As two of the oldest e-commerce platforms
shopify and volusion have a lot in common they're subtle
but important differences however may chip the scales in favor
of one over the other. Hi everyone, this is Ashleigh with IWD Agency
the e-commerce experts we help merchants reach their online goals through
marketing optimizations and store enhancements if
you're new here be sure to subscribe to our channel so that you're notified of
new content so that you can stay on top of your
ecommerce game when comparing shopify and volusion
at first it might be more about how similar they are
but keep watching to learn more about each and to see
which has the upper hand both shopify and volusion have the same basic purpose
to help you create your online store both are fully hosted solutions which
mean you don't need to install any software for using the platforms
both offer you a range of design marketing and e-commerce functionalities
in return for a monthly fee they let you sell any type of product
and even services and neither needs any coding nor
technical knowledge for creating your store
although volusion is technically older having been around since
1999 it has had less impact than shopify the second most popular hosted solution
in the us which has so far helped 1 million users
worldwide compared to volusion that has a little
less than 60 000 customers volusion went through a massive redesign
phase in 2016 and added more features to improve
integration issues yet according to google trends shopify
is not only bigger but by far more popular than volusion
aside from scale the two platforms are different in some important ways
which can affect your overall experience with building and managing your online
business let's highlight these features that can
help you decide usability both platforms need little to
no technical knowledge to launch your store
they have a clear-cut dashboard that lets you add inventory
change store settings for full orders or even view
analytics and site metrics for your store although both shopify
and volusion have a straightforward interface users have found it more
difficult in the past to set up a store with volusion than shopify
issues with uploading templates slow speed and poor editing
not to mention volusion's limited number of templates are some common pet peeves
for its users recently volusion redesigned its platform which
improved user experience but shopify's theme editor is still more streamlined
adding sections that use the core theme design is much easier with shopify
with volusion you'll have to go through many steps and questions to add or
modify different features for your store sometimes the extensive guides and
processes could be more nuisance especially if you are more experienced
in building online stores overall volusion setup seems to have a
few hiccups compared to shopify's easy breezy process pricing
even the pricing plans for the two seem to be similar
at first shopify has three core plans that range from 29
a month to 299 dollars a month and two custom plans
shopify lite at nine dollars a month for selling on social media platforms or
blogs and shopify plus a custom solution for
large businesses that starts at about two thousand
dollars a month volusion has a four level plan within
that same range 29 a month to 299 dollars a month
and volusion prime which is a custom plan with its price based on your
requirements unlike shopify which has no limits on
sales or products in any of its plans volusion's personal
plan is limited to annual sales below 50 000
what gets volusion's customers excited about its pricing is the complete
absence of transaction fees in all of its plans
compare that to shopify where you end up paying 0.5 percent
1 or even 2 transaction fees on every purchase depending on your plan's level
of course you can avoid shopify's transaction fees if you use their
payment system shopify payments the problem is that it
only works if you are selling from certain countries
if your country is not on the list you'll get to choose from hundreds of
third-party gateways for which you do pay the transaction fees
yet another difference between their pricing is that shopify offers abandoned
cart recovery a popular feature in e-commerce
platforms as a built-in feature in its basic plan
whereas volusion you would have to sign up for at least its professional plan to
get the same functionality also different shopify offers
point-of-sale features for all of its plans
volusion offers none with the same pricing range
shopify seems to offer way more value for your money
but volusion's advantage of not having any transaction fees
is an attractive deciding factor especially if you sell from anywhere
other than the 27 countries that offer shopify payments
design both platforms have a range of free and paid themes that are mobile
friendly professional and modern but volusion is
more limited in variety and less flexible with customization than shopify
although volusion currently offers 18 free themes compared to shopify's 10 it
has two paid themes balance and glass in the us compared to
shopify which has more than 60 design themes to choose from
another important design factor is how easy it is to find and customize the
themes available with shopify it's much easier to filter
your search based on style price or industry whereas volusion
provides no filters at all shopify also has great customization
tools and a user-friendly interface which are absent in volusion volusion
lags behind when it comes to the variety and usability of its design themes
apps and features another clear win for shopify is the wide range of apps and
features it offers to ensure smooth management
regardless of the size of your business again volusion seems to have a lot to
catch up with here shopify offers over 100 payment gateways
compared to volusion which only supports stripe paypal and
authorize.net although both platforms have their own payment solutions
shopify payments only applies in specific locations around the world
shopify's killer app store covers thousands of apps and more than 2200
plugins compared to volusion's 14 apps although
it covers basic functionalities like mailchimp
it simply fades compared to shopify's wide range of options
dropshipping a popular method with online sellers that allows you to send
orders to suppliers who then ship directly to customers
as a fully supported option with shopify compared to inventory source
the one integration for dropshipping in volusion
shopify also offers great pos functionalities which lets you choose
the platform for taking orders payment and inventory while you sell
your products in a physical store although pos can be used in any of
shopify's plans the full range of pos functionality
costs an additional 89 per month volusion has no pos
functionality yet where you can have ratings and reviews
and abandon cart recovery and shopify with their basic plan
in volusion you'll have to sign up for at least 79
a month to get the same features volusion does offer built-in solutions
for affiliate programs and recurring payments
which makes it an ideal choice if you're running subscription services
marketing shopify offers powerful seo tools and integrates with reporting
tools like google analytics and adwords if you need additional metrics to gauge
the performance of your store shopify has its own analytics software
that comes in handy it offers great email marketing apps
which you can install to send automated email campaigns it also has a
blogging tool that can boost your efforts in content marketing
the more advanced blog features like archiving and categorization
are available through a third-party plugin like wordpress
just by comparing the variety of apps volusion clearly lags behind
it has basic marketing features to get you going but with a far less variety of
features like shopify volusion also offers a
third-party content management like wordpress
but because it remains on a sub domain users find it difficult to update and
manage content with shopify's built-in blogging tool
you can get the seo benefits from the same domain
and help drive traffic to your main site so which is better in terms of design
themes apps and features shopify performs far
better although volusion added a few features
and improved some of its integrations it still has a long way to go to match
the popularity and scale of shopify's offers
but if you are looking for a less costly alternative with no transaction fees
regardless of the payment option you choose
volusion has the upper hand it also is ideal for subscription services or for
wholesalers where you're looking for unlimited
product options and variations we hope you found this information
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thanks for checking in with us today until next time
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