Volusion by Kevin Sproles

Volusion is one of the leading hosted platforms that give Shopify a run for its money. Its suite of tools is more focused on the operational aspect of managing an online store. It includes inventory management, marketing-based features, and customer support. Currently, it’s serving more than 65,000 websites. On this Volusion review, we will look at its features, design, product management, marketing & SEO, pricing, and more.

Volusion was launched in 1999, a few years after online shopping took the then young world of internet by storm. It’s founded by Kevin Sproles and has since then become one of the top picks for eCommerce site owners.

Some of the famous brands that use Volusion include Intel, Slickwraps, and 3M, among others. With the giants leading the way, there’s no doubt that Volusion is a popular choice. In fact, the platform had already processed over 185 million orders on its customers’ websites.

Before we dive deep to Volusion’s features, here’s a general rundown of its pros and cons:

 

Volusion PROS and CONS

PROS

-Competitive pricing

-Ease of use, intuitive dashboard

-One-stop eCommerce site builder

-Built-in resources for newbies

CONS

-Limited payment gateways

-Additional fees for other add-ons

-Fewer integrations than competitors

 

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Key Features – 4.5 stars

Volusion isn’t popular for naught. One of the factors that make it an excellent choice is its features tailored for all businesses: startup to enterprise levels. Here are some of its major features that customers love:

Built-in add-ons. You don’t need to purchase third-party applications just to build a well-rounded website. Volusion’s dashboard is geared with the essentials from product management to SEO. Also, they have 34 paid and 11 free designs you can choose from. Although it’s a bit limited, each template is well-crafted.

Social sharing. Unlike other major eCommerce sites, Volusion makes social media integration a breeze.  No need for nerd-level programming. You’ll just enable your chosen social media site on each product so your customers can share individual pages with their friends. You can connect the likes of Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram.

Abandon cart emailing. Once your customer abandoned their cart, Volusion has a convenient feature so you can send follow-up emails.

VIP pages. For your loyal customers, you can create VIP pages in Volusion. This will give them exclusive access to lavish discounts.

We want to highlight here the new and improved single-page checkout that has drastically decreased abandoned carts of stores. And if you’re on the go, you can still manage your store through Volusion’s Android and iOS-native mobile applications. Overall, I’ll rate the features department a reasonable 4.5 stars.

 

Volusion templates and design – 4.5 stars

Over the years, Volusion has tried to revamp the look of some of its templates. Thankfully, they already junked outdated ones and replaced it with more contemporary designs. Currently, you can access 11 of their free themes and 34 premium ones.

Compared to their previous themes, I can say that their roster is more chic and stylish now. Their free themes are already good enough for most physical items like shirts, accessories, crafts, food, and novelty items. But if you can spend some, their premium themes are slated at $180 which I think is worth the splurge.

Also, you can now edit your website with Volusion’s new drag-and-drop editor plus the usual HTML and CSS access. Mind you, not even Shopify has a drag-and-drop feature. With that, Volusion gets a shining 5 stars for the design.

 

Product management – 5 stars

This is where Volusion excels the most. You can easily add products to your website. However, only the Business and Prime packages offer unlimited product slots (check pricing table below).

Once you load the product inside your online store, you can edit the description, label, price, and images in one punch. It’s easy and you don’t need any Mensa-level means of coding.

When you go to the advanced section, you can see the pricing levels, stock, shipping, and other technical details. This can get really confusing. But once you get the hang of it, this will be as easy as counting you Volusion revenue.

How about taxes? Good thing, Volusion has a 5-star tax-rate engine that automatically computes the amount once your customer places the product in their carts. There’s no need to source third-party software just to get rid of the tiring number soup.

This part is very important as you don’t want to shock your customers with extra charges once they purchase the item.

 

Marketing and SEO – 5 stars

Regardless of whatever pricing tier you avail, there will be advanced SEO tools in the kit. You can use this to improve the visibility and optimization of your store. This way, more customers can see it and you can sell more.

The best part here is you don’t need technical knowledge just to have rich snippets on your web search results. Volusion has the tools so prospective customers can see the product and click through it and shop easily.

As for marketing, you can never go wrong with the MailChimp integration. You can easily capture new emails for your campaigns together with other forms.

To lure more customers, you can create site-wide or special discounts on your products. All the tools are easily located on the dashboard. You can also run a buy-1-get-1 promo among other marketing gimmicks that will encourage your customers to purchase more.

 

Payment processing – 4 stars

Unlike its competitors, Volusion’s list of payment gateways is a bit short. It only sports 30 payment gateways including PayPal, Authorize.net, Stripe, Worldpay, Beanstream, CyberCash, and more. Take note, though, that the only built-in gateways are PayPal and Stripe. The rest can be integrated with additional processes.

Volusion also processes credit and debit card payments from Mastercard, Visa, Discover, and American Express. However, you can only access this once you sign up for a Merchant account.

If you find all of these limited, you can upgrade to Volusion 2 where more gateways are available. It also includes modern gateways like Apple Pay and Google Pay. Although not all stores would need this, it’s still a big plus.

 

Security features – 5 stars

The common concern of online stores is the safety of their sales and the payment gateways. With Volusion, we’re confident that you can have peace of mind. You no longer have to purchase a separate SSL certificate like before. Currently, Volusion offers all of these basic security features for free.

Aside from that, Volusion is also PCI-certified which ensures that all credit card information is stored in the most secure places on the web. If you don’t want the hassle of dealing with SSL certificates and individual PCI compliance, Volusion will be a perfect platform. Even WooCommerce don’t offer this type of benefit.

Unlike Shopify that only gives shared SSL, Volusion will provide a custom SSL and a secure domain for free. This keeps your customers on your page for checkout. That’s added confidence for online store users and the managers themselves.

 

Technical and customer support – 5 stars

What if your online store suddenly stopped loading or the checkout page isn’t working? This is every manager’s dilemma. The good thing is that Volusion can be reached 24/7 in different modes. You can contact them through phone, email, and live chat to check on Volusion uptime.

In all fairness, the platform really takes every inquiry seriously. If you’re not reachable through email, they will make a follow-up phone call to make sure that your concern is addressed.

If the issue isn’t massive, you can refer to their self-help YouTube videos. You can also utilize their Dev Wiki feature where you can pick codes to improve the functionality and appearance of your store.

 

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Volusion Pricing – 5 stars

If you’re planning to avail Volusion, take note that it offers two versions: Volusion 1 and Volusion 2. Both have different pricing and features. For Volusion 1, you will have zero transaction fees but with higher monthly costs. Here are your options:

PACKAGE	PERSONAL $29/mo.	PRO $79/mo.	BUSINESS $299/mo.	PRIME Custom
Annual sales limit	$50k	$100k	$500k	Unlimited
Staff accounts	1	5	15	Unlimited
Products	100	5,000	Unlimited	Unlimited
Bandwidth	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited

Too expensive? You may want to check the Volusion 2. However, as much as the pricing is more affordable, be warned that there will be transaction fees. Here’s the pricing for Volusion 2:

PACKAGE	PERSONAL $25/mo.	PROFESSIONAL $75/mo.	BUSINESS $135/mo.
Products	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Transaction fees	2%	1%	0.5%
Support level	Online	Online & phone	Account manager
Bandwidth	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited

Although the Volusion 2 has extra fees, you can already purchase your postage directly on the platform. The images will also be enhanced among other added features. Overall, this is just the right bargain.

Volusion free trial login: If you’re not sure if Volusion is right for your store, you can maximize their 14-day free trial. After that, you also stand the chance of availing discounts for new customers.