WooCommerce is a very popular solution for building an online store, and the primary reason for this is that it's a free plugin for WordPress (which is hugely popular in its own right). WooCommerce cannot be used on a free WordPress.com account; it requires use of the paid WordPress Business plan or a self-hosted website using the downloadable WordPress.org version. If your WordPress website meets these qualifications, you can locate and install WooCommerce from the built-in plugin browser.

WooCommerce gives you a ton of design flexibility, and its feature set can be expanded through the installation of additional plugins. Be aware that these plugins vary greatly in pricing, quality, and reliability of development, but many are free and some are truly excellent. Compatibility can be an issue, though, so ensure any plugins you choose will work with one another.

Magento is another free, open-source eCommerce platform, but with a different structure and focus than WooCommerce. Rather than an eCommerce plugin for an existing website builder, Magento is a full software solution aimed directly at selling online from the outset. It's known for being the platform used by several large retailers, and has tons of features supported by its open development.

Magento does have its problems, however, including numerous complaints about websites that grind to a halt once too many products are added or too much traffic is achieved. Support can also be hard to come by, since you're relying on the community to provide it for you. Plus, Magento is not very easy to use or maintain, so it's more feasible for a business that has its own web development department. Still, if you can manage its intricacies, Magento can be much better than Volusion.

Unlike WooCommerce and Magento, Shopify is an SaaS eCommerce platform, making it a much more direct competitor with Volusion. Shopify is very popular in the eCommerce world, with a bigger market share than Volusion, and also has a much higher feature count. It's easy to use Shopify to quickly build an online store, and some users prefer the Shopify dashboard over Volusion's. However, there's still some missing functionality that requires you to pay extra for third-party apps to expand the features of your store. Some features are not available at all, even with apps.

Shopify also charges transaction fees on every sale, unless you use their proprietary Stripe-based payment processor, Shopify Payments. While this seems like a quick solution, Shopify Payments is not appropriate for every business, and cannot be used if you sell highly regulated products like CBD oil. Regulations aren't the only reason an industry can be designated "high-risk," either — it can also happen due to a higher chance of fraud, or anything else that increases the risk the payment provider takes on by handling your payments. This means Shopify Payments simply cannot be used at all in some cases.

Additionally, a large number of Shopify merchants report that their stores have been blacklisted by Shopify Payments' own internal risk department, for reasons Shopify refuses to disclose. When this happens, payment processing is shut down immediately, effectively closing the store and freezing payments to the merchant. This has happened often enough to make many new Shopify store owners wary of Shopify Payments, meaning they'll end up paying transaction fees.

BigCommerce is a strong eCommerce platform and a serious competitor against Volusion. It's also SaaS, meaning it brings the same convenience to your business with included hosting, software updates, and behind-the-scenes management of everything technical. It's not quite as easy to use as Volusion but this is in part due to its much larger feature set, and many BigCommerce store owners find it straightforward enough.

The biggest downside to BigCommerce is their restrictive revenue tier system. While it's normal for any online service provider to require a plan upgrade once certain milestones are reached, BigCommerce boosts online store owners to higher-tier plans much sooner than necessary. This is easy to manage if you have freedom with your budget, but many businesses don't. Still, if you do have the freedom, BigCommerce offers much better functionality than Volusion does. Volusion uses a similar system (with the same limits) so your business may already be growing in alignment with these revenue tiers.