Volusion vs Carbonmade: Comprehensive comparison guide for 2024

Final verdict

Volusion and Carbonmade cater to different needs, with Volusion focusing on ecommerce and Carbonmade on creative portfolios.

• 
  Volusion (Overall Grade: 6.6/10)
  
  is a comprehensive ecommerce solution designed to help businesses build, manage, and expand their online stores. It offers a range of customizable templates, secure payment processing, and tools for marketing and SEO. Volusion excels in providing robust ecommerce features, making it a suitable choice for businesses looking to establish a strong online presence. However, it has a steeper learning curve and some technical limitations.
• 
  Carbonmade (Overall Grade: 4.4/10)
  
  is tailored for creatives who want to showcase their work online without needing coding skills. It offers fully customizable layouts, responsive designs, and support for unlimited uploads, including 4K videos. Carbonmade is ideal for photographers, illustrators, and other creative professionals seeking an easy and fast way to create and manage online portfolios. However, it lacks ecommerce capabilities and advanced customization options.

Best for ecommerce

Verdict

: Volusion is a robust choice for ecommerce, offering a comprehensive suite of tools for online stores. Carbonmade, while excellent for creative portfolios, lacks ecommerce capabilities.

• 
  Volusion
  
  : Volusion is an all-in-one ecommerce solution designed to help businesses build, manage, and expand their online stores. It offers customizable templates, a comprehensive product management system, secure payment processing, and marketing tools. Volusion’s ecommerce features, such as SEO tools and social media integration, make it a strong contender for businesses looking to grow their online presence.
• 
  Carbonmade
  
  : Carbonmade is tailored for creatives who want to showcase their work online. It offers customizable layouts and pre-designed templates, making it easy to create and manage online portfolios. However, Carbonmade does not provide any ecommerce features, making it unsuitable for businesses looking to sell products online.

Best for informational & business websites

Verdict

: Volusion is better suited for businesses looking for a robust platform with extensive features, while Carbonmade excels for creatives needing a simple, visually appealing portfolio site.

• 
  Volusion
  
  : Volusion offers a comprehensive suite of tools for building and managing online stores, but it can also be adapted for informational business websites. Its customizable templates and robust features like product management, secure payment processing, and SEO tools make it a versatile choice. However, its complexity might be overwhelming for users who only need a simple informational site. Best for informational business websites score: 7.2.
• 
  Carbonmade
  
  : Carbonmade is designed specifically for creatives who want to showcase their work online. It offers fully customizable layouts and an easy-to-use interface, making it ideal for creating visually appealing portfolios. While it lacks the extensive features of Volusion, its simplicity and focus on design make it a great choice for creatives. Best for informational business websites score: 5.9.

Detailed comparison

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Winner: Carbonmade.

If you’re a creative professional looking for a platform that offers high customization flexibility and a user-friendly experience, Carbonmade is the preferred choice.

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

Carbonmade, on the other hand, does not use traditional templates. Instead, it offers a highly customizable platform tailored for creatives, enabling personalized, profession-specific layouts, responsive designs across devices, and support for unlimited uploads, including 4K videos. It provides a plethora of premade blocks and layouts for easy, drag-and-drop website design, along with specific features for various creative professions.

🏆 Winner: Carbonmade

. Scoring an impressive 8.3, Carbonmade excels in user-friendliness, particularly for creatives looking to showcase their work without needing coding skills. Volusion, with a score of 6.9, offers a robust platform for e-commerce but comes with a steeper learning curve, especially for advanced functionalities. For those prioritizing ease of use, Carbonmade is the clear winner in this category.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: Volusion

. While both platforms offer solid learning resources, Volusion provides a more comprehensive suite of guides, video tutorials, and a dedicated support center, making it easier for users to learn and adapt.

Volusion is a robust ecommerce platform designed to help businesses build, manage, and expand their online stores. It offers a comprehensive product management system, secure payment processing, and tools for marketing and SEO. Carbonmade, on the other hand, is tailored for creatives looking to showcase their work online and does not offer any ecommerce features.

Volusion ecommerce features:

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

Carbonmade ecommerce features:

Carbonmade does not provide any ecommerce features.

Ecommerce themes & templates

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. While the selection might not be as extensive as some other platforms, Volusion’s themes are customizable, allowing merchants to adjust the look and feel of their store. Additionally, for those with technical skills, there’s the option to edit the site’s CSS to further personalize the store’s design.

Product page customization

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. Additionally, Volusion supports the integration of customer reviews and ratings directly on product pages, helping to build trust and encourage sales.

Carbonmade does not have ecommerce capabilities, thus it’s not possible to have product pages.

Payment processing

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: 1.25% for Personal Plan merchants, 0.65% for Professional Plan merchants, 0.35% for Business Plan merchants, and custom rates for Prime plan merchants. Additionally, Volusion provides POS capabilities, enabling seamless sales both online and in physical locations.

Carbonmade does not have payment processing capabilities.

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Winner: Carbonmade

. Carbonmade, with a score of 7.6, offers a range of features designed for creatives to build personalized, professional online portfolios without requiring coding knowledge. Its editor provides responsive design across devices, 4K video support, unlimited image and video uploads, and premade blocks for customization. The platform also includes unique features such as private portfolios, a before/after block, gallery slideshows, and a talent pool to connect with other creatives and potential clients.

Volusion’s 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. However, beginners might encounter some difficulties due to its depth of features and customization options, which can be overwhelming without prior experience in website building.

Mobile editor/app

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Winner: Volusion

. When it comes to mobile editing capabilities, both Volusion and Carbonmade fall short as neither offers a dedicated mobile editor app. However, Volusion does allow for editing through a mobile browser, although the experience is not optimal due to the smaller screen size and the complexity of navigating the admin dashboard. This gives Volusion a slight edge over Carbonmade, which does not provide any mobile editing options at all.

In summary, while neither platform excels in mobile editing, Volusion’s ability to at least perform some editing tasks via a mobile browser earns it a higher score compared to Carbonmade, which lacks mobile editing capabilities entirely.

Overall Result

:

Volusion wins

. Volusion scores 7.6, slightly higher than Carbonmade’s 7.2, primarily due to its comprehensive 14-day free trial that allows users to test all premium features. Carbonmade also offers a trial period where all features can be tested, but it lacks a specified duration and does not provide a money-back guarantee, which may be a drawback for some users.

Carbonmade offers more budget-friendly plans, while Volusion provides more comprehensive options for larger businesses.

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Winner: Volusion

Volusion offers managed cloud hosting with a 99.9% uptime guarantee, making it a more reliable choice for e-commerce businesses. Carbonmade, while providing unlimited storage, does not disclose uptime statistics or offer an uptime guarantee, which may be a concern for users needing consistent performance.

🏆 Winner: Volusion

. Volusion and Carbonmade both offer website building solutions, but Volusion has a more robust approach to speed optimization, making it the better choice for users prioritizing website performance.

Volusion is an all-in-one e-commerce solution designed to help businesses build, manage, and expand their online stores. It offers a range of customizable templates that users can adapt to their brand’s aesthetics without needing extensive coding knowledge. The platform includes features such as a comprehensive product management system, secure payment processing, and tools for marketing and SEO to help increase online visibility. Additionally, Volusion provides analytics and reporting capabilities to track sales and customer behavior, enabling businesses to make data-driven decisions for growth. Volusion’s approach to speed optimization includes the use of a CDN, image optimization, code minification, regular monitoring and updates, and SEO optimization. These strategies help ensure that websites built on Volusion perform well in terms of speed and responsiveness.

Carbonmade, on the other hand, is a website builder designed specifically for creatives who want to showcase their work online without the need for coding skills. It offers fully customizable layouts that are perfect for a wide range of professionals such as photographers, illustrators, motion designers, graphic designers, and copywriters. Carbonmade provides an easy and fast way to create and manage online portfolios, featuring pre-designed templates along with various features and tools. However, Carbonmade does not provide detailed information on its speed optimization strategies or Core Web Vitals improvements. This lack of transparency makes it difficult to assess its performance capabilities compared to Volusion.

In conclusion, while both platforms offer unique features tailored to their target audiences, Volusion’s comprehensive approach to speed optimization makes it the better choice for users who prioritize website performance.

🏆 Winner: Volusion.

Volusion scores 6.8, offering a marketplace with 82 integrations that cover a wide range of functionalities, from payment processing to marketing and customer relationship management. These integrations allow businesses to tailor the platform to their specific needs, enhancing its core ecommerce features.

Carbonmade, on the other hand, scores 0 as it does not support any plugins or integrations. Its focus is on simplicity and ease of use for creating online portfolios, which limits its extensibility compared to Volusion.

Volusion Applications

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Overall Winner: Volusion

. Volusion excels with its comprehensive marketing tools, including SEO, email marketing, and social media integration, making it a robust choice for ecommerce businesses. Carbonmade, while excellent for showcasing creative portfolios, lacks many essential marketing features.

🏆 Winner: Volusion

. In the comparison of Volusion vs Carbonmade, Volusion takes the lead with a 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. This ensures that users have multiple channels to seek assistance and can get help promptly.

Carbonmade, on the other hand, has a customer support score of 5.8 and primarily relies on a ticket-based system for support. While response times are generally quick, the lack of live support options means users may experience delays in getting immediate assistance. This can be a drawback for users who need urgent help with their portfolios.

Overall, Volusion’s more robust and accessible support options make it the better choice for users who prioritize customer support in their website builder selection.

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Winner: Volusion

. Volusion excels in security, offering a range of features designed to protect sensitive information. These include SSL certificates for secure transactions, PCI DSS compliance, firewalls, data encryption, and two-factor authentication. Regular security audits and DDoS protection further enhance the platform’s security, making it a reliable choice for eCommerce businesses.

Carbonmade, while excellent for creating and managing online portfolios, does not emphasize security measures to the same extent. Its primary focus is on providing an easy and fast way to showcase creative work, which may not require the same level of security as an eCommerce platform. However, it does implement basic safeguards to protect user data.

🏆 Winner: None

. Both Volusion and Carbonmade do not offer any AI capabilities. This includes the absence of AI builders, AI-powered ecommerce features, AI content generation, and any additional AI functionalities. Users looking for AI-driven tools will need to consider other platforms.

🏆 Winner: Volusion

. When it comes to managing users, Volusion offers a more robust and flexible system compared to Carbonmade.

• Volusion provides 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. This range ensures scalability and flexibility to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes.
• Carbonmade, on the other hand, allows only one user to manage and edit a website, which can be limiting for larger teams or businesses that require collaborative efforts.

Volusion User Management:

Volusion offers roles such as Administrator, Editor/Manager, Customer Service, and Marketing, each with different access levels for tasks like site design, order processing, and analytics. This ensures that businesses can effectively manage and operate their eCommerce teams across different business scales.

Carbonmade User Management:

Carbonmade is designed for individual use, allowing only one user to manage and edit a website. This simplicity is ideal for solo creatives but may not be suitable for larger teams or businesses.

Additional Features

User Feedback

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.

Users appreciate Carbonmade for its ease of use, modern design templates, and no-code platform, which simplifies creating professional portfolios. However, some express a desire for a freemium plan and note limitations in customization and mobile site loading times. The platform is highly recommended for creatives, particularly illustrators and graphic designers, for its variety of design options and efficient customer service. Despite concerns over pricing, the overall sentiment is positive, with users finding value in Carbonmade’s ability to showcase their work effectively and streamline portfolio management.

FAQ