Volusion

15 USD/ month
Sell up to 100 products, create a mobile app, calculate tax rates and use up to 1GB bandwidth. This plan comes with social media buttons and mobile responsive templates.

35 USD/ month
Sell up to 1000 products, and receive all features from the previous plan. Get phone support, newsletter offerings, ratings, reviews and abandoned cart details. In addition, you get importing and exporting features and up to 3GB of bandwidth.

75 USD/ month
Sell up to 10,000 products, and get everything you would with the previous plans. 10 GB of bandwidth is offered, and priority support comes along as well. Integrate with Amazon and eBay, and gain API access and CRM tools.

135 USD/ month
Sell an unlimited amount of products, and use all the features outlined in the other plans. Receive 35 GB bandwidth and your own account manager.

Save 10% per month when you go with a yearly plan. Try the 14 day free trial, and gain unlimited storage for each plan, along with no transaction fees, social tools, online support, mobile sites and tax rate calculators.

WooCommerce

Free
Don't pay a dime when you download WooCommerce. It's a WordPress plugin, meaning you download it from the website, then install it on the WordPress interface, combining it with other plugins and a theme to create a full online store.

It's an open source tool, so other people are making extensions and developing themes for the plugin all over the world, opening up your possibilities.

Receive mobile responsiveness, pre-installed payment gateways (5 to be exact,) and the ability to integrate with even more gateways. Integrate with many WordPress themes, and implement settings for things like customer relationship management, custom accounts, product variables, shipping calculations, automatic tax calculations, currency controls and more.

WooCommerce is completely different from WordPress, but they work together to make a store. The transaction fees are zero, but you must find your own hosting and domain name.

Volusion

Choose from around 28 free and 88 paid themes in the library. This isn't a bad selection, but the themes aren't as modern or sophisticated as some of the options you can find with WooCommerce.

Themes are rather tricky to customize, since they are designed to act as "out of the box" solutions, assuming that the user will not make many changes. Therefore, it's tough for both beginners and advanced users to get in there and access source code or standard settings.

An FTP client is included. Although many of the paid themes look great, the customization settings are lacking.

WooCommerce

52 themes are provided when you go with WooCommerce, but you can also find thousands of other themes on the market, since third-party vendors are allowed to make and sell them. Many themes are given away for free, but you can expect to pay from $39 for the premium options.

The themes look great, but some third-party solutions are made poorly. All customization is done yourself, without the help of steps that are provided through a service like Volusion.

However, since the plugin is open source, you gain access to forums, blogs and other discussions online, since it's so widely used.

Volusion

All websites are responsive, allowing for people to view on mobile devices. Mobile commerce comes along with your plan through a mobile app. Volusion is known for packing in more frontend features, since it doesn't have much of an app store.

Therefore, you receive things like social media settings, automated tax calculations, easy checkouts, newsletters, ratings and a customer loyalty program. It's tough to modify the frontend features, but you have plenty of them.

WooCommerce

The features that show up on a website are entirely dependent on the themes, extensions and apps implemented after installing WooCommerce.

The only basic frontend features are for displaying products, calculating shipping, accepting payments, sharing coupons and providing a space for product reviews. However, one theme could offer settings for social media, while another one may not. It all depends on which theme you go with.

Volusion

The dashboard offers a clean interface with several steps showing you exactly how to setup your online store. Videos and tasks are combined into the page for the ultimate learning experience.

None of this can be found with WooCommerce. For example, the Volusion system will explain that you can start by choosing a template and then move onto uploading a logo and adding items.

Analytics are revealed in the backend, and various charts are nice for quick reference.

The tabs for the main dashboard reveal options for marketing, customers, inventory, reports and orders. Although adding a product is simple, with modules for codes, images, descriptions, prices and titles, the entire area for modifying your site structure is still lacking.

The source code is poorly organized and difficult to access, and most beginners will find it confusing.

WooCommerce

This runs through the WordPress backend, meaning that if you have any experience with WordPress then you shouldn't have any problems making and running an online store.

If you don't know anything about WordPress, a little training can usually get you there. When the plugin is installed, a WooCommerce tab comes up to the left of the dashboard, revealing options for Coupons, Orders, Reports, Settings and more.

Create products rather quickly, with categories and tag modules, along with settings for managing your inventory and shipping. In addition, you'll find areas for linked products and attributes.

Volusion

SEO

All of the SEO tools are built-in, where the product page is the primary area for modifying the SEO content.

These pages offer fields for items like meta tags, keywords, photo alt tags and URL text. Both platforms provide the basics, but you can expand on this by opting for plugins with WooCommerce.

Social Media

Choose from three social media integrations: Facebook, Amazon and eBay. Insert sharing buttons on your site if you'd like people to like, tweet or pin your products.

Link a store directly to Twitter or Facebook. This allows you to share quick announcements. YouTube videos are manageable through Volusion as well. It's a clear winner in the social media front.

Newsletter

Volusion stands out quite well with newsletters, since the entire newsletter system is built into the backend. Track the ROI of your newsletter campaigns and send and build them directly from your dashboard.

Test before you send them out to customers, and segment your users based on what types of products they buy or what they have done on your site. A signup form is available as well.

Built-in promotion options

Offer discount coupons, customer loyalty plans and batch orders through Volusion. The primary promotional tool is something that works like Groupon, in that you can post daily deal to your site.

Support of other selling channels

Sell on Facebook, eBay and Amazon. The Google Merchant Center integration is available, but it takes a little help from the support team and technical knowledge.

WooCommerce

SEO

Since WordPress is known for its SEO, no problems are going to arise when choosing WooCommerce as your shopping cart. WordPress makes automatic title and header tags, along with meta data.

However, if you'd like to change this information, it requires a plugin like Yoast SEO. It's not hard to install, but it takes an extra step.

Social Media

Not only will WooCommerce not give you any support for social media, nothing is included with the plugin. Therefore, plugins and extensions are your only options if you'd like to implement social media buttons, social sharing tools and additional selling platforms.

Newsletter

Nothing is included with the plugin in terms of newsletters, but you can choose from one of the many plugins and extensions in order to link up with email services like MailChimp and AWeber.

Built-in promotion options

A few promotional tools come with the WooCommerce plugin, including a nice coupon system that caters to those users who don't want tax factored into the discounts.

Along with that you receive product reviews and owner verification. If you'd like tools for rewards, wishlists, points and more, an extension is required.

Support of other selling channels

You must use an extension to sell on other channels. For example, a Facebook online store tool is offered for a fee.

Volusion

A snapshot of your stats is available in the main dashboard, making it similar to WooCommerce. A timetable reveals how much you're selling on the store, and a few other areas tell you the top 5 products going out of your store.

Analyze trends for sales, customer spending and order, while also looking into more advanced reports for ROI, search terms, affiliates and site health.

WooCommerce

Several areas are provided for looking at analytics and stats, such as a quick view area on the dashboard that outlines sales orders and traffic.

Net and gross sales amounts are provided through a few comprehensive reports, and you can also track trends for sales and growth. If you'd like reports for EU VAT rules, customer history, cart history and more, extensions are offered.

Volusion

The hosting is included, and it's PCI Certified to protect your store and customers from hackers. The 128-bit encryption SSL certificates are sold for cheap, and the up-time is always solid.

The best part is that it runs on a CDN, which is not necessarily offered with WooCommerce. Register your own domain when signing up for your account.

WooCommerce

Hosting is not an option with the WooCommerce plugin, but you can find your own hosting by going with a third-party company.

Although the plugin code is consistently audited, no PCI compliance is guaranteed. This means that the hosting company is what you need to look into.

It also means that you must find your own domain name and check to see if your site is secure.

Volusion

About 76 add-ons make up the app store. It's a new store, but the apps are decent for implementing things like shipping calculators, customer referral programs and email marketing tools.

They aren't as mainstream as other apps on the market, but they do the trick. The main problem is that they take a minute to activate.

WooCommerce

Select one of the hundreds of extensions that go well with WooCommerce and consider going with several of the many WordPress plugins made by WooThemes.

It takes a few minutes to install the plugins and extensions, but you have an unlimited amount of possibilities, from marketing to social media, and receipts to email newsletters.

Volusion

The support page is rather nice, with a knowledge base, videos and a contact area. Support representatives are there to help you 24/7.

This is offered through live chat, phone and email. Not to mention, the reps are friendly and very helpful.

WooCommerce

The only support is through a My Account tab in the WordPress dashboard. Nothing is provided in terms of 24/7 email, phone or live chat support.

However, you gain access to forums, blogs and knowledge bases, since WooCommerce is open source.