As an ecommerce store owner who has used leading platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce, I often get asked – how does Volusion really compare to running an online business? Is its balance of ease of use and customization a good fit for most merchants?
After building and managing multiple stores on various platforms over the years, I decided to thoroughly test Volusion to see if it could be a viable Shopify alternative. In this Volusion review, I’ll provide unbiased feedback on its features, performance, support, and ultimately if it should make the shortlist for store owners researching ecommerce solutions.
Let’s cut through the hype and explore Volusion’s strengths and limitations powering real online stores! I’ll assess key criteria like themes, payment processing, support, and scalability to provide a transparent assessment for those considering Volusion.
Volusion Review: Overview (Ratings out of 5 )
| Value For Money | 3.8 |
| eCommerce Features | 4.0 |
| Marketing Features | 3.9 |
| Ease of Use | 4.0 |
| Themes & Designs | 4.7 |
| Customer Support | 4.3 |
Is Volusion safe?
When it comes to any eCommerce platform, we must check its safety factors first because you are going to pay money for that.
However, Volusion is a safe and secure platform offering multiple protection systems for both sellers and buyers. Volusion stores come with a free SSL certificate making sure all your data is encrypted and protected. Not only that, Volusion uses a defense-in-depth approach to cybersecurity. It also performs penetration testing every six months to keep all real-world threats away.
So, this platform is multi-dimensionally protected and safe to use.
What Are the Advantages of Volusion?
Here are some best aspects we like about Volusion –
- It offers sleek and expertly designed modern themes.
- Advanced analytics tools
- Great SEO functionalities
- Premium product display feature
- Logo/favicon upload
What Are the Disadvantages of Volusion?
These are some aspects Volusion needs to improve on –
- No blogging feature
- You can’t sell digital products
- Hard-to-customize
- A bit pricey in comparison to its features.
We have given you a superficial view of the advantages and disadvantages of using Volusion. Now we’d explain them in detail.
A Detailed Review of Volusion’s eCommerce Features
As Volusion is an eCommerce solution, the first thing we must review is its eCommerce features – How good are they? Does it incorporate all the premium eCommerce features you need to grow your business?
However, to give you an overview, we’ll say that Volusion has pretty decent eCommerce and selling features. Though they are not as premium as Shopify’s, but they are quite good for absolute beginners.
Here’s what you’ll get in its eCommerce functionalities –
Inventory Management
This platform has an easy-to-use inventory system that would help you display product status, track stock reorders quantity levels, and provide quantity verification. The best part is, on Volusion, it’s quite easy to set up one or multiple warehouses and calculate shipping costs as per the warehouse information.
Even to make the whole process easier, Volusion mostly relies on automation. For example, if any item is out of stock, the system automatically creates “purchase order” to restock the item.
Product Display Option
Volusion will let you market your products with multiple photos and videos and with every needed information like social sharing, reviews, availability notifications, etc. You can also show your customers related products to keep them engaged with your store and entice them to purchase more.
Not only that, you can show them highlighted products and discounts directly on your store homepage via the Slideshow feature.
Advanced Search Tool
Volusion provides an advanced search tool that helps your customers locate their desired products quickly and more efficiently.
Premium Checkout
Volusion’s Premium Checkout feature is a more upgraded checkout solution that creates a seamless purchase experience by incorporating various updated features like a modern interface, mobile-first experience, multiple premium payment providers, guest checkout, and so on. It means fewer abandoned carts and more conversion rates!
Shipping options
Volusion has an in-built logo design tool that you can use for mass branding. Even on Volusion, you can specify shipping types, offer flat discounts/gift cards, and fix overall shipping rates.
Moreover, Volusion has a pretty simple return management process which we really appreciate.
Cross-selling Functionality
It’s one of the most powerful eCommerce features integrated by Volusion. This feature will let you expand your store across other shopping sites, and you can manage every order fulfillment process from your Volusion admin.
Social-Selling feature
You can link your store with your social accounts on Facebook and Twitter and turn your followers into paying customers.
Customer Account Management
With Volusion’s built-in tool, you can keep an eye on your customer’s purchase history and collect their contact information for future activities.
How Effective Its Marketing Features Are?
With eCommerce features, Volusion also offers some basic marketing features that are quite handy if you want to promote your brand and gain visibility among your potential clients.
Volusion’s marketing features include –
Abandoned Cart Recovery
One of the leading marketing features included by Volusion is the Abandoned cart recovery. You can easily check the number of abandoned carts in your store and send your customers personalized messages to make the purchase.
Thus, it’s a great tool if you want to turn your visitors into customers.
Out-of-the-box SEO
Volusion’s SEO features are pretty effective. It has incorporated all the fundamental SEO functionalities like product page optimization, image optimization, category optimization, sitemap indexing, robots.txt, canonical URL, and so on.
Newsletter tool
Although Volusion doesn’t have any blogging option (which is a major drawback), you can still connect with your customers with its in-built newsletter tool and nurture them further.
Gift cards & Discounts
On Volusion, you can create gift cards, coupon cards, custom codes, and discounts to keep your customers engaged with your store.
Reports & Analytics
Volusion offers an Advanced ROI tracking tool that you can use to calculate your profit on affiliates, ad campaigns, and newsletters. Not only that, but on this platform, you’ll also get thorough insights on return merchandise authorizations, CRM tickets, and overall orders.
In-house Marketing services
Now, if you don’t have time to manage all the marketing activities on your own, you can hire a Volusion expert who will assist you with PPC, SEO, shopping feeds, social media marketing, and more.
Is Volusion Flexible & Easy to Use?
To simply put, Volusion is pretty easy to some extent. If you have basic coding knowledge or have used any platform like WordPress before, everything will go very smoothly on this platform.
It offers an intuitive site builder that allows you to create, maintain and adjust your online storefront without any hassles. But for absolute beginners, it might seem a bit tricky to manage the front end. For example, if you want to edit your store and customize it further, you need to have some tech knowledge.
Thus, in a nutshell, we’d say that Volusion isn’t as easy as its rivals like Shopify and Wix, but with a little tech knowledge, you can easily navigate this platform.
Volusion Themes & Designs: How Good Are They?
One of the premium features that make Volusion stand out among its rivals is its top-notch themes & templates. Volusion has a total of 45 eCommerce themes, among which 11 are free, and the rest are paid, costing you around $180.
However, Volusion themes are flexible and straightforward, specially designed with conversions in mind. Moreover, all the themes ( paid or free) are mobile-responsive and gorgeous-looking. Though they are not as sleek as Squarespace’s, but we would give a big thumbs up to them as far as great themes are concerned.
Also, if you have some background knowledge of HTML and CSS, you can further tweak your site design to better portray your brand.
Volusion App Marketplace: How Powerful Is It?
Well, if you are not satisfied with all the built-in features of Volusion, you can add third-party integrations to your store and grow your business to the next level.
As of now, Volusion has a total of 80 applications in its marketplace, ranging from dropshipping, domain management, order fulfillment, and email marketing to shopping feeds and social media integrations. Even this platform has integrated some leading applications like accessiBe, Zapier, and ShipStation, which we really liked.
But, to be honest, Volusion’s app marketplace isn’t as wide-ranging and effective as Shopify’s, which might disappoint you.
Volusion Pricing: How Much Does it Cost?
We have already seen the features offered by Volusion. Now we’ll check how much Volusion costs and whether it’s worth buying or not.
First of all, Volusion offers a 14-day free trial option. You can opt for it to check the innate features offered by Volusion.
It also has 4 types of paid plans. These are –
| Plans | Personal | Professional | Business | Prime |
| Monthly Pricing | $35/month | $79/month | $299/month | Custom |
| Yearly Pricing | $31.50/month | $71.10/month | $269.10/month | Custom |
| Max Products | 100 | 5,000 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Max GMV Per Year | $50k | $100k | $400k | Unlimited |
| Staff Accounts | 1 | 5 | 15 | Unlimited |
| Import/Export | ❌ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| CRM | ❌ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Abandoned Cart Reports | ❌ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| API Access | ❌ | ❌ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Batch Order Processing | ❌ | ❌ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Client Success Manager | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✔️ |
| Premiere Access | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✔️ |
| SSL Certificate | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Free Web Hosting | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Support | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
All the plans come with some common basic functionalities, including unlimited bandwidth, checkout solutions, free web hosting, PCI compliance and so on.
However, the Personal plan lacks some major features like CRM, import/export features, phone orders, and many more. So, we recommend you to go for its Professional or higher plans to have a smooth business journey.
Payment Gateways Accepted By Volusion
To make the purchasing process seamless and more streamlined, Volusion has offered multiple payment gateways for its users. From Amazon Pay, Cash payments to credit cards, Volusion has integrated some leading payment processors available online.
However, if you use Volusion’s in-house credit card processing solution, it will cost you 2.15% per transaction.
Volusion Customer Support Team: Are They Helpful Enough?
We find that Volusion’s support team is quite helpful. Even if you are on the free trial, you have their back 24/7.
But until you opt for its business plan, there’s no way to connect with them directly. For example, if you are on its personal and professional plans, you’ll only get live chat and email support. But its Business and prime plans have the option to connect with the teams via phone with other online supports.
In a nutshell, we find Volusion is pretty decent when it comes to the customer support system.
What About Its Rivals?
| eCommerce platforms | Volusion | Shopify | Wix | Squarespace |
| Overall Ratings(Out of 5) | 4.0 | 4.8 | 4.7 | 4.6 |
| eCommerce Features | Good | Advanced & Top-notch | Great | Great |
| Marketing Features | Good | Premium | Premium | Great |
| No. of templates | 45 | 1000 | 800+ | 110 |
| Ease of Use | Decent | Pretty easy-to-use | Pretty easy-to-use | Decent |
| Pricing (starts from) | $35/month | $29/month | $27/month | $27/month |
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Conclusion: Volusion Review (2023)
Throughout the article, we checked all the nitty-gritty features offered by Volusion. Now it’s time to unveil the ultimate result – should you choose this platform or not?
However, if we compare this platform with other leading eCommerce platforms like Shopify and Wix, we find they offer way more extensive features (flexible POS, wide-ranging app marketplace, premium marketing features, blogging features) at a pocket-friendly budget than Volusion.
In contrast, Volusion seems pretty expensive when we take a deep look at its features.
Thus, we won’t recommend this platform to anyone having the vision to grow their business to the next level. You have other better options at Volusion’s price or less than that. But if you just want to create a store and explore the eCommerce business field, you can give it a try!
FAQs
Yes, Volusion offers a 14-day free trial which you can sign up for without giving your payment information. With the free trial, you can easily create your online store and add products to it, but you will need to buy a subscription to it to take your store online.
You can easily cancel your subscription to Volusion, but you won’t get any refunds on it because Volusion does not offer a money-back guarantee on the subscriptions.
You can sell physical products on Volusion with ease, and there is no limit on the number of products you can sell. However, Volusion does not allow you to sell digital products in your store.
Volusion is slightly different than Shopify because it focuses on online stores only, whereas Shopify allows you to sell online and offline simultaneously. Shopify is a bit easier to set up and use than Volusion.
Volusion does not charge you any set-up fee, and you can ask the support team to help you out with setting up your online store on Volusion.
