Volusion works, but it's an overcomplicated & time-consuming experience
December 17, 2014
Volusion works, but it's an overcomplicated & time-consuming experience
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
V13
Overall Satisfaction with Volusion
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 At that, some of the cheaper templates are using nested tables, and from what I know that's an extremely outdated no-no.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.
- 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.
- Shopify,Bigcommerce,WordPress
We use Shopify and while the monthly fee is slightly higher than Volusion, working within Shopify and the visual results you get...it's not even close. Volusion seems very outdated and overcomplicated, but looking for positives with Volusion, again, I'm paying an additional $40 on average for some warehouse and inventory functionality that is free, and pretty robust on Volusion.