeing in the markets That we're in and we've got a pretty succinct plan in terms of Our expansion strategy, which countries we expand into, and so I think that's number 1. Number 2, there is an opportunity for us To really improve and optimize our partner experience as well as all the different ways we can monetize transactions Across the ecosystem beyond payments, today majority of PSR is still payments. I think at some point it can get to fifty-fifty, 50% payments, 50% all other things and we're going to make the investments necessary to really, 1, optimize the experience for our partners, Make it really easy for our merchants to adopt and take And get the benefit of our partners' technologies and solutions.
And that goes For all the different categories beyond payments. So I think those are 2 important things and then obviously we're going to continue to invest in our Open SaaS strategy On the platform front, we feel like there's still a lot of opportunity for us to build out enterprise functionality onto the platform. And so our Open SaaS investments are platform oriented as well as on the partnership ecosystem front. Great. Really helpful.
Thanks guys. Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ken Wong with Guggenheim Securities. Your line is now open.
Great. Thanks for sneaking me in. And I'll try to double off of
my question here to save time. You guys mentioned Net revenue retention for greater than 2,000 ACV customers went to 113 from 106. Just wondering if you can help me maybe rank order some of the components that Drove that, whether it's retention, programmatic upgrades, payments, attach of other partner products? And then the second question, just ARR has outpaced revenue growth the last couple of years. Is that a dynamic that we think should extend into 2021?
Thank
you. Yes. So ARR is Reflective of our bookings, GAAP revenue is more backwards looking, ARR is forward looking. I think for 2021, it's going to come fairly similar to each other. So I wouldn't expect a wide disparity.
Got it. Didn't ask the drivers of net revenue retention. Any way to help us Rank order some of the components there?
Yes, you nailed it. I mean for us, when you look at our mix of merchants, The retention profile improves every quarter as that mix continues to shift to larger merchants. So I think number 1, Retention profile is strong. In terms of our upgrades, as I mentioned, it's programmatic. As they succeed, we succeed.
So On both the retail plans, if they exceed their GMV threshold, they'll upgrade enterprise plans will upgrade based on their order Growth adjustments and so what we're seeing is larger merchants on the platform, great retention profiles And the success you're seeing on BigCommerce is resulting in upgrades and then The last component is PSR. So as they drive transactions to the platform, obviously, the larger merchants Drive more GMV and as we monetize that, that helps on the NRR front as well.
Great. Thanks a lot, Ed. Sure.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Drew Foster with Citi. Your line is now open.
Hey, guys. Thanks for squeezing me in. Congrats to a strong end of the year there. Glad you're all doing safe. I had a question on more of the well known household name brands joining your platform.
I think last quarter you mentioned ChapStick, Fiber Hour Energy, HMG Global this quarter for their direct to consumer channel, that's great for your platform from a marketability perspective. Just curious what you're seeing With a lot of these consumer goods products companies, where typically consumers are buying more of these items in Like a supermarket or convenience store, are those brands having a lot of success with the direct to consumer channel? Just curious how you'd kind of characterize the performance of them versus More of the digitally native companies and what that tells you as a proxy for direct to consumer as a distribution channel?
Yes, they are. I mean, you can go to bitcommerce.com and look in the client examples Section and see well known brand names, many of which we've all grown up with, They're selling on BigCommerce. They're achieving, especially after the start of the pandemic, unprecedented success going direct to consumer. But oftentimes what they do is different online than what they do through their 3rd party retail channels. Subscription is oftentimes A big component of what they're trying to do getting on automatic reorders of your razor blades, your vitamins, your Water purifier supplies, your coffee supplies, stuff like that.
Another component is Test and learn, experimenting with new product releases, customization of existing products, different ways of Marketing and selling, promotional campaigns, there's a lot of innovation going on. And it's an exciting time for brand Retailers because in the past they could advertise to consumers, but they couldn't sell directly to them and they couldn't experiment that way because they were too dependent on The store shelf and activities of the retailers. Now they can try things.
Right.
They roll them out more broadly and oftentimes the retail Partners will benefit from those innovations.
I appreciate the commentary. That was really helpful. Last question for Ari. I know this might be a difficult exercise for you, but anyway to help us parse through the ARR growth, just Specifically as it relates to kind of breaching the previous GMV thresholds?
You mean in terms of how much of that is upgrade related?
Yes.
No, we don't disclose the elements of net new. But one thing that might be helpful for you is, again, Take our ARR back out the last 12 months of PSR. So you're only looking at subscription ARR over quarter over quarter. And that's a pretty good proxy for kind of net new booked within that quarter and You know upgrades would just be a component of that. Most of our net new is gross new sign ups.
That's the biggest element. But I would do that calculation so you can kind of see the momentum we're getting in subscription ARR.
Yes. Okay. Thanks. Sure.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Parker Lane with Stifel. Your line is now open.
Yes, thanks. It's Parker on for Tom Roderick. Just wanted to dive into the B2B opportunity a little bit more. So I was wondering if you could talk about The opportunity to leverage your core B2C partner network that you have today, is that something that you need to develop a little More for these B2B use cases and can you talk about how the deal sizes compare from B2C to B2B?
Indeed, the use cases for B2B are much more varied Than they are in B2C, because here does the selling entity of Manufacturer, raw goods company, a distributor, a wholesaler, finished goods manufacturer And as the buyer any one of those different types of service organization, you get such varied supply chain elements. And so the use cases are quite varied. And this is one of these places where we Try to do like a twentyeighty strategy where we've got 20% built into BigCommerce that essentially needs to be there. And then for the adaptation to various use cases, we rely a lot on our technology partners who Integrate in additional B2B functionality that will help serve the various cases. Now during the course of Time we will add in more B2B functionality into BigCommerce and we'll come up with additional ways to Deliver partner capabilities to merchants in a seamless way.
And as we do that, I think you'll also see The B2B sales and that component of our total business continue to rise as we become ever more full featured.
Yes, that's really interesting. Maybe just staying on the partner theme for a second, a lot of great adds at EMEA and APAC last year. Do you feel like you have full capacity there on the partner front internationally or are we going to continue to see pretty solid growth there into 2021?
On the partner side, both agency and technology, I think we have terrific penetration In Northern Europe, especially out of the U. K. And in Australia and New Zealand. But when it comes to Continental Europe and Asia, it is very early days for us and there's really enormous upside in the years ahead if we can Partner and sell and expand and grow in Asia and Continental Europe in the same way that we have out of the UK and Northern Europe and Out of Australia and New Zealand.
Got it. Thanks again.
Thank you. Our last question comes from the line of Brent Bracelin with Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.
Good afternoon and thanks for squeezing me in here last. Brent, I wanted to go back to the Q4 subscription growth rate. I mean, this is the highest growth rate that we've seen in 2 plus years, at least in our model. Very clear, the enterprise and international are the big levers here. But trying to understand the sustainability of the momentum here, What type of new customers is Open SaaS resonating the most with?
Is it B2B? Is it B2C? How does that change or not change as we think about anniversarying the pandemic? And just as you think about this whole move to headless, Is the appetite for partner revenue, I. E.
Payment specifically changing with some of these larger customers? So just wanted to drill down into that acceleration and sustainability and just think about the momentum right now in enterprise?
Well, I think one of the things that you all pull out when you look at our disclosures from various angles is that all parts of the business are growing at a very nice rate and at rates that are much higher than Last year or the year before and we were going to be in our 3rd straight year of accelerating revenue growth this year even absent the pandemic, but all of them have ticked up. On the ARR front, you were referring to subscription revenue, which is backwards looking, that's actual revenue. But ARR Enterprise exited the year at 51% and ACV above 2,000 was at 48 And do the math across the board, you'll still see that small business was growing at a pretty nice rate too. All of those ticked up in the last year for us. And I would say all 3, small business, mid market, large enterprise are Healthier than at any point in time, arguably in our history for small business since the early days Of the company.
And then could you rephrase the question that you had around?
Yes, I just was wondering as you think about onboarding larger customers, is that going to change your payment attach rate And would that potentially over time change the trajectory of PSR revenue? I know R. A. Mentioned that at some point fifty-fifty percent of PSR could actually come from non payment, but just trying to understand the 2021 impact of larger enterprise customers And could there be a lower attach rate of payments and I. E.
A lower lift to PSR?
Well, a couple of thoughts here. The First is that the great strength of our platform is that we are super well integrated Into a wide variety of the world's best payment processors for large merchants, whether that's PayPal's Braintree, Stripe, Adyen, Chase, Barclays, checkout.com, CyberSource, authorized.net, and we have best of breed integrations into all of those and more. And unlike one of our competitors who tries to put a proprietary solution on to every large merchant, most of these Big companies have a very strong reason to pick 1 or another. And with us, you get to pick those with the best of breed integration and no penalty for doing so. We get rev share from the vast majority of our payment partners and And so it doesn't really matter which one a merchant chooses.
Sometimes the rev share is going to be Much thinner because the larger the merchant, the closer they negotiate to price relative to interchange. However, the volumes Are massively higher. And so for a really high volume business, let's say, doing in the 100 of 1,000,000 in online Volume, it may be a thinner rev share spread that we get with the payments partner that that large merchant chooses, But it's on so much higher volume that it still ends up being very big numbers of rev share for us And really a great deal for the client because they're getting to pick the best payments processor for their needs, get great pricing on it and get best of breed Integration. So we really consider this to be one of the strengths of our platform and also A great PSR generator for us even on the largest of account types.
That's helpful color. I'll leave And hope the snow continues to melt and the power continues to come back on.
Thanks so much. Appreciate it.
Thank you. This concludes today's question and answer session. I would now turn the call back to Brent Bellum, President, CEO and Chairman for closing remarks.
I just want to thank everybody for the continued research coverage on BigCommerce. We have Really enjoyed our 1st couple of quarters as a public company and the conclusion of the most exciting year in our history, Not just the 3rd straight year of accelerating revenue growth, but an acceleration in that acceleration that we could have never Our sales anticipated at the beginning of the year. So we close it out with the best momentum in our history and couldn't be more excited about what we can do For the market and all of our stakeholders in 2021. So we look forward to talking again in our next quarterly update 3 months from now. Until then, be well.