Dreamhost vs Volusion: Comprehensive comparison guide for 2024

Final verdict

Dreamhost and Volusion both offer unique strengths, but they cater to different user needs.

• 
  Dreamhost (Overall Grade: 6.7/10)
  
  is ideal for users seeking a versatile website builder with strong integration capabilities, especially with WordPress. It excels in design flexibility, ease of use, and comprehensive hosting solutions. Dreamhost is well-suited for those who prioritize customization and a robust hosting environment, making it a solid choice for both beginners and experienced users looking to create professional websites.
• 
  Volusion (Overall Grade: 6.6/10)
  
  is tailored for ecommerce businesses, offering a range of tools to build, manage, and expand online stores. It provides comprehensive product management, secure payment processing, and marketing tools to enhance online visibility. Volusion is best for users focused on ecommerce who need a platform with strong inventory management and analytics capabilities.

Best for ecommerce

Verdict

: Dreamhost and Volusion both offer robust ecommerce capabilities, but they cater to different needs and preferences. Dreamhost scores 7.4, slightly higher than Volusion’s 7.1, making it a better choice for those looking for a versatile and reliable platform.

• 
  Dreamhost
  
  : Dreamhost is a versatile platform with WooCommerce-ready themes and integrations with Magento and Shopify. It offers fast storage, pre-configured WooCommerce, free SSL, and 24/7 WordPress support. However, its customer support is limited, lacking round-the-clock live chat. Dreamhost is ideal for users who want a reliable and flexible ecommerce solution with strong WordPress integration.
• 
  Volusion
  
  : Volusion is an all-in-one ecommerce solution designed to help businesses build, manage, and expand their online stores. It offers a comprehensive inventory management system, a range of payment gateways, and customizable design options. However, it has bandwidth limitations, which can incur additional costs for high-traffic sites. Volusion is suitable for businesses looking for a dedicated ecommerce platform with strong product management and marketing tools.

Best for informational & business websites

Verdict

: Dreamhost is slightly better suited for informational business websites due to its higher degree of customization flexibility, ease of use, and robust customer support. Volusion, while strong in ecommerce features, may not be as intuitive for purely informational sites.

• 
  Dreamhost
  
  : Dreamhost’s website builder, Remixer, offers a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface and a wide variety of customizable themes, making it ideal for creating professional-looking informational websites. Its seamless integration with WordPress provides additional flexibility for users looking to leverage more advanced features. With a score of 7.5, Dreamhost excels in ease of use and customer support, making it a reliable choice for both beginners and experienced users.
• 
  Volusion
  
  : Volusion is primarily an ecommerce platform, offering a range of customizable templates and robust features for managing online stores. While it includes tools for marketing, SEO, and analytics, its focus on ecommerce may make it less suitable for purely informational websites. With a score of 7.2, Volusion provides a solid option for businesses that may want to expand into ecommerce in the future, but it may require a steeper learning curve for those focused solely on informational content.

Detailed comparison

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Winner: Dreamhost.

Dreamhost offers a higher degree of customization flexibility and a wider variety of templates and designs compared to Volusion.

Dreamhost’s website builder, offers a user-friendly interface that allows for a high degree of customization flexibility. Users can edit various elements including text, images, backgrounds, and layout structures to match their preferences. The platform also provides a wide range of themes and templates that can be further customized to ensure the final website aligns with the user’s brand identity.

Dreamhost Themes

On the other hand, Volusion, as a website builder, offers a variety of design templates tailored to meet the diverse needs of online stores and businesses. The platform provides users with over 30 professionally designed, responsive templates. These templates are crafted to cater to a wide range of industries, ensuring that businesses of all types can find a design that aligns with their brand identity and goals.

Volusion Themes

🏆 Winner: Dreamhost

. Scoring 8.2, Dreamhost’s website builder is designed with simplicity in mind, making it highly accessible for users without prior web development experience. On the other hand, Volusion, with a score of 6.9, offers a user-friendly interface but some users may find the platform’s features and tools less intuitive compared to leading competitors, potentially requiring a steeper learning curve for more advanced functionalities.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: Dreamhost

. Both platforms offer solid learning resources, but Dreamhost goes a step further with its wide array of detailed guides on using the WP Website Builder with BoldGrid, building websites with various hosting plans, and optimizing sites for performance and visitor engagement.

Dreamhost and Volusion both offer robust ecommerce capabilities, but they cater to different needs and preferences. Dreamhost, with its WooCommerce-ready themes and integrations with Magento and Shopify, is a versatile platform for building ecommerce sites. It offers fast storage, pre-configured WooCommerce, free SSL, and 24/7 WordPress support. However, its customer support is limited, lacking round-the-clock live chat.

Volusion, on the other hand, is an all-in-one ecommerce solution designed to help businesses build, manage, and expand their online stores. It offers a comprehensive inventory management system, a range of payment gateways, and customizable design options. However, it has bandwidth limitations, which can incur additional costs for high-traffic sites.

Dreamhost ecommerce features:

• WooCommerce-Ready Themes
• Magento integration
• Shopify integration

Volusion ecommerce features:

• Ecommerce Product listings
• Payment Gateways
• Multiple Currencies support
• Shipping options
• SEO tools
• Social Media Integration

Ecommerce themes & templates

DreamHost facilitates eCommerce site creation mainly through WooCommerce, offering a powerful, open-source platform with plans designed to cater to varying levels of eCommerce activity. Additionally, DreamHost’s WP Website Builder, equipped with BoldGrid, provides a range of mobile-friendly themes for easy site customization without coding knowledge.

Volusion offers a selection of ecommerce-specific templates designed to cater to various store aesthetics and needs. They provide 14 free themes and 38 paid themes, each costing $180. These templates are mobile responsive, ensuring that your online store is accessible and user-friendly across all devices.

Product page customization

Through the integration of WooCommerce, DreamHost’s website builder offers a range of customization possibilities for e-commerce product pages to enhance the shopping experience. These possibilities include layout adjustments like modifying the single product page layout and adding custom tabs, introducing custom fields and sections for additional product information and FAQs, implementing dynamic content like personalized recommendations, and enabling product variations with swatches and custom product builders.

Volusion offers a range of ecommerce product page customization options to enhance the shopping experience. Users can modify product descriptions, images, and videos to showcase their items effectively. The platform allows for the customization of options and variants, such as size and color, to provide a more detailed and user-friendly product selection process.

Payment processing

When it comes to payment processing, DreamHost supports a variety of popular payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.Net, Amazon Pay, and Square, each with its own fee structure but no additional charges from DreamHost.

Volusion offers a comprehensive eCommerce platform that supports various payment gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, and its own solution, Volusion Payments, tailored for U.S.-based merchants. The platform is distinctive for its low transaction fees, which vary based on the subscription plan. Additionally, Volusion provides POS capabilities, enabling seamless sales both online and in physical locations.

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Winner: Dreamhost

. Dreamhost, with a score of 7.3, offers a user-friendly interface for creating and customizing WordPress websites, employing a drag-and-drop editor that eliminates the need for coding skills. It offers a selection of mobile-friendly themes to accommodate various website needs, along with essential tools like backups to safeguard user data. The builder streamlines the website creation process, from theme selection and layout customization to the final installation, enabling users to easily adjust their site’s appearance and functionality.

Volusion’s website builder editor, scoring 7.1, is designed for ease of use, catering to both beginners and experienced users. It offers a drag-and-drop interface, allowing users to easily add, remove, or modify elements on their website without needing to code. Users can customize their site’s layout, adjust colors, fonts, and images, and even integrate various functionalities like social media links, shopping carts, and payment gateways.

Mobile editor/app

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Winner: Dreamhost

. Both Dreamhost and Volusion do not offer a dedicated mobile editor app. However, both platforms allow users to modify their websites using a mobile browser. This method, while convenient, comes with certain restrictions and may not provide an optimal experience due to the smaller screen size and potential difficulties in navigating the admin dashboard. Despite these limitations, Dreamhost scores slightly higher than Volusion in the mobile editor category, making it the winner in this comparison.

Overall Result

:

Volusion wins

. Volusion scores 7.6, significantly higher than Dreamhost’s 2.7. Volusion offers a 14-day free trial during which users can test premium features. Dreamhost, on the other hand, does not offer a free or trial version, but allows testing of premium features during a 30-day refundable period.

Dreamhost and Volusion have similar pricing scores, with Dreamhost slightly leading. However, Volusion offers a custom pricing model for large businesses looking to scale significantly, which could be a deciding factor for some users.

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Winner: Dreamhost

Dreamhost edges out Volusion with a slightly higher uptime and a 100% uptime guarantee. Both offer hosting included in their plans, but Dreamhost provides automated daily backups, a feature not mentioned for Volusion. Dreamhost’s transparency about their data centers also contributes to their higher score.

🏆 Winner: Volusion

Both Dreamhost and Volusion have strategies in place for website speed optimization, but Volusion’s comprehensive approach and higher Website Speed Optimization score give it the edge.

Volusion’s approach to website speed optimization includes the use of a Content Delivery Network (CDN), image optimization, code minification, regular monitoring and updates, and SEO optimization. This comprehensive strategy, combined with their commitment to implementing various performance optimization techniques to improve Core Web Vitals, gives Volusion a significant advantage in website speed optimization. However, the load times and PageSpeed scores can vary widely, depending on the level of optimization and the complexity of the website.

On the other hand, Dreamhost focuses on built-in caching (available on higher plans), code minification, and image optimization for speed optimization. However, they do not disclose any specific performance tools or information about their Core Web Vitals improvements. The average load time for Dreamhost is between 1.75 and 3 seconds, but no data is available for their PageSpeed scores.

🏆 Winner: Dreamhost.

Dreamhost scores 8.8, offering a wide range of WordPress plugins that can significantly enhance a website’s functionality. Volusion, with a score of 6.8, offers a marketplace with a variety of integrations to enhance its ecommerce platform. However, Dreamhost’s support for WordPress and the extensive range of plugins it offers gives it the edge over Volusion.

Dreamhost Applications

Volusion Applications

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Overall Winner: Dreamhost

. Dreamhost stands out for its comprehensive SEO Toolkit and the ability to integrate with third-party email marketing platforms. It also offers blogging, which Volusion does not. However, Volusion provides a range of SEO features designed for online stores and enables direct advertisement and promotion through the integration of PPC advertising via Google AdWords.

🏆 Winner: Dreamhost

. In the comparison of Dreamhost vs Volusion, Dreamhost takes the lead with its 24/7 live chat and email support, ensuring users can get assistance at any time. Dreamhost also offers phone support callbacks, although availability may depend on the user’s specific plan. Their commitment to minimal wait times and quick email responses makes them a reliable choice for users seeking prompt support.

Volusion, on the other hand, provides phone support during business hours and 24/7 chat support through the Merchant Center dashboard. While their support is robust, it is primarily available to users on higher-tier plans. Volusion’s enterprise-level support includes a dedicated client success manager and priority support, which is beneficial for larger businesses but may not be as accessible for smaller users compared to Dreamhost’s offerings.

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Winner: Volusion

. Volusion’s security measures are comprehensive and tailored for ecommerce, with features such as SSL certificates, PCI DSS compliance, firewalls, data encryption, regular security audits, DDoS protection, two-factor authentication, and automated backups. These features ensure secure transactions and protect sensitive customer and payment data, making Volusion a reliable choice for online stores.

Although Dreamhost provides robust security measures, including free SSL certificates, domain privacy, multi-factor authentication, anti-spam filters, daily backups, and DDoS protection, it has experienced breaches in the past. This highlights the need for continuous vigilance and personal security practices.

🏆 Winner: Dreamhost

. Although both Dreamhost and Volusion lack extensive AI capabilities, Dreamhost offers an AI business name generator, which gives it a slight edge over Volusion.

Dreamhost, with a score of 1.2, has minimal AI capabilities, with the only feature being an AI business name generator.

Volusion, with a score of 0.0, does not have any AI capabilities.

🏆 Winner: Dreamhost

. Both Dreamhost and Volusion offer user management features that allow multiple users to edit a website, but Dreamhost’s user management score is higher.

• Dreamhost primarily uses WordPress, which allows for multiple users to edit a website. WordPress enables the addition of numerous users with various roles such as Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, and Subscriber. Each role has its own set of permissions and capabilities, allowing for flexible and controlled access for different users.
• Volusion offers customizable user account management with various roles and permissions tailored for efficient online store operation. Subscription plans determine the number of staff accounts available: 1 in the Personal Plan, 5 in the Professional Plan, 15 in the Business Plan, and unlimited in the Prime Plan.

Dreamhost User Roles and Access Levels:

Additional Features

User Feedback

Users appreciate DreamHost WP Website Builder for its ease of use, broad template selection, and integrated hosting solutions, highlighting its utility in building and managing websites efficiently. However, some users suggest improvements in areas such as image editing capabilities, customer support, and software optimization to enhance speed and functionality. While many find it a cost-effective and user-friendly option for website development without coding, others express concerns over occasional software bugs, slow website performance, and the desire for more advanced features.

Users generally appreciate Volusion’s affordability compared to competitors like Shopify, finding its simplified user interface suitable for non-tech users. However, there are concerns about its limited integrations and frequent technical issues, such as crashes and slow support responses. Some users feel that Volusion lacks the advanced features and customization options offered by competitors like Shopify, making it less competitive in the market. Despite these drawbacks, Volusion remains a feasible option for small to medium-sized businesses seeking a budget-friendly solution for establishing an online store.

FAQ