Overview
What is Volusion?
Volusion is a cloud-based ecommerce solution from the company of the same name in Austin, TX. It features an intuitive dashboard, built-in marketing and promos, SEO, templates, and tools to customize look and appearance.
Volusion Scam
I'd look elsewhere...
Volusion - The Small Business Gold Mine
Chat, great for the customer in a hurry
Volusion for the win!
Volusion: Full Featured Bang for Your Buck
Volusion: E-Commerce for Savvy Entrepreneurs
We love Volusion!
Review Of Volusion From Both A Store Owner And Marketer's Experience
Easy to use and support that is out of this world!
Volusion works, but it's an overcomplicated & time-consuming experience
Highly Recommend for Ease of Use, Affordability & Customer Service.
Good for a start-up, but not flexible.
My Love Affair with Volusion
Volusion Review from the Perspective of a Digital Marketing and Volusion Expert
Popular Features
- Visual customization (9)5.151%
- Product catalog & listings (9)4.343%
- Product management (9)4.343%
- Branding (9)3.636%
Pricing
Personal
$29
Pro
$79
Startup
$179
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Product Demos
Mintbird vs Volusion - mintbird | mintbird reviews | mintbird demo | what is mintbird
Introduction to the Volusion Platform
First Impression Review of Volusion
Volusion Pro V Demo - July 2015
How to export Volusion orders to a CSV file and what fields does a Volusion CSV file contain
Features
Online Storefront
Features for creating an online storefront with a browse-able product catalog.
- 4.3Product catalog & listings(9) Ratings
Products are easy to browse; listings include descriptions, photos, 360-degree views, and/or videos.
- 4.3Product management(9) Ratings
Product catalog can be easily updated.
- 4.2Bulk product upload(8) Ratings
Admins can upload products in bulk using spreadsheets.
- 3.6Branding(9) Ratings
Storefront is part of a unified customer experience of the brand across channels (social media, physical store, website, etc.)
- 1.2Mobile storefront(8) Ratings
Customers can easily shop on mobile devices; storefront is responsive or mobile optimized.
- 4.7Product variations(8) Ratings
Products with variations or configurable options are easy to list and easy to browse.
- 3.3Website integration(8) Ratings
Integrates with an existing company website or blog.
- 5.1Visual customization(9) Ratings
Users can customize the look & feel of the storefront; storefront is visually attractive.
- 2.2CMS(7) Ratings
Beyond product catalog, includes basic content creation and management features such as blogging capabilities.
Online Shopping Cart
Features that facilitate the collection of items so that customers can purchase them as a group.
- 3.6Abandoned cart recovery(7) Ratings
Saves contents of abandoned carts and allows customers to purchase on a future visit; may send a reminder email to the customer and/or a report to the merchant to help convert abandoned carts into sales.
- 3.7Checkout user experience(9) Ratings
Easy for customers to view shopping cart and checkout; maintains a consistent, trusted look & feel.
Online Payment System
Features related to processing online payment for eCommerce purchases.
- 4.1eCommerce security(8) Ratings
Security measures are in place to prevent a breach of sensitive payment information.
eCommerce Marketing
Features related to marketing for eCommerce websites
- 4.8Promotions & discounts(9) Ratings
Includes tools for offering and redeeming coupons, promotional codes, and time-based discounts.
- 1.8Personalized recommendations(8) Ratings
Display or recommend certain products depending on the customer’s identity or shopping/browsing history.
- 1.2SEO(8) Ratings
The platform & templates help users create the right website infrastructure (pagination, page headers, titles, meta tags, url structure, etc.) to increase the site’s visibility in search engine results.
eCommerce Business Management
Features related to business management and administration of eCommerce operations
- 3Multi-site management(2) Ratings
Administrators can manage multiple storefronts or websites under one umbrella.
- 3.6Order processing(9) Ratings
Includes tools or integrations for order processing.
- 2.2Inventory management(8) Ratings
Includes tools or integrations for managing inventory.
- 3Shipping(8) Ratings
Includes tools or integrations for order fulfillment of physical products.
- 2.6Custom functionality(7) Ratings
Users are able to customize the functionality of their eCommerce operation with custom code or add-ons.
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Volusion?
For $15 per month the Mini plan supports sale of 100 products, provides 1GB of bandwidth, with plenty of templates, mobile-accessibility, automatic tax rates, a Facebook store and social media integration. For $35 per month the Plus plan supports sale of 1000 products and 3GB of bandwidth, and adds a few extra features (abandoned cart reports, the ability to display ratings and reviews, etc.). At $75 monthly the Pro plan bumps up support for 10k products and 10GB of bandwidth, and provides API access with eBay and Amazon integration, a CRM, and engagement tools (Deal of the Day, a Customer Loyalty Plan, etc.). The Premium plan offers support for unlimited products and provides 35GB of bandwidth, and a dedicated account manager to help with setup and provide lifetime support. Volusion presents Mozu as an enterprise level solution.
Volusion Features
Online Storefront Features
- Supported: Product catalog & listings
- Supported: Product management
- Supported: Bulk product upload
- Supported: Branding
- Supported: Search & filter
- Supported: Mobile storefront
- Supported: Product variations
- Supported: Subscriptions & downloads
- Supported: Website integration
- Supported: Visual customization
- Supported: CMS
- Supported: Customer service tools
Online Shopping Cart Features
- Supported: Abandoned cart recovery
- Supported: Integration with Amazon
- Supported: Integration with eBay
- Supported: Checkout user experience
Online Payment System Features
- Supported: PayPal integration
- Supported: Returns & refunds
- Supported: Single-click checkout
- Supported: eCommerce security
- Supported: B2B features
eCommerce Marketing Features
- Supported: Promotions & discounts
- Supported: Personalized recommendations
- Supported: SEO
- Supported: Product reviews
- Supported: Social commerce integration
- Supported: Customer registration
eCommerce Business Management Features
- Supported: Order processing
- Supported: Inventory management
- Supported: Accounting
- Supported: Shipping
- Supported: Custom functionality
Volusion Screenshots
Volusion Video
Volusion Integrations
Volusion Competitors
Volusion Technical Details
Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android |
Supported Countries | USA, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand |
Supported Languages | English |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(34)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Recommendations
Volusion has been a trusted e-commerce platform used by many organizations across various industries. Users have relied on Volusion to power their websites, handle sales, analyze sales data, and calculate earnings and taxes. The integration with platforms like Amazon and PayPal allows users to seamlessly integrate with these popular marketplaces, expanding their reach and streamlining their operations.
For those looking to improve their website's visibility, Volusion's SEO consulting service has proven effective in delivering good results. Moreover, users appreciate the user-friendly interface provided by Volusion for managing orders, products, marketing, design, and reporting. The platform also offers robust features and functionality at a cost-effective price point, making it a popular choice for businesses of all sizes.
With Volusion's intuitive interface for customization and branding, users have successfully created unique online stores that represent their brand identity. The platform's out-of-the-box capabilities make it easy to set up and customize an e-retail store quickly. Additionally, Volusion seamlessly handles the entire business process from store front to customer management, analytics, and payment gateway integration.
While some users have experienced limitations in terms of features and reports, as well as occasional website failures, they have still chosen Volusion for its flexibility, comprehensive online tutorials, and overall usefulness. Whether it's managing inventory for small e-commerce sites or serving as the exclusive e-commerce solution for large organizations, Volusion has consistently demonstrated reliability and longevity as an all-in-one e-commerce platform.
Based on user reviews, users recommend the following for Volusion:
- Users suggest trying Volusion's free trial to see if it's a good fit for your business.
- Volusion is recommended for beginners familiar with creating websites.
- Volusion is considered a convenient and cost-effective option for e-commerce businesses.
- Users advise completing a demo before making a decision.
- Evaluate and outline ecommerce needs before making a final decision.
- Consider other platforms that care about their customers and establish a support connection for timely assistance.
- Look at other options in the market for better solutions, such as market leader Shopify.
- Thoroughly research before making a decision.
- Investing in Volusion's professional services for custom design and SEO can be beneficial.
- Some users find difficulties in integration with partners, so consider this aspect when choosing a platform.
- Volusion may be seen as a limiting system not suitable for long-term use, so look for a platform that is mobile, responsive, and innovative.
- Do research on Volusion, Joomla, and Wordpress before making a decision.
Overall, users generally recommend trying out Volusion and conducting thorough research to determine if it meets your specific business needs before making a final decision.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-9 of 9)Volusion Scam
- Volusion is a company with a great sales force.
- NOT user-friendly. Reporting tools virtually non-existent. VERY manual—no shortcuts ever for editing things.
- HORRIBLE customer service. Will wait on "Priority" Tech Support call line for an hour to talk to anyone. Completely UNHELPFUL/NOT KNOWLEDGEABLE tech support. ZERO accountability/transparency. We can't even get a hold of our "Designated Account Rep."
- Ever changing coding issues. We'll fix a problem one day and it'll return the next for no rhyme or reason. Even their own "engineers" can't make changes to hard-coded pages—it's ridiculous.
I'd look elsewhere...
- Customer service is pretty good.
- Layout is intuitive.
- Decent range of capabilities for small business.
- The site slowing down on such a regular basis is devastating to an online retail company.
- Easy to outgrow Volusion and its feature sets.
- No ability to create item-by-item discounts for certain customers.
- No ability to stop customers with tiered pricing from using coupon codes.
- Lacking in analytical features.
Volusion - The Small Business Gold Mine
- Friendly and informative user interface
- Easy access to aggregate data and exports
- Great for small businesses who need a few more tools than most basic e-commerce platforms offer
- API calls use the previous call as a reference, even if you weren't the one we made the previous call. Can lead to data gaps, so you often have to set a manual date range to look back to make sure you aren't missing any data.
- Not as customizable as most ecommerce platforms
- Not as many integration options as most platforms
We love Volusion!
- Great product detail information
- Easy to take orders
- Detailed reporting
- Mobile stores aren't great
- Downtime happens too often
- Templates are pre-built for a good end user experience. I've gone through the process of building custom sites as well as tweaking both free and paid templates that Volusion's design team provides.
- Their support team didn't use to be as helpful, but in recent years have answered nearly all questions I've had. Their support section within the database provides detailed walkthrus as well.
- Order processing is easy once you've been trained on the system. We got to a point where nearly the entire process was automated from initial purchase through shipping.
- The user interface is relatively straight forward, but I've got more of a development/DB background. I think it could still stand to be made easier for clients that don't have a technical background.
- A lot of my current and former clients complain about how the platform is limited from a customization standpoint. From personal experience I know that you can do just about whatever you want with it, but you have to pay a lot more than you might with more open platforms.
My Love Affair with Volusion
- Easy to Use. Non-technical employees can be simply trained. If you can use a social network, you can manage the backend of Volusion.
- All-In-One -- without any add-ons, Volusion is a turnkey solution for eCommerce. No programming knowledge is required, no modules are needed (unless you have very advanced needs), and it features everything from website text, products, email marketing, customer accounts, shipping calculations, and back-end payment and order processing.
- Allows for inventory tracking (such as Small, Medium, Large or Male/Female)
- Allows for kitting (creating product bundles, up-sells, add-ons, and more)
- Easy to customize -- with a little HTML knowledge, you can easily customize the free templates included in Volusion to create a personalized, dynamic web presence without the need for hiring expensive designers
- Provides a great experience for the customer. Everything from search results, product display, shopping carts, wishlists, and the actual order process are delivered in a professional manner that will keep your customer feeling confident about making their purchase.
- Easily integratable with Google Analytics with Sales Goal tracking -- this allows you to see where customers are coming from, what they are looking at, what they are purchasing, and when they are abandoning their carts.
- Volusion does not allow for digital downloads to be hosted off-site. This causes problems if you want to deliver any sort of file to your customer as you will have to cover the costs of bandwidth. Volusion offers very limited bandwidth, after you reach the max they will charge you per GB over. Selling music, video files, or software seem to be unreasonable unless you build your bandwidth costs into the cost of the product.
- Some parts of the volusion software are not editable by a typical user. If you need customization beyond the norm you will have to pay large amounts to "volusion partners" who are given extended access. Volusion partners are not always qualified (even though they have been 'certified by volusion') and can jeopardize the security of your website and your customer data so BEWARE.
- Some simple graphics are not customizable such as the UPS shipping logo -- due to licensing you are stuck with a low-grade GIF that will display with a fuzzy white border if your background color is anything but white.
- If you need to integrate with Quickbooks it is strongly suggested you invest in T-Hub as well (the offered solution has lots of holes and does not provide all information required to maintain proper books).
- Payment processing is only standard using Skipjack (which is not a very expansive interface) - using Authorize.net or other processing types requires additonal intergration and usually adds more steps to the order processing. Skipjack does not always return the correct responses so you will want to double check payments and refunds on a regular basis.
- Features. Volusion has a ton of features that we've found with other ecommerce solutions, but never all of them. We're fairly reliant upon a few of the features that we can't find elsewhere.
- Price. There's no denying it's a very fair price point... given that you don't go over bandwidth limits (we always do).
- Live Chat. They provide me with a quick way to get a hold of them - which I make FULL use of.
- Feature implementation. While they have a ton of features, they're often released haphazardly in my opinion. Sometimes it seems like they don't have testers. Typically, I'm unable to use new features until about 6 months after they're released (and over a year after I asked for them) because it takes that long to get the quirks smoothed out well enough for us to use them. It seems that they often don't understand programs that they integrate with well enough to do a proper implementation.
- Timeliness of features. This can be taken with a grain of salt for many looking to compare. I'm a super-experienced user with many, many needs. We're often limited when it comes to Google (and other platform) beta programs, and even just early adoption because I have to wait for Volusion to catch up. What's tough is that I often NEED them to make a change in order for me to move forward, it's not my own limitation (but that's what you can expect when you use a third party software to run your site rather than your own team of developers).
- Customer service in regards to live chat. While I LOVE that they have live chat (I'm needy, I constantly need support) - the operators are rude 75% of the time. They come into the conversation assuming I have no idea what I'm talking about and have a 'customer's always wrong' attitude. I'm sure it's frustrating to deal with ecommerce customers who don't know the first thing about websites - but I'm not one of those and I deserve respect. Our conversations nearly always begin with "Clear your cache" and "I don't see the problem" from the operator and end in "Oh, you're right. Well I don't know." from them. I will say I've dealt with one or two who actually know what they're talking about. Live chat is useless when the operators know less about the software than I do.
- Slow to updates. They are often way behind when it comes to development and code. Example: They use jQuery v 1.4. We're up to 1.10 now and I'm experiencing issues for which the blame has been passed back on to me. I'm keeping up. They should be too. For me personally, the quality of development should come first. THEN worry about all of those features.
- New live editor. It's seen a lot of scrutiny, which you'll find easily by Googling. My problem is that I don't need a WYSIWYG. I write in html. You have to pass through the WYSIWYG to get to the html editor. This has caused my javascript to get executed, so once I get to the html editor, I have to re-write my script because it's now shown as the execution. That's poor development. They should have an option to disable.
- Inability to access pages in FTP. If you are someone who needs customization and writes in html, have fun. You can't actually access your product or category pages unless you do it through the content editors. You can absolutely access & edit your template and css files. But if you need a unique header in a product page - say a script to run, you'll have to put it in the template - adding overhead to ALL of your pages. The only workaround is hard-coding pages as "articles," which can make a mess of things.
1. How much are you willing to pay?
If your budget is tight, this is probably your solution. Sure, I am constantly frustrated with Volusion's inability to keep up with me, BUT at $200/mo for a ton of features and almost flawless order management, I have to be fair.
2. What features do you need?
Do you need Google Trusted Stores, Google Shopping Integration, eBay Integration, Amazon integration, etc? Or really just order management? If you don't need the bells & whistles, you can probably get away with a cheaper or same-priced platform. If you're a full-fledged web marketer, this could be what you need.
3. Do you need integration with main workflow software?
If you're just ecommerce, this doesn't matter. If you're like us and have offline orders too, this can be a problem. Look into it. Ours doesn't integrate so we've custom-built a solution ourselves (Huge pain - still, worth the money saved). There are other, better solutions out there for businesses that are on & offline, but they're costly.
4. How experienced are you with web development?
I'm assuming not very if you're looking for shopping cart software. If you have enough understanding to do things yourself though, this software could be frustrating. There are definite limitations when it comes to customization, which is likely on purpose. Their support team could be less knowledgeable than you (though they won't admit it), so you'll spend too much of your time dealing with someone who thinks you're the idiot when really, you actually understand how things work far better than they can rationalize. Basically, they get in the way a lot. So if you need to be cutting edge, have access to integrate on your own, have access to all of your design... look for something that is less rigid and lets you do your own thing.
- The storefront is easy to navigate
- Provides multiple templates
- Support was always available
- There were several aspects of the website we were not able to change and manage. Some code was hidden from us and Volusion said there was no way we could access it. This made it difficult to really customize the site the way we wanted.
- Some areas of the site (header in particular) were hard to make changes to with HTML. There was a lot of hidden code that interfered.
- Uploading multiple photos one at a time was waaaay too long of a process.
Volusion From A developers perspective
- They have a very robust API to access many levels of the system.
- They allow small sites to get set up relatively easy.
- Their support is lacking when it comes to their API, even when the issues is clearly on their end.
- Updates can break API Calls
- Some aspects of the site are very limited