Volusion has the longevity and experience to help you online dreams become a reality

10-second breakdown:

Volusion is one of the oldest names in the ecommerce game. They’ve worked with some Fortune 500 companies to make the first iterations of their stores. The experience offered and the trustworthy name make them a viable option for anyone looking to set up a store that will be around for a long time.

The good:

There is a quick setup with Volusion. Signup, login and start building your site or pumping products into the database. All of the functionality you need to get started (and more) comes right out-of-the-box to make the whole thing work smoothly from the first moments your site is live.

You won’t have any transaction fees through Volusion. They offer their own payment gateway and besides the standard percentages required, you won’t pay a dime. Others in the space still do charge a small fee for every transaction, adding up over the course of your store’s progress.

Customer support is good which doesn’t seem to be a standard in the ecommerce software space.

The bad:

You have to purchase and maintain your own SSL certificate.

The software itself is a bit outdated and could use a complete overhaul to really be competitive with the newer products.

How it works:

Volusion was in the full-service ecommerce game well before Shopify came along. Their pricing is competitive and the process is overall pretty simple to get started. The first thing you’ll have to do is pick out the plan that best suits your new shop. Here’s a brief rundown of their plans:

Mini: At this level, you can have up to 100 products on your site and you get 1GB of bandwidth for traffic (typically good for less than 1,000 visitors in a month). There are several goodies too including a responsive site, mobile app, social media tools, and a tax calculator.

Plus: This will get you up to 1,000 products and 3GB of bandwidth space. All of the features in the mini plan are included as well as 24/7 support, abandoned cart tools, the ability to import/export product lists, send newsletters, and get ratings and reviews for your offers.

Pro: The pro plan gives you all of the features from the lower-level plans plus up to 10,000 products and 10GB of bandwidth for traffic. In addition you’ll get priority support, eBay/Amazon integration, customer loyalty plans, customer relationship management tools, and the ability to take phone orders.

Premium: All other features are included in the premium plan plus the ability to have unlimited products and 35GB of bandwidth. The only additional feature is that your account will have a dedicated rep to help you with any problems that may arise.

After you choose the plan and opt for the 14-day free trial, you’ll get access to the dashboard. Volusion really strives in the on-boarding of new users. Since they were so early in the game, they had to educate every new client. This experience has helped them streamline the process of starting a new online shop.

There is a quick video to get you oriented to the setup, but if you are the in-depth type there are an abundance of detailed tutorials that will make you an expert on the platform. After you get acquainted, it’s time to add products and pick a theme. Adding a product is super-simple and you have the ability to see it from the perspective of the customer before you’re done so you know exactly how it will look “live”.

Templates are available and there are over 70 free options. Only about a third of them are mobile responsive, so watch out for that. This problem speaks to the overall age of the company. There are a lot of things that can stand to be improved; the mobile-friendly themes should be top on the list. Even if you opt for a premium template the mobile designs are borderline outrageously expensive (nearly $1000 for almost all of them). There are much cheaper themes, but if they aren’t geared for smartphone/tablets, it’s a waste of your money.

The site-builder is a bit out of date too. It’s not the easiest to work with and capabilities are limited to simple modifications.

If you can look past the design problems, you really get a lot of features “out-of-the-box” with this solution. One-page checkout is awesome and some of the top software products don’t offer this at the moment. Advanced abilities including coupon codes, gift cards, and allowing customers to write reviews are a few.

There is a marketplace in beta for additional apps that integrate with the platform. Right now there are several dozen widgets that can help owners with a range of things from email marketing to accounting tools.

There are over 30 supported payment gateways to choose from (here’s our top list of them) including the one from Volusion. It’s fees are cheaper than most, but you’ll have to compare all of the fine print. There are no transaction fees from Volusion no matter who you choose (again not something everyone in this space does).

It’s a very solid option. While there are some cons, Volusion offers a great experience in setting up and managing your store. Making it look the way you want may take some development expertise, but once it’s all in place there are some great advantages to using this platform. It’s not going to be for everyone, but the beginner who wants to take advantage of the trustworthy and long-standing company are sure to like this option.

For complete rankings of all ecommerce software, go here.

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