BigCommerce vs. Volusion

Hosted ecommerce shopping cart services have become very popular in the last decade or so, and perhaps the two most popular of all are BigCommerce and Volusion. Volusion has been around since 1999, while BigCommerce, although it has a pedigree that goes a bit farther back, officially opened for business in 2009. While BigCommerce arrived on the scene with a big splash and some big promises, Volusion has been gradually improving its service over the last decade. Has BigCommerce really outdone the pioneer, or is Volusion still a better overall choice?

The Basics

Volusion offers several pricing plans, geared to suit a variety of different types of businesses. Their most popular option is their Gold service, which, at $99.99 US per month (plus a one-time setup fee of $49), allows for up to 5000 different products, 15GB of bandwidth and storage space for images, and access to Volusion’s customer service systems.

BigCommerce also has a range of different service packages, and a setup fee of $49.95 for each. Their most popular option is the $79.95/month Gold option, which features 1000 product slots, 5GB of bandwidth, 500MB of storage, login accounts for 20 staff members, and $75 worth of Google AdWords credit.

The Features

When it began operations just over a year ago, BigCommerce blew away observers with its extensive feature list, which in many ways surpassed anything offered by any other service at the time. They’ve set the standard in a number of different areas. In terms of payment options, in addition to standards like Google Checkout and PayPal, BigCommerce supports more than 50 other gateways, a number which is still unmatched by any other shopping cart provider. They also offer the broadest range of shipping options, including things like Australia Post and Royal Mail. BigCommerce can even be set up to allow users to sell directly through Facebook and eBay.

Volusion manages to nearly match BigCommerce in most ways. Its search engine optimization and stats tracking features are just about equal to what BigCommerce offers, although it doesn’t have as many payment gateway or shipping options. While non-US users may be discouraged to see that Volusion has almost exclusively US-based shipping options, but on the other hand, some will appreciate that Volusion allows users to create stores in any language, whereas BigCommerce supports only the Roman alphabet at this time.

Ease of Use

BigCommerce also does a good job of making store design and operations relatively easy. Users can choose from a wide variety of pre-designed store templates, which in many cases should be sufficient. It can be difficult to customize store designs beyond making the basic changes that BigCommerce’s built-in storefront editor facilitates, unless you have expertise with HTML and CSS (or someone on the payroll who does).

Volusion also offers some preset templates, but unfortunately, compared to BigCommerce’s, they are generally poor in quality and result in somewhat less professional-looking stores. This means that Volusion users essentially have no choice but to do some customization. The problem is that this isn’t any easier with Volusion than it is with BigCommerce.

While there are some providers out there, especially Shopify, who provide more powerful customization tools, and others, such as FoxyCart, who simply get out of the way and let web developers do their magic without setting up any obstacles, both BigCommerce and Volusion are geared towards users who are happy to use pre-designed templates, and thus BigCommerce wins out in this category thanks to its superior templates.

Conclusion

While Volusion is a good, reliable service that provides users with everything they need to successfully operate an online store, BigCommerce just goes a little further in virtually every area and, overall, represents a better value.