Shopify vs Volusion 2024: Which is Best for Your Business?

Volusion vs Shopify, which is the best store builder overall?

After experimenting with both platforms, I think Shopify is the better choice overall, thanks to its flexibility, scalability, and comprehensive sales tools. However, Volusion does have some great benefits, like robust reporting tools, and affordable payment processing rates.

Here, I’ll share my insights from using both platforms, covering pricing, ease of use, design and selling features, to help you make the choice that’s best for your business.

Shopify vs Volusion: The Quick Comparison

Overall, I’d recommend:

Shopify for companies in search of a flexible, easy-to-use solution for omnichannel selling, with exceptional ecommerce features. Volusion for smaller retailers looking for in-depth data analytics, but fewer comprehensive tools for selling. ShopifyVolusionBest forRetail companies interested in scalable omnichannel sellingSmaller companies in search of advanced analytics and reportingPricingStarter: $5 per monthBasic: $39 per monthShopify: $105 per monthAdvanced Shopify: $399 per monthPersonal: $35 per monthProfessional: $79 per monthBusiness: $299 per monthTransaction feesNone with Shopify Payments, or 0.5-2% with third-party payment processorsNone with Volusion Payments, or 0.35% to 1.25% with third-party payment processorsDesign toolsWide range of free and paid themes and a flexible design system. Limited free and paid templates, with a relatively simple store builderEcommerce featuresOmnichannel solutions for selling all kinds of products (physical and digital)Support for selling physical goods, with advanced reporting.Ease of useBeginner-friendlySlight learning curveProsUser-friendly interfaceMassive marketplace for integrationsScalable omnichannel platformBuilt in point of sale capabilitiesExcellent analyticsGood inventory management toolsUseful promotional toolsLow transaction feesConsTransaction fees can be highSome features restricted to higher plans.Limited blogging and sales toolsLearning curve Shopify vs Volusion: Expert Scores Shopify Expert Review

4.8/5

Shopify is the top ecommerce platform I recommend to small businesses and omnichannel sellers. Although it’s a little more expensive than some alternatives, it’s incredibly flexible, and packed with valuable tools to help you manage and promote your business.

Plus, the app store means you can constantly extend the functionality of your store and explore new ways to delight your target audience.

Shopify User Reviews

Shopify’s user reviews are mostly positive. A lot of the feedback I’ve seen online highlight how intuitive and easy-to-use the platform is for both new and experienced sellers. However, there are some negative reviews out there.

Volusion Expert review

3.6 / 5

Volusion has it’s up sides, such as excellent reporting features and a decent store builder, however it’s ecommerce functionality is extremely basic. The platform isn’t nearly as flexible as Shopify, and it’s hard to scale your business on the platform.

Additionally, I think the platform has a higher learning curve, and less access to support than many of other top solutions I’ve reviewed in the past.

Volusion User Reviews

Like Shopify, Volusion has both positive and negative user reviews. Some companies love the tax calculation and product management features.

However, many customers agree that the platform isn’t nearly as flexible as some alternatives, and the interface is a little outdated.

Methodology: How I Compared Volusion and Shopify

To help you make the right choice for your online store, I compared Shopify and Volusion focusing on the following criteria:

Pricing and payment options: I examined the monthly fees charged by each company, including transaction and payment processing rates. I also looked at payment processing options. Shopify was the clear winner here, with more value to offer in its basic plan, and a more robust range of payment processor options. Site builders and themes: I looked at how easy it is to build an attractive store and maintain your website with both platforms. Shopify offers better templates and a more straightforward editing tool. However, both products make it relatively easy to manage your store. Sales and ecommerce features: I looked at everything from the types of products you can sell on both platforms, to the sales features and channels. Shopify offers better omnichannel selling opportunities, and allows you to sell a wider range of products with no limitations. Ease of use: I always prioritize ecommerce website builders that are user-friendly. While Volusion isn’t too complex, Shopify offers more step-by-step guidance to beginners, and also has a wider range of customer service options to choose from. Expert score: I considered the overall value of each platform, feature quality, customer satisfaction levels, and ease of use to assign each platform a score. Shopify beat Volusion in virtually every category. Shopify vs Volusion: Pricing and Fees

Pricing is one of the first things I consider whenever I’m conducting a comparison review. At a glance, Shopify and Volusion have similar pricing structures, although Shopify offers a cheaper entry-level plan for social media selling (the Starter plan).

Notably, while Volusion’s Basic plan is cheaper than Shopify’s Basic plan including its store builder, it does cap your revenue at $50k per year, and it caps the number of products you sell at 100.

Volusion Pricing Personal: $35 per month: Maximum sales of 50k per year, and product cap of 100. 1 staff account, live chat, and email support, and all the store building features. Transaction fees of 1.25% (for third party gateways) Professional: $79 per month: Maximum sales of $100k per year, and product cap of 5,000. 5 staff accounts, and extra CRM features, importing and exporting tools, email newsletters, and abandoned cart reports. Transaction fees of 0.65%. Business: $299 per month: Maximum sales of $400,000k per month, and support for unlimited products. 15 user accounts, phone-based customer support, API access, and customer loyalty programs.

Volusion also offers a custom-priced enterprise plan (Prime), which removes your selling cap and provides access to more comprehensive features.

Shopify Pricing Starter: $5 per month with transaction fees starting at 5%. You can sell on social media and via messaging apps, but can’t create an online store. Basic: $39 per month with transaction fees starting at 2% (for third party providers). All the main ecommerce features, but with limited reporting and only 1 account. Shopify: $105 per month with transaction fees of 1%, with stronger reporting features, 5 accounts, and discounted payment processing rates. Advanced Shopify: $399 per month with transaction fees of 0.5%, advanced reporting, enhanced customer service, and a boosted checkout.

Shopify also has an enterprise plan (Shopify Plus), with pricing starting at $2,300 per month depending on your needs.

This plan comes with a dedicated account manager, and full access to site coding and customization tools.

Payment Processing

Both Volusion and Shopify have their own dedicated payment processing solutions. Shopify offers Shopify Payments, and Shop Pay for one-click checkout, while Volusion offers Volusion Payments through a partnership with Stripe.

Although both companies charge credit card processing rates (which is standard in the industry), Volusion’s transaction fees are cheaper if you’re using a third-party processor.

Notably though, Shopify partners with a lot more third party gateways (over 100), than Volusion.

Shopify vs Volusion: Site Design and Maintenance

Both Shopify and Volusion allow companies to build a comprehensive online presence, with a custom domain name, and a range of templates or themes for straightforward design.

Shopify definitely has more options to choose from in terms of pre-made themes, although there’s only a handful of free options to choose from.

There are dozens of premium themes to choose from, however, which can include additional features, like age restriction pages, and unique menu options.

Volusion has a similar number of free themes available, and its premium themes are often slightly more expensive.

You also have less choice with Volusion, as it only has about 30+ premium themes to choose from. Both companies offer highly responsive themes, so they’re good for your SEO strategy.

Speaking of SEO, both platforms also give you basic SEO features you can use, such as the ability to modify page URLs, meta descriptions, titles, 301 redirects and alt text for images.

Shopify does have a slight edge over Volusion thanks to its blogging functionality, which you don’t get on Volusion. Plus, there are a lot more apps in the Shopify app store to help with your SEO.

When it comes to actually editing your store’s design, I think Shopify’s section-based theme editor can be a little easier to use than Volusion’s customization tools, but both are relatively straightforward.

On the plus side, both platforms offer excellent loading times and site speeds.

Third-Party Integrations and Apps

One of the reasons I often recommend Shopify as the best ecommerce site builder is that it’s extremely flexible.

The Shopify app store hosts thousands of integration options, covering everything from marketing to design tools.

Volusion, on the other hand, does offer a handful of integrations, but there are fewer than a hundred options overall.

Notably, one thing I really appreciate about Shopify is its approach to dropshipping. Not only does Shopify partner with DSers, but it gives you hundreds of dropshipping and POD apps to choose from for order fulfillment. Volusion only integrates with two dropshipping tools.

Shopify vs Volusion: Sales and Ecommerce Features

As I mentioned above, Shopify is tough to beat when it come to ecommerce functionality. It consistently earns top scores from both customers and our own expert reviews.

One really significant difference between Volusion and Shopify is what you can sell on each platform.

Shopify allows you to sell anything from physical products, to digital products, subscriptions, and services. Volusion focuses solely on physical products.

Plus, where Shopify allows you to sell unlimited products, and earn as much revenue as you like on any plan, Volusion places restrictions on both your revenue, and your number of products.

Additionally, Volusion isn’t as effective at supporting omnichannel selling as Shopify.

While you can sell on some social platforms and marketplaces through integrations, Shopify supports social media selling, marketplace selling, and in-person sales, through its integrated POS software, called Shopify POS.

Overall, there are dozens of channel options for Shopify, ranging from Amazon and Etsy, to Instagram and TikTok.

Plus, many of Volusion’s integrations for omnichannel selling will incur an additional monthly cost, and require an extra integration for inventory syncing.

Product Features, Shipping, and Inventory Management

In terms of product and inventory management, Shopify and Volusion have similar capabilities. Both allow you to organize your products into categories, and Shopify allows you to add extra details to your products with “tags”.

For variations, Shopify supports up to 3 options per product, and up to 100 variations, whereas Volusion gives you unlimited options and variations.

Shopify has a significant edge in terms of inventory management. Shopify supports unlimited products on every plan, and both tools allow you to add items manually or in bulk, generate revenue reports, and track stock levels.

However, Shopify also has an excellent fulfillment network.

Plus, when you’re using Shopify POS, the software will sync your inventory information instantly between different channels, saving you time with inventory management.

For shipping, both Shopify and Volusion support various shipping rules, including flat rates, price-based rates, free shipping rates, and weight-based rates.

Both tools can also offer real-time shipping quotes, though Shopify gives you discounts if you’re using the Shopify Shipping system.

Marketing Tools

I’ve already mentioned that both Shopify and Volusion have their own search engine optimization features, but SEO isn’t the only way they can help you with marketing. Both tools support:

Abandoned Cart Recovery: Abandoned cart recovery is available on all of Shopify’s core plans, (except Starter). Volusion only offers this feature on it’s $79 per month plan, and there are some limitations on when and how you can send automated messages. Email marketing: Shopify’s email service is available on all plans, and supports up to 10,000 emails per month for free. You can customize email templates and schedule deliveries, although the features are a little basic. Volusion, however, has no email marketing features, but can integrate with third-party solutions. Social media: Shopify has excellent integrations with a range of social media platforms. While Volusion also supports some integrations, it lacks the social selling features Shopify offers merchants, making it hard to access omnichannel selling capabilities.

Notably, Volusion does have an in-house marketing agency that can offer you additional support (for a price). Shopify also has its Shopify Experts database, where you can find freelancers to help you with graphic design, SEO, and marketing.

Shopify vs Volusion: Ease of Use

I found Shopify a little easier to use overall than Volusion, but that doesn’t mean Volusion isn’t beginner friendly.

The great thing about Shopify is how it guides you through developing your site, with clear-cut tips and links to its help center.

Volusion doesn’t give you many prompts, although the clean interface is reasonably easy to navigate.

In terms of store management, both tools are relatively straightforward. Since Shopify has a more robust range of sales features, you’ll have more options to explore, and details to fill in when you’re loading up products.

However, you still get step-by-step guidance to help you.

Volusion allows you to add products to your store in an instant from the navigation panel, but navigating the interface is a little trickier. I had to click through a bunch of tabs just to get to the product upload page.

Customer Support

I think Shopify definitely beats Volusion in terms of customer support. First, it offers 24/7 live chat, email, and even phone support in certain regions. It also gives users access to a huge range of FAQs, guides, articles, and videos.

Plus, there’s a fantastic forum where you can interact with other Shopify store owners.

Although Volusion does offer an extensive help center, it doesn’t have its own community forum, and phone support is limited to merchants paying for higher tiers.

Additionally, there’s no guarantee of 24/7 support with Volusion, which can be a problem if you’re starting your store from scratch.

Shopify and Volusion vs the Competition

Notably, Volusion and Shopify aren’t the only options you’ll have for building an online store. I wanted to quickly compare these two tools to some of the other builders I’ve reviewed in the past, to give you an insight into how they stack up.

BigCommerce vs Shopify vs Volusion

BigCommerce is very similar to Shopify in its functionality, offering access to omnichannel selling, and even headless commerce on some plans.

Even its pricing is similar, although BigCommerce doesn’t charge you anything for using a third-party payment processor.

Where BigCommerce falls behind Shopify is in it’s ease of use, and access to point of sale tools. The platform is much more complex to manage for beginners, and it doesn’t have an integrated POS solution. Compared to Volusion, however, BigCommerce is still a better platform.

It offers more flexibility and scalability to high-volume sellers, has a wider range of templates and themes to choose from, and features more advanced selling tools.

Further reading