PrestaShop Vs Magento: A Comparative Study
Choosing the appropriate Online Selling Solution is vitally important for running a profitable online business. PrestaShop vs Magento is a battle between two of the most well-known eCommerce platforms. Between these two, deciding which platform is best could be difficult as different criteria join the conversation. The objective of this article is to point out the different criteria of comparison on which you can base your decision.
If you’re about to create an eCommerce platform or you’re simply here to develop a solid argumentative opinion then this article is for you.
Overviews: PrestaShop Vs Magento
PrestaShop Overview:
Started in 2005 as a student project within the EPITECH IT School in Paris, PrestaShop is now one of the most popular platforms in the industry of open source eCommerce solutions.
Thanks to its user-friendly interface, and its 60 languages versions, PrestaShop has known popularity. It is currently the chosen eCommerce solution for more than 300,000 eCommerce businesses worldwide and the number of its open-source community members amounts to 1.000.000 + people globally.
Another feature that contributes to PrestaShop’s widespread popularity is the large number of built-in features that are sufficient for managing eCommerce. If a retailer is missing a specific feature, they will almost certainly find it in the PrestaShop marketplace. The latter has a huge selection of both free and paid extensions and plugins.
For instance, the following list enumerates the most important elements that PrestaShop puts at your disposal to successfully manage your eCommerce:
- Stock management tools such as item tracking and out-of-stock alerts are available.
- Precise estimation of shipping costs
- Advanced SEO (Search engine optimization) features including managing meta titles, descriptions, and URLs.
- PayPal Standard and Pro, Skrill, Stripe, WorldPay, offline processing, and many other payment options are available.
- Sales and orders statistics.
Although this list can give you enough reasons why you choose PrestaShop, it is essential to mention that you could need some expertise. In fact, if confusion arises there is no official support team.
Magento Overview:
Magento’s beginnings are quite different from PrestaShop. In fact, Magneto’s founder who formerly worked with OScommerce had planned to fork osCommerce but then decided to rewrite it as Magento. And Since 2008, Magento has become one of the most popular Open Source CMS (Content Management Systems) that can be used to manage online stores.
Magento is an eCommerce platform that provides businesses with the best eCommerce solutions and a massive support network. Magento enables customers to update their online shops’ websites. It’s intuitive, efficient, and versatile.
Magento now provides two eCommerce solutions: Magento Open Source and Magento Commerce. Both versions of the Magento platform share the same fundamental functionality, but Magento Commerce offers a few unique characteristics that set it apart from the others.
Especially known for large-scale eCommerce websites, Magento Commerce is well-known for being prepared to accommodate up to 50,000 visits per hour with ease. It also offers an automated hosting version called Magento Commerce Cloud. It is a comprehensive solution designed specifically for enterprise-level stores with large sales volume or growing medium-sized enterprises.
Magento offers a large developer community as well as a catalog of extensions. This entails that there is a large set of options to help you create an original customized, yet efficient eCommerce website.
The software provides multiple payment options based on the customer’s preferred payment gateway such as credit cards, PayPal, cheques, money orders, Google checkouts, etc.
In brief, Magento ensures that a website’s operation is efficient and effective, regardless of the size of the operations.
Detailed Comparison of PrestaShop Vs Magento:
PrestaShop Vs Magento: Ease of use
Prestashop: Adaptable to e-commerce
As an open-source cart, it is written in the PHP language and runs on Smarty Template Engine. PrestaShop is compatible with almost all operating systems like Unix, Linux, and Windows. It is more in the user-friendly category. It’s possible to use this platform without any technical skills if you’re launching a basic online store.
Yet, you may not get so lucky if you want to make your shop stand out and give it all the integrations it needs. Upscaling could require coding know-how. Otherwise, you’ll have to hire a developer to make your concept a reality.
Magneto: Better suited to e-commerce masterminds
Ease of use is not Magento’s strong suit.
Magento is tailored for intermediate to advanced levels of web development. You’ll need to spend time reading official documentation to fully understand how and what works especially in the setup process. But once installed, the administrative and daily tasks are not that complicated. You can rely on the assistance of the page builder to manage your Magento store content.
PrestaShop Vs Magento: Functionality
Concerning built-ins, PrestaShop and Magento Open Source have all of the features needed to run an eCommerce business. This includes the capacity to create and manage items, create promotional offers, multi-currency, multi-language, and reduce abandoned carts.
You can also get instant insights on your performance including sales volumes, customers, products, and more. Both of the software could help you optimize your decisions by generating forecasts based on the data gathered from your website.
However, Magento Open Source is quite limited compared to Magento Commerce.
Magento Commerce offers advanced built-in features including:
- Customer Segmentation and Personalization
- Dynamic Rule-Based Product Relations
- Instant Purchase
- Content Staging and Preview
- Visual Merchandising
- Elasticsearch
- Responsive Design Themes
- Integrated B2B Functionality
- Powerful Admin Experience
- Technical and Account Support
- Managed Cloud Solution
Therefore, both PrestaShop and Magento Open Source provide the essential elements to build an online store. Yet Magento Commerce edition is by far the best alternative for more diverse and advanced functionalities.
PrestaShop Vs Magento: Extensions and Modules
When we talk about customizing your online shops, increase traffic, improve conversion rates and build customer loyalty then extensions and modules join the chat.
Magento and PrestaShop genuinely outperform other eCommerce platforms when it comes to extensions and modules. PrestaShop offers 4043 modules including their own, their partners, and developers while Magento offers 4112 extensions
Both of their marketplaces offer a large number of both free and paid extensions covering a wide range of topics. The topics include accounting and finance, content and modifications, customer service, marketing, payments and security, and site optimization, among others.
It should be noted, however, that a large number of PrestaShop modules are created by developers from all over the world. A poorly-developed module might result in problems and malfunctions.
PrestaShop Vs Magento: Templates and customization:
Building a recognizable brand is a critical long-term success especially in the competitive world of eCommerce.
Fortunately, Customers of both PrestaShop and Magento can find pre-built templates that are designed to look attractive and mobile display friendly. Customization takes only some skills in HTML, CSS, and some creativity.
For Magento, there aren’t many options. The software provides only 10 themes available on its Marketplace.
However, if you want to unleash your creativity then PrestaShop is what you’re looking for. For instance, PrestaShop has a catalog of over 3000 templates and a considerable number of customizable themes available on its marketplace.
The themes are sorted into 15 categories to cover all eCommerce purposes from Food and Restaurant to Health and Beauty.
PrestaShop Vs Magento: Pricing
PrestaShop- Pricing:
This open-source shopping cart is available to download for free. PrestaShop is ideal for retailers looking for a low-cost option because it does not require a license to start up an online store. However, it is not zero-expense. To begin with, the first thing that you have to pay for is the web hosting service. If you choose a PrestaShop partner then you’ll probably spend from 4$ to 14$ per month. Adding to that, the costs of a developer that you will need to hire to set up your online store website. As we mentioned, installation and customization could require a professional to handle. Of course, the cost of hiring a developer could vary. The country, the individual, and the service are all dependent factors.
An important amount of budget should be reserved for add-ons and modules. If you want to build a high-quality online business, you should keep in mind that a single ad-on can cost anywhere from 35 to 200$. Although this might cost you a fortune, it is still visually appealing and a user-friendly website is worth the money. And finally, you should bear in mind that some payment modules could charge additional fees on transactions. To sum up, the costs of using PrestaShop depend highly on your needs of customization and the nature of the service.
Magento – Pricing:
Like PrestaShop, Magento Open Source is available for free download and installation. However, if you don’t have the time or skill level to personalize your site the way you want, you’ll still have to pay for hosting, domain, and security, as well as any web development assistance.
Magento Commerce is best suited for enterprise-sized businesses. But unlike the usual pricing plans, Magento Commerce pricing depends on your average gross sales revenue per year. It can range from $22,000 to $125,000 annually.
Magento Commerce Cloud, which includes licensing as well as AWS-based (Amazon Web Services) managed to host, costs $40,000 per year. But this version also depends on the average gross sales revenue per year.
Although some extensions and themes could be available for free, customization and advanced features cost. Purchasing extensions could be vital for optimized performance. The prices of extensions can vary from an extension to another.
As we previously discussed, Magneto requires some technical knowledge to fully optimize. Store owners that lack this expertise, as well as large businesses, would have to hire qualified staff in-house or outsource their website development. The price varies dramatically based on the size of their online businesses and the level of customization required.
Maintenance and development are ongoing systematic processes that should be done in order to prevent bugs and glitches. Thus, when budgeting you should definitely add those to your expenditures.
PrestaShop Vs Magento: Final Thoughts
To elaborate on this comparative study, this article has discussed 5 aspects of Prestashop VS Magento.
So to answer the question of which eCommerce platform fits best your business, the answer is the business itself. The size of the business as well as the tech-savviness and the budget all interfere in the decision.
If you’re owning a small to medium-size business and you need a user-friendly platform, then Prestashop might be what you need.
Prestashop will offer you the basic functions that you will need to run your operations smoothly. The themes and templates will help you create a unique recognized brand among your competitors.
However, if your business is medium to big sized then maybe you should consider Magento open-source or Magento Commerce. The dashboard could take some time to learn but you’ll get it at the end. The features that Magento offers could save you great time and effort and help you manage your business successfully.
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