Volusion vs. BigCommerce: What’s better, Volusion or BigCommerce?

These days, turning to open shops online and become an online merchant is the way businesses are proceeding and growing into bigger and better ventures.

They are choosing online solutions and platforms that offer them hosting services, security over the web, tools, and features to make their websites practical and user friendly, customer services and technical support facilities, and designing opportunities to make their storefront attractive. This is where Volusion vs. BigCommerce comes into play.

Online merchants also need to have some fluidity, where they can focus their sales strategies, have new features in their stores every now and then, keep their navigability and look up-to-date and easily maneuverable, and cater to their dynamic audience effectively.

This is where eCommerce comes in to play, and the way online businesses are now able to manage their store logistics and customer relations, shows just how much the Ecommerce development industry has flourished and evolved over the years.

These features are mostly available in the web based selling platforms that fall under the SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) type of platform. What makes it easier to use a SaaS platform is that it is made for beginners, who have little or no experience of the web or the Ecommerce.

From all the SaaS solutions, the most popular one is Bigcommerce App Development, which is used and preferred by many people, but the solutions that follow it, namely: BigCommerce and Volusion, are the ones we will be discussing in great detail today.

BigCommerce vs Volusion

As already mentioned, BigCommerce or Volusion, both belong to the SaaS Ecommerce platform type, and are ideal ways to start for beginners, whoever wants to open their own online store.

BigCommerce:

BigCommerce is a platform that helps build web based stores for beginners, who want to start a business online. It helps and sizes of businesses and brands, and is a SaaS platform, so it is less restrictive, and offers much more than other platforms. It is known to have most of its good features already in-built and not to be paid for, and gives a great competition to other platforms such as Shopify and Volusion.

A little history into BigCommerce development company tells us it was launched in 2009, and since then, has grown multi folds over the years.

It has said to be available in about 150 countries worldwide, having hosted more than 95,000 stores, and has brought business of approximately $3 Billion worth of transactions online through it. What makes it a success is its ease of use, easily editable themes and options, and the vast customer support it provides to all its users.

Volusion:

Volusion is also a popular Ecommerce platform that has been around since a decade, and came about when CEO Kevin Sproles found the need for an all-inclusive Ecommerce software, that he wanted to be easy to use. It caters to all types of small large businesses, and currently has more than 40,000 users and merchants on it.

Volusion is a completly cloud-based Ecommerce platform, and has all the basic functions of operating an online store already built into it, but it also has a range of options that are special and set it apart from its other competitors. As this is also a SaaS platform, it has multiple features already available, and is also a good option to be used by beginners.

Just like BigCommerce, even Volusion has a customer support and technical team available for help 24/7, and has been claimed by many users to not having any apparent bugs, and has been smoothly running for many merchants now.

BigCommerce and Volusion are both very good options Ecommerce platforms for merchants who are new to the online business game, and are seeking an easy and affordable solution, especially in the SaaS category.

However, not both are suitable for all businesses, and people need to make sure they are choosing the correct one from BigCommerce versus Volusion according to the needs and perceptions of the business itself.

What’s the difference between BigCommerce and Volusion?

BigCommerce and Volusion may be SaaS software, but they are quite different from one another, and have many features that are only specific to them. Where BigCommerce offers more tools and conversion options without having to pay extra as a built-in feature, Volusion gives you a 99% guarantee on uptime unlike BigCommerce.

Additionally, BigCommerce has a lot of supporting material and easy to sell product outlook, and a double than industry average growth, but Volusion gains the trust of users over uptime and working without pause, so that no business is lost.

The following table shows which of these two, BigCommerce vs. Volusion, is better in the different categories given. This would help you determine which is a better option for your business, according to the needs of your business venture.

Comparative Aspects	BigCommerce	Volusion
Ease of Use	Equal	Equal
Themes	More	Less
Design Flexibility	Equal	Equal
Hosting	Equal	Equal
Functionality	More	Less
Development Time	Less	More
Availability of Features	More	Less
Payment Gateways and their Fees	Equal	Equal
Better Budget and Pricing	Less	More
Marketing Tools	Less	More
SEO Optimization	More	Less
Customer Help and Technical Support	Equal	Equal
Security	More	Less
Integration	Less	More
Sales Features	More	Less
Inventory Management	More	Less
Mobile Responsiveness	Less	More
Application Integrations	More	Less

 

• Ease of Use:

Both the platforms, BigCommerce and Volusion, are equally easy to use, due to the following reasons:

BigCommerce – once you log into it, there is an admin panel which is neat and well organized, and whatever features you need are set in a sidebar divided into categories. There is also a small tutorial present there to help you out with starting up, and the rest is also very easy to navigate and figure out.

Volusion – this also has a similar front like BigCommerce, where there is a clean admin panel, where features are listed in categories on the admin top itself, instead of a sidebar, and there are video tutorials also present in case you need to learn how to function and operate in the space.

Both the platforms also give easy solutions whereby you can add your products, edit your content or create discounts and other options, making both the platforms easy in usability.

• Themes:

All SaaS platforms tend to offer a wider range of pre-made themes, than other kind of platforms. Most people want themes, preferably, to be attractive, highly mobile responsive, and truly simple to edit, so that their business can be up and running in a shorter period of time.

BigCommerce – typically has 7 free themes, that are super easy to edit, and but it is not important that all these themes would fit all kinds of businesses and store outlooks, and some people may need a different set of themes.

For this reason, BigCommerce unveiled the Stencil themes concept last year, which are a collection of 23 new themes that can make up 87 different styles of BigCommerce web design company. Though, only a couple are free, the rest need to be paid for, costing between $145 – $195.

Volusion – initially it presented the users with 11 pre-made themes, having different outlooks and features, but again, not all were mobile responsive or had what some businesses needed, but, they were a better option than BigCommerce.

Recently, though, they have revamped their previous themes, and come up with about 13 editable, free themes, which are all mobile responsive now, and give the user more variety of options without paying extra. If the users still want more options and are willing to pay, Volusion does give them the premium themes option, which can be purchased for $180.

So we see that earlier on, Volusion did have an edge over BigCommerce, but it seems like with the Stencil themes option, BigCommerce could be at a higher level than Volusion.

• Design Flexibility:

The flexibility of a platform refers to how its themes can be manipulated to suit the business needs, how the typeface, fonts, storefronts can be edited to attract the right target market, and how easy all this is for the developer and owner himself.

BigCommerce – is not a very flexible platform, and though it does let you change typefaces and themes, and easily edit as you go, it is not very customizable. But, it’s launching of the new Stencil themes option proves otherwise. Stencil has an editor that easily lets you change your outlook of the themes without needing any prior coding or technical knowledge.

Moreover, the way you see the storefront from the developer’s view, the customers can see the exact same thing, so you know exactly what the customers would see and get attracted to. But, in case the developer does have coding knowledge, BigCommerce also offers the HTML/CSS coding option for editing purposes.

Volusion – has an equal degree of flexibility and is equally customizable in comparison to BigCommerce. It has a “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) editor that lets you edit your theme in the most comfortable and easy way without prior coding knowledge. But there are also the editors, if the user has coding knowledge and wants to go a step further.

So, as we can see, both have equal opportunities of flexibility and customizability, giving them both a tie in this regard.

• Hosting:

Both the platforms, BigCommerce and Volusion, are hosting options, being regarded as web-hosted solutions for online business and shopping carts. This means that they have an in-built hosting system, and take care of all operations regarding the hosting themselves, and the user does not need to bring in any third party hosting options.

Though, both the platforms are easily integrated through with third party hosting, which means that, if the user is comfortable with outsourced hosting, they can bring in their own host party and integrate it with any of the two, BigCommerce or Volusion without any disruption in their business work.

• Functionality:

The user who is paying for any shopping cart solution software for its online store, can expect some basic foundations and features to build on, but, they also expect something more and special than just the basics that attracts them to choose your platform. This is where the functionality of the software platform comes into play.

BigCommerce – is a completely transparent Ecommerce platform, which lists down its pricing plans, and all that each plan includes, without any additional hidden costs. It gives the users a selection of themes, multiple features and tools, a security option, different gateways to use and much more, making it a highly functional platform.

Though, where functionality comes in, BigCommerce also is a little unconventional where it caps the sales per month, and restricts the user’s profit margins until they subscribe to a higher and more expensive plan, or pay a penalty for going overboard.

Volusion – is not a transparent platform, and does urge the users to pay extra fees and some additional costs along the way, which can be deemed as hidden costs. From cancellation charges, to migrations costs and even email or bandwidth overage, they charge the user.

In addition to these, the fact that SSL also costs extra as it is not provided by Volusion and even extra themes that need to be paid for, all of this cause Volusion to lack in the area of advanced functionality, giving BigCommerce the upper hand in this situation.

• Development Time:

The amount of time it takes for a user or developer to develop the website and have it up and running in a short period of time will take him towards success, as it means getting into business faster, and having lesser down time, which help you in not losing customers.

BigCommerce – being less customizable and easy to maneuver, BigCommerce websites can have their hosting, security, features, products and shop up and running in even less than a day, and just within a few hours. Users do not waste any time in customizing, and jump straight to the business.

Volusion – Volusion initially had more theme options, so users would spend a longer time choosing a theme that suits their business. Though, Volusion does guarantee its users a 99% up time, and mostly has no downtime issues, so even if the development of Volusion takes some time, to get the SSL certificate from third party providers, and gathering other things that are required and not in-built, it would not be too long as Volusion has the business up and running.

Therefore, even though BigCommerce takes lesser development time, it gets stuck in later downtime issues more than Volusion does.

• Availability of Features:

The fact that features an important aspect of any online business website is inevitable. These features are what makes the website a success, leading to higher profits for the business. Features also enable the user to do multiple tasks and things in a much easier way.

In the case of BigCommerce vs Volusion, both platforms offer the same kind of, or similar features that are basically necessary for developing any web store and further features are also similar, but the only difference is, the availability of those features on both platforms is different from each other.

BigCommerce – has mostly all features available in all its plans, just that some added features are provided to users to enhance their online stores in the higher priced plans. More or less, BigCommerce has all features built-in already, and so, the user does not have to pay for any plugins or additional charges for any feature as such.

BigCommerce features include the following:

• Product Reviews
• SSL Certificate
• Built-in Blogs
• Import / Export in Bulk
• Customer Groups for easier targeting
• One-Page Checkout System
• Abandoned Cart Saver
• Filter Searching
• Integrations with eBay and Amazon

Volusion – on the other hand, has a different set of features that it offers under its different pricing plans. As you pay more and subscribe to a higher priced plan, you will get more and more features. Some of Volusion’s best features are as follows, some even similar to those of BigCommerce:

• One-Page Checkout System
• Abandoned Cart – Reporting and Email
• Product Reviews and Ratings
• Unlimited Product Options
• BigCommerce Integration or other platforms such as eBay and Facebook

In this regard, BigCommerce takes the upper hand when it comes to providing features that are similar and basic to all pricing plans, and the user does not have to pay higher for. For example, ratings and reviews on products are only available at higher pricing plans for Volusion, but BigCommerce has this feature in all of its plans.

• Payment Gateways and their Fees:

It is easier for a user to conduct business and related transactions between the company and the customers if the platform provides multiple gateways for payment processing.

BigCommerce – is known to be very friendly in his regard, as it offers 40 payment gateways, including many well-known names in the market, making the transactions very easy and faster. In addition, they have a special arrangement set up with PayPal, which gives a discount, and easier deal than many other payment processors, so people would prefer that.  so you can connect your site with your preferred payment processor.

Volusion – also offers about 30 payment gateways, and also an in-house payment solution that is powered by themselves, but is limited to US merchants only, called the Volusion Merchant Services. It helps the merchants avail reduced rates that could benefit them and their business. Though, many reviews on this service have presented concerns about cancellation charges, hidden fees and unfair contracts.

While we are discussing the payment gateways, it’s crucial to outline that if you design Shopify store and Volusion, you can integrate the payment gateway hosts. It will optimize the transactions from Stripe as well as from PayPal.

So, in this case, BigCommerce takes the cup of providing more gateways, and charging lower fees than Volusion and other platforms.

• Better Budget and Pricing:

Both the platforms, Bigcommerce and Volusion offer multiple plans to attract the vast range of user options and size of businesses. The plans are as follows:

BigCommerce Pricing Plans	Volusion Pricing Plans
Standard – $29.95 per month	Personal – $29 per month
Plus – $79.95 per month	Professional – $79 per month
Pro – $249.95 per month	Business – $299 per month
Enterprise – Variable pricing, depending on the requirements of the business.	Prime – Customized pricing, depending on the requirements of the business.

 

As we can see from the table above having all the pricing plans for both platforms listed, both BigCommerce and Volusion have very similar pricing plans, deeming a tie between both in regards to the prices they charges their customers for their services.

• Marketing Tools:

Marketing tools help in the growth of your business through different forms and platforms of marketing, and both, BigCommerce versus Volusion, seem to offer good marketing tools, such as:

• Gift Cards
• Discount Coupons
• Facebook Storefronts
• Banners, etc.

Though, Volusion takes the crown when it comes to offering marketing tools, as it goes a few steps further and provides many more marketing features such as:

• CRM Tool (on higher priced plans).
• Setting up affiliate program for more traffic.
• Sending E-newsletters.

Many of these services beat the in-built marketing services provided by BigCommerce, and so, Volusion is a better platform with regards to marketing tools and growth of the business through them.

In order to make your business successful, it must have what is called a SEO optimization conducted on it, so that it emerges earlier and faster on search engines, making your website popular and most viewed.

BigCommerce – allows you to easily edit names, meta titles, even the description, and has a special way to go about using keywords instead of longer sentences, etc., making it highly successful in SEO optimization like any other SEO platforms such as Shopify SEO features. Alongside, it also provides the following services:

• Searching of keyword friendly URLs:
• Accelerated Mobile Pages format (AMPs)

Volusion – allows some changes and tweaks in the SEO settings, it is a little difficult to edit things than in BigCommerce. It also over complicates some of the options, making it difficult, especially for beginners, to optimize their SEO operations.

As opposed to BigCommerce, Volusion tends to:

• Use variables for searching rather than keywords.
• No sign of AMP functionality within this platform.

Thus, it is pretty clear that BigCommerce for sure has an advantage over Volusion in the SEO optimization category, as it is highly successful in gaging the search engine audience through different channels as opposed to Volusion.

• Customer Help and Technical Support:

With regard to customer help and technical support, both headless BigCommerce development support and Volusion offer similar basic levels that fulfill the needs of the users promptly.

BigCommerce – offers a 24/7 personal bigcommerce support and maintenance services in all its pricing plans, which can be achieved via email, calls, and live chat. In addition, they provide self-help resources, too, including Youtube videos, webinars, a community and forum, a Resource Center, etc.

Volusion – offers a similar support service like BigCommerce, with a 24/7 personal support option via emails, phone, or chat. The self-help options also are available and include video tutorials, webinars, a Knowledge Base, etc.

• Security:

Having your online store secure is a very important feature that the users need in order to opt for any specific software platform.

BigCommerce – already has a fully built-in security system, along with an SSL certificate within it, totally free of cost as it is covered in the pricing plans.

Volusion – does not have any SSL certificate and users need to buy one from a third party and bring it on board, which means additional cost is incurred by Volusion users.

This is a clear win for BigCommerce as it is providing security features itself as an in-built feature and users not having to pay extra for keeping their business and online store safe.

• Integration:

Integrations are an essential part of an online store, and so, are also essentially supposed to be provided by the software platforms. Both Volusion vs BigCommerce provide different integrations, as we can see below:

BigCommerce – readily lets you integrate your whole store with big names like eBay and Amazon, even available in their cheapest pricing plans, and all the rest. Their app market is also flooded with about 320 add-ons and plugins, though some are to be paid for.

Moreover, BigCommerce also offers its users easy native integrations with companies such as eBay, Amazin, ShipperHQ, etc.

Volusion – does let you integrate with eBay and Amazon, though you need to have the expensive plans such as Business or Prime in order to avail this facility. Their marketplace for apps includes about 80 add-ons and plugins, along with popular apps such as MailChimp, Quickbooks, etc.

Both the platform, BigCommerce and Volusion also offer APIs so that your developer can easily build and fill any missing connections between you and the customers or the system. Though, BigCommerce takes the upper hand here, as it has many more add-ons than Volusion, and also offers additional native integrations that are special to it.

• Sales Features:

Sales features refer to the number of sales the business can conduct, which can also be related to the sales limit option. Volusion vs BigCommerce both platforms have sales caps in each of their pricing plans, which are as follows:

BigCommerce Sales Limits	Volusion Sales Limits
Standard – $50,000	Personal – $50,000
Plus – $150,000	Professional – $100,000
Pro – $400,000	Business – $500,000
Enterprise – customized and negotiable depending on the business’s needs.	Prime – also negotiable and depend on the needs of the business.

 

Both platforms have upper limits to the amount of sales carried out by businesses and the profits gained from it. If a business goes over the limits, they are faced with a penalty situation, or asked to change their plan to a higher, more expensive one.

• Inventory Management

Inventory Management is a very essential feature if you want to have an up and running successful business online. The inventory relates to how many products are displayed in the online store, and how much sales are being made.

BigCommerce – this platform has no cap on the upper limit of how many products can be displayed, as it gives an unlimited product portfolio permission to users of all its pricing plans. In addition, importing and exporting different products is very easy on all pricing plans of BigCommerce.

Volusion – this platform has an upper limit cap on the number of products are offered in most of its pricing plans, but this limit can be raised or eliminated for users who are using the Business or Prime pricing plan. In the case of importing and exporting different products, again, the user needs to have the Professional or any higher pricing plan if they want to avail this facility.

Volusion hardly lets inventory management settle down, as it puts an upper limit of the number of products offered and sold, which is not something any of the BigCommerce pricing plans would do, making it the winner of this round.

• Mobile Responsiveness:

Today’s need for websites and their designs is to be more practical than fancy or flashy. This is because the designs need to highly responsive to other gadgets as well, such as laptops, desktops, mobile devices, etc.

BigCommerce – out of its multiple themes, only two of the BigCommerce themes are mobile responsive in design, and in order to get more themes at hand that are responsive, BigCommerce users need to pay a premium amount to fulfill their business needs.

Volusion – even though Volusion also charges a premium amount for extra theme options that are highly mobile responsive, it still gives more room to users by offering at least six themes that are free of cost, which is a better shot than BigCommerce at selling their services.

Thus, it does depend on the kind of business that is in question and what degree of mobile responsiveness is required, then a decision can be made by the owner.

• Application Integrations:

Applications are a great way to edit and add more functionality and design to your online store, and need integration rights with other third party applications in order to make changes through it. This is called Application Integrations.

BigCommerce – has an app store of its own, and also has a larger range and variety of apps than Volusion does, which account to about 600.

Volusion – also as an app store of its own, but only has about 73 apps for integration purposes, and some of the well-known accounting apps like Xero or Freshbooks are also nowhere to be found on Volusion.

Therefore, even though both platforms are friendly with application integrations from outside, as third party apps, BigCommerce still has a larger variety of integration options than Volusion.

FAQs

Q.1.) Is Volusion the biggest competitor of BigCommerce?

BigCommerce follows the same SaaS program that Volusion also follows, and they both are similar Ecommerce platforms, having multiple similar features according to the comparative analysis presented above. Though, in most of the scenarios, BigCommerce has performed better than Volusion giving it an upper hand.

Thus, even though Volusion does give much competition to BigCommerce within the Ecommerce industry, it is still not the only biggest competitor that BigCommerce has. Shopify is another big name in the Ecommerce industry that gives both, BigCommerce and Volusion a tough time, making it one of their biggest competitors.

Q.2.) Which would you recommend: BigCommerce or Volusion? And Why?

Which of these two: Volusion vs BigCommerce is more suitable to use for your business, actually depends on the kind of business you are conducting, and your business needs will then proceed to choosing the right themes, design, features required, the kind of inventory you need and the marketing you want to conduct to sell your product.

Though, if you have little or no technical knowledge and are looking for something highly easy to use, BigCommerce is your pick for your online website, because not only is it easier to use as compared to Volusion, it also gives you limited options for themes and design, making you waste less time on customization, and focus more on starting your business as soon as possible.

This means that BigCommerce has a lesser development time than Volusion, also gives hosting, security, SEO options and a way to tackle the abandoned cart issue, making it more desirable than Volusion.

Q.3.) BigCommerce or Volusion: Considering speed, product numbers, technical support, and the use of a shared hosting service, which e-commerce solution is better?

The following comparison will give you a better idea about which platform, Volusion vs BigCommerce is better for all the comparisons listed:

• Speed – Volusion has a 99% chance of uptime, whereas BigCommerce struggles in the downtime department, though, both are fast Ecommerce platforms when it comes to website loading, online help and support, and shopping cart features.
• Product Numbers – Even though both the platforms has a certain cap in their pricing plans on the number of products sold per month on an annual basis, BigCommerce can import and export more products onto its websites than Volusion.
• Technical Support – Both platforms provide updated 24/7 technical support to their users, through emails, calls, live chat, and multiple other options.
• Shared Hosting – Both platforms have we web hosting license for being shopping cart solutions, as they are SaaS platforms themselves.

Thus, we can see that most of the features are in-built and provided equally by both, BigCommerce and Volusion, though, Volusion does have an upper hand in the speed region, where BigCommerce is struggling a little.

Q.4.) Volusion vs BigCommerce: which one is best for small business owners?

Small business owners have a small setup, and are looking mainly for a basic online store, that could help them present their products online in an effective manner.

It is safe to assume that they will not be having a high profit margin, and so, will need a platform that requires lesser investment and gives more returns. It is also possible that the small business owners has next to none technical knowledge, so will also need something that is easy to use at the beginner level.

In this case, BigCommerce could be a better option. This is because, even in the cheapest pricing plan of BigCommerce, a lot of in-built features are already present, and thus, no added costs will be required. BigCommerce pricing plans have in-built themes, features, marketing tools, SEO optimization requirements, and SSL certificate for safety purposes and higher levels of integrations and payment gateways.

So, it is obvious that all these would facilitate and help the small business to flourish more than the options Volusion offers. Thus, from Volusion vs BigCommerce, BigCommerce is highly recommended for small businesses.