BigCommerce vs Volusion 2024: Which is Better for You?

BigCommerce and Volusion are both pretty similar platforms on the surface. They’re both comprehensive ecommerce solutions ideal for companies of all sizes, and they both promise a relatively straightforward user experience.

However, after experimenting with both, I can definitely say BigCommerce is the platform I’d pick first. It offers more features overall than Volusion, a larger app store, and more intuitive design tools. Plus, it recently upgraded its platform with some super-powerful AI capabilities.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Volusion doesn’t have value. It’s great if you’re looking for insightful analytics and support for a wide range of payment gateways.

So, how do you pick?

BigCommerce vs Volusion: Pros and Cons

BigCommerce Pros and Cons

Volusion Pros and Cons

BigCommerce vs Volusion: Pricing and Fees

One thing I noticed straight away when comparing BigCommerce and Volusion, is that their prices are very similar. They even take a similar approach to pricing strategies, giving you access to most of the features you need on all plans, but placing limitations on how much you can sell.

Here’s the problem, while Volusion initially seems cheaper on the surface, it makes you pay extra for SSL certificates and fraud protection (plus any app integrations).

BigCommerce Pricing

BigCommerce offers a 15-day free trial followed by 4 plans. You can also get a discount if you opt for an annual plan (this is available with Volusion too).

• Standard: $39 per month: Sales cap of $50k per year, unlimited staff accounts, website building tools, product reviews, real-time shipping quotes, omnichannel selling and gift cards.
• Plus: $105 per month: Sales cap of $180k per year, all the features of Standard, plus special credit card rates, segmentation options, abandoned cart saver, and more.
• Pro: $399 per month: Sales cap of $400k per year, all the features of Plus, as well as custom SSL certificates, lower credit card rates, and faceted search.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing: Unlimited sales and API calls, price lists, express routing, priority support, and solutions for headless commerce.

Volusion Pricing

Volusion offers a 14-day free trial. The four plans include:

• Personal: $35 per month: Sales cap of $50k per year, and a product cap of 100, 1 staff account, email/live chat support, and store building features, plus unlimited bandwidth, a custom domain, and an integrated checkout.
• Professional: $79 per month: Sales cap of $100k per year, and up to 5,000 products. All the features of Personal, plus 5 staff accounts, CRM features, importing and exporting, abandoned cart reports, email newsletters and customer reviews.
• Business: $299 per month: Sales cap of $400k per year, unlimited products, 15 staff accounts, customer loyalty plans, batch orders, API access, and the features of Professional.
• Prime: Custom pricing for unlimited sales, staff accounts, and products, all the features of Business, advanced customer support, reduced rates on additional services, and earlier access to new features.

Volusion vs BigCommerce: The Core Features

Most of the features offered by BigCommerce and Volusion are pretty similar, but BigCommerce has an edge in most of the areas that will matter most to ecommerce sellers. Let’s break down the main features you’ll need to know about.

Website Building and Design

First, BigCommerce offers more themes (60+ compared to about 45) than Volusion. About 12 of BigCommerce’s themes are free, compared to 11 from Volusion. Both companies offer pretty modern and attractive templates in my opinion. However BigCommerce gives you more styles to explore.

Additionally, when you dive into the website builder, BigCommerce is a lot more intuitive, and flexible. It features drag-and-drop capabilities, as well as the opportunity to customize CSS and HTML files, add global widgets, style buttons, and more.

Volusion has updated its design tools recently to make them more user-friendly, but I still think it has a higher learning curve than BigCommerce. The good news is that you do get tutorials and tips to guide you through the initial setup process.

Payment Processing and Ecommerce

Both Volusion and BigCommerce offer excellent payment processing and ecommerce features. You can use each platform with a range of payment gateway options. However, BigCommerce does have a partnership with PayPal which gives you access to specialist rates. Plus, Volusion will charge “maintenance” fees if you use any payment processor other than Stripe.

Volusion has it’s own POS system built-in, which is something you’ll need a third-party app to access with BigCommerce. Additionally, I’m a big fan of Volusion’s “Deal of the Day” feature, which makes it easy to promote limited-time deals.

However, BigCommerce is a lot more flexible overall. It allows you to sell digital products as well as physical items, offer single page checkouts, and display real-time shipping rates.

The company is constantly looking for ways to help you convert more users too. For instance, it recently introduced “Fastlane by PayPal” for quick checkout, and AI product recommendations.

Marketing Tools

With most ecommerce platforms, I usually recommend using integrations and add-ons for robust marketing features. However, both Volusion and BigCommerce do have some handy marketing capabilities built-in. For instance, both solutions support SEO with options to alter meta tags, page descriptions and more.

Where Volusion really falls behind is that it doesn’t have any native blogging capabilities, which means you’re going to struggle to invest in content marketing. All BigCommerce plans give you access to a blog, with all the basic features you’d expect, including the ability to share articles through social media.

Notably, both tools also include the option to create coupons and discounts, and use PPC advertising. However, unlike Volusion, BigCommerce supports comprehensive omnichannel selling, integrating with Facebook and Instagram Checkout, Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Google Shopping, and more.

Analytics and Business/Inventory Management

One area where Volusion does have an edge over BigCommerce is in its analytical tools. I personally love the reporting features on BigCommerce. They’re great for gaining insights into your everyday sales, inventory levels, and more. Plus, you can collect customer details and create segments.

However, Volusion takes its analytical features to the next level, with a comprehensive “ROI tracker” that provides insights into unique ways you can boost your sales. On the plus side, BigCommerce seems to have better inventory and product management tools in my opinion.

You can maintain granular control over your inventory, order, and collections, even if you have a large and complex inventory. Volusion’s inventory management tools are fine, but they’re not as in-depth, and you can’t sell digital products with Volusion either.

AI Features

I’m loving all of the AI features appearing on ecommerce platforms lately, so I wanted to pay special attention to this when conducting this comparison. BigCommerce is still in the early stages of building its AI toolkit, which it names “BigAI”.

It’s similar in a lot of ways to Shopify Magic, the selection of AI tools from Shopify. With BigAI you can create content in an instant, gather insights with predictive analytics via Google BigQuery ML, and display personalized product recommendations to customers. There’s even the option to improve search results for customers with AI-powered search.

Plus, BigCommerce is partnering with other companies to bring AI-infused integrations to its platform too. For whatever reason, Volusion doesn’t seem to offer any AI tools. You might be able to find integrations with applications that offer AI, but there’s nothing built into the platform.

Integrations and Apps

Volusion offers a lot of built-in features on its platform, but if you’re looking to expand, you’ll only find around 70 integrations on the Volusion app market. There’s still plenty of options though, such as connectors for payment gateways, and dropshipping tools.

BigCommerce is far more flexible. You can access more than 850 apps on its marketplace which support everything from design to shipping and point of sale. I actually think that the app store on BigCommerce is a lot easier to navigate too. I really like the “Must Haves” collection, and the other collections for things like “Shipping Essentials”.

BigCommerce vs Volusion: Ease of Use and Customer Support

Volusion used to be a lot trickier to use for beginners, but it has become more intuitive in recent years. I still think BigCommerce is more straightforward overall, however. The website builder is simpler to experiment with, and you can create content and enhance your store easily with AI.

In terms of customer support, both store builders offer responsive live chat support, but BigCommerce offers assistance on a wider range of channels, including email and phone support for every plan. Phone support is only available on higher-tier plans with Volusion.

Both of these platforms do have extensive help centers, community forums, active social media channels, and guides you can access for extra assistance though. Plus, both will allow you to hire experts from within the platform for customized assistance with things like marketing or web design.

Volusion vs BigCommerce: The Verdict

Overall, BigCommerce and Volusion have very similar features, and pricing, they also both target a similar audience (small-to-midsized ecommerce companies). However, BigCommerce is a better-value purchase overall.

Volusion might offer great analytics, but BigCommerce gives you a more intuitive experience, more features on lower-tier plans, and powerful AI functionality. Plus, it’s far more scalable, with multiple themes, apps, and add-ons to choose from.