Why this comparison is really a two horse race
Put the three platforms side by side and the first thing that emerges is that they are not the same size of question. Shopify and BigCommerce are both actively developed, heavily funded, competitively priced platforms with large ecosystems. Volusion is a smaller, older, steadily contracting platform that still works well for a particular kind of store.
The interesting comparison is therefore not which of the three is best in the abstract. It is whether a Volusion merchant should move, and if so which of the other two suits them. That is the question this piece is built to answer.
Pricing, side by side
| Volusion | Shopify | BigCommerce | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan, monthly | $35 (Personal) | $39 (Basic) | $39 (Core) |
| Entry plan, annual | Not offered | $29 | $29 |
| Mid plan, monthly | $79 (Professional) | $105 (Grow) | $105 (Growth) |
| Mid plan, annual | Not offered | $79 | $79 |
| High plan, monthly | $299 (Business) | $399 (Advanced) | $399 (Scale) |
| High plan, annual | Not offered | $299 | $299 |
| Enterprise | Prime, quoted on GMV | Plus, from $2,300 per month | From $1,499 per month on annual terms |
| Sales cap, entry plan | $50,000 per year | None | $30,000 trailing twelve months |
| Sales cap, mid plan | $100,000 per year | None | $100,000 trailing twelve months |
| Sales cap, high plan | $400,000 per year | None | $33,333 per month, then 0.9 percent overage |
| Third party payment fee, entry | Not published | 2 percent | 2 percent |
| Third party payment fee, top tier | Not published | 0.2 percent on Plus | 0.6 percent on Scale, none on Enterprise |
| Apps and integrations | 84 | Over 13,000 | Over 1,200 |
| Themes | 45, premium at $180 | Large first and third party library | Large first and third party library |
| Hosting | Google Cloud, 99.9 percent uptime guarantee | Managed | Managed |
What the pricing table actually tells you
Three findings are worth pulling out, because none of them are obvious from the headline numbers.
Shopify and BigCommerce are priced almost identically. $39, $105 and $399 monthly, $29, $79 and $299 annually, on both platforms at all three published tiers. The choice between them is not a price decision at all. It is a decision about ecosystem versus native feature set.
Volusion is only cheaper on monthly billing. It undercuts both competitors at monthly rates and then loses that advantage entirely on annual terms, because it publishes no annual discount while both competitors discount around 25 percent. On annual billing the mid and top tiers land at exactly the same price on all three platforms.
Only Shopify has no sales cap. Volusion and BigCommerce both tie plan tiers to sales volume. BigCommerce publishes a 0.9 percent overage rate on its Scale plan, so a merchant who exceeds the threshold knows what it costs. Volusion publishes no overage rate and instead pushes merchants above $400,000 a year into a quoted Prime plan. For a business that expects to grow unevenly, that difference in predictability matters more than a $20 gap in monthly fees.
Ecosystem: the gap that decides most cases
Volusion’s partner marketplace lists 84 integrations. BigCommerce publishes more than 1,200. Shopify’s app store runs well beyond 13,000.
Against BigCommerce, Volusion is roughly 14 times smaller. Against Shopify, the ratio is far larger still. What that means in practice is simple: on Shopify or BigCommerce, the question when you need a capability is which option to choose. On Volusion, the question is whether one exists.
This cuts both ways, and the nuance is worth keeping. BigCommerce’s argument against Shopify has always been that it includes natively what Shopify charges for through apps, particularly business to business functionality, product options and faceted search. A merchant who would otherwise buy six Shopify apps may find BigCommerce cheaper in total cost of ownership despite identical headline pricing. That is a real argument and it is the main reason to choose BigCommerce over Shopify.
Feature positioning in one paragraph each
Shopify is the default. Largest ecosystem, widest theme selection, deepest pool of agencies and freelancers, no sales caps, strong native SEO handling including canonicals, structured data and dynamic sitemaps. The trade is that a meaningful part of your monthly cost ends up in apps rather than in the platform fee, and third party payment gateways attract a percentage fee unless you use Shopify Payments.
BigCommerce is the specialist’s choice for catalogue heavy and wholesale businesses. Native business to business functionality, deep product option handling, no app tax on core features, and published overage rates rather than quoted plans. The trade is a smaller ecosystem than Shopify and fewer agencies, though still an order of magnitude more than Volusion.
Volusion is the simple, stable option for a store that does not need much. Genuinely easy to use, capable built in inventory and order management, hosted on Google Cloud with a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee, and priced attractively on monthly terms at the entry tier. The trade is the sales caps, the small ecosystem, basic SEO controls that require developer work to extend, no advertised business to business or headless capability, and a shrinking base of specialists to hire from.
The trajectory data
Any three way comparison that omits this is incomplete. Store Leads counted 3,260 live Volusion stores on 11 September 2026, down 5.2 percent quarter on quarter and 19 percent year on year, against a peak of 13,889 in the first quarter of 2020. BuiltWith puts the count higher at 5,247, because it detects technology footprints including dormant stores rather than confirmed trading stores. The two methodologies disagree on the level by roughly 60 percent and agree entirely on the direction.
Of 35 merchants who left Volusion in the 90 days to 11 September 2026, Shopify took 18. Four merchants moved onto Volusion in the same period. Shopify and BigCommerce are both growing.
This is not a reason to panic if you are on Volusion. The platform emerged from Chapter 11 in January 2021 after restructuring debt with Main Street Capital, has had continuity of leadership under chief executive Troy Pike since then, and continues to trade. But it is a reason to weigh the depth of the hiring pool and the pace of platform development when you are deciding where to build for the next five years.
How to decide
Choose Shopify if
You want the largest ecosystem and the widest choice of agencies, you expect uneven growth and do not want sales caps, you sell primarily direct to consumers, and you are comfortable assembling part of your stack from apps.
Choose BigCommerce if
You have a large catalogue, deep product option sets or genuine wholesale customers, you would rather pay one platform fee than a stack of app subscriptions, and you want published overage pricing rather than a negotiated plan. This is also the more natural landing place for a Volusion merchant who liked the batteries included model in the first place.
Stay on Volusion if
Your store is stable and profitable, your catalogue is simple, you are comfortably inside your tier’s sales cap, the integrations you need already exist, and you have custom functionality already built that would be expensive to rebuild. In that situation migration is a cost without a benefit.
The bottom line
On a like for like basis Shopify and BigCommerce are close competitors at identical prices, and the choice between them comes down to ecosystem breadth against native feature depth. Volusion is a different proposition: cheaper monthly at the entry tier, simpler to operate, and materially more constrained on every axis that matters as a business grows.
If you are choosing a platform from scratch, choose Shopify unless your catalogue or wholesale requirements point specifically at BigCommerce. If you are already on Volusion, run the three tests that actually matter. Are you near your sales cap, do you need an integration that does not exist, and is organic search decaying for platform level reasons? A yes to any of those is a reason to move. A no to all three is a reason to leave a working store alone.
