Volusion

If I could score Volusion lower than a 1 I would. Since launching with them we've had more issues and frustration than ever. I wish we could go back in time and select anyone else but them for our website. We've funneled an insane amount of money into making this site suitable for our business needs (6x more than what was quoted to us initially) and our #1 customer complaint is how terrible our website is. There's no telling how many sales we've lost due to this. I would NEVER recommend Volusion to anyone.

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.

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.

For a small business in need of a few more tools than basic platforms, Volusion is a good option. However, if you want infinitely customizable [tools] or to have multiple integrations extracting your orders and products data, then Volusion is quite limited. Additionally, if you lack in-house development teams, Volusion is a good product that is friendly for users who are not necessarily tech-savvy.

Volusion live chat is perfect if you are currently using a Volusion site and need the functionality of chat, it works seamlessly. However there are several scenarios where a user will have to contact an administrator for simple things which can reduce its effectiveness as a time saving tool.

I have recommended this platform to many people in the past in different industries. Overall, it is a great solution for all ecommerce merchants.

If you want/need a platform that is feature-rich without breaking the bank - it's fantastic and something you can grow into. If you need heavy visual customization, Volusion may not be the best fit for you. While Volusion has hundreds of features, you'll need to make sure your short list of features that are important or critical to your business are part of that list because if Volusion doesn't have a feature you want or need, it's not likely something that can be added. The customization options are mostly limited to visual appearance. We cannot change how the system works or add functionality that isn't already there.

Volusion is an adequate solution for any ecommerce website. It's comparable to all of its current major competitors in price and services, as a one-stop packaged solution that can handle every aspect of your online sales presence.

Volusion doesn't work when someone has multiple stores. It also doesn't work as well when someone has thousands of products.

Volusion is great for startups and companies with 50-1000 products that are relatively basic (apparel, electronics, commodities). Once you reach a certain threshold of custom product needs or volume, it becomes a lot more difficult to manage. To the same degree, if you only have a handful of products, it seems like WordPress with WooCommerce is an easier and less expensive solution.

I imagine if the company is very large, they should ask about scalability, ability to handle heavy traffic, etc. That is not an issue for my company, however.

The people are based in the US. There is no language barrier. They are extremely well trained and bright people. They are not under the gun to get me off the phone. They care about solving my problem then and there. There is no other customer service organization that I have dealt with either in the US or abroad (gasp) that comes close to providing the excellent customer service that I receive from Volusion.

I think if you have a website where you have products that aren't going to include a lot of variations, and you need a more robust warehouse and inventory solution Volusion might work really well for you.

Very well suited for companies that don't have a web designer who can customized their store but need something already designed.

Also very well suited for "beginners" like myself who have to learn as they go.

Good for companies that are on a limited budget and are willing to forgo flexibility with the visual and branding side of the site in exchange for cost and ease of use.

Great for companies that have in house staff who develop and manage the site along with other duties.

Volusion is great if you want to set up a small online store and work from home. It is not well suited for a large company, and I had issues with down time in the past.

Volusion is great for any standard online store selling products whether to customers or wholesale. Volusion would NOT be a wise choice for people selling digital goods such as MP3s or anything over 1MB in size. Bandwidth is build in and even with the highest Volusion package available, you are still sharing a server so downtime does happen. Volusion used to be with Rackspace but switched companies without notice to its customers. This decreased the reliability of the no-downtime promise.

• How many SKUs do you have?
• Do you have options?
• Are they conditional options?
• What is the product exactly?
• Are you currently running on another store? <- If the answer is yes I would need to look at the data feed.
  
• Do you have an internal warehouse database that you need to connect to?
• Do you work out of an RMS or POS system under a brick and mortar store?
• What will be the marketing strategy be? Is it content heavy?

Volusion can be appropriate to anything and everything. However, if content and aesthetics are a big factor, then that Might just be a problem.

I recommended volusion specifically for the price calculations it provided including shipping cost.

My recommendation would be based on the following:

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.

Its all depends on your business requirements.

If someone is looking to make an easy site that they don't want to completely customize, Volusion would work well. For what we needed, it lacked a lot of specialty items. They also told us several times that the cart section was going to be updated to be mobile friendly and it never was.

Good for someone looking for something quick and dirty. It lacks many features of some of the more well established products. It does not allow for completed customization and are limited to there out of the box solutions. The pricing is on the higher side to especially when it comes to bandwidth overages.