How UntilGone Scaled Daily Deals with BigCommerce’s Unlimited APIs

Overcoming Platform Constraints

When Richard Bell acquired a struggling deals marketplace in 2018, he quickly rebranded it as UntilGone and set out to build a hub for bargain hunters. The team first launched on Ruby on Rails, then moved to Shopify Plus—but they ran headlong into API rate limits that made inventory syncs unreliable. With products rotating daily, static feeds and throttled endpoints left stock counts stale and orders mismanaged, creating a major bottleneck for growth.

Choosing a Platform Built for Freedom

Determined to avoid constant compromise, Bell evaluated both BigCommerce and Adobe Commerce Cloud. BigCommerce won out for its comprehensive, mature Enterprise-plan support team and robust, high-volume APIs. The decision unlocked “limitless freedom” to integrate external systems without workarounds. Bell partnered with Arctic Leaf, a BigCommerce agency expert, to ensure the migration would be seamless and maintain the brand’s familiar look and feel.

Seamless Back-End Integration

With guidance from BigCommerce project managers, Bell’s team replaced Shopify’s integration with a direct API connection to their custom ERP and PIM. Orders, inventory, and vendor data now flow in real time, eliminating manual updates and reducing errors. This integration freed up resources and improved operational efficiency, giving the team confidence that their backend always reflected accurate stock levels and vendor information.

Crafting a Customer-Focused Front End

Although Bell’s team excelled at backend work, they enlisted Arctic Leaf again to rebuild the storefront UI. Using BigCommerce’s flexible theme engine, the agency replicated UntilGone’s signature design while enhancing accessibility and merchandising logic. They applied ADA compliance best practices and smarter product placements, ensuring customers enjoyed a familiar yet improved shopping experience across desktop and mobile.

Leveraging AI for Personalization

Always on the lookout for innovation, Bell turned to Google Cloud for Retail to automate personalized deal recommendations. Instead of manually selecting items for transactional emails, the team now targets users with AI-driven picks based on browsing and purchase history. This leap in relevance drove a remarkable 200% increase in email-generated revenue by late 2023 and reduced manual campaign work.

Scaling Multiple Marketplaces

With BigCommerce as the foundation, Bell launched three additional daily-deal sites—Daily Steals, Pick Your Plum, and ShopHempDeals. Each storefront shares the custom backend and API connections, enabling the team to spin up new brands rapidly. Daily Steals saw explosive sales after its August 2023 debut, while Pick Your Plum enjoyed 20% year-over-year revenue growth since June 2022.

Results and Future Plans

By breaking free of Shopify’s constraints and embracing BigCommerce’s open architecture, UntilGone streamlined operations, enhanced customer experiences, and tapped AI to supercharge personalization. Bell plans to deepen AI adoption, develop mobile apps for each brand, and explore further automation to replace manual processes. With BigCommerce supporting every stage, UntilGone is poised for sustained growth and innovation, ready to delight deal seekers nationwide.