Volusion vs Shopify

Choosing a proper eCommerce platform for your business shouldn’t be too difficult. With hundreds of eCommerce solutions available online, you can quickly find one that meets your needs. However, taking the time to narrow down the selection and making an educated decision on just one service could allow you to save tons of money in the long run, enjoy premium features and have a much more optimized platform. We’re going to compare Shopify and Volusion - two top rated eCommerce platforms that deliver outstanding feedback and results for millions of online merchants. If you’ve managed to narrow it down to these two options, yet you can’t seem to decide between the two of them, we’ve got you covered. We’re going to compare features, prices, technical optimizations in order to make your decision much easier to make.

Volusion and Shopify Compared

Both Volusion and Shopify are excellent platforms for beginners and advanced merchants alike. They both hosting thousands of company websites ranging from small-time brick and mortar stores brought online to big brand companies. Knowing how to choose between the two platforms is a complex task since both of them offer amazing features and services. We’re going to take a deeper look at both platforms in order to determine which is the best option for your needs. Keep in mind, one platform may be ideal for some whereas the other platform may be better for others - in the end, it depends on personal preferences and needs.

Technical Comparison

First lets compare the technical aspect of both these platforms. When it comes to uptime, both seem to provide a similar experience. Both platforms guarantee an uptime of 99.9%, which is pretty much the industry average and is very good. Unless you’re a big time brand with millions of monthly sales, you most likely won’t notice a difference on one platform or the other. Incident frequency is also similar for platforms and shouldn’t make any noticeable difference. However, Volusion seems to run into fewer issues on a regular basis when compared to Shopify. A technical area that you should consider is web page loading times. Shopify seems to have way more speed optimizations in place, which in turn causes their websites to load slightly faster than Volusion’s sites. When it comes to SEO and customer retention, a web page that loads a single second faster can make all the difference, so Shopify is the winner in this category.

Customer Support

A solid customer support team makes all the difference for online merchants. Having access to real-time answers is crucial if you want to maximize profits. Fortunately, both platforms have similar customer support experiences. They both offer live chat, phone and email support along with a massive amount of information in their knowledge bases. One thing to take note of though is that you will only gain access to Volusion’s additional support resources by getting one of their premium plans ranked higher than the “Personal” plan - “Personal” plan only qualifies for online support. While support availability is similar for the two platforms, friendliness and helpfulness varies a little bit. Shopify seems to have more qualified support agents that provide more accurate information in a timelier manner. However, Volusion’s support team is still very good, making this category rather tight to judge - it’s too close to call so we’re going to say customer support is a tie.

Features

The most important aspect worth looking into is the platform’s features and built-in perks. This is where you’ll really want to base your decision on because it will have the largest impact on your overall website builder experience. Out of box, Volusion seems to have more to offer, but Shopify makes up for it by offering overlapping features via third-party apps. Both platforms have incredibly simple to use dashboards and with Volusion’s V2 design, they are both equally easy to use. You can easily add new products, fulfill orders, manage sales, manage shipping costs and much more on both platforms without too much fuss. Furthermore, they both offer excellent customer retention tools such as abandoned cart features. The area that makes all the difference is Shopify’s amount of features - they have many more tools available than Volusion. For instance, Shopify’s digital product selling features and their multilingual capabilities really help them take the upper hand in this category. Shopify also excels when it comes to third-party app integrations with way more options available than Volusion. For instance, Shopify’s Oberlo app allows you to easily setup a dropshipping business without too much hassle. It’s hard to judge these two eCommerce platforms based on features because both platforms have a lot to offer and they both deliver quality functions, but Shopify takes the win in this category due to their larger selection of apps.

Design

Another huge aspect worth consider is the design, look and feel of their websites. Shopify has a huge selection of free and paid themes. There are over 60 themes to choose from at Shopify and most of them look amazing. Volusion on the other hand does not offer as many options - they only have roughly a dozen free themes for you to choose from and about two dozen paid themes. The paid themes at Shopify vary in price, but most hover around the $160 to $180 price point. Volusion has the same price point for themes, so you shouldn’t expect to pay much more or less for themes when choosing one platform over the other. The quality of the themes on both platforms is amazing. However, we found the paid themes at Volusion to be a tad bit better with lighter coding and more optimizations in place. Both platforms have excellent theme designs with niche specific templates available. You can also customize the themes on both platforms if you choose to do so. Overall, this is another close category to judge, but Shopify’s largest selection of themes really makes it a better option when searching for excellent looking website designs.

Prices

Choosing an affordable platform is crucial if you want to save a ton of money. The goal of creating an online store is to build an income generator, not have to pay loads of fees. Fortunately, Volusion has no transaction fees - Shopify does though. This means that when choosing Shopify, you will have to pay a small fee with every sale you make. However, while Volusion doesn’t charge any transaction fees, they do limit the amount of sales you can make per plan, so as you sell more, you’ll have to upgrade to more expensive plans. The actual pricing plan structure is actually very similar for both Shopify and Volusion, so you shouldn’t see much difference on that end. Both platforms also offer a 14-day free trial so you can spend two full weeks trying the platforms without spending any money. While both platforms are similarly priced, we have to give the upper hand to Volusion due to their lack of transaction fees.

The Final Verdict: Volusion or Shopify

Overall, both Volusion and Shopify are excellent choices and only minor differences separate them. While Shopify is an excellent all-around eCommerce platform, so is Volusion. However, the sale limits at Volusion make scalability more complicated and potentially more costly. For this reason, Volusion is the better option for small businesses or merchants with small to medium monthly sales - larger businesses should opt for Shopify for their better growth options. When it comes to features, both platforms are quite similar, but Shopify has a larger selection of app integrations, so you’ll have more options for functionality. Volusion has a more affordable pricing structure, but you’ll also have more limitations such as being unable to access all support channels with the Personal plan. In the end, Shopify and Volusion are actually very similar, so it comes down to your business size and growth expectations - if you plan on dealing with lots of fast growth, choose Shopify - if you don’t plan on growing so much, choose Volusion for the lack of transaction fees.