Magento Commerce and Volusion are both popular eCommerce platforms. And whether you’re an entrepreneur looking to start your first eCommerce store, or a large enterprise organization interested in transitioning to a new eCommerce platform, both Magento Commerce and Volusion may seem appealing.
So, what’s better? In this blog, we’ll discuss Magento Commerce vs. Volusion, and how these platforms compare across 10 different categories:
- Analytics & Reporting
- Integration Capabilities
- Scalability
- Product Catalog
- Search
- Themes
- Security
- Vendor Support & Resources
- B2B eCommerce Features
- Pricing
We’ll discuss how Magento Commerce and Volusion are similar, how they differ, and what you need to know about the features of each platform. Join us, and see whether Magento Commerce or Volusion is the right choice for your next eCommerce project.
1. Does Magento Commerce or Volusion have better Analytics & Reporting?
Overall, Volusion has a pretty limited selection of analytics features, split into three different categories:
- Performance – Reports include gross revenue, revenue by day, total orders received, and your top-selling product.
- Traffic – Reports in this section include total visits, visits by day, unique visits, pages viewed per session, average session, and top device.
- Carts – These reports include reports about abandoned carts, conversion rates, and a detailed view of each abandoned cart.
Magento has similar reporting features with its Advanced Reporting tool, split into three different categories:
- Orders – Reports available include total revenue, average order value (AOV), refunds, tax collected, coupon usage, total number of orders, and more.
- Customers – Available reports include unique customers, new registered accounts, top coupon users, and a customer KPI (key performance indicator) table listing each customer’s orders, revenue, and AOV for the reporting period.
- Products – These reports include the total quantity of products sold, products added to wishlists, and best-selling products both by quantity and revenue.
Magento Commerce also includes the Magento Business Intelligence Suite, which is a powerful, data-driven analytics tool that allows you to dig even more deeply into your store’s performance and metrics, and gain useful insights to boost your bottom line.
Overall, Magento Commerce comes out as the winner in this category, since it provides deeper reporting features as well as the Magento Business Intelligence Suite. Volusion simply does not have a comparable data analytics feature.
2. Are there more Integration Capabilities for Magento Commerce or Volusion?
Volusion has a marketplace with some good integrations for accounting, shipping, live chat, and payment processors, but there’s a pretty limited selection available. As of publication time, there were only 21 apps on the Volusion Marketplace.
In contrast, the Magento Marketplace is much larger, with a wider variety of extensions and apps to install on your store. It has over 3,000 available extensions and integrations as of publication time, which puts Magento Commerce heads and shoulders above Volusion.
Magento Commerce is also a better option when it comes to custom integrations. Volusion has minimal API support, so if you want to connect an unsupported third-party application, you’re pretty much out of luck.
Magento Commerce, on the other hand, supports modern APIs like RESTful and webhooks. With the right team of developers and a bit of custom code, it’s possible to integrate a wide variety of programs like email marketing programs, CRMs (Customer Relationship Management), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and bookkeeping software into Magento Commerce – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
3. Which platform is more scalable, Magento or Volusion?
When it comes to scalability, Magento Commerce and Volusion have some similarities. They are both SaaS (Software as a Service) platforms and are hosted on the cloud. That means that you’re responsible for maintaining your own servers and backend infrastructure – Magento or Volusion are responsible for this.
This also means that it’s easy to scale up your business when you need more processing power, storage, or bandwidth to handle traffic spikes.
In the case of Volusion, it’s built on the Google Cloud Platform, one of the world’s largest and most reliable Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). This minimizes loading time and maximizes scalability. If your eCommerce store needs more storage or processing power, you’ll get it automatically.
Magento Commerce is similar, as it operates on Adobe’s cloud infrastructure via Amazon Web Services (AWS). As your website grows and expands, you’ll automatically get access to more server space and computing power – you won’t have to lift a finger.
However, there are some ways in which Magento Commerce is more scalable than Volusion. As an example, Magento Commerce allows you to run multiple stores from a single backend and catalog – while Volusion does not. You’d need to set up a separate Volusion installation for each individual store, so Magento Commerce may be a better option if your business has multiple distinct brands.
4. Who has the larger product catalog, Magento or Volusion?
The number of products you can have with Volusion depends on your plan. The cheapest Personal plan gives you 100 products, the Professional plan gives you 5,000 products, and the Business and Prime plans give you unlimited products.
Volusion also has some helpful features for up-selling and cross-selling, like support for related items, free gifts, and add-ons/accessories that can be integrated into product pages, as well as product bundles.
Magento Commerce provides an unlimited number of products for your product catalog, with support for unlimited product variants. Similarly to Volusion, it also has out-of-the-box features to help with cross-selling and upselling on both product pages and shopping cart pages.
5. How does the search capabilities compare?
Volusion has a built-in storefront search tool that’s fairly powerful and easy to use. It automatically indexes products and allows customers to search for them using its default search function. There are also a few variables you can mess with to change how search results are sorted.
Magento Commerce is the clear winner here, though. That’s because it uses Elasticsearch, which is one of the most powerful and extensible search engines in use today. It’s very fast and efficient and allows a lot of customization and advanced settings to be changed to ensure your customers get accurate search results.
Not only that, but the Magento Marketplace allows you to further extend the power of your search engine. For example, if you want to add autocomplete functionality to your store, you could simply install an extension from the Magento Marketplace – no custom code or long development time necessary.
Downloadable Resource:
Download our comparison guide on Magento vs. Volusion
6. Does Magento or Volusion have more themes?
Volusion provides a few different themes that you can use by default – about 30 at publication time. These themes are all mobile-friendly and work on all devices. They can also be modified and altered using drag-and-drop tools to add some more customizability.
One unique feature of Volusion is its Premium Theme Pro service. For a flat rate, the Volusion team will create a customized theme and homepage for your store, and some other basic services like technical SEO. This may be appealing to newcomers who want to set up a store fast.
Magento Commerce offers only 2 default free themes. However, there are a lot more premium paid themes you can buy for a low rate – a service that is not offered by Volusion at all. There are dozens of websites where you can shop pre-built themes, and it’s easy to add them to your Magento store.
You also have the option of building a custom theme from the ground up. The open-source nature of Magento means that almost any skilled web developer can build a one-of-a-kind custom theme easily, and this may be a better option for large businesses and enterprises who want to represent their brand with a unique, custom-built theme.
7. Who has better security, Volusion or Magento?
Volusion provides encryption, secure payment portals, and secure servers and databases that protect your data and the data of your customers. Since Volusion is a fully-hosted solution, PCI compliance is easy, too.
Unfortunately, though, Volusion has been the subject of a high profile data breach – malicious code entered its servers in 2019 and may have infected as many as 20,000 stores. This happened after hackers gained access to Volusion’s server on the Google Cloud Platform.
Magento Commerce is also very secure. Unlike Volusion, it does not use any shared hosting servers. Each customer gets their own isolated server environment, separated from other customers. So if there is ever a hack or data loss incident, this will be confined only to the affected customer, and cannot spread as easily throughout Magento Commerce servers.
In addition to this, Magento conducts regular penetration testing on its servers to guarantee security, offers secure payment gateways, and provides powerful encryption using the AES-265 algorithm.
8. Does Magento or Volusion have better support?
Volusion offers a large help center with a lot of resources to help eCommerce store owners resolve common issues and set up their eCommerce platforms on their own. In addition to this, 24/7 chat service is available for all customers. However, you will not be able to get phone support unless you have a Professional or higher plan at Volusion.
Magento Commerce also has an extensive help center and technical resource database, which can be useful for store owners and developers who are having issues with their store. Since Magento is open source, there are also a lot of other forums and support websites out there that can be used to help troubleshoot any issues you have with Magento.
You also get dedicated, 24/7 support with Magento Commerce. You’ll be able to submit support tickets at any time of day, and you’ll also get a dedicated specialist to help you and your development team as you begin building and launching your Magento store.
9. Which platform has beter B2B eCommerce features?
This is an area where there’s a clear winner between Magento Commerce and Volusion. Volusion has basically no dedicated B2B features. It’s meant to be a B2C platform, and that’s reflected by its feature set.
For example, while it’s technically possible to give a discount to a certain user – something that’s often necessary in B2B eCommerce, where products are sold at different rates to different companies – this must be set up on a per-user basis. In other words, you can’t assign discounts to an entire organization at once, but only to a single user.
In contrast, Magento Commerce allows you to set up discounts for entire organizations – and also has dedicated self-service features to allow B2B buyers to manage their own accounts, credit limits, past orders, and more. And that’s just the beginning. Other B2B features of Magento Commerce include:
- One-click reordering
- Order by SKU
- Custom catalogs for different companies
- Complex, rule-based shipping functionality for multiple distribution centers
- Integration with ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) platforms
- Requisition lists
- B2B payment options like checks, bank transfer, credit card, and net terms
- Support for customer quotes and negotiations
- Minimum order values, which can be set on a per-customer basis
Whether you’re exclusively working with B2B companies, or you want to build a B2C and B2B eCommerce platform on the same framework, Magento Commerce is the clear winner. Volusion simply is not meant for B2B eCommerce.
10. What’s the pricing of Volusion vs. Magento Commerce?
Volusion offers a few different packages and pricing tier, as follows:
- Personal – $29/month, for stores with up to $50K GMV (Gross Merchandise Volume) per year
- Professional – $79/month, for stores with up to $100K GMV per year
- Business – $299/month, for stores with up to $500K GMV per year
- Prime – Custom pricing, for stores with $500K GMV or more per year
Each tier provides different features, like a different number of maximum products and staff accounts. Some features are reserved only for Business and higher accounts. You can learn more from Volusion here.
Magento Commerce is a bit different. It’s meant for larger businesses, so it’s similar to the Prime Volusion subscription. Your monthly fees are calculated based on your total average gross sales revenue.
How to Choose The Platform That’s Right For You – Magento Vs. Volusion
Both Volusion and Magento have some great features, and either one could be a good option depending on your business needs.
Volusion, for example, is easy to use, affordable to get started, and offers most of the tools and functionality you would need for a small B2C store. That makes it really appealing for entrepreneurs, particularly those who don’t have a lot of technical skills.
Magento, on the other hand, is more technically complex. However, it’s a lot more scalable, extensible, and powerful, and since it’s open-source, you remain in full control of your own data. It also has unbeatable B2B features, where Volusion has basically no dedicated B2B features – so Magento may be a better choice for complex projects and large enterprises.
Curious to learn more about each platform and see which one may be right for your business? 121eCommerce is here to help. As Magento Certified Partners, we’re experts when it comes to Magento, and can provide you with all of the information you need to choose between Volusion and Magento.
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