Durable.co vs Volusion: Comprehensive comparison guide for 2024

Final verdict

Durable.co and Volusion both offer unique strengths, but they cater to different needs.

• 
  Durable.co (Overall Grade: 6.8/10)
  
  excels in providing a user-friendly, AI-powered website building experience, making it ideal for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Its focus on AI customization, ease of use, and affordable pricing makes it a great choice for those looking to establish an online presence quickly and efficiently. However, it lacks some advanced ecommerce features and comprehensive hosting details, which may limit its appeal for larger businesses.
• 
  Volusion (Overall Grade: 6.6/10)
  
  stands out with its robust ecommerce capabilities, extensive plugins and integrations, and strong customer support. It is well-suited for businesses looking to build and expand their online stores with a comprehensive set of tools for product management, payment processing, and marketing. While it may have a steeper learning curve and higher pricing, its specialized ecommerce features and reliable hosting make it a solid choice for growing businesses.

Best for ecommerce

Verdict

: Volusion is the better choice for comprehensive ecommerce needs, while Durable.co is more suited for simple, quick setups.

• 
  Durable.co
  
  : This AI-powered website builder is designed for ease of use, making it ideal for small businesses and entrepreneurs who need to get online quickly. However, it lacks advanced ecommerce features like inventory management and shipping configurations, which limits its scalability for larger operations. Best For Ecommerce score: 5.0.
• 
  Volusion
  
  : With a more extensive set of ecommerce features, Volusion is better equipped to handle the complexities of running an online store. It offers robust product management, multiple payment gateways, and detailed analytics, making it a more suitable option for businesses looking to grow their online presence. Best For Ecommerce score: 7.1.

Best for informational & business websites

Verdict

: Durable.co is slightly better suited for informational business websites, thanks to its AI-powered customization and user-friendly interface. Volusion, while capable, is more focused on ecommerce functionalities.

• 
  Durable.co
  
  : Durable.co’s AI Website Builder is designed to create professional websites effortlessly, making it ideal for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Its AI capabilities allow users to build a business website in seconds without any coding skills. With a score of 7.4, Durable.co excels in providing a user-friendly experience, making it a strong choice for those looking to establish an online presence quickly and efficiently.
• 
  Volusion
  
  : Volusion is an all-in-one ecommerce solution that helps businesses build, manage, and expand their online stores. While it offers a range of customizable templates and features for managing online stores, its focus on ecommerce makes it less ideal for purely informational websites. With a score of 7.2, Volusion is better suited for businesses that need robust ecommerce functionalities alongside their informational content.

Detailed comparison

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Winner: Durable.co.

If you’re looking for a platform that offers more AI-powered customization and a unique approach to design, Durable.co is the preferred choice.

Durable.co’s website builder offers a unique approach by prioritizing AI-powered customization over a large library of pre-built templates. Despite offering around 30 AI-generated templates, the emphasis is on unique designs tailored to user preferences. The customization flexibility compensates for the seemingly smaller template count, enabling users to create distinct websites. Design options include thousands of combinations, allowing users to tweak themes, fonts, colors, and layouts for extensive variations from a single AI-generated template.

Durable.co Themes

Compared to Durable.co, Volusion 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. The selection includes both free and premium options, allowing users to choose based on their budget and specific requirements.

Volusion Themes

🏆 Winner: Durable.co

. With a score of 8.2, Durable.co is recognized for its user-friendly platform, especially catering to individuals with no prior experience in website building. Volusion, scoring 6.9, offers a user-friendly interface but may require a steeper learning curve for more advanced functionalities.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: Volusion

. Despite Durable.co’s AI assistance, Volusion offers a comprehensive suite of learning resources aimed at helping users maximize their website’s potential. These resources include detailed guides, video tutorials, and a dedicated support center that covers a wide range of topics from basic setup to advanced customization options.

When it comes to ecommerce, Volusion outperforms Durable.co with a more comprehensive set of features tailored for online stores. While Durable.co offers basic ecommerce capabilities, it lacks features like a built-in shopping cart, inventory management, or shipping configurations, making it suitable for straightforward selling tasks but not for full-scale ecommerce operations.

Durable.co ecommerce features:

• Product pages
• Secure payments with Stripe
• Lead capture forms
• Marketing tools

Volusion ecommerce features:

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

Ecommerce themes & templates

Durable.co offers pre-built website templates that can be adapted for online product sales, but it lacks traditional ecommerce features found in platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce. On the other hand, 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

Durable.co offers customization options for product pages on their platform. Their AI-powered website builder allows for easy customization of product pages, where users can add sections, change images, and edit titles and SEO settings to suit their needs. In contrast, 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

Durable.co partners with Stripe to offer secure and versatile payment processing solutions, charging a 3.1% plus $0.30 fee per credit card transaction for invoices. This collaboration enables businesses to handle various payment methods, including POS transactions, through Stripe’s comprehensive payment gateway infrastructure. On the other hand, 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: Durable.co

. Durable.co, with a score of 8.1, offers a user-friendly, AI-powered platform designed to help users swiftly create business websites without the need for coding knowledge. It boasts a wide range of features, integrated SEO, and marketing tools, complemented by business management features like CRM, invoicing, and an AI assistant to enhance operational efficiency. However, despite its ease of use, it falls short in offering the advanced functionalities required for developing more complex websites, limiting its suitability for more sophisticated web projects.

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. Additionally, Volusion provides a range of templates and themes to kickstart the design process, making it straightforward to create a professional-looking online store or website.

Mobile editor/app

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Winner: Durable.co

. Both Durable.co and Volusion do not offer a dedicated mobile editor app. However, they allow users to edit their websites using a mobile browser. This can be a convenient feature for users who need to make quick changes on the go, but it’s important to note that the experience might not be optimal due to the smaller screen size, and navigating through the admin dashboard could be difficult.

Despite these limitations, Durable.co 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, slightly higher than Durable.co’s 7.2. Volusion offers a 14-day free trial during which users can test premium features. However, it does not offer a money-back guarantee. On the other hand, Durable.co offers a free plan with limited features and a 30-day money-back guarantee, during which users can test premium features.

Durable.co offers a more affordable range of plans, while Volusion’s pricing is more tailored towards ecommerce businesses with a higher volume of sales.

Winner: Volusion

. Volusion offers managed cloud hosting with a 99.9% uptime guarantee, making it a more reliable choice for businesses. Durable.co, while offering hosting in all their plans, does not provide explicit information about its uptime or data centers, which can be a concern for businesses prioritizing reliability and performance.

🏆 Winner: Volusion

Both Durable.co and Volusion prioritize website performance and page speed, with Durable.co focusing on server optimization, image optimization, caching, code minification, lazy loading, and CDN, and Volusion emphasizing CDN, image optimization, code minification, regular monitoring and updates, and SEO optimization. However, Volusion has a slightly higher Website Speed Optimization score.

Durable.co, an AI-powered website builder, prioritizes website performance and page speed by focusing on server optimization, image optimization, caching, code minification, lazy loading, and CDN. However, Durable.co does not publish aggregate data or benchmarks specific to sites hosted on their platform.

On the other hand, Volusion, an all-in-one e-commerce solution, emphasizes CDN, image optimization, code minification, regular monitoring and updates, and SEO optimization. The load times and Page speed scores of Volusion vary widely, depending on the optimization and website complexity. Volusion is also implementing various performance optimization techniques to improve Core Web Vitals.

🏆 Winner: Volusion.

With a score of 6.8, Volusion edges out Durable.co (6.4) in the plugins and integrations category. Volusion offers a marketplace with a variety of integrations to enhance its ecommerce platform, including tools and services across categories such as Accounting, Business Resources, Channel Management, Customer & Relationship Management, Design, Domain Registration, Email Marketing, Fulfillment, International, Live Chat, Marketing, Mobile, Order Management, Payment Processing, Security, Shipping, and Shopping Feeds. In total, there are 82 integrations available to help complete your ecommerce business needs.

On the other hand, Durable.co doesn’t offer its own plugins or extensions for its website building platform. Instead, it integrates with a variety of third-party tools and services to add functionality to your website. These integrations are not directly managed by Durable, so the number of available options and their pricing structures can vary depending on the specific tools you choose. However, Durable does provide a directory of recommended third-party integrations on its website, which you can explore to find tools that meet your needs. Additionally, many popular WordPress plugins and extensions are also compatible with Durable, giving you even more options to consider.

Volusion Applications

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Overall Winner: Durable.co

. Durable.co stands out for its AI-powered features and robust analytics, making it a great choice for businesses looking for an easy-to-use, efficient website builder. Volusion, while strong in SEO and social media integration, lacks in blogging features.

🏆 Winner: Volusion

. Comparing Durable.co vs Volusion, Volusion takes the lead in this category with a higher customer support score of 7.0. Volusion offers comprehensive support options, including phone support during business hours, 24/7 chat support through the Merchant Center dashboard, and priority support for enterprise-level customers. Additionally, Volusion provides a dedicated client success manager for Prime plan users, ensuring that enterprise clients receive prompt and personalized assistance.

Durable.co, while offering a range of support channels such as phone, email, and live chat, is available only during business hours from Monday to Friday. Although Durable.co provides tailored solutions for enterprises, its support availability is more limited compared to Volusion, which may impact the overall user experience for businesses needing immediate assistance outside of regular hours.

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Winner: Volusion

. Volusion’s security measures are more comprehensive, offering robust protection with SSL certificates, PCI DSS compliance, firewalls, and regular security audits. This is especially important for ecommerce sites that handle sensitive customer and payment data. Volusion’s infrastructure is designed to provide high-level security, giving store owners and customers peace of mind.

Durable.co also places a strong emphasis on security, implementing measures such as SSL encryption, regular software updates, and a robust firewall. However, it does not offer the same level of specialized ecommerce security features as Volusion, making Volusion the more secure option for ecommerce sites.

🏆 Winner: Durable.co

. Durable.co, with a score of 7.5, leverages AI in various aspects of website building, from the creation process to ecommerce features and content generation. Its additional AI features further enhance its capabilities, making it a comprehensive solution for businesses looking to establish an online presence.

Volusion, on the other hand, does not have any AI capabilities, making it less competitive in this aspect.

🏆 Winner: Volusion

. Both Durable.co and Volusion offer different approaches to user management, but Volusion’s system is more robust and scalable.

• Durable.co’s free plan only allows the account owner to edit the website. The Starter and Business Plans allow one additional user, while the Mogul Plan allows for multiple businesses under one account, each with its own website and additional users. However, the exact number of users is not publicly disclosed.
• Volusion offers customizable user account management with various roles and permissions tailored for efficient online store operation. The number of staff accounts available depends on the subscription plan: 1 in the Personal Plan, 5 in the Professional Plan, 15 in the Business Plan, and unlimited in the Prime Plan.

Unfortunately, there is no detailed information available about the specific user roles and access levels for Durable.co and Volusion.

Additional Features

User Feedback

Durable.co, despite its innovative AI-driven approach to website building, currently lacks user reviews on platforms like G2. This absence of feedback makes it challenging to gauge user satisfaction and overall performance. However, its promise of quick and easy website creation, especially for small businesses and entrepreneurs, positions it as a potentially valuable tool for those looking to establish an online presence without the complexities of traditional web development.

Volusion, on the other hand, has a mixed reception among users. While it is appreciated for its affordability and user-friendly interface, it faces criticism for limited integrations and technical issues such as crashes and slow support responses. Users also note that it lacks some advanced features and customization options compared to competitors like Shopify. Despite these challenges, Volusion remains a viable option for small to medium-sized businesses seeking a cost-effective solution for building and managing an online store.

FAQ