BV Commerce 2026 arrives Monday, May 25th
BV Commerce 2026 is our biggest release to date—by far! Tons of new features, enhancements, faster performance, and better security await merchants in this release. Under the hood we've embarked on a significant amount of code modernization by completely redeveloping nearly every third-party integration in the platform.
There are so many things to cover in this release that we just don't have enough space to do it here. Instead, we've decided to list what we feel are the top 10 features of BVC 2026. Over the coming weeks we will delve into these features in more detail via email, Facebook, LinkedIn, and our blog so stay tuned! For the complete list of changes read the release notes.
Top 10 Highlights from BVC 2026
- New Checkout with Apple Pay & Google Pay
Completely new checkout process using a faster, more mobile-friendly multi-page design that displays the cart contents and totals throughout the process. Apply Pay and Google Pay are now supported plus an updated PayPal integration that never takes customers off your site.
- Bootstrap 4 Turbo theme
This redesigned version of the previous Bootstrap 4 theme is optimized for page speed and includes better baseline accessibility out of the box. If you're going to redesign your site, this is the theme you want to start with.
- Universal Shopping Carts
Shopping carts are now tied to user accounts so a user can access the same shopping cart across all of their devices simply by logging into their account. For example, customers can start shopping on their phone and complete their purchase from your desktop/laptop.
- Faceted Search filtering on category pages
Category pages now support faceted search (filtering) using custom-defined Type Property data allowing customers to quickly filter through a large category of products. For example, a user could filter a category of TVs using the following parameters: size = 65", display type = OLED, and manufacturer = Sony.
- Quick Look and Compare on category pages
Quick Look allows users to view a version of the product page in a modal window without leaving the category page. Compare allows users to select multiple products on a category and view a side-by-side comparison of the product information.
- Dynamic Image Resizing
The new dynamic image resizer makes managing images much easier. Upload a single image—preferably one that is larger than what is needed—and let the image resizer scale it down to the required size. In the case of products this means that you no longer need to create small, medium, and large versions of the same image. Redesigning your site and the image sizes change? No problem! The resizer will generate the new sized images from the original image.
- Magic Zoom product image viewer
The image viewer on product pages gets a big upgrade with the Magic Zoom image viewer. Thumbnails for each image are displayed on the page and can be viewed and zoomed in all without leaving the product page or resorting to a popup window.
- Product Reviews upgrades
Product Review ratings now calculate to half-star accuracy, so a rating might now be 4.5 stars where before it was 4 stars. On product pages users can sort reviews and, for merchants with a lot of reviews, page through results rather than seeing a long list. Finally, merchants can respond to reviews and have their reply displayed beneath the review.
- Order Manager search upgrades
Search is now dramatically faster, more accurate, and now understands abbreviations (e.g. St = Street).
- Performance: turned up to 11
We're always working to improve performance, and BVC 2026 is no different. Performance improvements abound in this release coming from every corner of the application. The larger the site and the more traffic it gets, the bigger the gains.
Pricing
For existing customers, your pricing depends on the status of your BV.NEXT plan as it has in the past (explained below). If you're unsure of the status of your BV.NEXT plan, log in to your account to check it.
Customers with a current BV.NEXT plan
Log in to your account to download the 2026 release for free.
Customers with an expired BV.NEXT plan
Renew an expired BV.NEXT plan to receive access to the 2026 release as well as one year of technical support and any other software updates released during this time period (including full version upgrades). A BV.NEXT plan is $749/year and expired plans are prorated from their expiration date and capped at the cost of a new license ($1,495). To renew your BV.NEXT plan, log in to your account and click the "Renew Now" button for your website and complete the checkout process.
New Customers or Additional Websites
BV Commerce 2026 licenses are $1,495 per website.
System Requirements
Technically BV Commerce 2026 can run on the same server environment as BVC 2020. However, we are now providing stricter guidance based around the versions of Windows Server and SQL Server that Microsoft is actively supporting. The reason for this is that unsupported software is not considered PCI Compliant since it no longer receives security updates and patches. If you are unsure whether your hosting environment meets these PCI Compliance criteria, please contact your hosting company.
- Operating System
- Minimum: Windows Server 2019 with extended support (valid through January 2029)
- Recommended: Windows Server 2022
- IIS: 10
- .NET Framework: 4.8
- SQL Server
- Version
- Minimum: SQL Server 2017 (with extended support)
- Recommended: SQL Server 2022
- Database compatibility mode
- Minimum: SQL Server 2016 (130),
- Recommended: SQL Server 2019 (150) or above
- Full Text Search enabled (as with past versions of BVC)
Attention pre-BVC 2020 Customers
Support for versions of BV Commerce prior to 2020 ends on May 31, 2026. If you have a current BV.NEXT plan we will continue to provide support via support tickets, but no further updates or patches will be released. Please upgrade as soon as possible to ensure that your site supports the latest security requirements and continues to work with third-party integrations like your credit card payment gateway, real-time shipping rates, etc.