Volusion Software Review

Volusion was developed by a Web Designer in the 1990's by Kevin Sproles, who found that improving the shopping cart functionality for his clients 92 sites was what the clients most wanted.

He created Volusion in 1999 as a dedicated e-commerce company. Shortly afterward, Clay Olivier (current COO) emigrated from Dell to handle the business end. Volusion is headquarted in Simi Valley, California with a facility in Austin, Texas; it has more than 110 employees.

Free-Trial Notes

Routine and quick access to free trial, which lasts for 14 days.

Provided as a demo with an easy setup wizard.

No Surprises or difficulties in accessing the demo and learning the system.

Functionality and Features

The Sell Online tab on the site takes you directly to promotional information, as well as the pricing, demo and FAQ's. The pricing plans are identified in terms of metals, with the Steel version running $24.99/month (1GB bandwidth) to Platinum which sets you back $159.99/month (25 GB bandwidth.)

Each of the plans has a $49.00 setup fee, and offers a Google Ad words credit coupon. The 30-day money-back guarantee applies to first month's hosting fee for small business solutions only and does not apply to SSL, design, marketing, or live chat orders, or the one-time setup fee. Design services are offered with a varied set of design templates.

The Web design pricing page shows several alternatives, and it is clear Volusion is interested in helping with your Web layout with three basic packages, the Elite package, template, home page, buttons, category, graphics, page headings, slideshow, and thank you page for $3995.

Limitations

The following observations are drawn from secondary sources (some competitors) and comment on various attributes of the Volusion package that may affect your interest. Some of the limitations may have been resolved since the reviews were made:

From the SEO Shopping Carts Review

With Volusion, you can create custom HTML pages (e.g. landing pages) but you are somewhat more difficult to setup links with into the rest of the site. A way of working around this limitation is place links in the footer of the intended pages.

Something missing in Volusion that is available in other SEO shopping carts is the H! tag as an automatic insertion. Some way to automatically insert a header tag, often with the product name, is provided by so many SEO carts.

 Using Volusion, you manually insert the header tags into a proper form field. Also a feature many Website owners find irritating is the necessary existence of a link back to Volusion.com on every page. (You may have the link removed for a fee of $20/month.)

From the Nexternal Evaluation

These are Volusion limitations noted in an evaluation by Nexternal:

No access to a dedicated support individual

No Direct Checkout

No single-click reorder

Will automatically create USPS, FedEx and DHL labels

No Customer selected preferred delivery date

Whether these are limitations or simply tradeoffs between products will depend largely on what your requirements are.

Support and Documentation

Volusion support includes 24/7 chat and email support, standard US Central Standard Time business-hour phone support from customer service consultants, a knowledge base, training videos, and online forums. A conventional training manual and user guide is provided online in the knowledge base.

Conclusion

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

A 5-star e-commerce solution is available with Premium Web Cart, which is full-featured and usable across the widest range of business size. It is also built on the latest Web technologies and comes to you in an affordable suite of options designed to aggressively grow your core business.

Best Wishes,