Volusion Review
- Date Established
- 1999
- Location
- Austin, TX
Pros
- Easy to use
- Competitive monthly cost
- Single-page checkout
- Cart recovery features
Cons
- Inconsistent customer support
- Limited features
Overview
In the late 1990s, website designer Kevin Sproles noticed a trend in his clients’ requests. They wanted shopping cart software they could use to easily sell online. In response, Sproles founded Volusion, an all-in-one shopping cart option for small to large businesses. Since its founding in 1999, Volusion has grown to employ more than 250 people and now hosts over 30,000 online stores, including Tiny House Coffee Roasters and USA Bride.
As comprehensive shopping cart software, Volusion offers most of the features merchants need to manage their online stores. And Volusion now does so by offering two distinct versions: V1 is the original platform that’s a bit more complex and feature-rich, and V2 is a new, simplified platform, designed to get merchants selling quickly.
Keep reading for a full Volusion review. We’ll look at pricing, features, add-ons, customer service, and more for this all-in-one solution.
Table of Contents
Pricing
Volusion offers a 14-Day Free Trial (no credit card required) so you can test out the platform with zero risk. If and when you decide to use Volusion to host your online store, you can choose from four pricing tiers. All are billed on a monthly basis, without any setup or cancellation fees (though if you cancel you must remember to cancel all your third party services individually to avoid additional fees). You don’t have to sign any contracts to use Volusion, but if you do decide to make a year-long commitment to the platform, you can benefit from a 10% discount.
Volusion pricing varies for V1 and V2. Perhaps the largest difference is the way Volusion handles fees. V1 does not include any transaction fees, but bandwidth is limited. On this plan, if you go over your bandwidth allotment, you can expect to pay $7 for each GB of bandwidth that you exceed your limits. V2, on the other hand, comes with unlimited bandwidth, though it does charge transaction fees between 0.5% and 2.0%.
Here’s a breakdown of the pricing structure and the features that come at each level. We’ll start with V1’s pricing and then move onto V2:
V1 Pricing
Mini: $15/month
- Unlimited Storage
- No Transaction Fees
- 1GB Bandwidth
- 100 Products
- AND
- 24/7 Online Support
- Free Responsive Templates
- Built-in SEO Tools
- Social Media Tools
- Reporting Tools
Plus: $35/month
- Unlimited Storage
- No Transaction Fees
- 3GB Bandwidth
- 1,000 Products
- All of the above PLUS
- 24/7 Online & Phone Support
- Abandoned Cart Reports
- Ratings & Reviews
- Import/Export
- Newsletters
Pro: $75/month
- Unlimited Storage
- No Transaction Fees
- 10GB Bandwidth
- 10,000 Products
- All of the above PLUS
- Priority Support
- Phone Orders
- Deal Of The Day
- Customer Loyalty Plan
- Batch Order Processing
- Amazon & eBay integration
- API Access
- CRM Tools
Premium: $135/month
- Unlimited Storage
- No Transaction Fees
- 35GB Bandwidth
- Unlimited Products
- All of the above PLUS
- Priority Support
- Dedicated Account Manager
V2 Pricing
Personal: $25/month
- Unlimited Products
- Unlimited File Storage
- 2% Transaction Fee
- Online Support
Professional: $75/month
- Unlimited Products
- Unlimited File Storage
- Checkout On Your Domain
- Abandoned Cart Details
- 1% Transaction Fee
- Priority Phone Support
Business: $135/month
- Unlimited Products
- Unlimited File Storage
- Checkout On Your Domain
- Abandoned Cart Details
- 0.5% Transaction Fee
- Dedicated Account Manager
- Free One On One Setup
In addition, all V2 levels include the following:
- Free, Responsive Themes
- Drag & Drop Editing Tools
- Built-In SEO Tools
- Discounts & Coupons
- Analytics
- Automatic Tax Calculator
- Google SEO Optimized
- Product Variants
- Sitewide Security
- Inventory Management
- $100 Free Ad Credits
Web-Hosted Or Licensed
Web-hosted. Volusion is a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution. They manage the hosting of your online store, and they currently boast an impressive 99.9% uptime.
Volusion has recently migrated their hosting to Google Cloud. This switch should increase uptime reliability and site speed for their merchants. We’ll keep an eye on this transition and hopefully report back with some positive effects soon.
Specific Size Of Business
The Volusion platform is scalable and works for small and large businesses. Just keep track of how much bandwidth your site uses and plan accordingly.
Hardware & Software Requirements
None! Just keep your computer and internet browser current and maintain a strong internet connection.
Ease Of Use
Volusion offers a Free 14-Day Trial to all prospective customers. While you will have to provide Volusion with some contact info, you get to keep your credit card number all to yourself.
When you create your account, you’ll be able to choose if you want to sign up for V1 or V2. Your choice will depend on your skill set and your business’s needs. My recommendation: If your business is larger than a very small startup, choose V1. In my opinion, V2 does not have enough functionality yet to fit the needs of most merchants.
Testing V1 Ease Of Use
Upon creating your account, you will be directed to your admin. Here’s what the dashboard looks like:
For in-depth step-by-step directions, I recommend Volusion’s video tutorial series. You can find these videos by clicking the “Helpful Video Tutorials” link in your dashboard.
As always, I started my testing by adding my own products to the store. Thankfully, adding products and product images is simple. You first input basic information:
At the bottom of the page, you’ll find a list of advanced product information. Here you can enter SEO information, shipping information, tax information, and more.
When I was done, I just clicked “View Live,” and was able to see the product I had just added as a customer would see it.
It’s easy to create discounts and coupon codes in the admin. And you can make those discounts apply to specified products or categories. More advanced discount options (including quantity requirements and order price requirements) are listed at the bottom of the page.
From the admin, you can also make changes to your site’s design via HTML/CSS editors as well as a WYSIWYG editor. More on this in Web Design.
Testing V2 Ease Of Use
I must admit that I was disappointed with Volusion’s more recent version of the software: V2. I found the admin overly-simplified, to the point that it is frustrating to use. The lack of a main dashboard page and toolbar organization makes using V2 rather difficult, even though Volusion intended the software to be easier to use.
When I first logged into my new V2 account, I was presented with this page:
This is V2’s dashboard, although it’s missing a few of the things I most commonly look for. There are no site analytics listed, and you are not able to view subcategories for each of the categories listed on this page.
After clicking through these categories for a while, I decided to try adding my first product.
Your “add a product” page will look like the one above. It’s easy to enter product information to your store, and as you scroll down the page, you’ll be able to add more advanced product features.
My biggest frustration came when I tried to update my store settings. I clicked on “Settings,” and found myself in a vast ocean of orange.
I entered my business’s address, as instructed, but I could NOT get the software to accept my address. I looked everywhere for a “Submit” button, and I tried pressing “Enter” a million times. For the life of me, I could not enter this information, and so I couldn’t move forward to input the rest of my settings.
It turns out, my trouble lay in copy-pasting my address into this field. You must type the address in order for V2 to accept it. I finally figured this out and was able to move on to entering my settings. Good golly!
You must install the free discounts app in order to create discounts for your customers. As you create a new discount, you will see a screen with drop-down options similar to this one:
Once you have entered this information, you will be able to view and edit your new discount in a more typical format:
Overall, I would not recommend V2 over V1. Volusion’s intentions with V2 was to create a software that was easier to use. I don’t feel that V2 achieves that goal yet, and to be honest, V1 just isn’t that hard to figure out.
Features
Volusion comes with all the features you’d expect from a popular shopping cart. Here’s a quick breakdown of a few of those features. Keep in mind that I’ve broken up these features for V1 and V2.
V1 Features
For The Customer
- One Page Checkout: Help your customers purchase quickly for a higher conversion rate.
- Allow Social Media Sharing: Let your customers share their excitement and promote your brand.
- Gift Cards, Daily Deals & Discounts: Create all of these features in your admin.
- Abandoned Cart Reports & Emails: Remind your customers to complete their transactions with this abandon cart feature.
- Allow Reviews: Inspire confidence in your products and your brand.
- Give Customers A Good Look At Your Products: Post multiple product images and enable zoom and color swatch features so your customers know exactly what they’re purchasing.
For The Merchant
- List Unlimited Product Options: You can sell the same t-shirt in five different colors, in five different sizes, in five different patterns, no problem.
- Accept Payments: Volusion can handle multiple currencies and has features for automatic tax calculation.
- Returned Merchandise Authorization (RMA) Tool: Make returns a cinch.
- Mobile Management: You can manage your store from your smartphone, tablet or even smartwatch.
- Email Marketing Tools: Keep your customer base informed.
- Sell On Facebook, Amazon, eBay: All of these channels are synced with your Volusion store, and you can manage all your orders from your Volusion admin.
- Marketing & SEO Tools: Write custom URLs, meta tags, and image alt tags. Benefit from Volusion’s auto-generated sitemap.xtml, robots.txt, and custom 404 error pages.
- Content Delivery Network (CDN): Take advantage of a CDN to deliver your site’s content to your customers’ computers faster.
V2 Features
For The Customer
- Instant Search: Help customers find the products they’re looking for.
- Showcase Your Products: Create detailed product pages with images and videos.
- Checkout On Your Domain: Let customers checkout on your domain name, not one of Volusion’s subdomains. This is available for merchants on the Professional and Business level plans.
- Discounts: Create and promote discount codes.
For The Merchant
- Order Processing: Manage inventory, shipping, and returns.
- Shipping Features: Choose from multiple shipping options, including signature-required shipments, discounted shipping, and flat rate shipping. An integration with Shippo may give you access to lower shipping rates.
- Product Variants: Create products with different sizes, colors, and styles, and price each item differently. You can also choose specific images to be displayed with each variant.
- Track Inventory: Make sure you never sell an item you don’t have on hand.
- Upsell: Suggest related products to previous customers to inspire additional purchases.
- CRM: View your customers’ purchase history, value to your store, and contact information.
- Bulk Import: Import new inventory using CSV files.
- Analytics App: See how customers are coming to your site and interacting with your content.
- Accept Payments: Volusion has features for automatic tax calculation.
- Returned Merchandise Authorization (RMA) Tool: Process returns easily.
- SEO Tools: Write custom URLs, meta tags, and more.
- Mobile App: Manage your account and process orders from anywhere with Volusion’s new mobile admin app.
For the full list of features, take a look at Volusion’s site.
Web Design
While Volusion’s theme selection used to be lacking, they have recently unveiled a brand new selection of fully mobile responsive themes, which are a big improvement.
If you are still using V1 for your online store, you can choose from a selection of 46 themes, 11 of which are free.
Here’s a sampling of those free Volusion templates:
If none of the free templates strike your fancy, Volusion offers premium themes at $180. I’m very glad that Volusion has moved away from their previous, very expensive pricing model for premium themes (some used to cost as much as $900!). This new pricing jibes much better with the industry standard.
Volusion V2 offers just 14 free themes, all of which are mobile responsive. I was not able to find any premium templates for V2.
As you might imagine, editing tools for Volusion templates vary between the two versions.
For V1, there are a few ways you can go about customizing your online store. There’s a built-in template editor within the admin, and you can edit both the HTML and CSS stylesheets.
The technologically disinclined can use the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor to update content. There’s also a visual Easy Editor for your storefront, which you can use to add new blocks of content.
While the Easy Editor is useful for smaller changes, in order to make global or structural changes to your site, you’ll need to get into the source code.
The V2 version also lets you make changes to site CSS. However, V2 places a lot more focus on their easy editors. You can use WYSIWYG and visual editors to add and change content easily on your site, without messing with the code.
Integrations & Add-Ons
If you’re looking for dozens of integrations to add to your site, V1 is the way to go. V1 offers 60+ integrations. Here are a few of those integrations:
- ShipStation: Shipping software.
- Yotpo: Customer comment software.
- Constant Contact:. Email marketing.
- MailChimp: Email marketing.
- eBridge Connections: Accounting integration.
Volusion V2, on the other hand, lists only 14 applications, two of which are payment processors. Here are the integrations that Volusion currently supports:
- 1800Accountant: Tax and accounting firm.
- FedEx Advantage Program: Discounted shipping service.
- Amazon Product Ads: Advertise your products on Amazon.
- Doba: Dropshipping application.
- Domain.com: Domain registration provider.
- Grasshopper: Virtual phone system.
- Hover: Domain registration provider.
- Kabbage: Funding service.
- Kole Imports: Dropshipping application.
- LegalZoom: Legal documents service.
- MailChimp: Email marketing.
- Namecheap: Domain registration provider and web host.
There’s also an API available if you’d prefer to have your developers build a new connection.
Payment Processing
Volusion V1 integrates with over 30 payment gateways. Here are a few you might recognize.
V2, on the other hand, integrates with only two payment gateways: PayPal and Stripe. If you choose to use Stripe to accept payments, you can also enable Apple Pay on your site.
Volusion also integrates with its very own in-house payment gateway, Volusion Merchant Services (for V1 US merchants only). If you choose to go this route, you may benefit from a slightly lower transaction fee. Volusion Merchant Services charges a fee of 2.15% + $0.30 per transaction. (Volusion does not provide complete information about these fees on their website. I found this number by contacting Volusion. I was passed around a few times before someone finally answered my question).
Note: I’ve seen rumors online about hidden fees, contracts, and cancellation charges involved with Volusion Merchant Services. It appears that you’ll have to sign a three-year contract, and termination of that contract will cost $99. Additionally, the advertised 2.15% transaction fee is the lowest rate available. Some merchants will be charged more. Be wary and always read the fine print.
Customer Service & Technical Support
All plans (except V1’s Mini and V2’s Personal) come with 24/7 personal support via phone, chat, and email. Mini and Personal come with online support only. Additional priority support (read: faster response times) comes with higher level plans.
Here’s the contact information for those avenues of support:
- Phone – 1-800-646-3517
- Sales Email
- Live Chat (Link provided on the footer of most volusion.com pages and in your admin)
For the business owner who prefers to figure things out on their own (and every merchant on the Mini and Personal plans), Volusion has made some good self-service resources available, including social media platforms and support documentation. These resources include:
- Knowledge Base
- Webinars and Video Tutorials
- Social Media Profiles. You can contact Volusion via Facebook and Twitter.
- Blog
- Guides
- Professional Marketing Services
- Professional Design Services
There are mixed reviews online about the quality of Volusion’s customer support. When I asked a question via live chat, I received a response in minutes. However, I’ve also seen comments from current users stating that they have to wait hours for responses from customer support. I have also experienced these kinds of wait times in the past.
Negative Reviews & Complaints
As with every service, there are some downfalls to using Volusion. I’ve searched the internet to see what real customers say about their experiences with Volusion and gleaned the most relevant, recent, and recurring complaints:
- Bandwidth Overage Charges On V1: Lots of customers report racking up big charges in bandwidth overage fees. If you are on the V1 platform, aim to choose a plan that matches your bandwidth needs and try to reduce the amount of bandwidth your site uses.
- Transaction Fees On V2: While Volusion does not charge bandwidth overage fees to V2 customers, they do charge transaction fees.
- Dated Software: Customers often call Volusion’s software “dated,” “old school,” or “behind the times.” Volusion is simply lacking some of the bells and whistles that many other shopping carts have introduced in the past few years.
- Misleading Sales Representatives: I’ve seen a lot of complaints mentioning “bait-and-switch” tactics. Sales reps are reportedly over-promising and under-delivering. For some reason, these complaints are often directed at Volusion’s UK branch.
- Support Is Difficult To Contact: Customers report waiting hours to hear back from a representative over live chat.
- No Free SSL Certificate On V1: Although most SaaS solutions provide a 128-bit SSL certificate for free, Volusion’s V1 offers no such deal. You’ll have to purchase an SSL certificate starting at $89/year.
Fortunately, it seems that Volusion has realized some of their past mistakes and is working to correct those. In 2016, Volusion sold their enterprise level software, Mozu, so they could better focus on their main product. They’ve since done some restructuring in the company and released V2. You can learn more about recent and upcoming changes in this post from CEO Kevin Sproles.
Positive Reviews & Testimonials
On the other hand, many customers are satisfied with the service they receive from Volusion. Here’s what those customers praise most frequently:
- It Works: This is by far the most popular positive comment. Volusion works. You can start selling with most of the features you need right off the bat.
- No Transaction Fees On V1: While Volusion does charge for bandwidth overages on V1, they do not charge transaction fees. Keep in mind that this is reversed for V2.
- Good Customer Service & Support: I’ve seen both complaints and commendations in this regard. What’s certain is that it’s nice to have in-person 24/7 support at most price points.
- Ease Of Use: Volusion’s admin is easy to learn. You can get to selling quickly.
Security
Volusion is PCI (Payment Card Industry) Level 1 compliant. If you’re on V1, you’ll still have to maintain your own SSL certificate. You can purchase one from Volusion for $89/year, or you can choose from the other options available.
If, on the other hand, you’re on V2, you won’t have to worry about it. An SSL certificate is included with your plan.
Final Verdict
While Volusion is a good option, I can’t call it the best. Volusion’s spotty customer service and additional fees make me question whether it would be a reasonable long-term investment, so at this point, I cannot wholeheartedly recommend it over other fully hosted shopping cart options.
However, that isn’t to say that this cart is the wrong choice for every merchant. Plenty of merchants have found success with Volusion. You might also. Sign up for Volusion by clicking the link below, and try it out for yourself.
Liz Hull
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92 Comments
Responses are not provided or commissioned by the vendor or bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the vendor or bank advertiser. It is not the vendor or bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
Organization Name: WDP
So horrible was my experience with Volusion that I take a half hour every month just to yet again give feedback. This company almost caused me to shut my doors after the over-investment in their “promises”. I have an adult toy store and when I started my “Trial” to play around I was hit within seconds from a chat from a salesperson and in minutes of getting a call from another. So SO many promises, but the one I wanted the most was true full analytics. That was my primary motivating factor. I paid for the full premium service and had a dedicated account manager. For MONTHS we worked together a few times a week getting my store fleshed out. I trained 10 people in my business so we were all as expert as we could be on the (oddly clunky UI riddled weird odd workarounds to navigating the editing). All this time my account manager was helping me with product photo placement, descriptions, code, etc. Flash forward a few months and the 2 month buildup to our “Launch” with so much damn money spent on advertising for this big “Now Open”. Call set for a final review of the site. 16 people over for the walkthrough wth our account manager. No call. 38 minutes later he finally calls – tells me to check my mail. It turns out, that despite having multiple Volusion people working with me weekly on my Adult Toy Store – their department on morality decided that they wont support me with those products. Months lost, Money lost, they only gave me back every cent I gave them directly – nothing for the training, time, effort, lost advertising, not being able to open after the big media blitz, not any of the custom coders they referred me to for hire to overcome their short-comings. In the end I went back to Shopify and launched 90 days later. I am still recovering from the cost. Most importantly – don’t trust Volusion. I was at a point where the last remnants of money I had could have been spent in either retooling on Shopify or chasing legal action against Volusion. I took the former, but logged complaints everywhere I could. I tell anyone I meet looking for an online store about how much they should avoid Volusion.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Organization Name: Atlantic PRO divers
These Volusion people are con artists. RUN RUN RUN
Milked me out of THOUSANDS and didnt even have the common sense to
know how to correct their own poor grammar. Moving my business over to
BIG COMMERCE.
Volusion is absolutely the WORST customer experience of my life and i worked
in customer service MYSELF for over 20 years in business aviation. These
people lie and they play dumb when you try to get help. Nobody could be as stupid as these
people and still breathe. Honestly I cant even imagine how they stay in business>
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
My review would be worse but it wouldn’t let me go less than one star! The worst ever support. I waited 2:46 on hold. After that they said they would fix DNS problem. Whatever they did they blocked my email which they do not host! The DNS problem was theirs! They threatened to shut down my site, again their issue. They said it was taken care of and I wouldn’t have any other issues, well I have not gotten e-mail in over 6 hours. They probably will not miss me but I will speak loudly of how bad they were for me. I will think of everything I can to give them a bad review VOLUSION STINKS! I am on hold again and it has been 26 minutes. I will think of another place to leave review. It will be bad, I know you don’t care!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
If you run any sort of recurring billing/subscription business DO NOT use Volusion. If you ever have the need to switch your customers to a different system, they are unwilling to allow you to migrate your customer credit card info even in an encrypted, 100% PCI Compliant, manner. They will essentially hold your company hostage. Insane lack of care for their customers.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Overall, I think Volusion has worked well for our very small online store. However I’ve found the interface a bit difficult to learn – especially if you don’t use it everyday. I also don’t like the lack of reports that can be run. For example, if you want to have a report for only one product, you can’t do that. Weird. However, whenever I’ve stumbled, their online chat for customer service has helped a great deal. So 4/5 stars, minus one star for the crappy reports. 🙂
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I would not recommend Volusion. I had a store that lost business because of a faulty payment gateway, only a few free templates that are ugly and aren’t easily editable. When I called to close, the representative was rude and not helpful. Using this company was a mistake that ended up costing me exactly $402.80 with no refund for not-as-advertised services.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Worst host and service ever!, they charge hidden fees all the time, the recurring billing never worked! and now that we moved our host, we coudln´t move our merchant account, they are holding our money during 90 days in a called reserve account, also they are charging us $99 for a termination fee. Is a complete scam!!!!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
We talked extensively to sales personal before we decided to switch to Volusion. We were assured over and over again that Volusion could do what we needed it to do. We needed customers to select their delivery date at checkout, we needed shipping options that could accommodate perishable vs non perishable items and reflect shipping costs accordingly, and we needed customers to be able to place one order with multiple recipients (ie a company sending 1 item to 30 employees). These were my first questions I asked every company I talked to. They said YES to each and every one of them. Then we switched, paid for a customized template…because you can’t not use your own branding on a website….so even the $900 options wouldn’t work for us because we needed branding and logos. So we paid well over $1500 for a template. We didn’t know about the customization fees before we purchased but we went ahead and did it. The website can’t do what we needed. We were told that since we spoke with their sales team over the phone that we can’t prove that they misled us. Now we’ve found out that our $1500 site DOESN’T WORK ON CELL PHONES! This. Is. INSANE. Save yourself the nightmare. Choose a different platform.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
This company is terrible. DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE TO CHOOSE THEM FOR YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS OR MERCHANT SERVICES. SQUARE IS 1 MILLION TIMES BETTER. They will rob you of your money and find a way to make up charges whenever they can. Also, when you cancel with them, make sure you cancel all of their services from all departments because they will continue to charge you for things if you don’t. For example: I canceled my online store and was never told to cancel the merchant account with them until I called back after seeing charges on my bank statement. They then told me to call Authorize.net, who they use for merchant services, to cancel and stop the charges. I immediately did that and thought I was ok then until I saw more charges on the following statement. Apparently, I was suppose to also cancel with Volusion Merchant department which no one mentioned to me. Just did that.. Let’s see what kind of charges I’m going to see next month.I’m so glad i switched over to Big Commerce and Square for my merchant services.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Volusion is the worst possible site to setup your business on, after 3 months of no sales, no apparent seo work on thier end i finally got a sale, went thru the volusion verification process (which they tout as being the best in the business) i got a chargeback, i submitted the info for verification to the credit card company who promptly refunded the money to VOLUSION who promptly closed my merchant account as too high a risk THATS RIGHT 1 SALE 1 CHARGEBACK = RISK ASSESMENT CLOSE IT DOWN!! the credit company claimed fraud..even though everything was verified thru volusions oh so great system and they promptly took the money back..but not from volusion..they took it from my BANK ACCOUNT AGAIN!! i have been trying to recoup my money from volusion for 4 months now to no avail.
SAVE YOURSELF THE HEADACHE AND GO SOMEWHERE ANYWHERE ELSE BUT TO VOLUSION.COM
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
RUN from Volusion!!!!!!!! Horrible customer service and they are always trying to upsell you even why they are trying to trouble shoot a problem on the phone with you. You will waste a lot of time and money with them. I don’t know of any other platforms and how they operate, but I can say Volusion is definitely the wrong way to start a business. Look up professionalism in the dictionary and Volusion is exactly OPPOSITE of what it says.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Vollusion is a joke.. we had a store for https://discovercbd.com for one day and realized vollusion is like the screwed up car mechanic that burns you for every penny every chance they get.. I use shopify now, the difference is significant but really any other platform puts vollusion to shame.. they have terrible software, really extremely terrible customer service and will rip you off any chance they get.. BEWARE! SCAM artists
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Lots of negative reviews that seem to reflect frustration of dealing with ecommerce technical side of things rather than volusions lack of competence of service….may be I’m of the lucky few- but always was able to resolve any issues I’ve had in a timely manner as well as getting my questions answered when needed. ..I also wanted to give someone who is considering volusions ecommerce platform : it’s not all that horrible as you will read in reviews. …it’s frustrating all together when you are a newcomer to this ecommerce stuff….you also have to know what you are asking even when it comes to the most simple things like setting up your shipping automation through your postal service….it’s the end it is all the new things that you have to learn and understand that are time consuming and are frustrating at times that will make you perceive volusion in a negative light. …For me….functions work flawlessly and I do have a database of thousands of products for sale….
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I would give a 0 star but not the facility. I have been with Volusion for 5 years, constantly they have fallen behind other providers and not done anything to help bring stores up to what is expected in todays ecommerce worldRecently I was informed by customers no payments were going through. I queried with Volusion and was told there was an integration issue with them and Sagepay. No timescale provided I thought it would be a week max which would have been bad enough but understand issues can happen. 2 months later, still can’t take payments, Volusion refuse to provide more information or care. This is my small company’s busiest period (Halloween and Christmas – Party Business) and I am left dangling. Volusion offer to refund 1 month hosting – complete joke this company – avoid. Im leaving, no doubt this will be difficult as well.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Worst experience I’ve had with any online company, and pretty much any company in general. Sales reps were my buddies, and then gone when I signed up. I added the training for $100, not realizing it entailed a 1-hour phone call with someone. There was no refund, even though I asked for one as soon as I realized I had committed to that much money for a one-hour call. All told, I was out $300 by the time I was done with Volusion and got nothing for it. No website, no apologies, no refunds. I would highly recommend Shopify over Volusion, unless you can learn WordPress on your own. Shopify is slick, just not really easy to customize.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Just don’t do it. Save yourself the trouble. These are direct quotes from their automated emails to me after paying for a premium template ($895).”The initial customization on your site is restricted to the spec sheet attached.Items that are not highlighted on the spec sheet are not included within the scope of this project but can be pursued through custom hourly work.” – note – you are not told about the limits of what can be changed until AFTER you purchase.”Our premium template projects do NOT include a phone consultation, however I will be happy to assist you via email.” – note – email responses are taking 3 days so far…When they did a mock up of my website, I was given only a jpg of what it would look like. Therefore I could not check links or view the mobile website. That jpg was accompanied by this message: “If you have any revisions, please try to keep them to one email and provide as much detail as possible as only 1 round of revisions is permitted.”I am grossly disappointed in the quality of my website.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Volusion is the worst possible ecommerice site you can use. After setting up my store I was never able to get it to be functional and online. After a couple of months the system told me I needed to change my password and locked me out and would not allow me to change it or get into my account. After getting back in I was still never able to to live so that my customers were able to buy from my site. The service was cancelled in March and they still billed me for merchant services for several months which weren’t being used. Beware when using Volusion, they will take your money and give you nothing in return. When speaking to a representative they told me exactly that, “You bought a contract for a website and merchant services, you have to pay even if it doesn’t work.
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I’ve been using Volusion for years. They used to be pretty good and pretty reasonable. However their SEO isn’t good, if it even exists at all. We used to be ranked #1 for a pile of search terms. Now we don’t show up on the first few pages. I think the poor SEO is my biggest complaint. Our store hasn’t added products but starting last year we suddenly started getting charged for excessive bandwidth. Since 100% of our graphics and videos are hosted on a different server it made no sense. Turns out we’re being charged for a ton of 404 errors from an automated system hitting pages we don’t have. The firewall is super basic and we can’t stop these errors. We’ve been charged for millions of pages that aren’t on our site anywhere. It’s frustrating and expensive. As others have mentioned support is pretty useless most of the time. Sometimes they’re helpful, but usually it’s a canned response basically saying “go away and don’t bother me again”. The knowledge level of most of the support people is way less I’d expect. Also as mentioned their suggestion pages are a joke. It’s an empty hole where no idea ever comes out nor gets addressed. People post the same suggestions over and over and over and over yet nothing changes. I don’t have enough experience to say how Volusion compares to some of the other sites, but I”m really tempted to find out. It’s just that moving websites isn’t something I take lightly as there are always issues and it’s a lot of work.
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SCAMMERS! Stay away! They will take your money, never return phone calls, software sucks. All around the worst E-commerce platform available today. I run a successful Shopify store and Bigcommerce store. I would rather pay transaction fees than try and make this POS system work right. If there was ANY customer service at all you might be able to get things fixed but instead if by some miracle you do ever get ahold of someone they are more likely to crash your site than help you fix it. ALL of the issues I had were mistakes or screwups on their end. No Im trying to get my money back and Ive been on hold for over 3 hours. STAY AWAY!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
While I do not have the computer expertise to comment on most of these issues; I hired a girl to create what I wanted. She was forever “waiting” for a response from Volusion, claimed no cancellation fees at start up.
I had to get rid of her. I have been through several web builders/providers. Volusion(months after cancellation), a refund from the payment/credit card & a 0 balance. I received a email stating I owed them $99, claimed a cancellation fee. I had a better opinion of them from the hired girl, including no cancellation fee.
Took over everything, determined to learn & take control. Read, turned to Shopify: clear, unbelievably helpful in establishing website, pricing is great ( no surprises ), HEAD & SHOULDERS ABOVE VOLUSION.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Volusion is not the worst thing in the world, but I don’t like it for many reasons. I can list the major reasons I don’t like this platform. 1. Someone is always there on the chat support, but their skill levels vary, some of them know the program very well, and some others don’t know some important aspect of the program. Often I had to come up with my own solutions by struggling. They said they are sorry, but sometimes they didn’t help. Often they had good intentions, and they try their best to help. It’s just that some of them didn’t know well enough. 2. There are bugs that they need to fix, but they blame other entities and do not fix it. The support tells me to go to their suggestion page and report the suggestion, but frankly I am a paying customer. It’s not my job to have the bug fixed. I am not going to spend 30 minutes of my time, on top of the time I had to spend on trying to rectify the situation. Let me elaborate on this item #2. There is a form to fill when you connect your FedEx account with Volusion program. When you do that, FedEx matches certain information to verify you as their account holder. Top part is “contact info” – the address you put in the volusion form needs to match FedEx data as “contact info.” And the lower part of volusion form has (the form says) “billing address.” This data is “billing address” IN THE VOLUSION FORM, but this particular data has to match FedEx’s “shipping address” which is equivalent of contact address. Contact address in the world of FedEx is the address that says, “ship from” when you make shipping labels when shipping something to your customer. If your shipping address and billing address happen to be the same address, which is the case with many people, you will have no problem, but some of us have billing address and shipping address being different, so if you put your billing address where volusion form says, “billing address” the data won’t match because someone in volusion wrote a program so that part of data has to match FedEx’s shipping address. To be accepted you have to put shipping address in a box volusion says “billing address.” In other words, data type is internally swapped. But there is no way of knowing that as a volusion customer, and we are not God. I finally I spoke with FedEx web integration specialist on the phone, and he said that FedEx receives so many calls from volusion customers having difficulty integrating their FedEx account into Volusion for this very reason. But Volusion doesn’t fix the error. Instead, they let us suffer. I spent 4 hours trying to resolve this problem, used a lot of cellular minuets, calling FedEx and Volusion. Volusion doesn’t give a shit. 3. Very strange server. The servers’ timestamps are always off. Most often it is 8 hours ahead of where I am. Annoyingly, it is sometimes 8 hours and 1 minutes off. I have been using FTP on and off for more than 20 years and accessed different servers in my life, but this is the first time that server’s time stamps being irregular. I spent a lot of time trying to fix this, but there is nothing wrong on my end. I accessed server of my web site (nothing to do with volusion) with the same ftp programs (I tried two programs) and my web server’s timestams are precisely correct. Whatever the server volusin is using is poorly maintained. Also, volusion site (admin) froze a lot of times while I was editing the site. I don’t trust their server. I don’t feel so good about my online store sitting in their strange server I don’t trust.4. The program is poorly structured and because of it, it’s hard to use or doesn’t do what I need. 5. Templates look like some pot-head programmers fell asleep before they completed them. I also gathered that paid templates ($895 each) are not as good as the free ones. There is html/css editing feature, and that one is weird as fuck. I write comments in there so I know what some of codes do so I can find the same part later, and save it. After a few hours, comments vanish and instead of comments, there are blank lines where comments were. I did save it, and also I am using the correct format for comments. It’s not like this is my first time editing css files. I really don’t know if I pissed off someone and this person is deleting my comments to make my life harder, or the server is so unstable that the moment I saved it, it didn’t save. Well, I often closed it and opened right away to see if the comments were still there. And comments were there when I checked it, but a few hours later I went back to edit something else and they were gone again. I really can’t work like that. 6. Not only the CSS/HTML files not preserving what I left with, other setting that is controlled by front-end also was unstable. There are things to select or un-select to display or hide certain elements of the product pages. Sometimes old setting comes back, so things I set up as “hide” would suddenly appear on my store. Customer service says I have to clear cookies and caches, but if i have to constantly clear cookies and caches so often (like a few time a day) just to be able to view the most current version of a web site, something is wrong with it. 7. I was made to buy a promotional package of $99.99. Before I bought it, I was told there are Facebook ad credit and other marketing credits come with the package. I was mainly interested in using Facebook ad credit because I have used Facebook ad before and I had an immediate results. After I finally set up the store, I realized that there is not Facebook ad credits. It’s just not there. 8. Volusion program cannot handle certain characters. I used the character ” (quotation mark) in the product description. When I export the data from volusion, something bad happens. Often it’s no longer ” (quotation mark) and displays very odd mark. So any time I export/import csv files, I had to change them back to ” (quotation mark), but I got tired of it, so I had to remove all ” (quotation mark). It’s not in the product name. It’s in the product description where there should be description of products in the English language. Oddly other characters such as apostrophe (‘) and other punctuation were handled just fine with Volusion. It’s just ” (quotation mark) that caused a lot of problems and manual labor of removing them from so many places in csv files. ” (quotation mark) is not a Chinese character nor any special character. It’s their job to deal with it. They blame on csv editors, but they are supposed to figure out in removing unwanted formatting when they are generating output from volusion data. Even crappy 3 year old zencart doesn’t generate that garbage formatting when exporting its data. They rely on Microsoft Excel, and if something works with Excel, they think things are peachy. Let me point out that the world doesn’t rotate around Microsoft Excel. CSV file is CSV file. The content should consist of ascii codes separated by commas. ” (quotation mark) is an asccii code. If the data translates to something else, it is a failure. Why other platforms can handle it just fine and voulsion can’t? I have no idea. 9. I didn’t need to buy the $99.99 promo deal. That came with free SSL for one year, but I want to migrate my store to somewhere else soon because of A. questionable server stability B. poorly made templates/design (all of them suck). I would need to spend $2,000 on a programmer to fix the template, but I would rather move away from volusion. C. Buggy chat support (I think they should use different product for chat). Since I am not staying too long with Volusion, a year of SSL means nothing to me. I just wasted my money and 200 hour of labor to put up with a crappy program. I can’t move too soon because I will have to migrate the data again. I am giving 2 stars because it’s not the worst thing in the world. But I would not recommend this platform.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I have used Volusion for 8 years and recently switched to Shopify. It is like going from the dark ages into the light. Volusion has hit me up for a ton of hidden fees over the years. My site was extreamly popular and they always hit me for HUGE bandwidth fees with a “cute” emails saying your bill is much higher than expected so with all that traffic hopefully your sales are up too…no joke they do say that as they rake you over the coals. I went along mindlessly following them upgrading to avoid overage fees as each level gives you more bandwidth until I was on their enterprise plan. EVEN then they do not give you support. I once added on a feature that needed to be designed and I was told that there was no phone support for my small level of custom design order. AFTER PAYING $10,000 of dollars in over age fees, super insulted I could not get someone on the phone to talk to me. So I switched to Shopify and my monthly bill is half and the store is twice is popular now and twice as profitable with more sales going threw then ever in the history of my company. I am a firm believer Volusion should be avoided as their sales tactics are dark ages as well as their technology can’t keep up with high volume like I have. even as I am writing this I have called in twice to cancel and they won’t let me cancel until I talk to a sales rep who never calls me…I have been waiting for his call for 2 weeks now. Very unethical company.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Apparently you are not doing much volume. We were in the process of converting over to a Shopify site from another, and They wanted somewhere between 2% and .5% in fees for us using a third party processor. When you have a volume over 100K a month, that gets expensive. I haven’t used Volusion but can assure you Shopify is on the way out the door.
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I have used Shopify very successfully. I have high volume so I pay a fair amount it transaction fees.. especially since I dont use their gateway or Stripe for processing. I have also used Bigcommerce. While Shopify can get expensive its leaps and bounds better than Volusion. These people just cant get their act together to save their life. They had me calling Godaddy support for 3 days saying they werent directing the nameservers correctly. I wasted probably 20 hours trying to figure this out. Contacted Volusion for the 4th time after 7 days of my website not showing up and ooops.. apparently they made a mistake and screwed up the IP address.. no appologies from them either. And if you call Shopify they answer. Since I have never been able to reach anyone on any of their 1-800 numbers Volusion falls WAAAY short on customer service. If you would like to get put on hold and waste half a day and still have noone answer. If you have a volusion store and you need customer support your pretty much SOL. And yes, as I read earlier you can get someone on chat but most know little to nothing so them helping you is like a toddler helping a bear up a flight of steps… a complete joke. DO NOT USE Volusion!.. Shopify and bigcommerce make Volusion look like a highschool kids science project.. glitchy with no infrasatructure for support held together with glue sticks and duct tape.
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Volusion is a disorganized and dishonest company with horrible customer service. They lie about giving you free upgraded service and wont take it off your bill when you approach them about it. My “supposedly” dedicated account rep that I was paying for did not contact me for 3 months. Then when he did, his make some changes to my system and his ignorance shut down my shipping for a week. Then he would not respond to all of my messages trying to have him reverse his actions. Beware if you cancel services, each service must be cancelled separately. And if you try to cancel your credit card service and transfer, they will not let you and charge you 99.00. They will later call you and tell you that you could of transferred, way after the fact where they can get more money out of you. I never received the same answer from the support staff twice. They sound like a bunch of college students. When I asked to speak to a manager, I was treated so poorly, they treated me like a child, and still did not fix my problem. Be really careful with their support staff and management, they are horribly trained and will mess up your website. There are many options out there, Volusion is NOT A GOOD ONE, THEY WILL TAKE YOUR MONEY, NOT OFFER ANY TYPE OF REFUND AND NOT HELP YOU WHEN YOU NEED IT. Fortune should retract there most brilliant company ranking. I moved to Nexternal, it is more expensive, however I have not had a single problem. You really do get a dedicated rep there.
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We are finding the USPS live rates are coming back too high. The Volusion rep was pretty useless. Essentially he said to check with USPS to find out. I don’t have a programmer to troubleshoot and work with USPS to determine a fix. Are there any companies that could do this for me?
Raymond
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Volusion is a dishonest company, they add services without your consent, they lie about giving you free upgraded service and then charge you extra. The person supposed to help me set up the website admitted never having taken a look at the site. When you cancel services, each service must be cancelled separately but they never tell you that and keep quietly charging you for months, knowing you are not using their services, and when you finally cancel it all they still charge you a termination fee. The support people laughed when I said I would post complaints on the internet, now I know why.They are scammers, a TRAP, KEEP OUT.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I’ve used Volusion for five years and everything is ass backwards and counter intuitive. In addition, if a customer places an order and tries to come back and place an “anonymous” order using the same email they can’t.
You can’t restrict shipping address to US only without also restricting billing address to US only.
You can’t name product images for seo purposes. Nor can you use product image links that match your old site because the system adds a “v/” after the root folder.
Can’t offer a coupon code restrictive to one category of products. If they order just one of that category then they qualify to use the code even if they didn’t reach the minimum for that category but ordered other items. Imagine offering free shipping on pen and then someone orders one en and a refrigerator.
List goes on and on.
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We have been with Volusion for 12 years. While not perfect, we all must understand they, like other providers, are dealing with the ever changing internet. We have been through the Rack Space issues, email and a host of small problems over the years, but we have grown to love Volusion. They are the most comprehensive e-commerce provider, period! To address the fury over merchant discount rates 4% is the going rate. Accepting a card over the internet with out a signature or physical card is costly to the vendor and is a cost that needs to be reflected in the vendors pricing to their customers. If you are a small first timer you need to know these costs are part of doing business on the internet. Each card type charges different rates. This has nothing to do with Volusion. It is the nickle and dime tactics of the big credit card companies. That being said, Volusion works! But lets remember they are a company that needs to make profits. Hire Volusion to create a site on their platform and be prepared to pay for it. A good looking website that functions like a fortune 500 site requires about 10-12K site investment. Add on SEO and Marketing another 3K a month. Yes, 3K a month. Getting proper visibility on the web is not cheap. Will it pay off? It might, if you have a niche market you believe in and a wallet deep enough to pull customers in, keep them, and give them a shopping experience they will come back for.
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You must be a shill for Volusion.>”To address the fury over merchant discount rates 4% is the going rate.”Not even close. Volusion Merchant Services was costing us about 4.5% (this computed from total credit sales charges vs the actual amount deposited in our bank account after all fees were deducted). It now runs us less than 3% when computed the same way (not only is our discount rate lower, but we don’t have all the flat rate monthly account service fees that Volusion tacks on). We started saving over $7500 per year on payment processing fees alone once we switched away from Volusion Merchant services and we aren’t even a very big company.>”Each card type charges different rates. This has nothing to do with Volusion. It is the nickle and dime tactics of the big credit card companies.”Wrong again. Some processors like Volusion have tier pricing (e.g. a rewards card cost more than a non-rewards card), some have more tiers than others, and some don’t have tiers at all. Volusion chose their tiered pricing while some of their competitors offer the same pricing on all cards. It is not dictated by “tactics of the big credit card companies”.Our current processor doesn’t have tiers and all of our Visa, MC, & Disc card sales are processed at the same rate (Amex is always different from all other cards though due to Amex policy). The problem is Volusion prominently advertises only their lowest tier, which is for a card present (you as the merchant have the card in hand and swipe it) non-rewards card. How is it not incredibly deceitful for an online eCommerce provider to advertise a card present rate?? Even after finding out about their tiered pricing, I went back to their advertising and couldn’t find anything mentioning tiered pricing even existed, much less that as an eCommerce business you’ll virtually never qualify for the rate they are advertising. I assume they avoid prosecution by disclosing that in the fine print buried in a voluminous disclosure statement that no one reads or can’t understand if they try.>”That being said, Volusion works! But lets remember they are a company that needs to make profits.”If Volusion works, why do we continually get calls from customers over time wanting to place orders over phone because they couldn’t get the order to go through? Why do our daily sales rock along at a fairly consistent rate on most days but then occasionally we have a day that is way down (the same days that customers are calling to place orders)? If it works, why does our site sometimes show as down on http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ even though Volusion claims they weren’t down, and continues to advertise over 99.9% up time?I have no problem with Volusion making a profit. I have a problem with Volusion being deceitful to make excessive profit. They advertise 2.17% on cards knowing they are in the eCommerce hosting business and that rate will virtually never apply to eCommerce. They took 4.5% from us when we could get less than 3% for the same thing elsewhere. Look at all the reviews from customers that didn’t know they were making a 3 yr commitment when they signed up and didn’t know there was a $99 early cancellation fee. Besides being deceitful by only disclosing it buried in fine print, why does Volusion require or need this to make a profit when most of their competitors are month to month with no cancellation fees and seem to be doing fine?Read the reviews of Volusion customers that were shocked when they were hit with bandwidth overage charges they didn’t know existed because Volusion hid those in the fine print instead of being upfront. Some of their competitors have unlimited plans, and most are at least upfront about plan limits and charges, and they seem to be doing well.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Volusion has fallen behind most other platforms. They suck. Do not use Volusion. You will be sorry.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Truman, I’m very sorry to hear that our platform didn’t meet your expectations. We’re in the process of adding some new features and are continuously working to enhance our software functionality to meet our customers’ wide range of ecommerce needs. We’d be happy to learn more about your experience, so please don’t hesitate to reach us at contact@volusion.com and we can set up a conversation at your convenience. Thanks!
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Do not tell me Volusion has ‘no cancellation fees’.!!! After a three month nightmare of dealing with that company I finally moved over to Shopify. I received NO assistance from anyone at Volusion, and am currently in a BBB dispute because they will NOT stop charging my account even though I left there over a MONTH ago. When the BBB contacted them they suddenly have a $99 cancellation fee that did not exist before. NO ONE would ever help me with anything. Overtime I asked about what to do I got one of three responses: 1. It is not my department 2. It will cost you more for that or 3. a stupid illiterate video demonstration.
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Ann,
Shopify is a much better platform, but just to clarify for all of our readers, Volusion does not have a cancellation fee. It may be difficult to get them to stop charging your account, but technically that is not a cancellation fee.
Best,
Amad
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
But that does raise a question. If one of the big benefits is the built-in credit card processing, and people choose this company because of that, then there really is a cancellation fee — it’s just parsed out to a popular ancillary service.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Ann, thanks for the feedback and for sharing your experience. I’m sorry that you had issues receiving assistance from our team as one of our primary goals at Volusion is to ensure our customers receive convenient, effective support at all times.
To better explain the cancellation fee, Amad is right that we don’t have a fee upon no longer using our hosting services. The $99 you’re referring to is exclusive to our credit card processing service, which is separate from our monthly hosting plans and has a unique set of terms and conditions upon signup.
That being said, the fact that you were unable to receive assistance or a full explanation falls on our shoulders, and I’ll follow up on your case to see where we fell short in meeting your needs.
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Reading through the reviews I can confirm several complaints. Looking at my credit card processing bill and my overall fees are in the 4% plus range. Currently I’m considering moving to another cart because selling multi channel (ebay, amazon) on Volusion is impossible. They sell you on their integration with these sales channels, but they don’t work. There are several third party companies that do this, and most have told me volusions API doesn’t work right and they can’t proper integrate with these sales channels. And the companies that say they can do it all charge around $2000 setup fees and anywhere from $200 to $400 in monthly fees.
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Hi John, thanks for providing feedback on your experience with Volusion. My name is Matt and I’m a part of the Volusion team, so I’m very interested to learn more about the issues you encountered with our eBay and Amazon integrations. We designed them to be best-in-class and remove several steps in terms of managing your third-party listings – would you be willing to chat with us regarding your ideas for improvements? You can send me a note at contact@volusion.com and we can get us set up to learn more about how we can improve moving forward. Thanks!
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Do you have the option to notify me when an item is out of stock?? Including all the sub categories ( We were told this was standard with Volusion) and it is not! Only the parent category. Does your system allowed more than 100 variants? (Yes) Are you able to do individual itemized returns? Does this also automatically send the customer a letter? Are we able to process refund through the system with paypal? Or do we have to go directly to paypal. – NOIf we cancel an order does it automatically restock the item? NO When we hide an item – is the customer still able to order if they have the url ?? YESAre we able to set up a universal coupon code for special events? Can we set up a generic unique coupon code ? without linking to an account? NO Do you have an option that allows us to set up a gift card?? In the back office?? NO
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Volusion’s system has some real problems, that are not apparent at first glance. The biggest issue I found was in migrating my store to their platform. After spending a year setting up my new Volusion store, I discovered that their 301 Redirect system does not work for dynamic links. Note: It doesn’t say this anywhere in their documentation. (All my old product pages were dynamic.) Therefore, I was not able, in any way, to redirect my old product pages to my new store. After taking a huge hit in my Google rankings, I finally resolved the problem (sort of) by moving my site to a new domain name, redirecting the DNS back to my old site, and manually 301 redirecting all my pages to the new site. My rankings are still not back to where they should be, though they are much improved over what they were. This was an absolutely rediculous work-around which should never have been necessary.Volusions customer service reps are terrible. They don’t even know how their own software works, let alone anything more complicated like 301 redirects. Buyer beware: if you are moving to Volusion from a site with dynamic links, you CAN NOT 301 redirect them with Volusion’s system. Even though they say you can.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Hi Jim, thanks for your feedback regarding the 301 redirects. I’ve sent this directly to our Product team for their review and to begin adding this functionality to our roadmap. I’m glad that you were at least able to find a solution via a workaround.
In terms of our customer service reps, I’ve also escalated your feedback to our Director of Support, who will use this as an opportunity for additional training. If you ever find yourself not getting the answer you need, don’t be afraid to ask for a Team Lead who may be better equipped to answer more detailed questions.
Again, thanks for your feedback and for giving us the opportunity to improve. Feel free to contact me at contact@volusion.com if you’d like to have a more in-depth conversation.
Thanks!
-Matt
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I’ve had Volusion about a year. It’s been great so far.1.) I ordered a custom template. It took about two days to install. Easy as that. 2.) Their “add to cart” feature is awesome. It adds the product to the cart without having to take them to the product page or the checkout page. 3.) Their customization when it comes to shipping is awesome. Everything is done through the back end. We have a complex system for determining shipping, and it’s done without a hitch. 4.) The automatic coupons are great. The unlimited options are great. The reoccurring pricing is amazing. (I know that’s more than one thing, but I could go on.)5.) CUSTOMER SUPPORT: So I bought the website, ordered SSL encryption, and signed up for the monthly plan at the same time. Then, I applied for their merchant services. Within five days, everything was installed and running smoothly. I didn’t switch my website from the trial server to the actual domain name, so they opened a support ticket and informed me that I needed to switch it. Every time I’ve had to contact them, they were very friendly and informative. The support ticket wait time is a little long, but if you call, you’ll get help right away.
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We tried volusion last year to sell silver charms, and after getting the site to the publishing stage found that the software didn’t add VAT properly or at all in the options section – this breaches the The Price Marking Order 2004. We told volusion and they were not in the least bit interested. So we asked HMRC if this would be a problem – they confirmed that it is illegal in the UK and they would prosecute sites found to be confusing customers with prices. We therefore cancelled the account with volusion – but their account closure process is designed to be complex so we found ourselves being billed when we thought we had closed the account. We had however removed the card details from the control panel – so they couldn’t bill us without breaching PCI DSS – our bank found that they had not used the CVV code to run the payment and upheld the breach, refunding the payment each time it was taken. To circumvent the block on the card, they used alternate merchant numbers – so we were refunded again. Eventually we got sick of it and contacted them – no response. So we contacted the banking ombudsman who agreed that they would step in if we didn’t get satisfaction – we did eventually get them to stop billing us, but it was not easy – we had to phone and threaten them with legal action backed up by the ombudsman.Now we have an oscommerce site on our own server. If you are in the UK selling to UK customers, don’t use volusion – their trading practices are best dubious and at worst downright illegal which we have proved. If you want evidence, just email us via our silver rosa charms site and I’ll be happy to let you have the email chains
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
The charged $4995 for a custom template, which they did a horrible job on, but never actually gave it to me, they have my template and my $4995. I do not recommend using these criminals to get ecommerce hosting.
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Volusion is a scam. They charge these made up fees for overages in bandwidth and cover it up with nice technical support staff. They have billed me 3X my monthly in overages which makes up about 50% of my monthly sales on the site. They must pay for good reviews because I have nothing good to say about them and will be moving to bigcommerce this month. I have filed a request for a class action lawsuit under classaction.org. If you feel like joining me, maybe we can get some interest in this. It is such a scam.
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If you have employees watch out. Volusion does not limit access for refunds. If they can process a transaction via credit card, they can refund it. A disgruntled employee could refund thousands and thousands of dollars to random customers for Months after the sale has taken place. Too much liability if you are not doing it all yourself. They should include permissions to charge and refund cards separately so some rogue employee does not create a mess refunding people at random.
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Worst customer service ever. Rip me off from the monthly merchant credit card service. I requested a cancellation on July 1 but nobody was able to take care the request til the end of the month. I ended up got charged over $100 for something I did not use. The worst part was they told me there was five transactions during the month so they had to charge it. HELLO, IF YOU WERE ABLE TO RESOLVE MY REQUEST ON JULY 1, THIS BS WOULD NOT HAPPENED. AND HOW CAN I HAVE 5 TRANSACTIONS IF I TOOK DOWN MY CREDIT CARD PAYMENT SERVICE FROM MY SITE ON JULY 1. IT DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE AT ALL.
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We had purchased a template design package from Volusion which cost $4995, and we had also paid for a year of their “Plus” hosting service which was $35 x 12mo = $420.We feel that the quality of the template that they made was very amateurish and had many visible mistakes due to sloppiness. We did finally get them to fix it the best they could, but the template was no where near what we envisioned for our new site. We were going to accept it as is and hire a 3rd party designer to make the necessary changes.However, we started to notice monthly debit card charges which raised some red flags, because we paid for a 1 year plan, and specifically told the salesperson to charge everything all at once so no reoccurring charges happen every month.I had complained to their billing support, and after many days they responded and basically said there was nothing they can do, told me even though there’s yearly plans, they still like to bill the user’s debit/credit cards monthly. I think this totally defeats the purpose of a “yearly plan”.I removed the debit card info from our account, and thought it was over, but it happened again 2 more times, this time with overage fees from our debit card company.I again complained to billing support, I asked for them to cancel service and refund us for all the unused services remaining.They responded after many days and offered a free $1.83 a month service for the remainder of the year, in hopes to entice us to stay.The worst thing is, we’re in limbo right now, between websites, and Volusion is taking their time. This is still not resolved and we’re just kind of sitting here waiting on them.We just want to move on and forget about all this…Needless to say, I do not recommend Volusion.
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I contacted Volusion regarding migration of our website, walked them around our current WP based site, showed them how to use previewers we needed to migrate, all product option (there were many) and discussed in detail what was needed. I was told if I purchased today the migration would start immediately. Migration started a few days later, they initially said that everything, including previewers could be migrated over and that all product options would be handled by the migrations team. I provided everything needed in detail and was also told that the slider and additional category images could be added at no cost. The only catch, I need to splurge on a premium template. At first I was told to select one for $595 or more, then $895. I selected and purchased a template for $895. Then they wanted to charge me $495 for the sliders and $300 for addition of the two additional category images. I disagreed, but finally relented and agreed to a discounted rate. They still overcharged what they stated and forgot to mention the $495 only included really crappy basic sliders. They agreed to refund for the slider since I could create a better one in my sleep, but they never did. Then the real issues started. They could not transfer my previewers and I was told to find a company that could build them for me or find software that was compatible with their platform. Hardly anyone wanted to touch the Volusion platform and kept recommending Magento. I finally found and made an agreement for several hundred bucks a month and a profit share (3% of all sales using previewers) with a company to do the custom previewers. This did not include the custom design setup required to get the templates ready for the new platform or anything- that was an addition $900+ just to get the first two and we have about 25. Then the issue with the available options Volusion has arose. Volusion is so basic that it wouldn’t allow me to even create a pricing variation and make a specific color for a product only available on certain sizes. We were initially told they could. Also, we asked if Volusion was capable of making automatic price changes (dynamic) based on options selected and we were told “yes”. However, this was also a lie. We actually ended up needing to search for a custom programmer who not only would be willing to work on the very basic platform Volusion is, but also custom code these options. The cost to this, nearly $2500. After we spent between 3-4 weeks getting shipping set up, products in and waiting on Volusion to complete their end of the deal and all the while having to do the legwork in finding several outside companies to do what Volusion said their software could do out of the box, Volusion decides it is too much work for them and they are no longer willing to adhere to the agreement they made. They wasted nearly a month of my time after leaving me to find workarounds for their inept platform. I highly suggest looking elsewhere than Volusion if you are looking for an ecommerce platform that is capable of truly growing with you and working for anything other than an extremely basic website. Volusion not only misrepresented their company and their platforms ability, but they also defamed BigCommerce by stating that I should not go with BigCommerce because they don’t have nearly the features or ability because “BigCommerce has not been around nearly as long. BigCommerce is like that annoying little brother that copies everything you do”, stating they have all the features and then some. This was a lie because after checking in with BigCommerce, we found BigCommerce has tons more features out of the box without need for custom coding that Volusion lacked. I would recommend BigCommerce over Volusion any day since not only is BigCommerce a fair enough company not to put Volusion down as Volusion did to them, but their features are ALL there and from what I see so far, they do not lie like Volusion seems to constantly do. Please comment if you have had similar issues with Volusion as we are trying to see if this is a repetitive issue with Volusion and we have consulted with a legal firm.
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Can’t thank you enough for your detailed reviews! These are so useful to myself and all of us. Thanks for saving us money & time
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Volusion BUYER BEWARE! I sent a cancellation notice for one of our smaller sites and they noted it in their system, and then proceeded to bill one of my old credit cards for the next 6 months. After auditing our books we found they we still charging us. I contacted them, and they said I am out of luck. Even though they see my cancellation in the system, they “stated they sent me a last step notification” in which I never received, and they will not credit us back the 6 months of service. Thats just unethical anyway you look at it! Their billing rep stated we could never cancel you site because and it has to be done on our own through the cancellation steps. So, here is what one their emails look like when your credit card expiration expires: Immediate Action Required: This is a 48 hour notice that your site will be stopped for non-payment!We attempted to process your monthly payment in the amount of 100.74. Unfortunately, the credit card you currently have on file has been declined. Please update your payment information as soon as possible to avoid interruption of service and a reactivation fee up to $125.00. Below are steps for updating your information:Bottom line… They sure will contact you for non payment, but no way in hell will they contact you to follow up on your cancellation request. What a sham! Its juts unethical anyway you look at!
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We have been using Volusion for over 10 years and although there have been some bumps along the way overall it has been a great experience. Our business has grown from $100,000.00 to over 1000,000.00 of sales a year while using Volusion. There were some downtime issues during the 2009 server switchover, but those problems no longer exist. Like all cloud hosted platforms there are issues once in a while but that is normal for all hosted shopping carts. A few days ago our site was not able to process orders. I contacted Volusion tech support by chat and they had it fixed in 15 minutes. The best thing about Volusion is the inventory management system. It shows low inventory items and makes reordering items easy and possible without having to use Quickbooks or other separate software. The bottom line is that if you have built a site which is making good money then Volusion is a great place to be able to grow your business to the next level. We use a separate server for our website and only use Volusion for the shopping cart area of our website, so we never have additional bandwidth fees, and we have full control of our website plus the ability to switch to another shopping cart if ever necessary without changing the URLs of our website. I do not recommend building the store area of your website with Volusion or any other hosted website service, because once you do, if you ever want to switch shopping cart providers then your URLs will change.
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Congratulations, very intelligent, helpful. Your advice is unique and useful. Thank you very much.
Sincerely
Bob
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Amad – since essentially 100% of the feedback here is negative, shouldn’t you perhaps consider adding some kind of weighting to your top level 3.5 stars that factors this in?Volusion has essentially stolen $250 from my non profit and it’s not over yet.
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Thanks for the input Jason. We definitely consider user reviews in our ratings, but keep in mind that people are prone to complain when things go bad, but rarely praise a company when things go well. Our rating is based in part on our own research, and based on that research we deemed Volusion to have a 3.5 rating.
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I have been using Volusion for 4+ years for several e-commerce clients. I have to say their customer support has gone from a 10 to a 1 in quality the past year. It takes forever and I mean forever to get any support question answered via ticket and on the phone you are always told ‘we have to look into it’ and we’ll call you back or ‘you need to call back’, etc. It is the worse and very sad that a company with some much promise has tanked in the support and technical department.
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We started this site years ago..Still have many glitches they never solved or ignored..Website functions work fine..For instance we sell gift certificate to our customer for $25, and a customer wants to buy another one it uses the $25 already purchased..So they buy NOTHING….We mentioned this but it was ignored..We just applied for merchant services..It was a TERRIBLE experience..DO NOT get any..Try PAYPAl instead..As they get bigger, their customer service is getting worse..respond time is very long..But they are good at taking your money with no delay..
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Under no circumstances should you use Volusion – less an ecommerce “solution”, more an ecommerce “problem”.
After “updating” their software to prevent the payment gateway from working, they then too almost a week to rectify their problem, and almost as long to respond to any support tickets raised on their system.
They have now had the cheek to tell me that despite this (only the second time in three months that they have shut off the ability to take orders and payments through their system), I cannot have any money refunded as the site was up throughout this time, and that’s the measure by which they would consider giving back any money – it’s all in their terms and conditions that they can carry on taking money when they like, without any need to actually provide a service. If I tried such a ridiculous approach with any of my customers I would have every expectation that they would never shop with me again.
Never, ever, use Volusion – unless, of course, you want to experience high blood pressure, incompetent and rude service, and the joy of paying through the nose for a service that isn’t a service. Amazing how they’re still in business.
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I’ ve been using Volusion since 2010. Overall great experience.
If you wish to save money on merchant fees, please sign up for PayPal Pro. All other companies will charge you at least 1% more for payment processing. Additionally PayPal will lower the fee if you have an eBay account.
Since 2013 Volusion has improved significantly – no outages, mobile site has been redesigned, checkout is really mobile (the customer can even use PayPal mobile which is great feature). Also they are planning to improve API which will allow them to offer more applications. New features are added every months.
My only recommendation is to lower the bandwidth fee over the limit. $3-$5 per Gb would be great.
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Volusion is the absolute worst choice you could ever make for your online store. Runaway as far and as fast as you can.
They lie about their downtime, they have done several platform upgrades, beginning on November 14th, 2013 that resulted in unsolicited changes getting made to product pages and storefronts.
You confront them about it and they deny everything.
They will not give you access to your server error logs when requested. There company is just a plain mess and not on the customers side of the table.
Volusion’s platform code is old, outdated and actually penalizes you from an SEO perspective with Google. It is very old architecture and not up to current standards.
We are moving to Magento and our own dedicated server just as fast as we can.
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I did some researched on other hosting and sites and merchant services before deciding to go with Volusion. I was attracted by the flat 2.17% transaction fee and the low monthly hosting/store set up fee, free templates, supposedly fast and easy customer service, etc. etc. I enjoyed building my site with volusion, and Customer Service on that end was very helpful. My complaints started when I couldn’t get on to set up my email accounts. Noone could tell me why except to tell me to clear my cache and cookies, close all browers and try again. That never worked, but that is all they would tell me. So eventually they set up the email for me. Then I was able to get on my email once, and started getting errors. When I would call they would tell me the same thing about clearing cache and cookies, closing browsers etc., never worked. Then it was “well Volusion isn’t optimized for IE, you need to use Chrome.” So I downloaded Chrome. Didn’t work. So they said it was actually optimized for firefox. So I downloaded firefox. Still didn’t work. Now it seems to work about half the time, the other half giving an error that no one cares to try to help me figure out. This still isn’t my biggest problem with Volusion. When I spoke with sales, I was told a merchant services account would run about $35 per month. That was about on par with other services I had looked into. On the first month I noticed that they charged me $65. When I called and asked they sent me a page that told all the fees including things I was never told about such as the $25 monthly minimum. After having a merchant services account for 3 months, I had never received any kind of statement (despite the $10 a month statement fee). Therefore, I have no idea what percent they are actually charging on payments run by my customers. I have spoken with another merchant services company who looked at the fee schedule and told me that because of the website set up (and that there was no swiping, it was all key-in) one or another of the surcharges would apply to every transaction. This in essence would double the 2.17% fee the advertise. Again, I don’t know if they charged me surcharges or not, because they have never given me a statement and I can’t seem to find one anywhere to access. So I got a much better rate through another company and called to cancel. After waiting on hold for a ridiculous amount of time, they told me I had to send an email and that they couldn’t answer any questions. 5 days later I received a response that informed me it would take several business days to process (got the response on a Friday) and that they would be charging me a $99 early termination fee. I called to complain, but they had no interest in discussing it with me. I was never informed of any 3 year commitment or early termination fee, but when you sign up over the phone, they don’t give you a change to read anything, its here is where to sign, sign now, then sign here, etc. It was in the fine print on the very last page (4 pages after the last page you have to sign). In short, they falsely advertise their fees, don’t give a statement to see what they are charging, and rope you into a 3 year commitment with a ridiculous cancellation fee and will NOT work with you on anything.
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After special request, I received my statements from the three months I had been using the service via email. I compared them with my merchant agreement, and noticed several problems. I called to get the excess charged (that I didn’t agree to) removed. I was told one charge was a “pass-through” charge that is not disclosed on my agreement and they claim that because it is a pass-through charge, they do no have to disclose, although they know that it exists and will be charged on a monthly basis no matter what. They refused to refund anything from that. There was another fee that was over double what my merchant agreement said. Customer service claimed that it goes up sometimes and that the agreement allows them to raise it. I pointed out that I was never notified of any raise in fees and that the fee was over double starting with my very first bill right after I signed the agreement, so if the fee was going to be doubled on my first bill, why would they have me sign something saying it would be less? She finally agreed to credit me with the difference between the agreement and the charge for the last statement only. I explained that was not good enough, that they hadn’t sent me statements to confirm fees and they overcharged with no notice. She eventually agreed to credit the difference for all three months. Big deal. Doesn’t even begin to cover the $99 fee I am paying to have the services cancelled.
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Absolutely the exact same experience I had. I also note that none of the best merchant services companies and credit card processing companies recommended on this site are integrated through Volusion. Why would they want to give you a better option than their incredibly over priced solution.
I was very happy with Volusion until 6 months into using their payment processing service, $385.00 was deducted from my bank account. They had not bothered to send me my statements or bill me the fees, so it came as a real shock to see what add-ons were on my payment processing fees (in one lump sum of six months of fees). I was led to believe it would be $35.00 per month. But there is the additional statement fee, when you don’t receive statements, minimum amount fee etc…
The folks that work at this end of customer support are hard bitten. They don’t give a rat’s anything that you are dissatisfied or were mislead. I expect that is because they get calls from stunned customers all day – everyday.
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I went with Volusion because they have really nice templates for creating an online store. If I did it over, though, I would go with an inexpensive hosting service like GoDaddy and pay someone to create the site. With Volusion, even if you don’t have any credit card fees, you’ll be charged $60+ / month. Then you pay $50+ / month for the service. They’ll impress you with their help setting up your account, but then, unless you pay $100 / month or more you’ll have a hard time getting help. Then, if you cancel–as I did–you’ll be charged $99. (I never saw anything about a cancellation fee). Do yourself a favor–go with GoDaddy or another similar company when you’re starting your company, so if it doesn’t work out, you won’t get a lot of unnecessary charges.
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I use GoDaddy for a personal site (not ecommerce) and their Website Tonight software is clunky, crashes 8 times an hour and ultimately it takes me 3 hours to accomplish what should take 20 minutes.
If you want support, they tell you that you need to pay for a designer to help you as that is”not part of their regular support.” Be glad you went with Volusion, then hate yourself for the payment processing fees there.
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So, if volusion is as bad as everyone on here is saying it is… Which site is better? Or should I just build my own ecommerce site?
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Hi Taylor:
Check out open source carts Spree Commerce and PrestaShop and cloud-based carts AmeriCommerce and Shopify, we’ve reviewed them all on Merchant Maverick. Depending on the needs of your business one of those platforms may be what you’re looking for. Best of luck!
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Have been a customer of Volusion for about 18 months. After my most recent experience with Volusion’s customer service policies I am actively looking to move off the Volusion website. Here are a few of my most recent experiences with Volusion –
1. For 48 hours on this important holiday weekend, we repeatedly had customers call us stating that they couldn’t process their order on our website. It has been 48 hours since I notified Volusion of the problem and I have yet to receive a response.
2. We signed up for a three month shopping feed service from Volusion. After receiving a notice from Google that 55% of my feed was being rejected, I contacted Volusion and they claimed that the rejections were a surprise to them and that it was not their job to have the products actually accepted by the shopping feed. Interesting, I thought that is what we paid them more than $1,100 to do.
3. We use Wells Fargo as our Merchant Account Provider. WF customers are required to use Trustwave to scan for PCI compliance, and Trustwave (as well as other scanning companies) are coming up with high level security fails when it comes to Volusion. This is despite the fact that we pay an extra fee for PCI compliance each month. So we pay an extra fee yet fail the PCI compliance tests.
4. When we developed our site, we had some custom development work done. We wanted to make a simple change to the site relating to a link. Unfortunately Volusion place the link in a part of the code that was difficult for someone who isn’t a programmer to change. Volusion’s technical help desk told me that I’d have to contact Volusion’s development team and sign a new development contract to make the change. The change was so simple it took a third party 5 minutes to make the change – said it was so simple he wouldn’t even charge me for the work.
There are certainly some things that Volusion does well. However in our experience, Volusion does not treat you like a partner. It seems they constantly have their hand out looking for money. Even when they actually fail to deliver the service they were contracted to provide.
My recommendation is to look elsewhere.
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I am in the process of leaving Shopify, (which basically has the same kind of problems that Volusion seems to have). I was about to go with Volusion, but thank God I read these comments. No way am I going down the same lousy road that I just went down with Shopify. I have read tons of the same types of comments about Big Commerce as well. Is there an ecommerce platform out there that actually works as advertised?
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Volusion’s SSL is not only a rip-off, but they failed to install it 3 x over the last 15 days, resulting in “run away” messages in most browsers stating our site was “unsecure” even though they took our $79 three times and failed to upload. We are in the middle of a black friday promo and have now lost thousands in sales. Do not go to Volusion for anything. Try Big Commerce instead….that’s where we are heading in Jan 2014.
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Volusion is a total RIPOFF
They will drain your bank account dry!
BEWARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Thank you so much for your detailed review. I appreciate your hard work! I love the detail of your review.
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I have an online store with Volusion. The hold times for tech support is unbearable. Trying to get any support through tickets via email is worse than pulling teeth, there is 2 to 3 day wait times between questions. They make it where you just about have to buy there services. I already had a SSL certificate, they wanted $99.00 for me to use it and a ten day wait time or pay them $79.00 for their certificate with a 2 day wait time. I wanted to compare merchant accounts, they make it very difficult to to use anybody but them. You have to sign a 3 year contract and they lied to me about all of the fees. I had a fraudulent transaction from a s stolen credit card, I caught it the same day. Authorize.net (the gateway)did not charge me any transaction fees because it was a stolen credit card and I acted immediately. Volusion charged me over $440.00 in fees and diverted all transactions to their bank account for one month while they investigated. Yes, they held all transactions for one month! There is no way I could ever recommend Volusion to anyone, thank god I own my domain name. I am in the process of moving to another host.
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This firm is unscrupulous. I requested a refund because I never opened a store
They never had authorization to take money from my account, but they did. I am
going to have to sue and a family member who works for the news media is going
to do an expose on this company.You can’t reach the account services and their President Clay doesn’t respond to e-mails and you cannot reach him by phone. Apparently they commit fraud and will not respond because they are guilty.
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I agree! The same things happened to me. They Charged me without me opening an account. They were better 2 years ago. They are worse now. I will never recommend anybody to open an account in volusion.
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Run far away from Volusion. And make sure you hold your credit card tightly. They charged us for services we didn’t use. Never notified us of charges and made it impossible to cancel.
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While the Volusion site worked ok, I’m writing to let you all know to Beware of Volusion Merchant Services. I signed up thinking it was a convenient way to accept credit cards. I should have stayed with BOA procesding because Voludion had so many hidden fees. I was getting charged $65.00/month for their merchant services alone without making a single transaction. Then they had a hidden 3 year contract with an early termination fee $99. I hate when companies hide all of those fees so I cancelled the merchant services as well as the Volusion site all together and moved to storenvy.com which does all that i needed it to and is totally free and no hidden fees. Hope this helps.
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Same experience here. $65/month every month for merchant services – then when i cancel i get the “be prepared for the $99 cancelation fee”.
I am in active negotiations for a refund for 4 months of merchant fees and the $99 cancellation fee. My next step will be a BBB posting.
unscrupulous is a great description.
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I thought this write up was very helpful. Found following page on Volusion site (http://support.volusion.com/article/understanding-your-monthly-volusion-credit-card-processing-statement) that notes various charges on Volusion’s monthly credit card processing statement. I really liked Volusion; clean site, great security (one of the first to openly address PCI as an important point for merchants and customers). But from my calculations it looks as if charges for monthly credit card processing would be $25 (minimally) + 1.39-1.79% of all non and mid-qualified purchases (whatever those are) + .34 cents for each credit card authorization on each item + a Visa acquiring fee that would vary depending upon sales + monthly internet gateway fee of $17.99 + monthly DCI-DSS compliance fee of $3.41 + monthly statement fee of $10 = a consistent monthly fee of minimally $56.40. I’m going back to figure the rates for Big Commerce and Shopify because $56.40 seems a little too steep for me at this point. I know one has to spend money to make money but also have to use what one has wisely. Thanks for writing this article. It was helpful. As a small business starting up I really wanted to use you Volusion. : (
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Wish I would have seen this before I signed up… Yes, I was scammed by Volusion Merchant Services and their many hidden fees. Try storenvy if you are a small business. They use PayPal for processing but at least you know exactly what you are being charged without all of the hidden fees.
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We have a store on Volusion and are in the process of moving it to a different platform. We cannot wait to pull the plug on Volusion. All the previous bad reviews are correct, and they only touch on the surface.
Our store is down often. We regularly have customers call to place orders by phone since they couldn’t get the order to go through online. We see our sales volume drop to near nothing on some days every once in awhile. Volusion support has never admitted to us that they were “down”. The closest they came was saying they did experience a little “server latency”, but of course that was corrected.There are (or at least were) posts from in the Volusion forum from some of the “geek” store owners complaining about the much higher than normal abandoned carts they were experiencing with Volusion. Volusion tried to blame it on search engine robots, but the geeks posted logs and pointed out what was search robots and what was not.
We did have a Volusion merchant services account (cc processing account), largely to have a turnkey store host/payment processing platform so there would be no finger pointing if a problem developed. We were down for 3 days during the Xmas season rush. Volusion blamed the payment processor they were using and claimed it therefore wasn’t Volusions fault. Sorry, but my monthly statement said “Volusion” across the top and we never had any direct dealing or received any statements from the payment processor they were essentially subbing my business out to. Volusion would only blame others and not provide any compensation.
Speaking of their merchant services, they advertised very boldly that their fee is 2.17% plus a transaction fee. What they make near impossible to find out in advance is that the 2.17% rate practically never applies to your eCommerce business. And their monthly statement is many pages, with various charges scattered throughout so that it is hard to determine exactly what you are paying. When I finally set their statement aside and looked at the total credit card sales vs the deposits to our bank account, I found they were taking about 4.5% of our sales as payment processing fees. Note this does not even include the hosting fees.
So we go to cancel the Volusion payment processing and switch to another payment processor of our choosing, and Volusion tells us signed a 3 year commitment, and there will be a $99 fee to cancel, apparently all this is in the fine print of the seemingly zillion page sign up forms that nobody reads entirely. Most other payment processors are month to month with no commitment and we were able to cut our fees in half, so we made the $99 cancellation fee and then some back within the first month. Yes it chaps me that they charged us nearly double what numerous other processors charge for two years (thousands of dollars more than their competitors), and then still hit us for a cancellation fee when most of their competitors are month to month with no commitment.
When a customer opts to pay with Paypal, Volusion sends the customer an order confirmation before he has even finished making payment. How stupid is that? We get a lot of orders that customers don’t finish the Paypal process because they think they’re already done when they get the confirmation. Then we have to email them to try to save the sale, hoping that they don’t think we’re trying to scam them since most sites don’t operate this way. Store owners have widely been begging Volusion in the forums to change this for at least 5 years that I know of to no avail.
Besides the Paypal integration lacking in many ways, Volusion is also behind on API in general compared to some of its competitors. We find that others carts integrate with many more payment processors, 3rd party apps/add-ons/softwares, etc than Volusion.
Also as a store owner, you can log into “my account” on the volusion website, and quickly find plan upgrade and add-ons you can add with a simple click or two. But the drop down boxes for the available plans have no downgrade options. If you want to downsize, you have to file a support ticket. In other words, quick and easy to pay more, an act of Congress to pay less once they have you on the hook.
Also note that if you sell say a shirt that is available in the customer’s choice of 3 colors and 4 sizes, Volusion considers that 13 products (1 parent product and 12 child products). Many of the other shopping carts consider that 1 product. So when comparing plans & costs and depending on the items you sell, you will likely need a Volusion plan with a higher product limit (and thus higher cost) than you will need with one of their competitors.
The Volusion software is also a little buggy. If we run out of one child product and later enter new inventory when our next stock purchase arrives, the child product will un-hide itself, meaning you have to manually re-hide it or you customer will see your shirt listing plus another listing of the same shirt but in one particular color/size. This means your customer will get confused and/or frustrated by the clutter/duplication, and it will cost you in customer service effort to address their questions that needlessly raises, and probably some will simply go shop elsewhere that is better organized. We have also noticed that sometimes we input new inventory, click save, the page seems to refresh, but the initial inventory amount still shows. You then have to click refresh on your browser to see the updated inventory. We have screwed up our inventory counts numerous times due to double entering inventory because of this.
The Volusion forum is closely moderated and hidden from public view. Many negative comments are quickly removed. Any potential new customers are not allowed to even view the forum for research. You have to commit to a hosting plan first. If you have a good product, wouldn’t you want to be transparent, want to show it off in every way you could, and encourage open discussion?
I could go on and on, but in short, Volusion’s policy seems to us to be to generally deny, blame others, cover up, ignore, hide in the fine print, etc… anything but acknowledge and clearly address a problem or clearly disclose all fees and shortcomings.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I was considering Volusion but this is truly an avalanche of damning reviews.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I value that greatly.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Just a short note. I use Volusion, and paypal does work with it.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Volusion is scheming, underhanded and highly manifpulative. Let’s us not be delicate here, They are truly among the most dishonest entities I have ever dealt with. Under no circumstances let them have your debit card. But, they demand it anyway. That’s telling you right there that they intend to debit your card without your permission, and for the wrong amount and they most definitely will do so. And no, you will not get your money back. Ever. You can’t have a reasonable discussion with the billing department because they hide from you and make it impossible to talk with the billing department. You can’t get your money back if they do not communicate with you. You can’t play the game with them because they don’t tell you what the rules are. And no, nothing about their rules is honest, fair, or reasonable. Believe me.
They have they own ” secret” set of rules that they run their company by. Unfortunately, they do not put them in print anywhere on their website. You never have any idea of the kind of monster that you are dealing with until it is too late. If I am not being clear, I will say it in a different way. “They cannot be trusted…ever. ” It can be compared to a girl’s basket ball game. Girl’s team “A” is the visiting team. They are doing great and winning by a mile but when the game ends , team “A” is told that they LOST the game . Of course team “A” is outraged. Team “A” is then told that this basket ball game was to be played according to the BOY’S basket ball rules. Of course it is stupid, it makes no sense, but Volusion does not care. They have your debit card and when they debit lyour you are in their ball park, they own the score board and the rest of the town too. I have not gone into detail about all the things [edited: name removed] and the rest of this dishonest company have said and done. When I have a spare few hours, I may do so. Just keep this in mind, If they ever tell you that they are “compatible” with paypal (like they did with me), hang the phone up and run away. [edited: name removed] told me that Volusion was “compatible” with paypal. He forgot to tell me that they were not compatible “enough” that Paypal would actually “work” on your website. But that is OK. After all, Volusion would be happy to step in and help you out. Then you can just pay them for the credit card processing. ( and all the other charges that they come up with.) I finally just cut my losses and left Volusion while I still had some money left in my bank account.
Margaret E. Thomas
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I’m sorry this happened to you. Thank you so much for sharing your experience with Volusion. I was considering them, but not any more. You saved me from a bad experience.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Here here, I too have been saved from this headache! Thanks for the warning. In this day and age, word travels fast and the strong survive, hopefully the week will wither away.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
You should be aware that since Jan. 2013 any Volusion site owner who uses Wells Fargo as their Merchant Account Provider will be failing PCI compliance scans. WF customers are required to use Trustwave to scan for PCI compliance, and Trustwave (as well as other scanning companies) are coming up with high level security fails. Volusion insists it is a false positive (that is what the standard response is every time we submit a ticket), Trustwave denies the disputes with the following message “*While stating that “Credit card data is transmitted via port 443, not port
21” is a step in the right direction when seeking acceptance of this
finding. The remediation of this finding recommends “to use more secure
alternatives such as SSH instead of Telnet and SFTP in favor of FTP, or
consider wrapping less secure services within more secure technologies by
utilizing the benefits offered by VPN, SSL/TLS.” As such, we have denied
this dispute based on the information provided regarding how this finding
has been addressed.* ” Their “Customer Experience Manager” Brian Stubbs, more than 5 months ago, wrote this to us: “We plan to implement additional FTP security features in the future that will render this issue obsolete, but we cannot offer such a resolution in the short term.” Shortly after we received that message, we ironically received notice of a price increase for “Due to increasing Internet security risks and growing regulatory compliance demands, Volusion is making extensive investments to maintain industry-leading PCI security standards. In order to continue delivering this highest level of security for your business, we must pass on a small portion of this monthly cost to you of $3.74”. So we’re paying more for the privilege of failing PCI Compliance, Volusion keeps their head stuck in the sand, all WF customers are failing (costing $25/mo. fee for failing – then an ultimate permanent loss of the Merchant Account). Their head customer service guru, David Mitzenmacher, does not respond to emails, our account rep doesn’t have a clue. I’ve found posts from 2011 (yes, 2011) where others have had the same problem. And one of Volusion’s big selling points is their PCI Compliance. Bologna!
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
Yes, even when they do not charge transaction fee (a precentage of your sales, like Shopify does) it does charge you a lot for brandwitdht, even with about 120 visits a day i am needing the gold plan of 165 usd/month because of brandwidth. Not to say the extra tax of PCI… Not cheap, and at the same time i am quite happy with volusion.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I’m confused… if there’s no transaction fee, why is there a “2.17% per transaction plus $10/month statement fee, $17.99/month payment gateway fee, $3.41/month PCI compliance fee, $1.87/month regulatory compliance fee”?
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
They do not take a % of sales. The transaction fee you’re referring to is for merchant services. I never have and never will use their merchant services. It makes no difference for using service – sign up for authorize.net or another gateway, and enter your credentials. What merchant account that links to is nobody’s business and a non-issue.Volusion user since 2004: (currently Gold)I finally hit the overage fee this month- an extra $7/mth, but since they recently reduced the monthly plan fee, I’m not paying more. Do I like it? No, but I have over 10,000 images, including the multiple sizes needed for mobile, regular, and large views. Part of the bandwidth issue is bots gobbling up data so blocking unwanted bots can reduce this problem, as well as moving some content like PDF’s off their server, or uploading images with newer compression techniques.Regarding SSL : I’ve shopped this before. It’s simpler to just use their service for that and prices are competitive, maybe a bit higher, but not a difference maker.Server downtime: I agree it has increased over the years from non-existent to more frequent, however, the average is still over 99% uptime; we’re talking about hours a year, not weekly outages. For comparative purposes, I don’t think there’s better and it’s a non-issue.”..charge you $25/month to remove the “Powered by Volusion” link at the bottom of your site (in the footer). ” I wasn’t aware they finally came up with this option. The footer was always part of the terms of service, which of course gives them a bazillion backlinks. It’s one of my pet peeves linking out to them on every web page, but I’m not going to pay to stop it. Customer Service: hold times in 2014 are higher than prior years- 10 minutes recently vs 1-4 previously. I have to look at it as a whole- they offer phone support, and it’s usually pretty good; some companies do not. Additionally, in most cases, the person I call can answer my question or fix the problem so my time spent is minimal once I get through. I’ve tried several others over the years (without ever dropping Volusion) and I also previously worked in web development for a decade so I’ll share some overall insights:- Prestashop, oscommerce and the likes are not comparable. These are lightweight or entry level stores that require extensive add-ons and work to get to the Volusion level. Prestashop can be very good value, but depends on your product.- 3D Cart- there’s a lot of positives for this and I recommend trying it. It’s not for everyone. For example, when I last tried in 12/2012, they didn’t offer a child products option, required for apparel if you want to submit product feeds, and I thought it was very cumbersome to import/export for mass updates. They have several features that can lead to higher conversion rates. – Magento- always worth a look. – Shopify- I don’t like this model because they take 2% of sales (with your own merchant account) and I would say their $175/mth plan is most like Volusion $75/mth plan, except Volusion doesn’t also tack on a % of sales fee. – For a professional store, Volusion is full of features, but in the end, your personal store needs may push you to one choice or another. For apparel and custom products, I would venture Volusion is one of the best, even with some blemishes. ( They all have them, you just need to figure out which one’s you can live with) Volusion is extremely robust. If you’re a very, very small store, I’m sure you can find cheaper. What you’ll also find is that adding plugins and extra modules gets to be very expensive.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.
I have the same issue with bandwidth, I m getting over charged every month and I can t see the point on upgrading my plan because I will loose some modules that I have from a previous pricing structure, and they are to over priced.
The Free template suck and are not mobile friendly at all. If you do want to get a mobile and device friendly template it cost way too much. I regret building my site on there platform.
This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.