The answer to the million-dollar question Shopify Vs Volusion is… well, you will have through this entire blog. Gone are the days when life was easier because choices were limited. Today the biggest confusion for most people is to choose between the available options. This dilemma is not only limited to personal lives but transcends to business choices as well. Almost 2 decades ago if someone had to build an eCommerce store, they had limited options to choose from and could set up one faster because of that. It would be mostly Shopify Vs Volusion. Now, not to say that have the options is necessarily a bad thing but unless you have a fair idea of different aspects of choosing a good eCommerce store provider, you won’t be able to make a sound business decision.
Let’s look at some of the most popular eCommerce service providers in the world & compare them to make it easier to choose the one which fits in your needs & business requirements more precisely.
Table of Contents
1. Reach/Popularity
One of the metrics you need to look out for before you end up choosing an eCommerce store service provider is their reach/popularity and market share. The bigger their market share, the easier it will be to deploy, use and manage them. Shopify is obviously bigger than Volusion stating 600,000 businesses use their platform while Volusion says it has 180,000 customers. Clearly, Shopify is more than 3 times bigger just with those numbers.
Is Shopify better than Volusion?
The reasons for popularity can be several like 3rd party integrations, pricing and/or the above-mentioned ones in relation to UI or overall usability. It’s not just Volusion vs Shopify so do not limit your options and look at all the possible decision making elements like Integrations, ease of use and whether it’s easy to deploy/manage for the merchant. Most eCommerce web designers who are either used to Shopify or Volusion would become Shopify designers or Volusion experts and would want you to have a store on either platform based on purely their convenience rather than taking account of your needs. You have to make sure you don’t get trapped with such companies.
2. Pricing
If you have budgetary constraints and are in the market for your eCommerce store setup then Volusion is your best bet. They have cheaper plans than Shopify and any Shopify Vs Volusion will be able to establish that fact quite easily. While you may not have much design freedom or template choosing options with Volusion you will definitely to move on to a different platform later on when you do have enough cash flow. There is a clear cut winner in terms of cost and pricing here because unlike Shopify their cheapest plan has no transaction costs involved. Have a look at the pricing for both here. The only two things where Volusion isn’t that great is Online sales per year and the number of products in the store where Shopify has no limits.
Shopify Plans: How much does Shopify cost?
Volusion Plans: How much does Volusion cost?
3. Feature Parity
When it comes to features, Shopify is a more feature-rich platform and it even has more useful features because of 3rd party integrations and has their own payment service besides a rich collection of themes and overall ease of use. The screenshots above are just an indication of the same.
4. Shopify Vs Volusion: How good is the support?
The support from both the companies is equally good and they also make it easier as to how much support can merchants offer to customers. This aspect does not have a clear winner and any instances of declaring preference of one over another might be individual experiences. In this context, the Shopify Vs Volusion comparison ends in a tie.
5. Scalability
Another very important aspect of the eCommerce partner you choose is how good are they at scaling and uptime. You cannot afford not being able to reach out to more of your customers and not being available to them in case the website is facing any technical difficulties. You need to choose the eCommerce platform based on how good they are at scaling and how many bigger partners they have on their platform. Ultimately it will also depend on your own needs and requirements as well but it’s always prudent to choose a tried and tested partner. Shopify is a clear winner with more merchants using their platform here. Shopify has demonstrated enough evidence of scalability signing up bigger partners and growing its platform exponentially over the years. Some of the biggest stores that are using Shopify are Tesla, Budweiser, WaterAid, The Economist, The New York Times Shop and many more.
Recommended: BigCommerce vs Shopify – A Comparison for eCommerce Enthusiasts
6. Payment options
Shopify has its own payment service called “Shopify Payments” which is available in a few countries besides the support of all leading 3rd party providers, which is also offered by Volusion. Volusion has its own “Volusion Payments” too but it’s only available in the USA. This gives an edge to Shopify over Volusion and also works out cheaper for merchants choosing Shopify because they don’t pay any charges for using Shopify Payments but Volusion has no transaction fees as well and as such it really comes down to the choice of if you can live with the other limitations imposed by them in lieu of not charging transaction fees.
Shopify payment options
7. Template designs
Shopify and Volusion, both provide attractive templates which are professional and responsive.
Shopify offers 10 free templates moreover Volusion offers 11 free templates. Here, Shopify has an advantage as it offers 2-3 options for each free template.
When it comes to paid templates, Volusion offers 38 options costing $180 and Shopify offers 50 options ranging from $140 to $180. Here again, Shopify can be preferred over Volusion.
When you are searching for a template design on both the platforms, Shopify provides filters like the style, price, industry, etc., but Volusion offers only two filters – Free or paid and responsive or non-responsive. So, once again, Shopify wins the Shopify Vs Volusion battle. Moreover, Shopify premium themes tend to be more attention-grabbing than Volusion themes.
8. Blog integration
In this era of content marketing, posting blogs has become extremely important.
Shopify offers a blogging tool through which SEO friendly blogs can be added and traffic can be generated. But if you are looking for advanced blog features like post categorization, retaining the archives of old posts and tags, you should go for a third party plugin like WordPress.
Volusion lacks to offer such an out-of-the-box feature. A third-party blog like WordPress blog can be added to your Volusion store. But, that blog stays on a sub-domain and it is quite difficult for new users to manage and update that blog.
Shopify can be preferred over here as the blog on the same domain has SEO benefits.
9. Shopify Vs Volusion: What is General Sentiment?
For any product or service, you have a general sentiment with its users, its partners, and more related parties. The way they feel using these products on a daily basis says a lot about the company which makes them and the product/service itself. The sentiment will reflect a strong feeling as to what platform you should choose and why. It’s the users and merchants who would be using the platform more often and if it’s popular, has more features, does not face any issues or hiccups and is also in your budget, then you have a winner.
Boost your brand’s webs presence with our performance-based Shopify SEO Services.
Here’s a comparison of Shopify and Volusion in terms of web searches for the past 5 years.
As such, each of them has pros and cons and can be used in different scenarios. There is no clear winner for every scenario. We make sure we look at client’s requirements before suggesting them an option here at QeRetail. Check out our plans to know how you can have a kick-ass online store on your platform and become an eCommerce wizard.
