Volusion is a cloud-based e-commerce solution made to assist companies in creating, launching, and managing customized e-commerce websites using customized domains and unique themes. The platform includes a built-in content editor that enables businesses to add or amend text and graphic material on the website. Our Volusion review will help merchants understand the pros and cons of this e-commerce solution.
Subscribers of Volusion may manage their search engine optimization (SEO), add subcategories, and construct product category pages to enhance promotion. A CSS editor, inventory tracking, search tools, barcode generation, pricing management, tax rate calculation, and ROI tracking are among the features. Role-based permissions also enable managers to follow changes across the online store, check admin history, and grant restricted access to staff.
Businesses can manage client accounts on Volusion and examine contact information and purchase history to enhance marketing campaigns. Through reports, users can learn more about abandoned/live carts, popular products, and more. The system allows for the integration of numerous external platforms, including Facebook, eBay, and Amazon.
Volusion Updates
Volusion most recently updated to “V2,” a new operating system with several UX (User Experience) enhancements. The inventory system is considerably clearer, making it much simpler to manage your goods.
The fact that it offers a ton of helpful data, analytical tools, and payment alternatives is what matters most.
Additionally, Volusion has concentrated on fusing business functionality and site-creation capabilities by starting the user journey in the storefront editor to keep up with e-commerce industry giants like Shopify.
The business features, while adequate, aren’t too intriguing. You cannot blog, there is no specialty offering, and building your site requires frequent back-and-forth navigation between the front and back ends. Overall, their product is for data enthusiasts rather than designers.
Volusion Features
Inventory
First off, Volusion has videos that describe all of their products. It’s a very useful feature that enhances client satisfaction. Who is the ideal customer for this product? Well, any company with eye-catching images, like clothing merchants, would profit.
Additionally, Volusion has a “recommended items” option. This is a significant victory against Shopify, a competitor that depends on third-party integrations to perform the same task.
Volusion does not however, allow you to sell digital goods. This significantly reduces the types of businesses that should use it; for instance, if you’re wanting to sell digital art, music, or ebooks, you should go elsewhere.
Mobile and Third Party Application
Need to make a quick sale? Volusion’s top-notch mobile app allows you to manage your online store from your phone. Consequently, you can use your phone to check inventory, alter prices, or take product images!
But what Volusion wants is for you to personalize your store as much as you can. How is this accomplished? — by supporting 1,000+ apps on Zapier, ranging from customer management to accountancy.
Better Rates
Volusion has some of the best pricing plans of any eCommerce platform, with reasonable rates. There are four different subscription options available, with prices ranging from $31.50 per month (when paid annually) to a custom package with a price based on your gross sales volume. Online security features and customer support are offered in all subscription tiers. Additionally, there is a 14-day free trial period available for you to try out the platform and only sign up for a paid plan if it meets your demands.
Payment, Service Charges, and Shipping
PayPal and Stripe are just a couple of the many payment channels that Volusion offers. With digital wallet choices like Amazon and Apple Pay, it also caters to users who are more technologically adept.
Some choices, such as Square, demand integration with Zapier. But doing it is quick and simple. There are no transaction costs included in any of Volusion’s pricing options. However, standard credit card fees will be charged for each payment.
And don’t forget about shipping. You may add your text and logo to invoices and packing slips using Volusion. The personalized touch will be greatly appreciated by your consumers.
Simple Integration
You can increase the functionality of your online store using Volusion’s integrations. Along with its built-in features, Volusion also integrates with other third-party applications such as CRMs, accounting programs, shipping and payment processors, live chat tools, order management systems, and others. These extra features aid in streamlining your company’s operations and boosting its growth potential.
Plenty of Formats
To ensure that your online store’s design complements your branding, choose from 300 lovely eCommerce themes. Nearly as important as your product or service is how well this aspect of your web store is designed. Users take note of and take action on your website’s design, color, and overall appearance. Every Volusion template is also mobile-friendly, giving your customers a consistent shopping experience across all platforms.
Reporting Platform
An online business needs effective reporting tools to gain intriguing insights into sales, shopping cart patterns, product views, ROI, and other factors. Build reports that provide you with the data you need to expand by analyzing the metrics that are effective for your store using Volusion’s reporting features.
Comprehensive SEO Handling
To create a reliable, well-optimized website that ranks highly on Google, SEO tools are required. Volusion offers a variety of effective controls for your SEO strategy, ranging from controlling metadata and content optimization to altering the robots.txt file on your Volusion site. Additionally, Volusion provides SEO audits to assist you in determining where to make adjustments to your URL, design, meta tags, and other elements.
Blog
You must link to a third-party website to add a blog to your Volusion store. However, you may stay in touch with consumers using the Volusion Newsletters tool.
Numerous Alternatives For Support
Volusion provides all of its users with the assistance they need. It provides live help seven days a week via phone call, email, or online chat. Volusion also features a website knowledge center with in-depth manuals and instructional videos. A dedicated account manager and access to Volusion’s internal design and marketing team are features of higher-level plans.
Volusion Pricing and Agreement Terms
Volusion divides its pricing tiers into groups based on the number of sales a company generates throughout a trailing 12-month period. The user will be moved up to the next pricing tier after a growing firm exceeds the plan’s annual sales cap. Access to more advanced features and customer support options is available with each price increase. Volusion provides four options, all of which have transparent upfront costs. (The Startup plan appears to have disappeared when Volusion emerged from bankruptcy.)
Customers have the option of paying monthly or a year in advance to save roughly 10% on their subscriptions. Take advantage of Volusion’s 14-day, credit card-free trial before making that choice so you may try the platform risk-free. Users are always free to adjust the level of their plan. Additionally, there is a 10% discount offered by Volusion for each new store that merchants who intend to develop several businesses build.
If you decide to utilize Volusion to host your online store, you may choose from the following subscriptions at the appropriate monthly billing rates:
Volusion Personal
Volusion Personal costs $35 per month, but if you pay yearly, you can save a little money and reduce that to $31.50 per month. This permits 100 products to be uploaded and sets transaction costs at 1.25%. For small enterprises, this subscription strategy is perfect.
The Personal plan’s features include built-in inventory management, free responsive themes, support for selling on social media channels, secure checkout and payment, and responsive themes. However, it doesn’t integrate with Amazon or eBay and only offers a few marketing capabilities.
Volusion Professional
When paying yearly, the Professional plan costs $79 per month or $71.10 per month. This increases the number of goods to 5,000 and cuts transaction fees to 0.65%. You also get access to five staff accounts, which you can use to assign tasks and control who has access to what data and regions of the website.
The variety of selling and marketing tools included with the Professional plan is the biggest boost. It alerts you to abandoned carts and allows you to win over those doubtful shoppers. Additionally, it provides you with access to CRM services, email tools, and site data import and export.
Especially with the lower transaction fees, this is perfect for established small businesses wishing to grow even more.
Volusion Business
You can upload an unlimited amount of products with the Volusion Business plan, which is a significant improvement. Transaction fees are also reduced to 0.35%. Additionally, you receive 15 staff accounts so you may incorporate additional team members like your office and warehouse personnel.
Users of the Volusion Business Plan have access to Volusion’s priority assistance as well as the marketing and design specialists’ services to enhance the strategy and look of their websites. The websites included in this plan offer seamless integration with Amazon and eBay as well as API access, giving you special capabilities to design your website. The performance of two or more goods can be monitored and compared using an advanced reporting system.
The monthly cost of the Volusion business plan is $299, or $269.10 when paid yearly.
Volusion Prime
Your gross merchandise volume is used to determine the Volusion Prime plan’s cost and transaction costs. It offers limitless worker accounts and is the best choice for major businesses or premium brands. You have VIP access to support, and professionals in marketing, design, and finance are only a message or phone call away to assist you in reaching your objectives. You can concentrate on other areas of your business by hiring an account manager to help you optimize your website. The majority of your web store’s operations will still be managed by you, but you can always get in touch with your account manager for support and guidance.
Expensive rate: Volusion’s price plans are rated as the most expensive in our grading. If you get a lot of features for your money, this isn’t so bad, however, Volusion only received a value-for-price rating of 2.5 out of 5. You’re better off using other options such as Square Online or Wix for truly excellent value!
Volusion Review
Based on actual ratings and feedback
Average rating (3.3 Stars)
Volusion genuinely focuses on data, offering the broadest selection of any website builder. It’s not the best eCommerce choice, but you can manage and develop your business quickly because of the superb analytics features. Shopify is the overall winner.
In other words, except for sales, it occupies the middle of the pack in every category. Product videos, the variety of payment gateway alternatives, and the suggested items feature are some of its strongest points.
But there’s a good reason why we only gave Volusion 3.3 stars. You cannot blog on it, the storefront is unclear, and the help and support might be improved. It lacks a general niche as well.
Good VOLUSION Comments and Endorsements
Although Volusion has received some favorable reviews, the majority of the reviews are unfavorable. Here are a few good qualities that customers commonly mention in their comments:
Simple use: Users report that setting up an online store is straightforward and that adding your products to the site is simple and quick. Users value the software’s comprehensiveness, which eliminates many of the technical difficulties associated with maintaining a website.
Excellent Customer Support: I’ve seen many evaluations that give Volusion’s support staff high marks. The live chat service is frequently mentioned in these favorable ratings.
We collected a few positive reviews from customers on different platforms:
January 2019
Operations Manager @ Consumer Electronics
Company volume: 2-10 employees
Review Source: Capterra
“Volusion provided us with a fantastic website.”
- Since 2011, we have been utilizing Volusion. It has never let us down. Never once have we received a phone call from a client or potential customer complaining about any component of our website. We have thousands of clients and hundreds of items. Making new items, pages, and categories and arranging them in whatever I choose is quite simple. Additionally, Volusion manages our PPC accounts, producing and updating advertising, and providing weekly results. Overall, I would advise anyone wishing to establish a virtual storefront to use Volusion.
May 26, 2020
Manager @ UX Ecommerce & Office Operations Design
Company volume: 51-200 employees
Review Source: Capterra
“Great entry point for online shopping or modest inventory options”
- “The overall experience was decent. This will work fine for you if your website is simple, but in the business, I was in, it couldn’t handle the complexity of the several product variations. Our business decided to utilize a different e-commerce platform when it was time to build a second website since it could handle it with a better user experience (both website users making purchases and administrators/customer service handling customers from the platform’s back-end dashboards).”
Critical VOLUSION Comments and Criticism
It was challenging to locate reviews following the business’s bankruptcy-related reorganization, which may have been due to advancements or a shortage of new customers. We’ll continue to monitor and review websites and update with any fresh patterns we notice. The following are the most pertinent, recent, and consistent concerns shared by users of Volusion software:
Overpriced: Users claim that the price is too high and they feel overcharged. There are occasions when merchants must pay an additional fee for services like Fraud Score and premium SSL certificates. Additionally, some users claim that the free templates are too basic, necessitating the purchase of a theme.
Minimal Integrations: There are only a few dozen integrations available for Volusion, and this number has not expanded in recent years. It appears that developers are not motivated to create links with the program, which makes it challenging to integrate cutting-edge capabilities.
Too Basic: Volusion is deficient in a few crucial features. Although you can incorporate a blog from another website, there are no tools for generating blogs and only a few marketing options. Additionally, I’ve read evaluations that claim Volusion requires more robust reporting and delivery tools.
Numerous glitches: Users regularly report errors and faults. Some comments claim that Volusion’s updates make more flaws than they fix.
Limited Help Opportunities: Users complain that email support is missing, and some think the live chat option isn’t very good. Users of the base plan find it particularly annoying because they can no longer get phone support.
We also collected a few critical reviews from customers on different platforms:
Free Trial purpose
Review Source: Capterra
“Simple to set up, terrible customer support”
- “We’ve used Volusion for four years. They introduced interaction with AMAZON, EBAY, and Google Stores a little more than a year ago. We’ve had issue tickets open for ALL 3 integrations for the past 12 months. Even though we have documented all of the problems and shown how to fix them, they genuinely don’t care (this came from one of the CS managers.) They don’t have to react to these problems right away as long as they keep signing up new members. The worst customer service I’ve ever encountered with comparable service.”
Our Verdict: Average Choice
The plans from Volusion provide user-friendly features at affordable prices. With the lowest transaction costs, the Business plan is the most complete and allows customers to sell an infinite number of products through multiple channels. It also offers priority customer service.
Overall, we advise Volusion for companies with large product inventories. Additionally, if your business has developed to the point that you can afford to spend more than $200 a month on your e-commerce platform, you can take advantage of all that Volusion has to offer, which will open the door for continuous growth.
