Bigcommerce

29.95 USD/ month + 1.5% transaction fee
Sell an unlimited amount of products. Receive an unlimited amount of storage and bandwidth. Use powerful reporting tools, and accept PayPal and credit cards from customers. The checkout is not hosted on your domain for this plan, so it goes through the Bigcommerce module. Coupon codes, timed promotional tools and social media buttons are included with this plan.

79.95 USD/ month
Sell an unlimited amount of products without having to pay for any transaction fees. The checkout is hosted on your own domain, and you get omni-channel sales features and customer segmentation modules. The payment providers are top notch, carrier shipping is real time and pricing groups and rules are included. The plan offers comparisons on shopping sites, eBay integrations and all the features you would receive from the previous plan.

199.95 USD/ month
You get everything from the previous plan, high volume security and analytics, fraud monitoring and product filtering.

Custom Pricing for Enterprise Plan
This plan requires you to speak with the Bigcommerce team for pricing, but you receive an unlimited amount of products and zero transaction fees. The Google Trusted stores integration is a plus, along with product filtering and priority support. Advance SEO comes along with the HTTPS, and a dedicated account manager is there to help you out. Finally, the plan comes with API support, uptime SLA and all the features you receive from the previous plans.

Each plan provides mobile friendly themes, support at all hours of the day (24/7,) coupon code features, unlimited storage and bandwidth, and the ability to accept PayPal and credit cards. In addition, you get a 10% discount if you opt for the annual payment. Finally, you can try out the 15 day trial, create unlimited products and work with promotions and discounting rules.

Volusion

15 USD/ month
Receive the ability to upload up to 100 products, 1GB bandwidth storage, a mobile app for selling, automated tax rates for customers, social media tools, themes that work on mobile devices.

35 USD/ month
Upload a maximum of 1000 products, and receive all the benefits you would get from the previous plan. Get 24/7 phone support, built-in newsletters and a ratings and reviews system for building SEO and social credibility. Abandoned cart reports importing/exporting and storage of up to 3GB is also included.

75 USD/ month
Sell up to 10,000 products from your store, use up to 10 GB of bandwidth, receive all features from the previous plans and get priority call and email support. API access is great for customization and integration, Amazon and eBay selling is included and a CRM is packed into this plan.

135 USD/ month
Sell an unlimited amount of products, use up to 35 GB of bandwidth storage, receive all features from the previous plans and work with your own dedicated account manager for building your store.

When you go with a yearly plan you can save about 10% per month. Receive a free 14 day trial, and get unlimited storage and no transaction fees, regardless of the plan you choose. Online support comes with every plan, along with a Facebook store integration and social media buttons. Sell from your own mobile app, and generate automatic tax rates from the frontend.

Bigcommerce

Bigcommerce doesn't have as many themes, but you can tell they have focused on making quality themes with robust features. You can choose from 16 free and 42 paid themes, and it's simple to search through the theme store and find one that suits your brand. Accessing the source code doesn't take much time, and these files are better organized in the dashboard. This is nice for developers, but beginners also have access to nice backend customization tools that don't require coding knowledge. The themes look great , you can connect to an FTP and if something is missing on your theme it doesn't take long to implement an app, whereas the Volusion app store isn't as basic.

Volusion

When comparing Volusion themes to Bigcommerce, Volusion has far more, with 28 free options and around 88 themes you can pay for. However, the themes are more simple, with less modern designs, particularly the free ones. You can end up spending up to $1000 for some of the paid themes, and they are really nice. In terms of customizing the themes, it's somewhat difficult since you typically have to go into the code and modify it yourself. Even then, it's tough to make changes. You don't receive a drag and drop editor or simple backend editing tools like you do with the other platform. An FTP client is offered, but it works pretty much the same as the one with Bigcommerce. Overall, the themes are acceptable, but the customization settings are of lower quality.

Bigcommerce

Bigcommerce comes in strong with its frontend product tools, since customers can use modules for image zooming, viewing related products and writing reviews. Although it does have a robust frontend interface, Volusion has more built-in from the start. Both interfaces are clean, but it is more modern and has fewer integrated options (apps) so it may seem less complicated. The themes are built to work on mobile platforms, social media integrations are included, a blog comes with your plan and customers can type in coupon codes. Live chat is a handy feature for users, along with product filtering and wishlists. Payment processing shouldn't be a problem with neither option. Whereas Bigcommerce lacks in the translation department, Volusion presents a decent translation module for displaying different languages.

Volusion

When it comes to frontend features, Volusion provides responsive designs for people to view on tablets and phones. You can also sell your items on an included mobile app and integrate social media buttons for users to share your products. The checkout is fairly simple, and automated tax rates add clarity to pricing. You'll notice that Volusion made a system with more of its features built-in, whereas Bigcommerce focuses more on its app store for you to pick and choose the frontend features your store. It offers Amazon selling, eBay integration, and even a customer loyalty program for customers to sign up for. Along with newsletter and review features, the system is more of an out-of-the-box system.

Bigcommerce

The first part of the backend requests that you take a tour of the dashboard. This is nice for understanding the system, but the entire dashboard is clean (similar to WordPress) with tabs for analytics, content, marketing, customers and products. Bigcommerce presents several important tasks you should walk through after activating your store, such as creating products, accepting payments and selecting a theme for your site. Like stated to the left, Bigcommerce has a similar interface as Volusion for creating products. Some of the tabs you'll run into include bulk pricing, custom fields, images, inventory, details and videos. Since most backend features are built into both, they are somewhat similar in terms of posting products to your store, but the big advantage is that the source code and site customization is easier to manage.

Volusion

When you land on the initial dashboard it looks clean and concise, but when you try to modify the look and feel of your site, it gets a little messy. The source code is arranged in a fashion where the files are listed and categorized, so you may find it difficult to locate a certain area in your files for changing an individual design. However, the dashboard includes tutorial videos, a step by step guide and some handy tools for making quick adjustments like uploading images and logos. You basically just upload a template, add products and include a logo. The backend also incorporates order analytics, and various charts for looking at site trends, top selling products and top selling categories. If you navigate to the top part of the dashboard it gives you several tabs for marketing, inventory, customers, reports and design, but this doesn't differ much from the other system. The product creation pages are also somewhat similar to that of Bigcommerce, with fields for things like titles, descriptions, images and prices. You can even implement recurring pricing.

Bigcommerce

SEO

Bigcommerce automatically pings the search engines when you make changes to your site. It does this with the help of sitemaps and robots.txt files, which are included with your plans. In terms of optimizing your product pages, both are on the same level, since Bigcommerce has fields for meta descriptions, search engine friendly links and title and header tags. It also has reviews, 301 redirects and a fast CDN, but Volusion has these included as well.

Social Media

SocialShop is the best way to sell on Facebook. You can also implement a Facebook "Like" button on your products. Although social sharing buttons and links to your social platforms are occasionally included with your theme, most of the time you must go into the app store for the functionality.

Newsletter

Although you can integrate with MailChimp and a few of the other big email service providers, this is mainly just a module that helps you collect emails and export the lists for later use. The integrations aren't terrible, but you will have to use a second program, whereas with Volusion it is all included through the dashboard.

Built-in promotion options

Bigcommerce lacks the daily deals module that Volusion has, but you get some gifting options with wrapping and certificate offerings. The time-limited promotions are nice and the discounting rules engine is similar to the discount coupons from Volusion, but with a little more functionality. Pricing rules and comparison tools are also offered.

Support of other selling channels

Similar to Volusion, you can sell through the Google Merchant Products Center. A Google Trusted Stores integration is also included. Hook up to Amazon, eBay and various comparison tools. Volusion and Bigcommerce are rather close in this regard.

Volusion

SEO

Each product page offers several fields for SEO, including a meta tag title, meta tag description, photo alt tags and meta tag keywords. The settings aren't that tough to find, and if you don't manage the SEO area manually, it pulls in content information for the search engines.

Social Media

Volusion comes out on top when it comes to social integration, since it provides a direct connection with Facebook and Twitter, which sends out news updates to your followers from your store. The system also has built-in buttons for people to share to Pinterest, Facebook and other social networks, along with an area to upload and manage YouTube videos. The main social integration is to Facebook, since you can sell on the platform. Amazon and eBay are also included in the social package.

Newsletter

Volusion wins in the newsletter realm, but don't expect stunning email designs, since the system runs completely on your dashboard and you mainly work with a basic text or rich HTML editor. The cool part is that you can build and test out your emails, and the newsletter program allows for segmenting, ROI tracking and report viewing.

Built-in promotion options

Volusion provides several promotional tools that come built into the system depending on your plan. These include daily deals, discount coupons, customer loyalty plans and batch orders for large purchase discounts.

Support of other selling channels

Integrate with the Google Merchant Center, but remember that this isn't exactly an easy thing to setup. Consider selling through eBay, Amazon and Facebook.

Bigcommerce

Bigcommerce doesn't have the stats snapshot, but the reports are robust. Check out abandoned cart reports, order reports and store overviews to keep your business in check. A standout feature is that you can run reports on individual customers.

Volusion

When comparing Bigcommerce and Volusion with statistics, they actually come out pretty even. The main difference is that Volusion has a snapshot of your statistics in the dashboard for quick views. Some of the graphs include top 5 products and categories, along with reports for customer spending and sales trends. The more in-depth reports are available on one of the main navigational tabs in the dashboard, and they have everything from ROI to affiliate sales, site health to common search terms.

Bigcommerce

Hosting is offered through your plan, and it comes with a domain name, CMS and shopping cart. The product catolog is included as well, and the Level 1 PCI Compliance is just like Volusion. It has SAS 70 Type II certified servers for strong security.

Volusion

PCI Certification comes with your plan, which is great for protecting your site. The 128-bit encryption SSL certificates are rather affordable, and you won't find these from Bigcommerce. The CDNs from both are fast, and domain registration is included with your full hosting from Volusion.

Bigcommerce

The Bigcommerce app store (http://apps.bigcommerce.com ) has slowly been improving, and it blows Volusion out of the water because of its selection and the ability for quick installations. Documentation is provided and they have options for anything from accounting to email marketing.

Volusion

Volusion provides around 76 add-ons in its app store (http://apps.volusion.com). Although the store is still in beta, it's been around for long enough to find some nice solutions for your site. The main downside is that you must download the apps as zip files, then upload them to your site. It's a tedious process. That said, the apps in the store are not as good (or as plentiful) as in Bigcommerce, but you can find options for accounting, marketing, shipping and more.

Bigcommerce

Bigcommerce offers 24/7 support. It's about on the same level as Volusion, with live chat, phone and email support. But you can also talk in the forum and view the loads of information they have in the knowledge base and blog.

Volusion