tawk.to vs. Volusion

We have been able to increase our "real world" presence on our website, providing users with support and sales guidance when they need it the most – when they have a question. It provides the extension for free. Furthermore, tawk.to provides tracking solutions for your website, allowing you to see how many visitors visited your site and how long they stayed. You can also see which locations follow your webpage. The low-footprint, web-based solution is simple to install and use (in most cases), and it provides insight into the effectiveness of our web pages and sites.

Volusion is a good company if you're starting out. The problem is that, if you want more complexity out of the program, you're kind of stuck. Also the regular time out errors and slow downs can be very frustrating. Packages that miss overnight deadlines because your system stops working can cost you customers. In today's highly competitive market, that's just something that's hard to put up with. If you have a lower volume of business you might be able to work around these issues.

Incentivized

• Being able to see what the contact is typing before they send is great as it allows time to prepare your answer.
• The whisper function is invaluable for keeping colleagues updated and giving staff training.
• The 'Ban' function is great for quick action when you have a nuisance contact.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• What I always dislike about any software is the branding that comes along with it.
• The live chat module is not super noticeable since it's just in small print at the bottom of the chat module.
• Small errors can occur, causing the extension in the webpage to disappear.

• 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

Incentivized

When you spend so much time with a product like this and not only have you witnessed its growth, but you almost feel like you are next those that make the decisions of building features a certain way, you can't help but want to stay and be a part of their continued growth. It's simply a great product. Can it improve? By all means! But it will only improve because of users and avid resellers like me.

I think that it's very user friendly. And even in filling out this survey, I've discovered it has beneficial features that I didn't even know it had! It's a lot of capabilities all rolled into one. We're appreciate that tawk.to is an option for us since we haven't found another third party that fits so well with our needs

Incentivized

I know what to do to add a new product, promotion or do an analysis of sales.

Incentivized

You have to wait on hold for at least 45 minutes every call—the tech support person never knows the answer right away so they put you on 10 minute holds only to come back and say they're still looking for answers. The chat function could take days to get a response. Our "Dedicated Account Manager" never checks in or answers, nor are they ever in the office when we call. It's like they try to be as unavailable as possible until you forget why you even called in the first place. Insane.

Incentivized

It is best to use the built-in features and recommended services for the most turn-key experience (ie. Skipjack for payment processing so that it can all be done from the Volusion backend).

We use HubSpot for most of our sales and marketing and it's highly effective. However, the chat function doesn't allow communication between staff during chats that tawk.to offers.

Incentivized

While k-eCommerce was very glamorous to us because it integrates with our main workflow, it just didn't have some of the marketing features that are so integral to the way we do business online. The set-up costs were also way too high. Volusion is so affordable and feature heavy, it makes it very difficult for any shopping cart provider to compete. You can find others who are competitively priced and have similar features, but they simply aren't as robust (at least for the way we use it)

• Engaging with customers directly with live chat.
• Gather customer data for live chat support.

Incentivized

• Honestly, when you're in the dashboard, the UX is simply horrendous. I mean, everything that should be 1-2 clicks away is 4-6 clicks away, and each pages takes at least four seconds to load. You just find yourself wasting a lot of time waiting for things to load. This should be more simple.