eBay ProStores vs. Volusion: Best Way To Start an eCommerce Store

Thinking about making some money from the comfort of your own home? Blogging not for you? How about eCommerce? eCommerce is basically merchanting products through the internet, and holds true potential for making you rich. Don't know how to do that? Well, here are two products that will guide you hand in hand, ProStores and Volusion. Both are very powerful eStore managers, owned by massive companies. In this article, i will compare the pros and cons of each software, hopefully helping you to decide whether you would like to have a future in eCommerce, and which product to choose to help you through it.

ProStores is a company owned by the massive international corporation "eBay", which is an online store where you can buy and sell your used products. ProStores products help small-medium sized buisnesses manage their store, giving them a step by step guide on how to set up their business and a proffesional class software to manage it. It is a hefty $100 one off set-up cost, but it is definitely worth it for the young entrepeneur, considering how much possible profit there is. 

Pros

1. There is a massive range of website templates available, a staggering 143 in total.
2. It's owner is eBay, which means you get full support for the eBay site, as well as being able to easily sell products.
3. One off payment of $100.
4. Can hold up to 10,000 products on your store.

Cons

1. Only has one package, meaning that a small buisness owned by a middle class person wanting to make a few extra bucks and a top notch entrepeneur would pay and need the same equipment.
2. You cannot sell soft goods with this product (downloadable softwares and the like).
3. There is a website wizard, but for those who want to be more complex there are long months of study ahead of you.

Overall?

All in all, ProStores is definitley one of the best eCommerce softwares out there, and stacks up in the top 20.

Volusion is an excellent eCommerce software like ProStores, only Volusion has been around for longer, since 1999. The drawback from using this over ProStores are the monthly payments, but this product makes up for it with a reputation for excellent 24 hour customer service. Quoting from the Volusion website;

"Free 24x7x365 support for help every step of the way"

Plans start at $29 USD per month for their basic package, which lets you put up to 100 products up and 2gb of transfer along with other handy tools. Bronze is $39 per month, and gives 5 times the amount of products storage and another gigabyte than the first one. Silver is another step up, and should be all the regular home-operated business person needs. It costs a hefty $79 a month, but you can put up to 1000 products up and gives you the Basic+Bronze of data transfers. For more serious bussiness men, there is the Gold and Platinum packages. Gold costs $99 a month, while platinum costs $179. Although these two are very expensive, they give additional tools, such as API access, Onboarding coach and Social Store Builder, platinum additionally offering unlimited product spaces.

The latest version is V11, which is even more powerful than the previous ones and offers a much for ease of use interface.

Pros

1. Many different rates and packages, making it more versatile than ProStores.
2. An incredibly good 24/7 customer support.
3. Unlimited products for Platinum packages.
4. Has been around for longer, meaning that it must be good to have survived this long.
5. Good internet security.

Cons

1. Only has monthly payments, unlike ProStores which is a one-off. This results in an expensive piece of software.
2. Volusion's packages offer much lower product space than ProStores, and although the Platinum has unlimited space it costs nearly double Per Month.

Volusion is a very powerful, user friendly software, and i would personally recommend it to all you rising entrepeneurs.

So which one is better for you? Well, I would say that ProStores would be better for a casual eMerchanter looking for a extra bucks, while Volusion may be better for the general audience, Platinum/Gold for a serious business man, while the basic Steel package can satiate the average guy selling old junk out. But for both you need to invest a bit, and maybe Volusion is better for you if you are new to this game of eCommerce.

I hope you enjoyed this article, and maybe it helped you along the road to success.