Volusion vs Shopify vs CoreCommerce
29 Jan
As I mentioned the other day, I’m planning on moving my store off of yahoo and onto a better eCommerce host. I spent the last couple of days trying out my top three choices. Here are a few notes I took on each…
Volusion
I spent two days going through Volusion and getting a feel of their interface. Tanya commented on my last blog and sent me this, which talks about their problems with bandwidth, so that makes me pretty skiddish.
Plus one of the features most important to me is customization. If I can’t use my own template, I can’t be bothered. And if it’s too complicated I can’t be bothered either. Volusion says theyre customizable, and I played around with their WYSIWYG editor a bit, but the free trial doesn’t give you FTP access so I can’t test my own template out. That’s a major thumbs down right there — I’m not going to give you $150 and then realize later that I can’t use my own design! But beyond just that, volusion is very, VERY powerful. There are actually a lot of features that I don’t need, and some of it is really complicated but if you watch their training videos, you’ll get the hang of it.
Shopify
I’ve heard this place is a bit more “simple” but I don’t really need something as powerful as Volusion. I also like that they use store tags, it seems easier to customize my site than V. Their interface is definitely prettier, although it looks like CJ and Volusions’ looks like wordpress (ew). They say they use store tags but they don’t seem to be as flexible as the store tags on Yahoo! stores…which probably both good and bad. Their tag language is called liquid and they have serverside software called Vision that allows you to customize your store design. If you ask me, “Vision” is pretty pointless, and fully customizable it’s not. The give you templates that you can edit, which is a pain in the butt if your design is already done. And there are sub template pages you have to edit, about six of them, and that makes it even more annoying — imagine having to make the same changes six times. Oh, and on top of that since they’re .liquid files you can only edit them BY HAND and not with a WYSIWYG editor. Yeah, NO way. I’m sure I could have figured out their langauge but I gave up after a while. Since I’ve heard better things about corecommerce anyways, it’s not worth wasting my time.
CoreCommerce
Oh boy, I’ve heard SO many good things about their services, but after starting their free trial yesterday, I have NO idea why. First off, their user CP isn’t very attractive or well designed. And there seems to be a lot of bugs in their system. I go to add something, and it doesn’t show up. I go to edit one little piece of text, and an entire form field will dissapear. Then I tried to customize the layout. Their system for customization seems to be the easiest and the most straight forward — you can upload your design, and they’ll break it up into a header and footer for all your pages. Simple, right? Well, if it actually worked correctly, I’m sure it would be. I uploaded my design, I went back and checked the html files, and all the right coding is there. I clicked view site…NONE of my layout is showing up. There are just a bunch of boxes with logos in them. There’s no layout on any of the subpages either.
Of course, my first thought is to go to support. Oh, wait, they don’t have online chat support. To me, that right there is a major, major site. You can not run a professional business that has anything to do with webhosting without online chat support, preferably 24×7 support. So I decided to be patient and submit a ticket. I waited, and waited, eventually went to bed, woke up, still no response. Over 15 hours later, I finally received a reply from the team…and it was a non answer answer. I really don’t get how anyone can rave about their services. Sure, I’ve only been using them for 1 day but their support is HORRIBLE and that’s not excusable.
So I’m kind of back where I started. I’m not loving any of these three choices, although I’m leaning a bit towards Volusion. But the most obnoxious thing is that none of them will give me ftp access so I cant fully test out my template, which is extremely frustrating. On top of all that, I’ll have to change the urls to my pages after I’ve spent so much time and money building backlinks to the ones I already have. Ugh. I had no idea making this decision would be so complicated!
We use Volusion for a lot of our clients sites and they all look very different. I believe in a future version they’re going to have Design Tags so you can better edit their templates. If you like, send me an email and maybe we can give you some temporary access to our test server so you can test your design.
Hi Kim,
I’m a jewelry designer and like you, I’m trying to choose a shopping cart platform. I nixed Volusion because i heard of horrible downtime there. I really liked Shopify and was excited about the unlimited bandwidth and built in blog but they hardly have any features like gift certificates, RMAs (managing returns)…
I am not deciding between CoreCommerce and Big Commerce. I have to agree that the Core Commerce admin interface was horrendous! I almost gave up and then when I logged into my free trial again a couple days ago saw that they made some (welcome)changes to the interface. But still not so easy to use.
I love the Big Commerce admin interface but they are lacking some features that I absolutely need (like free shipping discount code) and I still can’t figure out how to add multiple shipping options!
My awesome hubby is a web designer/developer so he will be customising my site. He said that may be a bit easier with Big commerce than Core Commerce.
It was nice reading your blog…. I feel your frustration too!! Good Luck!!
- sapna
@Amy, I ended up figuring out the template thing. Thanks for the offer though!
@Sapna – be sure to let us know who you ultimately end up going with!
I have used Shopify and recently “upgraded” to BigCommerce. And now have a second store on CoreCommerce mainly because they support multiple language.
Shopify is really simple ecommerce. Simple as in not to many frills and bells and whistles. Changing the tempate was awful and you are right, the Vision template editing program is completely useless. One of the main reasons for “upgrading” my site.
BigCommerce does have a wonderful admin and has been quite easy to use. Template changes and mods are super easy. I like that you can see the original code, highlight the changes you have made to the original template and revert them if needed. I did have a brief issue with missing panels, but resolved pretty quick.
BigCommerce does lack some important features for such a highly popular and heavily marketed site, such as PCI compliant, fulfillment services, multiple language support, daily currency exchange updates, backend updates are sllloowww to roll out and you are on pins and needles when upgrading your site that the upgrade my total your site and leave your live site useless for a while. Scary! Check out the community post for more problems and clients begging for standard features to be implemented.
CoreCommerce has a dry admin, but mirrors the structure of BigCommerce a lot to the degree that I thought they might be built on the same core or something. They roll out new features every few weeks and it does not affect your template (so it seems). All the problems with BigCommerce seem to dealt with with CoreCommerce. The complaints you had about them are covered now. CC also seems to focus on their function and upgrades opposed to their marketing. There is way less chatter in the forum and overall. I attribute this to clients not really have major issues. I haven’t used costumer service on CoreCommerce, but calling BigCommerce and resolving my issues on the phone was really nice.
Both systems have pros and cons. It is up to what you need and want from your ecommerce. I foresee that I will be using both systems for a while.
Your post was very helpful, as I have been comparing these three carts also.
I have found CoreCommerce has the BEST features, but it is definitely the WORST for customisation! I cant get anything to work and I am well versed in PHP, CSS and HTML. Its just very buggy like you mentioned.
So I am now going to try out Volusion. I have also read up on NetworkSolutions and apparently they are quite good. However their package prices arent anything to be desired, so I am still ontemplating what to do.
I would love to hear how you went with it all.
^Hey Kiara, I did end up going with Volusion. I like it, but there are still customization issues. You can customize the layout pretty much as much as you want. But you cant customize the tables for the products. That doesnt sound like a big deal, but its annoying because they don’t add any spaces between the product images and the price/product name/links, etc., and the product pages end up looking cluttered :/ Kind of annoying.
you can semi-ftp into shopify using a macro with textmate on a mac. there are instructions on the shopify site. it is a new thing – really helps with development.
anastasia, thank you for writing great detail. i have been looking for a few months comparing till i am blue int he face, and it shows there is not a perfect cart for all out there. with corecommerce, had you experienced a lot of downtime? which was a consistant comment i read?
core have the ability to have the wholesale site as well, plus bundled packages, multiple shipping, and languages which seem nice.
i was hoping to find someone that is using both to give me the comparison.. thank you, any other details you might have would be fantastic. lke issues syncing with accouting software etc.
Congratulations! Your site looks awesome!
hi Kim,
Your post was written very nicely. I have sensed these problems in all of these products. We have recently launched a new e-commerce platform called ’39shops’. We want to bridge the big service gap that exists between store owners and these e-commerce solutions. It would be great if you can give our product a try and let us know how you feel about it. We are very new and far from perfect. Your feedback will immensely help using taking our platform where it should be! Here is the link to our website:
Thanks,
Hrishi
Very useful post. I’m currently using Shopify and find it easy to use but very limited. also I find their support is very limited, I’m looking into other options and after reading your post I’m considering giving Volusion a try.
Thanks