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Volusion

Volusion

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.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Volusion has been a trusted e-commerce platform used by many organizations across various industries. Users have relied on Volusion to …
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Volusion Scam

1 out of 10
February 08, 2019
Incentivized
Volusion is being used across the whole organization as our company website. The only way we accept orders is through our website. We …
Continue reading

I'd look elsewhere...

2 out of 10
December 20, 2018
Incentivized
Volusion is what we use for our web store. Being that we are an online retailer, that is a very significant function for our business. …
Continue reading

My Love Affair with Volusion

10 out of 10
March 26, 2014
Volusion was used as our eCommerce solution for over 3 years. It allowed us to have a user friendly website with a client friendly backend …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

Popular Features

View all 20 features
  • Visual customization (9)
    5.1
    51%
  • Product catalog & listings (9)
    4.3
    43%
  • Product management (9)
    4.3
    43%
  • Branding (9)
    3.6
    36%
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Pricing

View all pricing

Personal

$29

Cloud
per month

Pro

$79

Cloud
per month

Startup

$179

Cloud
per month

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.volusion.com/pricing

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

Mintbird vs Volusion - mintbird | mintbird reviews | mintbird demo | what is mintbird

YouTube

Introduction to the Volusion Platform

YouTube

First Impression Review of Volusion

YouTube

Volusion Pro V Demo - July 2015

YouTube

How to export Volusion orders to a CSV file and what fields does a Volusion CSV file contain

YouTube
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Features

Online Storefront

Features for creating an online storefront with a browse-able product catalog.

3.6
Avg 7.7

Online Shopping Cart

Features that facilitate the collection of items so that customers can purchase them as a group.

3.6
Avg 7.6

Online Payment System

Features related to processing online payment for eCommerce purchases.

4.1
Avg 8.3

eCommerce Marketing

Features related to marketing for eCommerce websites

2.6
Avg 7.5

eCommerce Business Management

Features related to business management and administration of eCommerce operations

2.9
Avg 7.8
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Product Details

What is Volusion?

Volusion is an 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, and more.

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

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of

Volusion Video

In this unboxing, TrustRadius walks through Volusion. An online storefront, e-commerce solution with added features like social media integrations, SEO tools, a simple CRM and more - this demo of Volusion goes feature by feature.

Volusion Competitors

Volusion Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android
Supported CountriesUSA, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand
Supported LanguagesEnglish

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Wix, BigCommerce, and Shopify are common alternatives for Volusion.

Reviewers rate Visual customization highest, with a score of 5.1.

The most common users of Volusion are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(34)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

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:

  1. Users suggest trying Volusion's free trial to see if it's a good fit for your business.
  2. Volusion is recommended for beginners familiar with creating websites.
  3. Volusion is considered a convenient and cost-effective option for e-commerce businesses.
  4. Users advise completing a demo before making a decision.
  5. Evaluate and outline ecommerce needs before making a final decision.
  6. Consider other platforms that care about their customers and establish a support connection for timely assistance.
  7. Look at other options in the market for better solutions, such as market leader Shopify.
  8. Thoroughly research before making a decision.
  9. Investing in Volusion's professional services for custom design and SEO can be beneficial.
  10. Some users find difficulties in integration with partners, so consider this aspect when choosing a platform.
  11. 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.
  12. 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

(1-20 of 20)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
February 08, 2019

Volusion Scam

Haley Owens | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Volusion is being used across the whole organization as our company website. The only way we accept orders is through our website. We utilize it for e-commerce as well as retail channels.
  • 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.
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.
December 20, 2018

I'd look elsewhere...

Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Volusion is what we use for our web store. Being that we are an online retailer, that is a very significant function for our business. Bottom line - does it work for day-to-day business operations? Yes. Does it do it well with minimal errors? No, I'd say not. I'm personally not satisfied with Volusion. I think its features are limited and the reports that you can run aren't the most useful. We also experience total website failures, including gateway errors, painful slowdowns, and other errors. To their credit, Volusion always springs back into action in due time. But I've seen it take them four or five hours to fix errors where the site was moving so slowly it took customers 20+ minutes to check out. No way of knowing how much business that cost us. We've looked into moving platforms and the only reason we haven't is the grand nature of doing such a thing.
  • 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 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.
Michael Huey | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Volusion is being used by everyone who is client facing across multiple departments. We integrate with various e-commerce platforms and assist our clients in using that e-commerce data to inform their email marketing. Thus anyone who works with one of our clients who is using Volusion becomes a Volusion user. My experience branches the client success manager side of things as well as the engineering side.
  • 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
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.
Michael Angel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our customer service team uses Volusion live chat as a way to connect with our customers. It is another avenue that they can reach us if they are uncomfortable doing so by phone or just need a quick question answered without the hassle.
  • Quick way for questions to be answered
  • Improves quality of online experience
  • Modern way for a customer to communicate
  • Saving chats for review or printing is not possible
  • Creating pre-made or canned responses is tedious and can only be done by an administrator
  • Limited number of users
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.
November 02, 2015

Volusion for the win!

Catharine Small | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our organization uses Volusion to manage our online store, including processing orders, credit card capture, etc. It also gives us the ability to easily edit and publish, while quickly updating our sitemap to submit to search engines. Overall it is very user friendly and has been a great solution for us over the past 8 years.
  • They have a great how to section, so if you are unsure of how to change or create something within their platform, their knowledge base sections typically has the answer.
  • The platform is very user friendly and lays out each section separately so you can easily add for SEO.
  • Blog integration - they have evolved over time, but there is not a way to easily implement a blog.
  • There is also some need for improvement in terms of duplicate pages, where they are really tabs.
I have recommended this platform to many people in the past in different industries. Overall, it is a great solution for all ecommerce merchants.
Cameron Renfro | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
The Volusion platform provides the entire online shopping functionality for the companies I work with. It provides a single solution to handle all the ins and outs of selling online and does so with an intuitive and robust interface. From a features and functionality standpoint, you can't beat the 'bang for the buck'.
  • Volusion has just the right amount of customization. Any less and your hands would be tied. More and your development costs would be out of reach for most small businesses.
  • Volusion's free 24/7 support is a huge asset to any business.
  • The html markup is extremely out-dated.
  • Some level of layout customization on the product page would be nice.
  • Due to their outdated html markup, responsive websites are a hack-job.
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.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Volusion was chosen as a solution for opening an online e-retail store. The products for the store were acquired through third party dropshipping services and manufacturers. Volusion made it simple to choose a store front design, load products into the site, and set up a payment gateway to accept purchases using integration with PayPal. After setting up the legal and mundane aspects of the business (business licenses, domain names, etc.) the actual store was able to be created and set up in less than 24 hours from the time I decided to create an account. Volusion takes care of the design, makes it easy to customize your colors and logo, sets up custom pricing and shipping, and works on mobile devices. In short, Volusion was the entire business - from store front, to customer management system, to analytics, and payment gateway.
  • Volusion has an excellent simple and intuitive administrative area.
  • Volusion stores work great on mobile devices and tablets.
  • Volusion integrates with many third party services like Doba.
  • Volusion makes it easy to accept payments.
  • Volusion could offer more free modern responsive themes.
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.
October 27, 2015

We love Volusion!

Jackie McClelland | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our whole organization provides services to customer using the Volusion platform.
  • Great product detail information
  • Easy to take orders
  • Detailed reporting
  • Mobile stores aren't great
  • Downtime happens too often
Volusion doesn't work when someone has multiple stores. It also doesn't work as well when someone has thousands of products.
Ryan Forrest | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My wife and I own a few ecommerce stores on Volusion for our home decor business. I also have clients on the platform that range from electronics to high-end machinery. It is great for product database management, order management and even content management for basic uses. It also integrates with a variety of other third party platforms for marketing, fulfillment and other retail needs.
  • 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.
  • Their developer community is really limited. Platforms like Shopify and Magento have extensive developer communities with a variety of companies to choose from. Volusion seems as though they haven't prioritized building this out.
  • 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.
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.
Patrice Romzick | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Volusion to power our website, handle our sales, analyze our sales and calculate our earnings/ taxes. We use the interfaces with Amazon and PayPal. We are also presently using the SEO consulting service that Volusion offers and have had very good results with it.
  • 24/7 support from people based in Austin, TX. The Volusion employees are very well trained and find solutions quickly. I cannot say enough good things about these employees.
  • The functionality is very broad and covers virtually anything we would want to offer our customers.
  • Their uptime is fabulous and they let us know when they are planning to do preventive maintenance.
  • It is very easy to add products, text and photos.
  • I would love to see a better interface with Amazon. It's awkward to use the Amazon template. I would love it if the information in Volusion could automatically populate the Amazon template.
  • I would like to see a Volusion capability that would make it fast to enter an order in Volusion at a trade show. At a recent trade show we used the PayPal app with the swipe triangle. (It required us to set up the product codes and descriptions into PayPal ahead of time.) Then later we had to enter each order into Volusion manually in order to synchronize our sales, tax and inventory. We should not have to do it twice. We do not care so much about getting all the address information, etc. People are in a hurry. It would be good enough to get their name, email address, select the product codes, let Volusion calculate the state sales tax and swipe their credit card or accept a check or cash. Done.
  • I would like to be able to grab photos that I've already posted on the website and reuse them for Instagram, Pinterest, etc. It is a time consuming process to find the original photo in my files.
  • You need to update the fields for SEO. There are limits to meta titles, meta descriptions, etc. The limits you show are too long, based on the SEO consultant that I am presently working with . Also, keywords are not used by Google anymore and you should indicate that to your clients.
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.
Paul Francis Jones | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I've used Volusion for a website that sold thousands of bicycle related products such as actual bicycles, parts, accessories, etc. I also consult on a small business website that went against my advice and built their site on Volusion. Both had goals of building simple to manage ecommerce sites.
  • Volusion has a stupendous inventory / warehouse system that includes the ability to create PO's (purchase orders) which is something that I pay an additional $20 a month for using a different eCommerce solution.
  • Unless you plan on spending close to $1K on a template, the more reasonably priced templates have some major spacing issues on the product listings. You have your standard listing, then below that something like 300px of white-space and then some more content that's usually off the page. So while the pricing seems reasonable at first, be prepared to spend a lot of money on a template if you'd like a visually pleasing product listing template. At that, some of the cheaper templates are using nested tables, and from what I know that's an extremely outdated no-no.
  • Working within the dashboard is a horrendous, unpleasant experience; the load times are excessive, and from SEO best practices to images to variations, editing a product, a standard five minute process takes about twenty minutes on Volusion.
  • Adding and navigation is a complete headache; again it's an overcomplicated process that's even further bogged down by excessive load times, and the need to navigate through half-a-dozen pages to change one simple thing.You could simplify this process using a CSV upload, but yeah, that's not available on all plans
  • Products with variations are a complete headache to manage.
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.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Used to establish an online retail store for products imported from Israel.
  • Customer service and tech support are great - I needed a lot of it as I taught myself how to use it.
  • Very affordable.
  • Interface with Ebay is cumbersome and not customizable.
  • More variety with page designs.
  • Building in SEO is cumbersome also. Have to type in keywords, tags, etc. individually.
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.
Lisa Autumn Papageras | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I used it to sell niche gifts to a very specific audience online. I was the owner of the business and it was my primary solution.
  • It makes for a really easy start up.
  • It is easy for nontechnical people to get started and to maintain a web store.
  • It has sales reps that can walk you through business processes like Credit Card authorization and setting up a plan.
  • The sales reps are good about getting a person through the start up process, but are not available when you need help. I often felt that once they got my money flowing into their organization, they abandoned me.
  • The software could be limited to just their normal offers and set up. You can't really "think outside the box" with a product like Volusion. It's just not as flexible as being able to write in .NET or a language to support different promos or offers.
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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Volusion was used as our eCommerce solution for over 3 years. It allowed us to have a user friendly website with a client friendly backend that covers everything from B2B sales, Direct to Consumer sales, email marketing, client friendly WYSIWYG editors on all products and pages, simple and reliable payment processing, and more. The most rewarding part about Volusion is that they have almost everything you would need for standard eCommerce sales and makes it easy enough to present that almost anyone with a little training can maintain a multi-million dollar online store with hundreds or thousands of products. Huge bonuses were the inventory tracking, kitting options, and automatic emailing.
  • 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.
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.
Jose Miguel Vera | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
We've been working with Volusion since its inception. It is the E-commerce platform of choice for our entire organization. We have worked with Big Commerce, Zen Cart, Shopify, Magento, you name it... but to this day absolutely Nothing compares to the basics Volusion lays out as an out of the box E-commerce platform.
  • Import/Export functionality - changes in bulk are a breeze in Volusion through this functionality. The past part of it is that you can choose what fields and what rows to touch when uploading a product feed. Makes changes in bulk yet never put your database at risk; that's what makes this functionality great.
  • Genius photo attribution logic - Volusion developed a very straight forward yet genius logic when it comes to uploading photos in bulk. Whether you need a swatch functionality in your photos when picking different options or whether you need to make a mass change of photos throughout the store, there is a very specific logic Volusion follows that makes it all fairly easy.
  • Extensive API - Volusion's API has allowed us to create functionality that even Volusion through was impossible. We have been able to push Volusion in terms of usability and functionality and they have welcomed our feedback with open arms. I cannot begin to tell you how many times we have heard "that's impossible in Volusion" and yet it still stands today.
  • Bulk import for products and child products with conditional options is impossible with Volusion. While it's perfectly possible to import mass products in bulk, it is impossible to import a mass feed with parent to child relationships already established. Volusion has the need to creating the relationships first - by doing this, it creates its own SKUs for EVERY possible variation of the product (depending on the options attributed to it). This leaves you with hundreds if not thousands of superfluous products, and the ones that are actually legitimate, with a need to change the SKU names either manually or through an intricate bulk process. Too many unnecessary steps.
  • Lack of a CMS or WordPress Compatibility - Volusion being a hosted solution, it is impossible for us to install a WordPress blog within the "www" of the store. This would be a HUGE boost from a marketing standpoint and for stores that are strong on content. I myself, while I prefer Volusion over any other platform, have chosen to spend the resources on Magento development just because I needed a WordPress blog under a subdirectory of the store. You have to bear in mind that E-commerce is only getting more competitive at this point - without content a store's success will be seldom, especially starting ones with no authority or visibility. Giving users the ability to have not only a great store but a great content platform MUST be the future of Volusion.
  • Responsive Design - I'm not even going write anything else on this, I'm sure you know :)
  • 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.
March 21, 2014

Volusin Approved!

Arthur Rogers | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Volusion was chosen and the e-commerce platform by the company and my job was to customize the appearance and brand it. The interface was easy to digest and took me only a few minutes to get the branding started. Updates that have followed have made it even more intuitive. I would recommend Volusion to any future clients or employers. Great job!
  • Ecommerce - I have used other products in the past and have definitely found a product I will use again
  • Pricing - the billing was great in that if calculated all the necessary fees.
  • Adapatation - modifying themes was very simple and allowed me to achieve the desired look I was shooting for.
  • Please improve on the on screen editor. Especially when it comes to using tables. Editing and customizing tables was kind of the weak point.
I recommended volusion specifically for the price calculations it provided including shipping cost.
Shayna Bane | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Volusion is used exclusively by me as our ecommerce solution. We run a few websites using Volusion as our shopping cart provider. We use nearly all of the Order Management, Product Management, Marketing, Design, and Reporting tools they provide.
  • 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.
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.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We choose Volusion as our eCommerce platform because of it's flexibility and online video tutorial. It really helps us to learn lot of new things. It is being used by whole organization.
  • Social media integrations are really good and easy to maintain.
  • Maintaining products, import and export of data is user friendly.
  • Anyone from beginner to advanced level user can use their interface easily.
  • Customer service is really helpful and provides response within 24 hrs after you generate a ticket.
  • Template customization
Its all depends on your business requirements.
Megan Wexler | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
A small department in our company used Volusion to provide a delivery grocery service. It was funded by a client of ours and he was trying to get this business off the ground.
  • 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.
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.
Joseph Rounds | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I support small eCommerce sites mainly managing their inventory. I have written many programs that call to the API to either update stock or manage orders.
  • 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
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.
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