Instamojo vs Velodine

Instamojo started as a payment-links tool and has grown into a full storefront builder: Instamojo's Online Store plans (Lite/Starter/Growth) let a seller list products, accept online payments, and ship orders through built-in courier integrations, all without leaving Instamojo's dashboard. Alongside the online store, Instamojo also separately sells Smart Pages (a landing-page builder, Basic free, Pro ₹12,999/year) and Payment Links (one-off payment collection, Quick free, Smart ₹4,999/year) as their own products, but this comparison is scoped to the Online Store plans, since that's the product that actually competes with a digital catalog.

Velodine has no checkout by design, though it does have a real cart: a shopper browses a tenant's catalog, adds one or several products to it, and submits a single enquiry with those products already attached; the seller sees the enquiry land in a lead pipeline and follows up over WhatsApp, call or in person to close the sale, negotiate price, or arrange a site visit. That's a deliberate fit for furniture, jewellery, tiles and textiles sellers, where the WhatsApp-PDF-catalog habit Velodine replaces already assumes a human closes the deal, not a checkout page.

Instamojo's own homepage casts a wide net — it calls out art, jewellery, beauty, food, courses and events as use cases, which makes sense for a general-purpose checkout builder that just needs a product, a price and a payment method to work. That breadth is a real strength if you sell across categories or run a mixed shop of physical and digital products.

Velodine narrows deliberately to furniture, jewellery, tiles and textiles — the categories where a WhatsApp-shared PDF catalog is still a common habit, and where a sale usually clears a few hurdles (available in this finish, deliverable to this pin code, priced right for this budget) before it closes. Jewellery is the one category where both platforms genuinely overlap, so a jewellery seller is the clearest case where the checkout-vs-enquiry decision actually matters rather than being obvious from the vertical alone.

For a jewellery seller specifically, the decision often comes down to ticket size and customization: a small-ticket, ready-to-ship item (a pair of studs, a fixed-design chain) fits a checkout flow well, while a larger, made-to-order or heirloom-style piece usually needs a conversation about stone quality, sizing or exchange value that a fixed-price cart can't hold. A jeweller selling both kinds of pieces could reasonably run both models side by side rather than picking one exclusively.

Instamojo prices its Online Store as freemium-plus-transaction-fee: Lite is ₹0/year (free forever) but takes 5% + ₹3 per transaction on every sale; Starter is ₹6,999/year at the same transaction fee, adding a custom domain and premium themes; Growth is ₹14,999/year (or ₹2,999/month) and drops the transaction fee to 2% + ₹3 per transaction while unlocking abandoned-cart recovery, coupons and SEO options.

Velodine charges a flat annual fee per plan with no transaction cut at all, because Velodine never touches the payment — the seller collects money however they already do. Current published plans: Online ₹4,999/year, Starter ₹8,999/year, Growth ₹17,999/year, Business ₹34,999/year.

The practical difference: on Instamojo, the platform's revenue scales with your sales volume through the transaction fee, which matters most for high-ticket items where even Growth's reduced rate (2% + ₹3 per transaction) is a meaningful rupee amount. On Velodine, the fee is fixed regardless of deal size or how the sale eventually closes — relevant for jewellery or furniture where a single sale can be a large sum that a seller would rather not share a percentage of just to process the order.

Instamojo also offers a custom-quoted "Do-It-For-Me" plan where Instamojo's team builds and manages the store, which includes a dedicated eCommerce advisor, dashboard training, regular catalog updates and phone/WhatsApp support for the first 30 days — a genuinely useful option for a seller who wants a store built for them rather than building it themselves. Velodine's onboarding is self-serve on every plan; there's no equivalent done-for-you tier today.

Instamojo's tiers gate more than price: product images run 1 image per product on Lite, 3 on Starter, 10 on Growth, and banner images run 1 banner image on Lite, 3 on Starter, 10 on Growth. Basic categories and variants are on every tier, and Instamojo also lists Google Shopping Integration as a feature (which specific tier that's included on wasn't confirmed on this pass — check Instamojo's pricing page). For furniture and jewellery, where a buyer usually wants to see a piece from multiple angles before enquiring, that per-plan photo ceiling is worth checking against how many photos your actual catalog needs before picking a tier.

Velodine caps a single product at 50 images, but that ceiling is the same on every plan rather than shrinking on cheaper tiers the way Instamojo's does. For a tiles or textiles catalog where texture and pattern only read clearly across several close-up shots, that's a meaningfully different constraint to plan around than a per-plan image ceiling.

Instamojo's 19+ premium themes become available from the Starter plan up, along with removing Instamojo's own branding from the store. A custom domain is also a Starter-plan-and-above feature, and Growth throws in a free domain on top of that.

Velodine ships 20 catalog designs built specifically for furniture, jewellery, tiles and textiles sellers (out of 51 designs total across every vertical Velodine supports), available regardless of plan, and its own-domain ladder runs Online: velodine.in/catalog/yourshop · Starter: velodine.in/catalog/yourshop · Growth: yourshop.velodine.in · Business: your own domain. Where Instamojo's themes are general-purpose eCommerce templates, Velodine's are shaped around how these specific categories are actually browsed and photographed.

Instamojo's eCommerce CRM lets a seller see who bought and who abandoned a cart, segment those customers, and message them in bulk — useful for retention and win-back campaigns on a store where the primary conversion event is a completed order.

Velodine's lead capture is built around the opposite assumption: most conversions happen off-platform, so every enquiry keeps the product it was raised against, and moves through an explicit pipeline (New, Contacted, Negotiating, Converted, Lost) so a sales team can see exactly where a deal stands. That structure doesn't exist on Instamojo because Instamojo doesn't need it — its checkout already tells the seller whether the sale happened.

Neither approach is strictly better; they answer different questions. A seller who wants to know 'did this visitor buy?' is well served by Instamojo's order-and-CRM view. A seller who wants to know 'where is this negotiation stuck?' needs Velodine's pipeline, because the negotiation is the whole point — a shopping cart isn't built to hold that state, a pipeline is.

Instamojo's Growth plan lists a WhatsApp integration, but it's a chat widget on the storefront that lets a visitor message the seller directly — a support channel, not an automated conversation flow. Instamojo's Online Store has no Instagram automation feature (a separate Smart Pages product lets a seller embed static Instagram posts on a landing page, which is a passive embed, not automation).

Velodine's own WhatsApp handoff is the same kind of thing as Instamojo's widget — a click-to-chat link a tenant can turn on for their storefront, off by default until they do. Where Velodine differs is the automation built on top of that channel: Instagram automation is available on the Business plan and above, and WhatsApp automation — keyword replies and AI-driven conversations that qualify a lead before a human ever sees it — is available on the Business plan and above, a tier of automation Instamojo's chat widget doesn't offer at any plan.

This is the category where Instamojo is simply a more complete product, and it should be said plainly: Instamojo has a real cart, real checkout, cash-on-delivery, discount coupons and abandoned-cart recovery on its Growth plan, and built-in shipping-partner integrations (Shiprocket and others) that schedule doorstep pickup straight from its dashboard. For a seller who wants to actually take payment and get the parcel moving without leaving one tool, that's a genuinely useful, well-built set of features.

Velodine deliberately has none of it. There's no in-app checkout and no fulfillment integration — Velodine does have its own multi-item cart, but it submits one structured enquiry rather than a payment, because the products Velodine's tenants sell — a made-to-order sofa, a custom gold necklace, a tile order measured to a room — usually involve a price conversation or a site visit before anything ships. Velodine ends at the enquiry; the seller arranges payment and delivery the way they already do today.

Both platforms treat bulk catalog housekeeping as table stakes: Instamojo offers bulk product import/editing from a CSV or Excel file, plus per-product review management so buyers can see what previous customers said. Velodine's bulk CSV import works the same way, so a seller migrating a spreadsheet-based catalog isn't starting from zero on either platform.

Where they diverge is what the trust signal is for. Instamojo's review management shows product-level reviews to support a checkout decision — 'did the last buyer think this was worth the price' — which matters most right before someone pays. Velodine's closest equivalent is narrower: a prompt asking a customer to leave a Google review once their enquiry is resolved, not reviews shown on the catalog itself. Velodine's other small features sit alongside it — a customer wishlist for saving pieces to revisit, a printable QR code for the shop counter that opens the live catalog, spam-protected enquiry forms, and barcode scanning for staff pulling up a product on the shop floor — aimed at the browsing and in-store side of a sale rather than the payment moment, since Velodine doesn't have a payment moment to build trust signals around.

Instamojo bundles dedicated "SEO Options" into its Growth plan on top of the basic website every tier already gets — implying Lite and Starter stores are live, real websites, but without the same level of on-page SEO control.

Velodine's public catalog pages are built to be crawlable and indexable by Google on every plan, with no separate SEO tier to unlock — a fast, discoverable public catalog page is treated as baseline behaviour rather than a paid add-on, which matters most for a Starter or Online-plan tenant who's relying on organic search rather than paid ads to be found.

Instamojo's public pricing and feature pages don't mention team member seats, staff logins, role-based permissions, multiple store locations, or an out-of-stock waitlist anywhere — so this comparison doesn't claim Instamojo lacks them, only that they aren't documented publicly as of this review. A seller who needs any of those should confirm directly with Instamojo before assuming either way.

Velodine's plans are explicit about all three: team roles (owner, manager, viewer) exist on every plan, though seat counts scale with the plan (Online 1 · Starter 2 · Growth 5 · Business 15) — so Online's single seat has no second person to hold a manager or viewer role at all. Physical-location support is plan-gated the same way (Online – · Starter 1 · Growth 3 · Business 5), and a restock waitlist lets a customer ask to be notified when an out-of-stock piece is back — useful for a ready-stock furniture or jewellery design that routinely sells out between restocks.

On analytics, Instamojo's Growth plan adds what it calls Advanced Analytics — heat maps, geo-location tagging and conversion funnels — on top of the order-level reporting every tier gets. Velodine's catalog and enquiry analytics track a different funnel: catalog views, where an enquiry originated, and how many enquiries actually convert, which is the number a catalog business (rather than a checkout business) actually needs to see.

Instamojo is a broader business-tools company than just the Online Store plans compared here. Smart Pages is its landing-page builder, sold on its own tier structure (Basic free, Pro ₹12,999/year), aimed at a single-product launch or campaign page rather than a full catalog. Payment Links is narrower still (Quick free, Smart ₹4,999/year) — a way to request a one-off payment by SMS or email without building a store at all.

None of that changes the Online Store comparison above, but it's worth knowing if you're evaluating Instamojo as a company rather than a single product: a seller with a mix of needs (a full catalog, occasional campaign pages, and quick one-off payment requests) can cover all three with Instamojo's suite. Velodine is a single product — the catalog and enquiry platform — with no landing-page or payment-link equivalent of its own.

Instamojo doesn't run a time-boxed free trial on its paid plans — Lite is free indefinitely, and Starter/Growth instead come with a 14-day, no-questions-asked money-back guarantee on paid plans instead of a free trial. That means a seller on a paid Instamojo plan has already paid upfront and is relying on a refund if it doesn't work out, rather than trying the real plan for free first.

Every Velodine plan carries its own 14-day free trial of that exact plan, not a separate free tier with fewer features. A seller evaluating any given plan gets that plan's real domain setup, location support and automation entitlements for the full trial, before paying anything.

If you strip away the feature list, the decision comes down to one question: does your sale end when the customer clicks 'pay', or does it end when a person on your team says yes to a price? Instamojo is the better-built tool for the first case, with a real cart, checkout, coupons, cart recovery and shipping baked in. Velodine is built for the second, where a catalog and a structured enquiry that a salesperson can act on matters more than a payment button.

Furniture, jewellery, tiles and textiles sellers moving off a WhatsApp-shared PDF catalog are usually already living in the second case — they just haven't had a proper tool for it yet, which is the gap Velodine is built to close.