Volusion vs Shopify – Which One Is The Ultimate Choice For You?

Overview

If you are finding a hosted eCommerce platform for your new online store, Volusion vs Shopify may be a solution for you.

Shopify is the top popular eCommerce on the market. It has some of the most outstanding foundational features to help improve your online business performance. Volusion is another hosted eCommerce platform that has been on the market for some time and attracts many new merchants.

In the line chart above, the popularity of the “Shopify” keyword is much higher than Volusion. So what is the reason for this popularity of Shopify?

We’ve taken the time to compare the differences between Volusion vs Shopify based on the most important factors including performance, ease of use, customization, security, extensions and plugins, SEO & marketing, pricing, support. I hope this article will help you choose the one that suits you best.

• An overview of Shopify and Volusion
• Features comparison
• What is the best suit for your business?

Volusion vs Shopify: Features Comparison

Performance

The website’s performance is determined by its loading time. Sluggish loading times as well as the “can’t reach” status will give an unpleasant experience to customers. The faster the loading speed is, the more likely customers will stay on your website.

When it comes to the loading time of eCommerce platforms, Shopify is the brightest candidate thanks to its fast loading speed. The average load time is 3.2 seconds while Shopify sites are 1.3 seconds. Volusion is far behind Shopify with 3.5 seconds too.

Ease of use

Both Volusion vs Shopify have easy-to-use backends. But for Shopify, the user’s manipulation becomes easier than Volusion.

Volusion has an intuitive and user-friendly interface. It’s convenient for not only experienced users but also complete newbies. The dashboard’s functions are quite informative for store owners to get to grips quickly.

The Shopify platform is much easier to use with simple editing tools, a visible ‘undo’ button, a clear and simple interface. Therefore, Shopify is not a steep learning curve, even for those who don’t have technical skills. With a few minutes, you can easily create a Shopify store and start selling with this platform.

Using the Shopify platform has never been easier with a few clicks. To start with Shopify, you just need to go to Shopify.com, sign up an account, then go through some basic setup instructions, and start selling products.

Customization

Both Volusion vs Shopify have various tools that help you create, design, and edit your website’s pages at your will. They have a live drag-and-drop editor which helps you customize your content blocks and interface without manual coding. Moreover, they also have WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) – a system that allows editing software content in a form similar to its appearance.

When it comes to customization, themes and templates are two important factors that decide the look of your online store. Currently, Shopify comes with a reservoir of freemium themes ranging from $140-$180. Besides, each theme has specific variations, such as conversion. Hence, you are getting more than 100 different designs. Each template is mobile responsive and suitable on any screen size.

Security

All Shopify stores are certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliant, which means all your data and customer information are ultra-secure. SSL certificates are also integrated into Shopify stores. SSL security encrypts the data transfer between customers and your website. It is an important element to protect sensitive information – such as payment details – from hackers. With SSL certificates, Shopify allows you to:

• Use HTTPs instead of HTTP will help you add a new layer of security to your store.
• Show the SSL padlock icon beside your online store’s URL will help you build customer trust.

Just like Shopify, Volusion meets all standards when it comes to transaction security, every Volusion store is PCI compliant and an SSL certificate is included with the Volusion plan.

Extensions and plugins

No matter how robust an eCommerce platform is, you’ll always need to add some extensions to boost your store. Follow me to find out the best extensions supported by Volusion vs Shopify.

Besides built-in features, Shopify helps you enrich your store by providing a wide-ranging collection of apps and extensions. It covers up to 9 categories including store design, shipping and delivery, fulfillment, conversion, and more.

OptinMonster is currently the top world cShopify Payments onversion optimization software that helps reduce cart abandonment and increase overall sales conversion. Besides, Plugin SEO is one of the best free Shopify apps. With this app, you can find and fix search engine optimization (SEO) issues to get more web traffic to your online store.

Besides, there are more than 2000 application options that are provided by third-party companies. These extensions extend the possible functions such as shipping, marketing, and accounting.

MailChimp is one of the best apps on Zapier. With this app, you can add new customer emails from your Volusion store to MailChimp, send notification emails, weekly newsletters, and other marketing communications to your customers.

Both Volusion and Shopify are offering a large number of apps and plugins for you to choose from. However, Shopify is more dominant with thousands of solutions in the Shopify App Store. Although Volusion supports fewer extensions than Shopify, users can go through Zapier to integrate apps of their choice. Among those thousand choices, make sure that you install the ones that you need the most.

SEO & Marketing

After you launch your store, increasing traffic and converting visitors into customers are important. Whether you are selling online or in person, developing a marketing plan can help you choose marketing tactics that are right for your store. Both Volusion vs Shopify support features that help you improve Marketing and SEO performance.

Volusion offers a wide range of built-in marketing services designed to help companies grow their customer base. Some outstanding services such as PPC(Professional pay-per-click) help you bring new visitors to important pages. Using Shopping Feeds campaigning also helps you reach millions of new shoppers with popular shopping engines like Google Shopping.

With the Volusion platform, you can access a lot of expensive SEO features that place your store straight within Google’s search loop and manage all social media accounts from the comfort of a single dashboard. It also includes unique meta titles, descriptions, custom URLs for your pages, and editable Robots.txt files that let you decide which parts of your store should be most visible to customers and search engines.

Shopify has a good range of SEO features. It covers most essential areas from the meta title, meta description to custom URLs, headings, image alt text, good speed & uptime. You can custom page titles and meta descriptions… easily with Shopify platform.

In a nutshell, both Volusion vs Shopify supports an array of services and features to help improve Marketing and SEO functions for customers.

Payment gateways and apps

If you want to accept credit card payments from your customers, rest assured as both Shopify and Volusion allow you to integrate with many payment gateways.

Shopify has its own payment provider network, Shopify Payments, which integrates directly to the checkout process. Some of the highlight advantages when using Shopify Payment are:

• No additional transaction fees.
• Enter their payment information without leaving your online store.
• Available in 11 countries.

Besides, Shopify Payments, you can access the other 100 Payment Gateways. It costs you from 0.5-2 % avenue depending on the Shopify monthly plan, the more you pay, the lower the transaction fee you pay for Shopify.

On the other hand, Volusion is supporting 34 payment processors but they’re not available for every store owner. Payment apps accessibility is based on your location. For example, in Europe, the number of apps you can approach is only 8 out of 34.

While both Shopify and Volusion have app stores for your eCommerce website, Shopify does provide a much wider range of apps.

Pricing plans

Don’t forget that price is an important factor that merchants must consider carefully before choosing a platform as their online store.

Shopify packages

Currently, Shopify is offering three main options for you to choose from including Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify, starting from $29 to $299. Shopify also provides two additional packages which are Shopify Lite and Plus. They are not common as Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify, and cater to specific customer groups. To see the differences between Shopify and Shopify Plus, you can check this Shopify vs Shopify Plus article.

In general, all Shopify packages have comprehensive features and functions which help you start your online business easily and effectively. Obviously, there are some outstanding advantages which are only available in more expensive packages.

Some key benefits of buying a higher pricing plan:

• More advanced features: For instance, in the Basic Shopify package, it doesn’t include professional reports, advanced report builders, third-party calculated shipping rates, etc which are available in advanced Shopify.
• Less shipping discount.
• Priority support.
• Less fee of credit card rates: You have to pay a small fee to be allowed using major credit cards, such as Visa and MasterCard, as payment in your store.

Which Shopify plan should you choose?

You should go for Shopify Lite if you are a beginner. While the Basic Plan is suitable for small businesses, Shopify and Advanced Plan will be the solutions for medium businesses, large enterprises. Shopify Plus is the solution for large businesses that require more advanced demand.

Volusion packages

Volusion supports more variety choices than Shopify with five monthly plans including Personal, Professional, Start-up, Business, and Prime package. Basically, like Shopify, Volusion packages are fully-feature

Some key benefits of buying a higher level Volusion package:

• More advanced features: With Volusion personal plan, you will lack some additional features like Bulk Order Processing which helps you import and process bulk orders quickly and easily. Or you can configure complex discounts and coupons, whether on individual products or entire orders by using the Advanced Discounts feature, but it’s not integrated into a Personal plan.
• Dedicated support from experts
• Lower shipping fee: Shipping rates that are offered to you depend on your plan level. The more you pay each month for the Volusion package, the less shipping rates you give.

So which one is suitable for you?

With this Volusion Personal Plan, I highly recommend it for beginners or the smallest online stores. Professional Plan is suitable for medium stores. you can sign to Start-up if you are planning to grow your online business. You can sell as many products as you want, there is no limit with the Business package. Finally, the Custom Plan is meant for enterprise projects that need VIP support and no sales limitation.

In a nutshell, the pricing plans for both Volusion vs Shopify are quite similar. They have various packages for you to choose from. These plans meet all store owners from beginners to the enterprise.

Support

No matter how long you have been competing in the eCommerce market, you still may encounter some problems while running your online store. Hence, the customer support service is an important factor that you need to think about.

Shopify customer supports

	Shopify Lite	Basic Shopify	Shopify	Advanced Shopify
Support offered	Email and live chat, Shopify Help Center	Live chat, phone, email, Shopify Help Center	Shopify Help Center, phone, email, and live chat,	Phone, email, and live chat, Shopify Help Center

At this time, Shopify is supporting through 24/7 email, live chat on all Shopify plans. If you are on the Basic Shopify plan or higher, then you also receive 24/7 phone support. Currently, 24/7 live chat and phone support are available in English only. With email, Shopify supports 19 languages for store owners. You can check whether your language is supported in the following list here:

• Chinese (Simplified)
• Chinese (Traditional)
• Czech
• Danish
• Dutch
• English
• Finnish
• French
• German
• Hindi
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Norwegian
• Portuguese (Brazil)
• Portuguese (Portugal)
• Spanish
• Swedish
• Thai
• Turkish

Volusion customer supports

	Personal Plan	Professional Plan	Startup Plan	Business Plan	Prime Plan
Support offered	Live chat, Volusion Help Center	Phone support, live chat, Volusion Help Center	Volusion Help Center, Phone support, the live chat	Phone support, the live chat, Volusion Help Center	The live chat, Phone support,, Volusion Help Center, VIP support

With the Personal Plan, you can access online support. This includes the Volusion Help Center, where you’ll find a variety of articles and advice covering a wide range of topics. They also support via live chat. Especially, when you buy the Professional or higher-level plans, you will have chances of calling to the real person. With the Professional Plan, you can’t call directly anytime, then you have to schedule a call for Volusion to ring you at a specific time.

When you purchase the Business plan, you will receive priority support, which means you can ring for phone support without scheduling a call. The Prime plan is the only package that offers VIP support, you can contact multiple experts, from marketing and design to finance and beyond, until you find the result as you want.

In conclusion, Both Volusion vs Shopify offers various customer support like live chat, phone, community help centers. When you sign up for the advanced level plan, you’ll receive priority support. One key difference between Volusion vs Shopify is that the Volusion platform doesn’t offer help via email.

Volusion vs Shopify comparison – Final words

Both Volusion vs Shopify are powerful hosted eCommerce platforms for starting your online business.

If you wish to migrate to Volusion or to Shopify, the LitExtension team is here to help. At present, we are supporting migration from 100+ shopping cart platforms. You can check whether your platform is supported for the automated migration in our list of supported carts here.

Finally, If you have any questions regarding our migration service, feel free to contact our support team, we are always here to help you!

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