TYPO3 vs. Volusion

TYPO3 is great if you need to connect some systems in company to work together: like ecommerce + CRM + ERP + MRP and build an Extranet for partners/dealers where they can order your products, see particular BOM (bill of material), paid/unpaid invoices and use email marketing on top of it. You can do it but keep in mind that you will need a dedicated hosting, well organized admin(s) and some handwritten code. For simple blog TYPO3 is also a good choose, but WP would be better I think.

Incentivized

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

• open source - do what you want, and even if you dont know how to do it - someone will do it for you
• more secure than others (Joomla, WP, Drupal) - thanks to dedicated Typo3 Security Team
• modularity and diversity - a lot of plugins/extensions
• workflow and user roles - feel free to build a workflow templates ie. for documents routing
• assets management - no matter is it a video, audio or text file, you can REALLY manage it.
• typoscript language - sometimes JS is not enough

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

• compared do Wordpress - far less community support
• when you run a simple blog - it is simple as piece of cake. But if it is a large news site, with many user roles, extensions and permissions - it may be hard to find an admin that will organize and keep that stuff working.
• server resources: so you want performance and speed with all that modules enabled? make sure that you have dedicated server in most cases. WP works much better here.

Incentivized

• 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 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).

• more complex and elastic revoke system (undoing changes for multi-administrator systems) PHP/JS and TypoScript language
• LTS - long ter msupport (bugfixes and updates)
• usage rights and permissions (much more advanced thatn in WP/Joomla)
• separation of design and content (in WP also but here is complex)
• many plugins to integrate with external systems
• several portals may be operated from a single admin/install

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)

• + 1 platform that handles connections to 11 external systems (CMS, CMR, ERP, MRP, accounting, controlling, email marketing etc.)
• + still lower TCO than commercial systems (Oracle, Microsoft)
• + LTS - long term support - can provide you an updates or bugfixes
• - resource consuming (forget about shared hosting in large projects)

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.