Volusion - Opinions

[vivente]

Anybody any opinions on what Volusion are like as a E-Commerce Webhost as they offer a greater featureset than I can currently get with EKM however customer service, specifically their ability to deal with issues that arise quickly and effectively is very important.

They claim to be able to integrate with Ebay and be able to manage both purchasing (purchase orders, through to delivery) and thus effectively manage stock between both platforms (my website hosted with them and Ebay). This is very attractive to me as I currently only have Sage Instant Accounts Plus which has rudimentary stock managment to say the least. It also claims to be able to integrate with Sage therefore I can still use Sage for my accounting.

As I see it I could replace Tradebox and EKM with just Volusion. Less systems, less potential for headaches so long as Volusion is robust an does what it is supposed to.

I had considered Linnworks however the jump in costs between their services and their very limited support are not appealing even though their software does interest me greatly though they can't link directly to Sage and require Tradebox as a middleman which just makes it an even more expensive solution and one that I am not prepared to pay this time.

So anybody any experience of Volusion in any of those areas and how good is their support? If I did go with them I would be looking to use the Pro Plan at £49 per month.

 

[Charlie McBroom]

Hi Vivente

Volusion is a great system, I would say its only downside is that you have to pay a monthly subscription.

What other channels are you planning to sell on?

The bonus to using a system like Linnworks is that it integrates with more channels than just eBay and Amazon.

It connects directly to your couriers, saving the copying and pasting of shipping information.

and many other features such: The bulk listing tool, translated listings, hosted images, reporting, ePos, CMS, direct orders, invoice/template designer and much more.

The downside to Linnworks as you mentioned is the accounting, but there are plans to develop a direct integration to QuickBooks at the moment.

If you're looking at a paid ecommerce platform then I would also say have a quick look at shopify and bigcommerce.

Personally I am a big fan of Magento and Opencart - but you do need to self host for these.

I hope I have been of some help,

All the best,

Charlie McBroom
Ecommerce Specialist
@McEcommerce

 

[vivente]

Hi Charlie,

The only other platform that I'd be considering in the next year is Amazon however there is one big stumbling block with it which means I probably will not move to it. I sell non OEM parts and accessories for horticultural & forestry machinery. A single part can fit a range of different manufacturer's equipment and more expensive machinery brands have higher parts costs so I can make more as selling it as compatible on those brands than I can on others. Now my understanding, which may be wrong, is that Amazon forces you list manufacturer numbers, therefore I would be forced into charging the same price for all which would hurt my margins overall.

Another even more important problem is that by listing by manufacturer part number rival (potential) supplier's can see exactly what range of equipment the part fits. This is actually not information which is widely available and is extremely valuable and something which can only really be gained through working in the field and repairing equipment which I have spent nearly 15 years doing. My feeling at the minute is that Amazon would probably do more harm than good to my business.

With only around 300 products the basic package would suit me however that support just doesn't cut it for me. One open ticket. That's not within my control really. If there is more than one bug on your platform then that should be your issue and you should know about it and deal with it. I would have signed but by now if that restriction wasn't in place. To get the standard support is way more than I need and I would really only be paying to get standard support. Seeing the other discussion on here where any sort of further grading looks frankly unlikely then I can't see me moving that way at present.

It's for this reason that I was looking for an integrated stock control function which integrated ebay (orders not just listings) on a hosted service that could sort the worst of my immediate problems however I realise that this is unlikely to suit me in the medium term. Bascially something that will take my ebay orders and hosted orders and automatically handle the stock levels.

Since writing this post I had read of nothing but customer service problems with Volusion even though the platform is well regarded by those that had used it. I'm not prepared to risk my business on sloppy customer service. So I then was looking elsewhere and came across Bluepark which now looks interesting to me though their ebay support is still several months away so may not ready in time to give me space needed to implement before I hit my busy season again early next year. When I queried the ebay integration (which for most other plaforms I've looked including the two you have mentioned the integration is listing integration only not order integration) they said that sales on ebay would reduce stock levels on the Bluepark site so that at least looks interesting.

I've now been looking at OpenCart and Magento and whilst OpenCart looks much easier to work with it doesn't have any real inventory control across platforms and what's available looks too basic ie not dealing with bundled items, etc. Magento does look a considerably better solution and at about £30 per month hosting I'd be happy to pay that however it's underlying code is a mess from what I understand and therefore very difficult for anyone but an expert to properly work with. How necessary that is I'm unsure as there are wealth of great templates and extensions which would probably meet all my requirements, of which chief is a more integrated approach to customer's choosing shipping methods ie they see only what is available to them based on their location.

The problem with both OpenCart and Magento is that both are due major releases next year which are both likely to break all existing extensions and themes therefore muddling through for another year and allowing those upgrades to take place and developers time to take adavantage of the new platform might be a better option.

Lots to think about.