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| OVERALL RATING |
4.7
/ 5.0
★★★★★
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|---|---|
| Features | 4.7 / 5.0 |
| Ease of Use | 4.6 / 5.0 |
| Pricing | 4.8 / 5.0 |
| Reliability & Support | 4.4 / 5.0 |
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Volusion is a fully hosted online store builder that caters almost exclusively to aspiring online retailers. While they're not as powerful or performant as competitors in the shared hosting space, they shine when it comes to the number of eCommerce-related features they offer. If you want to take your mom-and-pop shop to the web, you can do so with Volusion.
Advertiser Disclosure
“Founded by 16-year-old Kevin Sproles in 1999 as a web design studio, Volusion added eCommerce functionality in 2002 and hasn't looked back. More than 180,000 entrepreneurs have looked to the company for help hosting and managing their online businesses, and Volusion has processed more than 185 million orders worth $26 billion.
The company offers a hosting/site-building combo platter worthy of consideration if you're in need of a basic online store and the means to promote products. The company focuses on easy, custom designs and eCommerce-optimized features. Although Volusion could increase its support offerings to further justify a price tag that exceeds most shared hosting competitors, the company's focused niche in online store design and inventory management warrants the investment.
Store owners will need to purchase a domain elsewhere before connecting it to Volusion and launching their store. Once you're ready to start designing your site, Volusion's revamped site builder provides dozens of stellar mobile-friendly themes. The company used to offer hundreds of themes, so we expect — and want — to see the number of options grow.
Unlike many eCommerce site builder plans that limit your product numbers substantially, Volusion's most basic plan allows you to display 100 products — many more than do similar companies in the space. Regardless of which plan you choose, site owners are allotted unlimited storage and zero transaction fees, in addition to tools for inventory management, order processing, and shipping oversight.
Finally, market your products via social media integrations and reach new markets via integrations with Amazon, eBay, and Google. Collect payments via all the major credit card issuers (Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and AmEx), as well as through cash, PayPal, Google Wallet, Amazon, and Stripe. The platform will calculate reports to show your return on investment and store activity.”
“When folks typically search for cheap web hosting, they're often in need of a shared server provider that offers a basic site builder or easy integration with blogging apps or content tools. For folks looking to launch an online store, however, costs can rise with the addition of eCommerce-friendly features.
Volusion might not be the most affordable hosting/site-building combo around, but they do focus on helping customers build a better eCommerce store. All of their plans are geared toward promoting more products in more ways, though the price scales rapidly as you upgrade your plan to take advantage of additional services.
Similar to mainstream hosts, however, Volusion is designed to help store owners become successful. The company makes the design and setup process user-friendly and emphasizes eCommerce with each feature or customization option added. You might not get the same 24/7 technical support that other hosts offer, but Volusion can help entrepreneurs build a basic website and beautiful online store that profits quickly with zero transaction fees.
Volusion's business is helping you launch your online business quickly and painlessly. They make store designing simple and offer a solid number of customization options when it comes to promoting your products. While they may not have the lowest price tag on their services, they offer what many hosting newcomers are looking for, which is an extensive feature set that caters to eCommerce needs.”
Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com): This rating is not available yet. We haven't evaluated Volusion for the "Dedicated" option yet as they do not currently offer this type of hosting service. We're always working to keep our reviews up-to-date so check back later!
Does Volusion already offer the "Dedicated" option? Let us know.
Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com): This rating is not available yet. We haven't evaluated Volusion for the "VPS" option yet as they do not currently offer this type of hosting service. We're always working to keep our reviews up-to-date so check back later!
Does Volusion already offer the "VPS" option? Let us know.
Laura Bernheim (HostingAdvice.com): This rating is not available yet. We haven't evaluated Volusion for the "WordPress" option yet as they do not currently offer this type of hosting service. We're always working to keep our reviews up-to-date so check back later!
Does Volusion already offer the "WordPress" option? Let us know.
“Volusion launched the next generation of its eCommerce website builder, dubbed V2, in mid-2017 to much fanfare. The drag-and-drop builder and eCommerce interfaces are exceedingly more modern and user-friendly, but the company is still playing a bit of catch-up. Our biggest knock on the site builder when comparing Volusion to other eCommerce platforms is the lack of theme options, which we expect to be solved as time passes. At the time of writing, Volusion offers roughly 50 design templates, while competitors offer hundreds of choices.
The beauty of an online website builder is the idea of focusing on the WYSIWYG or what-you-see-is-what-you-get aspects of the design process and knowing that the web hosting itself is happening in the background. That's why online platforms like Volusion are particularly good options for first-time site owners and mom-and-pop shops that just need to get a basic website off the ground. When it comes to easy-to-learn customization features, Volusion does an excellent job of giving users options.
Once you're up and running, you can promote anywhere from 100 to unlimited products, depending on which package you select. You can add plenty of photos and videos to display your items, with specifications for the colors, sizes, and textures that are available for each. Finally, promote your online store via social media, send out email marketing campaigns, sell on a variety of integrated third-party platforms, and track your business progress with informative reports and analytics.
Overall, Volusion's strong suit is site building for eCommerce. There are tons of online web builder platforms out there, but Volusion specializes in catering its plans to meet the needs of future online store owners. They make it pretty easy to get started, offer a bunch of layout options, and allow you to customize via HTML and CSS as well.”
Volusion was designed with the intention of helping store owners create an online hub to market and sell their products quickly and easily. The number of available themes has dropped considerably since the update, but we expect to see dozens more added in the coming weeks and months. The majority of Volusion's features are centered around the idea of helping business owners track inventory and profit efficiently while making the user experience informative and intuitive for their shoppers.
Entrepreneurs can easily customize their online storefront with Volusion's revamped site builder, which provides easy access to product display settings, navigation menus, and more. The drag-and-drop platform is tied in with users' store management systems, allowing business owners to easily switch between design tools and the features covering order processing, customer relationship management, inventory tracking, marketing, design, and analytics.
Volusion seems to strike the balance between affordability and productivity, offering ample features and tools to justify what they charge. Naturally, the platform is significantly more expensive than free, self-hosted, open-source options, such as WooCommerce, Magento, or PrestaShop. Those services, however, require store owners to purchase and maintain a web hosting account. Although hosting can be procured for less than $5 per month, performance, security, and other features typically lag behind until you get to options priced comparably to Volusion.
When examined alongside other commercial hosted services, Volusion is quite a bargain. BigCommerce plans start nearly twice as high and come with transaction fees on purchases made through external payment gateways. Although the themes available through each eCommerce platform are visually impressive, they're both typically priced beyond $150. Wix and Weebly are priced equally or less than Volusion and offer cheaper themes, but the site builders include storage or product limitations and fees.
Our only gripe with the Volusion pricing format would be the $7-per-GB for exceeding bandwidth limits, but a responsible store owner should be able to adapt to scaling traffic and upgrade to new plans as needed.
As with seemingly every web hosting provider, eCommerce specialized or not, Volusion promises customers free 24/7 support and a 99.9% network uptime guarantee. Our support standards typically drop somewhat with eCommerce platforms, but Volusion puts forth a decent effort. Although we understand the upsell opportunities of offering priority support to the customers spending the most money on higher-tier plans, as Volusion does, we tend to gripe at hosts that limit support options for the small-time customers just getting started with the cheaper plans. Volusion reserves phone support to those spending at least $35 per month.
As for the online-only support, however, we do appreciate the level of depth in the support articles, blog posts, and how-to guides, as well as the ability to relatively quickly chat with a Volusion representative, but we struggled with finding different resources quickly. Information is spread among the blog and help center on the Volusion website, as well as the store and account management interfaces.
Wondering how Volusion stacks up againt other web hosting services? See our host-vs-host reviews below and compare them side by side.
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Volusion is the winner
2 out of 2 times.
Laura Bernheim
Hosting Expert:
Volusion's major overhaul in mid-2017 was a giant step forward for the eCommerce platform, giving entrepreneurs and their customers more confidence in doing business together. The company streamlines the daunting process of starting an online storefront, finding success, and growing profits. We appreciate how many features and tools Volusion packs into the company's largely affordable plans, to say nothing of the hassle-free hosting experience. The Volusion website builder might not be quite as intuitive as some of the company's competitors, but motivated site owners should have no problem picking up the reins and taking control of their online business.
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Overall Rating 4.7 / 5.0★★★★★ |