To put together this Volusion review, I personally analyzed 100 sites running the Volusion ecommerce platform.
There is no such thing as a 100% perfect platform, since every platform with awesome features will also have limitations. All that really matters is the limitations aren’t deal breakers for you.
I got really tired of all the opinion-based Volusion reviews so I decided to write my own. Let’s take a closer look at what you can expect from the platform, so you can decide if it’s the right one to power your online store.
Things to Consider Before Selecting a Hosted eCommerce Platform
When choosing a hosted e-commerce platform, there are many factors consider such as:
- Your budget
- Your level of technical expertise
- How well the platform fits with the business model you’re using
- SEO options
- Site performance and load time
- Features
- Scalability
- Whether or not there’s an integrated blog platform
And the list goes on…
When it comes to pricing, Volusion is among the most affordable for starter plans. It works with a limited number of payment gateways and is one of the slower loading platforms.
Payment Gateways & Transaction Fees
Volusion works with more than 30 payment gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, and Amazon.
The Volusion platform doesn’t charge transaction fees on any of their plans, but the payment gateways you choose to accept for payment processing may charge them.
Volusion is gaining customers from Yahoo Store and BigCommerce but losing a considerable number to Shopify. That doesn’t mean you should choose Shopify necessarily, just weigh the two against your needs before you decide.
Brands using Volusion include:
- USA Bride
- Tiny Coffe House
- Hit Bars
Volusion Overview
As one of the leading hosted e-commerce platforms, Volusion’s main competitors are BigCommerce and Shopify. Their feature set focuses more on the behind-the-scenes operations of running an e-commerce site, rather than marketing-led features.
Volusion is a basic e-commerce website builder that hosts everything for you. You design the store, add your products, and the platform handles the rest for you.
Volusion is best for people who are just getting started with e-commerce and don’t want a huge monthly bill. It’s ideal for those with a finite number of products, and those who want a bit more guidance and help with how the platform works and online marketing.
While there’s an extensive amount of educational and customer support material for those who are new to e-commerce, it can be hard for new store owners to determine the best plan for their needs, even as they grow. Volusion falls flat when it comes to offering a built-in content management system for blogging, but they do have built-in marketing tools.
Plans & Pricing
Volusion has four pricing plans, ranging from $15/month to $135/month.
The Mini plan offers:
- 100 products
- 1 GB bandwidth – after this traffic limit is reached, you’ll start incurring overage fees
- Online support
- No transaction fees
- Dedicated Secure Checkout
With the Plus plan ($35/month):
- 1,000 products
- 3 GB bandwidth
- Online and phone support
- No transaction fees
- Dedicated Secure Checkout
With the Pro plan ($75/month):
- 10,000 products
- 10 GB bandwidth
- Priority support
- No transaction fees
- Dedicated Secure Checkout
With the Premium plan ($135/month):
- Unlimited products
- 35 GB bandwidth
- Priority support
- No transaction fees
- Dedicated Secure Checkout
Each plan comes with a 14-day free trial. None of the plans have a Fulfilled by Amazon integration, and all plans will require a paid add-on for real-time shipping/tracking. All plans include social media tools, reporting tools, and 24/7 online support. If you’re willing to commit to using Volusion for a year, you can get a 10% discount on any plan.
Volusion Features and Plans
Poor Site Search Function
The site search function is in place to help people find what they are looking for. But, the Volusion function isn’t as good as it could be.
If your customer happens to make a typo or simply can’t spell the name of whatever it is they are looking for – the search won’t pull results, even if your store actually does carry the product.
Want to Blog? You’ll Need To Install That Separately
Blogging is a great way to generate traffic, and Shopify and BigCommerce offer an integrated content management system to make it easy for you to manage a blog within the same software as your store. Volusion doesn’t do this, so you’ll have to install WordPress in another directory on your domain.
Selling Online with Volusion
Volusion integrates with Amazon, eBay, Google Product Data feed, and other sales platforms, but in order to use the multi-channel features, you’ll need the higher priced plans. You’ll have to rely on third-party apps for upselling and cross-selling.
Thanks to the materials available to help you learn how to make the most of your business, you can easily sell products with Volusion. There are built-in SEO and marketing tools to simplify the process as well.
Volusion Integrations and Plans
Themes and Apps
Volusion has a great selection of free quality themes and a good mobile app. There’s a rather light selection of third-party apps and integrations available in the app store in comparison to what we see offered by Shopify and BigCommerce. You can quickly and easily build your own theme with the site builder, or you can hire one of Volusion’s professional designers.
Ease Of Use
Volusion is a relatively easy platform to use since you don’t need to have any technical skills to make it work for you.
You’ll find around 13 free templates to use for your store, which is more than you see with some competitors. If those don’t work, you’ll pay at least $180 for a premium template, which is on par with the competition.
| Platform | Ease of Use | Phone Support | 24/7 Support | Chat Support | Community Rating | # of Apps/ Plugins |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | 4.9 | Yes | Yes | Yes | 5 | 5,000 |
| Sellfy | 3.5 | No | Yes | No | 4 | 4 |
| Zyro | 3.7 | No | Yes | Yes | 4.7 | 30 |
| Nexcess StoreBuilder | 4.5 | Yes | Yes | Yes | 3.6 | 50,000+ |
| ShopWired | 4.5 | No | No | Yes | 4.9 | 72 |
| Pixpa | 3.7 | Yes | No | Yes | 4.7 | 103 |
| Freewebstore | 3.4 | No | No | Yes | None | 25+ |
| Ecwid | 3.6 | 5.0 | 1.0 | 5.0 | 4.7 | 100+ |
| Square Online | 4.0 | 5.0 | 1.0 | 5.0 | 4.2 | 25+ |
| BigCommerce | 4.8 | Yes | Yes | Yes | 4.0 | 1000 |
| Woocommerce | 3.3 | No | No | Yes | 4.0 | 250+ |
| Shift4Shop | 4.3 | Yes | Yes | Yes | 3.0 | ~250 |
| Volusion | 4.1 | Yes | Yes | Yes | 2 | ~20 |
| Adobe Commerce | 2.2 | No | No | No | 4 | 3000+ |
| Prestashop | 2.9 | Yes | No | No | 3 | 3000+ |
| SquareSpace | 3.8 | No | Yes | Yes | 3.0 | 10+ |
| Wix | 4.2 | Yes | Yes | No | 4.5 | 700 |
| Weebly | 3.6 | Yes | No | Yes | 2 | ~350 |
There are fewer apps and plugins available with Volusion than there are with BigCommerce and Shopify. However I found Volusion’s customer services and onboarding really helpful.
One of the things that’s great about the platform is you don’t have to enter your credit card information to start your trial. You can get in-depth step-by-step directions for setting up your store with the video tutorial series.
If you know HTML and CSS, you can use these to make changes to the design of your site. If you don’t, you can use the what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) editor.
It’s also easy to use since it offers a one-page checkout, social media sharing, gift cards, daily deals, discounts, abandoned cart reports, and emails, allows customer reviews, and supports multiple product images.
Volusion Alternatives
The most common alternatives for Volusion are Shopify, BigCommerce, and 3dcart.
Shopify
Shopify has a wide range of plans like Volusion, and though they are higher priced, that comes with more flexible features. There are no bandwidth limits, more apps and integrations to choose from, a wider variety of themes to design your store with, but you’ll still get the ability to use multiple sales channels. However, the lite plan on Shopify, for less Volusion’s Mini plan, doesn’t offer a fully functioning ecommerce store – it only lets you setup a Facebook store, sell offline, manage your inventory, and include a Shopify button on your website.
See: Volusion vs Shopify: 7 Critical Comparison Points
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is highly similar to Shopify since that is their main competitor. It’s comparable to Shopify in terms of pricing which makes it more expensive than Volusion, too. BigCommerce offers multichannel stores and has an extensive app and integration library. It, however, lacks cross-selling and upselling without a third party and has limited free themes available.
3dcart
3dcart offers much of what you’ll find with both Shopify and BigCommerce. You’ll see the pricing structure is similar, and you’ll get much of the same feature set. The main difference is you won’t pay transaction fees, and you’ll get a fast load time. Since Volusion really lacks in the load time, this could be a bonus for many readers.
Conclusion
Volusion helps you create a search engine optimized e-commerce store, and makes it easier to manage your online business. If your store isn’t optimized for the search engine, you will have a harder time getting new customers and will have to work harder to drive traffic to your website.
Volusion includes SEO tools within the platform to help you control what the search engines see for each product listing. And, it includes a number of features you can use to improve the overall customer experience.
Click here to check out Volusion. This product is ideal a limited e-commerce business model. It’s best for B2C stores offering multiple product categories, working an affiliate, or a hybrid. Though there are drop shipping options, it is quite limited, so it’s better for manufacturers or wholesalers.
