Volusion vs Shopify | Differences You Should Know to create your online store?

What is volusion and shopify?

Ecommerce stores are all the buzz today with entrepreneurs and businessmen looking for more opportunities to dig into this lucrative and high-potential business segment.

If you have lately been looking to jump on the E-commerce business, you must have come across some popular ecommerce development platforms including Shopify web design, volusion, and others.

Both Shopify and volusion are among the various other ecommerce platforms that are meant to enable entrepreneurs and businessmen to get started with their ecommerce initiative easily and without much hassle. In simple words, these are dedicated ecommerce platforms that offer businessmen and entrepreneurs with plenty of features and functionalities to get started with the ecommerce marketplace.

However, while both have a similar underlying objective and much similar target audience, there still exist some major points of differentiation between the two platforms. For instance, the Shopify platform comes with much more robust and advanced sales features as compared to Volusion, whereas, Volusion comes with its strong and advanced data analytics tools.

So, in our Shopify vs Volusion blog, we will be comparing the different features and functionalities of each of these platforms to figure out which platform serves best the needs of different e-commerce business models.

Why and how to Compare Shopify vs volusion?

When we talk about eCommerce web development platforms available in the market, Shopify and volusion are two of the strongest contenders based on the features, functionalities, as well as, number of ecommerce sites powered by each platform.

If we look at the volusion vs Shopify individually, we came to know that Shopify stands out as one of the biggest and best eCommerce development platforms with robust features and functionalities. The platform offers perhaps one of the strongest and most comprehensive sales tools, along with high compatibility for third-party apps integration, which is crucial for the growth of any eCommerce business.

However, while Shopify may be one of the best eCommerce platforms, it definitely isn’t ideally suited for all eCommerce stores. It will eventually lack some of the inbuilt features that may be required for some eCommerce stores’ tastes or budgets. This is why we have such comparisons like Shopify vs BigCommerce Vs Volusion and others.

Similarly to Shopify, volusion is yet another strong contender as a leading eCommerce development platform offering strong features and functionalities to online store owners. The platform comes with strong payment options, as well as, some pretty robust data analytics and customer insights; which makes it an ideal platform for many e-commerce stores.

So, let’s just get started with our Shopify vs Volusion comparison and see how these two platforms compare with each other in different aspects.

Volusion vs Shopify: Pros and Cons

Let’s begin our Shopify vs volusion for ecommerce comparison by looking at the pros and cons of each platform.

Volusion Pros

– A large number of payment gateways to choose from

– One of the strongest and most advanced data analytics and reporting features

– Highly responsive and aesthetically pleasing mobile app

– Simple and intuitive interface

– Strong customization capabilities to suit a range of e-commerce stores

Volusion Cons

– Very few application options

– Lack of blogging functionality

– No support for digital products

– No specific niche

Shopify Pros

– Robust and advanced sales features

– Large app store

– Dedicated and robust Shopify customer support

– Strong community

– Brilliant custom shopping cart

– High integration with dropshipping features

Shopify Cons

– Transaction fees charged for Shopify payment gateways

– More expensive with some of the other ecommerce platforms

– Difficult to switch between themes (need to reformat the entire site)

Ok, now that we have a summary of the pros and cons of each of the platforms, let’s get started with our Shopify vs volusion comparison for different features and functionalities.

Volusion vs Shopify: Pricing

While pricing may not be the most obvious consideration when it comes to choosing the best and right ecommerce platform, it nonetheless is an important consideration especially for small and medium-sized businesses with a tight budget.

When we compare pricing for Shopify vs volusion, we get to know that both of these platforms come with competitive pricing options, which is good news for entrepreneurs who are always after budget platforms with reliable features.

Starting with Shopify, the pricing plans for the platform start around $9/month and may go as high as $299/month or more depending upon the package, functionality, and support you are looking for.

The good news is that the pricing plans for both Volusion and Shopify are often considered to be quite competitive. Shopify’s packages start at around $9 per month and go all the way up to $299 per month depending on the functionality and support that you might need.

Shopify offers four different pricing plans for ecommerce stores including;

– Light plan: starting at $9/month

– Basic Shopify Plan: starting at $29/month

– Shopify Plan: $79/month

– Advanced Shopify Plan: $299/month

While Shopify pricing plans are certainly competitive and within budget for most ecommerce stores, what makes the platform slightly unattractive is the transaction fee which it charges for most payment gateways. The only way to avoid paying transaction costs is to opt for the platform’s own payment gateway (Shopify Payments) which is offered to only US customers. So, if you are outside of the US or you choose another payment gateway, you may get charged for the transaction fee varying for each pricing plan;

– Light plan: 2% transaction fee

– Basic Shopify Plan: 2% transaction fee

– Shopify Plan: 1% transaction fee

– Advanced Shopify Plan: 0.5% transaction fee

On a slightly positive note, the platform does offer a free trial that can be leveraged to assess the compatibility and features offered by the platform for your ecommerce stores.

Moving on to volusion, similar to Shopify, the platform offers four different pricing plans ranging from $14 to $135.

– Mini Plan: starting at $14/month

– Plus Plan: starting at $35/month

– Pro Plan: Starting at $75/month

– Premium Plan: Starting at $135/month

What makes volusion much more appealing than Shopify is that unlike Shopify it doesn’t charge any transaction fee, which means you can enjoy using the services of the platform without having to worry about leaking money through a transaction fee. However, it’s important to remember that whatever ecommerce tools you use, it comes with gateway fees and some other costs like customized shopping cart, POS system, and others. Irrespective of the plan you choose, both Shopify and volusion offer unlimited bandwidth and products, which is great for ecommerce store scalability in mind.

Read Also Shopify vs Magento Coalition

Who’s the winner with respect to Shopify fee vs volusion? Well, as we said earlier, pricing may not be the most pressing and critical aspect based on which you should choose an ecommerce platform. In a nutshell, both platforms offer quite similar pricing plans, apart from the transaction fee levied by Shopify which makes it slightly less popular and leaves volusion with an advantage.

Volusion vs Shopify: Ease of Use/development time

As we mentioned in the earlier section of our volusion pattern vs Shopify, both of these platforms offer quite robust and comprehensive functionalities, along with an intuitive and interactive interface to help ecommerce store owners easily develop and manage their stores.

Now, in this section of our volusion ecommerce vs Shopify, we will look in more details about the Volusion vs Shopify development time and ease of use of each of these platforms to figure out which one may suits the needs and requirements of your ecommerce store.

Starting with Shopify, perhaps the best part about the platform is its “Wizard Mode”, which enables even the novice users to get started with the development and management of their store; one feature which is lacked in volusion. Moving on, the Shopify comes with a clean and declutter backend that’s pretty simple and straightforward to use, thanks to various modules and segments. It literally takes to time and effort to add products to your store or integrate third-party apps. The platform also makes it super easy to customize the store like adding custom discount offers to boost sales.

Read Also Shopify vs Snipcart

Moving on to volusion, the platform also comes with an interactive and intuitive interface, with high-utility tools to enable effortless development and management of ecommerce store. One special aspect to mention when we talk about volusion is its strong focus on the usability of its interface. The platform offers drag and drops components, along with customized icons and other tools that make it super easy to develop and manage an ecommerce store.

Read Also Shopify Plus vs Shopify Advanced

Now, comparing Shopify vs volusion, we can say that for absolute beginners, volusion may seem to be a more appealing and appropriate platform, with plenty of interactive and intuitive features that literally holds your hand to take you through the store development, which is kind of cool considering loads of other aspects entrepreneurs have to worry about.

Volusion vs Shopify: Sales Features

When we talk about the success or failure of any ecommerce store, sales features offered by the platform are definitely right at the top of the consideration for online stores. In a highly competitive market, ecommerce stores need a robust and comprehensive sales feature that can boost your online store’s sales and open up revenue channels.

Read Also Launch Cart vs Shopify

Now, when it comes to comparing volusion vs Shopify for sales feature, we can safely say that volusion starts a little low for this aspect. The sales features offered by the platform doesn’t come anyway near to the capabilities and functionalities offered by Shopify. In fact, it may be trickier to get used to the sales features offered by volusion; especially for ecommerce stores looking to speed through the process. However, on the positive side, the platform does offer some pretty robust tools.

What really stands out when we talk about sales features comparison of Shopify vs volusion is that in the later, the focus is greatly on the data analytics tools, whereas, in Shopify, the focus is more on direct sales.

The “search term analysis” feature offered by volusion enables users to analyze audience search queries on Google, as they land on your website, which is a great indirect mean to drive more audience to the store. However, on the downside, to be able to integrate the “search function” with your store, you will need to purchase/integrate third-party marketing tools. Also, another downside for volusion is that it doesn’t offer any support for blogging, which greatly restricts your indirect sales options, and you would have to rely on third-party platforms like WordPress to compensate for the lack of blogging support.

Read Also Cart.com vs Shopify

Alternatively, when we talk about sales features offered by Shopify, we can see that the focus here is greatly on direct sales. The platform offers a pretty basic level of analytics and reporting tools, however, it does offer integration of third-party applications to boost your analytics and reporting capabilities. Also, the higher tier pricing plans do include some solid analytics and reporting functionalities. However, while Shopify lacks the robust analytics and reporting tools, it more than makes up to it with its strong, comprehensive, and advanced direct marketing tools like SEO and others that make it one of the best platforms in terms of sales features.

Some of the sales features offered by both platforms include:

– Inventory management

– Online store functionality

– Provision of discounts and promos

– Shipping charges calculation

– Multiple payment gateway options

– Multi-lingual capabilities

– SEO capabilities

– Customization options

Volusion vs Shopify: Design and Templates

Moving on, it’s time to take a close look at the design and templates functionalities and features offered by each platform. The significance of Volusion vs Shopify web design and templates towards the success of any ecommerce store is obvious and thereby it is a no-brainer to say that any ecommerce platform should offer aesthetically pleasing and highly interactive design and templates to make it a success story.

Now, when we look at Shopify for the design and template we can safely say that the platform is right at the top in terms of the level of customization offered to the customers, as well as, intriguing and exquisite design templates available to users. The best part about the design and template offered at Shopify is that all of these design templates aren’t just stunning and functional, but also super easy to implement and edit. The platform offers WYSIWYG editor which enable drag and drop option for users; making it much easier and simpler for users to create ecommerce store designs as per their needs and requirements, even without any prior coding knowledge.

Now, when we look at the design and template options offered by volusion, we come to see that we have pretty limited or rather restrictive options in here. There are literally the only handful of design templates available with the platform that you can choose from. However, on the plus side, the platform does offer a high degree of theme customization through CSS, and certainly, all of the themes are professionally designed. Apart from CSS editor, the platform also offers WYSIWYG editor which enables beginners, users, with no prior coding experience to customize available designs as per their liking.

The good news for users here is that irrespective of which platform you choose, both of these platforms offer highly responsive design templates, which significantly improves your sales and marketing chances.

So, who’s the winner here?

All in this case we certainly have a clear winner – Shopify. The platform comes with a large inventory of professionally designed and aesthetically pleasing design templates along with easy to customize options; making it possible for users to get started with their unique ecommerce store. On the other hand, volusion almost lost it from the beginning with restrictive design themes availability.

Volusion vs Shopify Apps and Payment Gateways 

Ok, while the sales and design features are certainly important consideration and influence the success or failure of any ecommerce store, let’s agree to the fact that there are other important aspects like payment gateways which also greatly influence the success of an online store.

When it comes to Shopify vs volusion for payment gateways, we can say that both of these platforms come with pretty impressive functionalities and options for users. Whether it is Volusion integration or Shopify integration the both platforms enable all of major payment gateways to the store, empowering you to allow transactions for as many channels as possible. To be precise, Shopify has 100+ payment gateway options, whereas, volusion also enables integration of up to 34 payment gateway integration.

Interestingly, the payment gateway options for Volusion would differ depending on the users’ geographic location. For instance, the platform enables up to 30 payment gateways when you are managing the store from the United States, whereas, if you are in Europe, you would only be left with 8 options, which isn’t just strange but also a big disadvantage for the platform.

A similarity between Volusion and Shopify in terms of payment gateway functions is that both of these platforms come with their payment gateways. The proprietary Shopify gateway “Shopify Payments” is available for integration across 11 countries, and comes free from transaction fees. Alternatively, the “volusion payments” are currently only available for the United States.

Another interesting feature in terms of payment gateway options offered by both platforms is that Shopify charges a transaction fee for all payment gateways except for its own “Shopify Payments”. Whereas, volusion doesn’t charge a transaction fee for other gateways but do charge a monthly fee for its “volusion payment”.

So, when we look at the options available, as well as, functionalities offered by each platform, Shopify is again a clear winner. While it does charge a transaction fee, the number of payment gateway options makes it stand out as the winner.

Volusion vs Shopify: MARKETING:

Getting your store up and running is just one part of the game, and to be able to transform it in a success story you need robust and advanced marketing features that can help drive traffic and increase sales to your store. So, next in line in our volusion vs Shopify comparison, we will be looking at the marketing features offered by each of these platforms.

Starting with Shopify, the platform comes with strong SEO features, as well as, capabilities to integrate with some of the leading marketing, analytics, and reporting third-party apps like Google Ads or Google Analytics. Apart from third-party integration, the platform also offers its built-in analytics software that offers sufficient tools to keep track of important metrics and optimize the store’s performance. Some of the built-in marketing tools offered by Shopify include;

– Integrated coupon engine

– ListShopify (for newsletter management)

However, to leverage the complete potential of the platform, it is highly recommended to integrate third-party applications that can significantly boost the marketing and revenue for the store. The best part about third-party integration is that the platform offers 1000s of third-party applications in its store, from where you can easily integrate applications of your choice. Some of the most popular third-party applications like Facebook or Instagram for marketing purposes include applications for customer reviews, social media channels, email marketing tools, shipping tools, and others. All of these third-party tools can be integrated individually to meet the growing needs of the ecommerce store.

Moving on to volusion, the platform once again seems to lag behind Shopify in terms of the marketing features. You don’t need many details, rather just an overview of the volusion app store reveals very limited apps available for integration. And we are not talking about a few hundred but rather only a couple of dozens of apps that are available with the Volusion app store for integration, which simply puts it right at the bottom for any e-commerce platform comparison.

So, unsurprisingly our winner for marketing features is Shopify, with its strong built-in marketing tools, as well as, a wide range of third-party integration options that makes it easy to compete with other stores.

Volusion vs Shopify: POS

To be able to leverage the complete potential out of your ecommerce store, you would like to take it offline, right? Fortunately, Shopify and volusion both platforms come with a point of sale solutions for their users.

For Shopify, store owners can buy the POS hardware from their store directly. The POS system would include the barcode scanner, receipt printer, till, and other hardware. The platform also enables you to sync your store’s data directly to the backend, which allows for easier and integrated inventory management. Also, another POS feature offered by Shopify is that it enables you to use a POS checkout with all of its pricing plans. The only prerequisite is that you should be using a card reader, along with an app that is able to integrate with Shopify. However, if you are looking to leverage the complete POS features offered by the platform, you should be in the “High-tier” pricing plans.

Moving on to volusion, the platform also comes with support for POS functionality. Store owners get to use a range of POS hardware including UPC scanners, tills, card readers, receipt printers, and others, allowing you to create your business presence offline, as well. While the platform allows syncing of inventory information in real-time, you may need some additional time to figure out the configuration settings with Volusion.

So, who’s the winner here?

Well, there is no clear winner and both platforms offer comprehensive support for POS systems.

Shopify vs Volusion: Application Integrations

Moving on with our Shopify vs Volusion comparison, let’s see how these two e-commerce development platforms fares with respect to application integration.

Well, if you have read it from the top, you would have already known that Shopify stands out right at the top when it comes to third-party apps integration. The Shopify app store has over 1000 third-party apps for different purposes. These apps can easily be integrated with the online store to optimize specific store function and yield better performance and more revenue.

On the other hand, volusion doesn’t stand a chance to even compete anywhere near with its few dozen of third-party apps available with the Volusion app store.

The lack of third-party app integration doesn’t just make volusion lose a point in app integration purpose, rather significantly damage the platform’s utility and overall competing prowess with Shopify or other ecommerce development platforms.

Volusion vs Shopify: Blogging

Blogging is an important marketing aspect for all ecommerce businesses. It not only plays a crucial role in bringing better search engine rankings for the store, but also plays a significant role in the branding of the store, and thereby is an important ecommerce store function to consider in our Shopify vs volusion comparison.

Starting with volusion, unfortunately, the platform doesn’t offer any support for blogging, which leaves store owners with the only option to look out for third-party blogging platforms for integration (which again is very limited in case of volusion).

On the other hand, Shopify does offer built-in tools and support for blogging, which enable store owners to continuously update the content on the store for better search engine ranking and increasing branding possibilities. However, it is worth noting that the blogging tools and support offered by Shopify is nowhere near the top as offered by some of the other platforms like WordPress; nonetheless, the platform does support blogging and offer basic level blogging tools which makes it a clear winner for our volusion vs Shopify comparison.

Shopify vs Volusion: SEO

Search engine optimization or SEO is an important aspect for all online businesses looking to break into the market and reach a higher audience.

Now, when it comes to SEO features offered by Shopify vs volusion, we see that both of the platforms offer some solid support for SEO including page customization, Meta titles, meta-descriptions, and others.

A great feature offered by both platforms is the 301 redirect, which enables online store owners to change their URLs without losing their current page ranking. More specifically, Shopify enables the creation of a new path under the online store, whereas, this can be achieved through the redirects manager section.

If we are to compete with the SEO features offered by both platforms, Shopify again stands out for the ease of integration of SEO features and functionalities. For instance, editing URLs in Shopify is much easier and simpler as compared to volusion. In fact, Shopify offers easy editing of almost all features with some strings attached as compared to volusion where users may find it a little difficult to edit SEO functionalities.

So, while there isn’t a clear winner in this aspect, Shopify with its easy editing feature does have an advantage over volusion.

Volusion vs Shopify Customer Support

Customer service is just an essential aspect for any business; be it physical or online. In fact, when we talk about ecommerce businesses, customer support is even more important as online shoppers are much more demanding in terms of quality of service and dedicated customer support required. Thereby, it is important for ecommerce stores to maintain effective and dedicated customer support to be able to attract and retain users.

Moreover, it’s not just the users that are after customer support, store owners also rely on dedicated customer support from these platforms to get through the various processes and systems required to create and manage ecommerce stores, as well as, to optimize their customer service.

Starting with Shopify, the platform enables live chat and 24/7 phone assistance, which is certainly a great beginning. Moreover, the platform also offers detailed guidance through social media and email. In fact, once you scale your business and move up to a high-tier plan, you get access to a dedicated service agent to help you through the entire process.

When it comes to volusion, the platform does offer phone support, however, it is restricted to 7 Am to 10 PM CST. Apart from phone support, the platform doesn’t offer any email guidance or social media support, maybe because they believe the phone support is sufficient for their users.

Nonetheless, it’s easy to say that Shopify is hands-down the winner when it comes to customer support for ecommerce stores.

Shopify vs Volusion: Which One Wins?

So, there you have it, everything you want to know to compare Shopify vs volusion.

But which one you think stands out?

Well, I believe Shopify is the winner in most cases starting from a large range of design and templates to strong and dedicated customer support and a pretty extensive range of third-party integration. And while volusion does offer lots of features and functionalities for ecommerce store owners, it lags in most of the metrics including no blogging support, limited themes, very limited third-party integration, and others.

And while our clear winner is Shopify, this doesn’t mean that volusion is any lesser of a platform, rather it may come better for some ecommerce store owners given its strong and robust data analytics and reporting feature, which certainly enable store owners to get a better picture of their store and optimize for even better performance. For more help regarding Shopify, how about you get in touch with Folio3’s Shopify Development Partners?