Volusion vs. Workbooks

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.

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It's a really great system for small to medium organizations that are willing to spend some time thinking about how their workflow can be improved by designing processes which will allow them to streamline and automate their business. For people who are not serious about making a commitment to bettering their business, Workbooks may not be a correct fit. For instance there are a lot of features which many people think they don't need, but they haven't really spent the time to figure out what the needs of the business are. The nice thing about Workbooks is that you can turn off things you don't need, and then when the business demands, they will be there for you to utilize.

• 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.

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• Sales process management from enquiry to delivery of product
• This was previously on as many as 4 systems using excel and legacy applications such as the written word in log books
• Automatic reporting for financial compliance: once built, the reporting process reduced the workload on a monthly basis from 2 days to 20 minutes
• The FD loved it
• The overall capability of the package enabled the sales force to rapidly pull our pertinent data for a sales call, plus managing time and resources better for increased efficiency
• Business development and focussed marketing became so much easier, we noted that the process paid for itself many times over

• 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

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• There really isn't all that much, what I would like to see is an app to use on iDevices. Our sales team all have iPads for presentations etc.
• While Workbooks works rather well with HTML 5, I would still like to see an app. I know it's in the making, but haven't seen anything of this as of yet.
• I am sure that would increase productivity even further (if it's of the same standard as the main environment).

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.

the product works. support has been good or great so far all has been great and we hope to get more from the product. we purchased for an initial year then renewed for a longer term, we have no regrets with this.

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

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Workbooks CRM never let me down.

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.

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Workbooks online trianing does what it needs to; but some training will always be better suited to face to face..

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).

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)

We felt the high amount of customisation available from Workbooks was much more beneficial to us than the offerings from the larger CRM companies. We also liked the smaller company mentality of Workbooks as it reminded us of ourselves. Ultimately the price also paid a factor as Workbooks was more affordable for what we needed.

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• 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.

• Allows us easy management of leads and clear visibility of opportunities for the sales team
• User levels allows us to lock down various parts of the system to only allow them to view or edit certain areas
• Allows us to manage customers in one piece of software and avoid having to use separate software for support, sales and operations

Incentivized

Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info