Prestashop VS Shopify – How to Choose The Biggest E-Commerce Platform?

What Is Prestashop VS. Shopify?

Prestashop vs. Shopify is a popular topic among people nowadays. It is mainly because both of these platforms look similar at first sight. Also, some of their features resemble one another. Both Shopify and Prestashop enable you to build your online store and customize it the way you want. You can also add your products and market them efficiently.

Moreover, operations like payment processing, managing and completing orders, and shopping cart functionality are some great features to discover as a user of either platform. Simply to say, Shopify vs. Prestashop is easy to understand the equation. You just need to dig deeper and find out which platform is more suitable according to your requirements. Both of these platforms are all-inclusive and offer great built-in features that offer you the ability to set up and grow your online business.

Before going into the details prior to the building Shopify store or prestashop development for your online store, we would like to highlight one major difference between these two that is hosting. Shopify is known as appreciated for being a fully hosted e-commerce platform that requires users to subscribe to one of its exciting plans. It means that Shopify helps you host your e-commerce store by managing security, maintenance, and upgrades. All of these features are included in the fee that you will pay for the plan that you subscribe to.

On the other hand, Prestashop is known for being an open-source platform that is completely free to download. However, the requirements are that the user must install Prestashop, pay for the web hosting, deal with upgrades, and maintenance themselves. Being an open-source platform, Prestashop allows you to access their codes. Because of this, you can adjust and edit the codes as per your requirements.

Keep in mind that though Prestashop is appreciated for being a platform that is open-source, they also have their hosted platform, i.e., Prestashop Ready.

Why need To Compare PrestaShop vs. Shopify?

If you are planning to launch your online store, you must analyze which platform suits your requirements. There are a number of platforms out there, and looking at each one of them individually might confuse you. However, In this article, we are comparing the two most popular platforms to help you select the one that matches your needs.

You will learn about all the reasons to choose either platform over the other.

Also, by the end of this post, you will know about all the advantages and disadvantages of both platforms, so it will become easier for you to make a well-informed decision and set up your online store with all the tools you require.

Let’s have a look at the comparison of PrestaShop vs. Shopify.

PrestaShop vs. Shopify – User Friendly

Shopify enables you to access the clearest and simplest interface for your store. There is no need to learn about programming or coding. Shopify’s drag and drop editor allows you to take control of your online shop. You get to build an attractive store with all the essential features in no time. Users can save their money and time, which is another attraction for store owners to opt for Shopify instead of any other platform.

PrestaShop, however, has a complex mechanism. It asks users to learn about programming and coding. This requirement makes PrestaShop a difficult choice and pushes users to look for any other option. However, if you already have prior experience in coding, you are good to go! Moreover, the platform is not that advanced, and you will find most information in the forums.

PrestaShop vs. Shopify – Pricing

PrestaShop an entirely free content management system. It means that users can easily install and use the platform without paying anything. The only thing users must pay for is the hosting services that they choose. Also, there are no transaction fees to pay.

On the contrary, Shopify is popular for being a cloud solution, and you get the hosting services from them as well. Shopify offers its users three different plans:

• Shopify Basic – users have to pay $29 per month along with 2.9 percent and 30 cents on each online transaction.
• Shopify – The plan costs you $79 each month with add 2.4 percent and 30 cents per transaction.
• Advanced Shopify – it costs $299 each month, along with 2.4 percent and 30 cents on each transaction.

However, if you want to get a fully hosted platform of Shopify, you can get it for $2,000 monthly. In contrast, Shopify Lite can be accessed at $9 monthly.

Shopify costs you a $29 fee (depending on your chosen plan). If you are not using Shopify Payments, you will have to pay an additional 2 percent as a transaction fee for each of your orders.

Prestashop Vs. Shopify – Apps And Modules

Shopify designed apps and Prestashop modules are greatly important if you are focusing on your store’s success. These software counts as extra features that are developed by your chosen platform or third-party developers that enables users to customize their store as per their requirements.

Both Prestashop and Shopify have created a huge marketplace that features a wide variety of modules and apps that brings greater value to merchants.

Prestashop Vs. Shopify – Marketing and SEO

Both of these platforms offer coupon codes, discounts, free shipping, and special offers. You can use all of these marketing tactics to engage your customers even more. Above all, you can easily connect your online store to your social media accounts. Simply to say, it promotes your products, helps to drive more traffic to your store, and allows you to boost your brand awareness.

Shopify gives customers an option to leave reviews on a store’s website. Also, Shopify helps you a lot with search engine optimization ofo your website. It means that with the passage of time, your site gets a better ranking in search engine results.

In the same way, with PrestaShop, you can easily re-write your web address or URL. Also, you get a dedicated section for search engine optimization of your web pages. Moreover, with PrestaShop, you can get a good range of paid-for modules for SEO that can help you to fill in your meta tags automatically. Users can download both free and premium modules to allow customers to leave reviews on their site.

Prestashop Vs. Shopify – Analytics and Reports

Shopify offers a dashboard that is easy to read and highlights key orders, sales, and information about web traffic. So, it gets easier to monitor your business’s performance with just an overview.

Also, you can generate referral and traffic reports to check from where your visitors are coming and from which sources they discover your store. Moreover, you also get products reports that offer you useful insight into the growth process of your store’s best selling items. The best part is that these reports can be exported and sent to bookkeepers. Above all, Shopify supports integration with Google Analytics.

The same is the case with PrestaShop, so there is not much to worry about when it comes to analytics and reports. You get access to reports and analytics about products, customers, marketing, and sales.

PrestaShop vs. Shopify – Customer Support

PrestaShop provides customer support through live chat, email, and telephone. There’s also a vast user community you can connect with via PrestaShop’s forum. Here you can look for the answers to questions and discuss any problems that arise with other PrestaShop users and developers.

Shopify offers 24/7 customer support via email, live chat, and over the phone. They pride themselves on providing some of the best customer support in the industry. There are also loads of community support online.

PrestaShop vs. Shopify – International Selling

If you plan to sell internationally, you might consider choosing PrestaShop, and we are about to explain to you why.

PrestaShop offers some great features such as a multi-language store, checkout and shipping options, international taxes, and currency settings. All of these are easy to configure and make your job much easier.

On the contrary, Shopify does not offer you that much. If you are not using Shopify payments, you will have to pay an additional fee. Sadly, Shopify Payments is not available for some countries. These include the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Japan, Ireland, Hong Kong (China), Germany, Denmark, Canada, Australia, Singapore.

Shopify vs. PrestaShop – Performance

The performance of your online store is responsible for determining how great of a user experience your customers will achieve. The loading speed of your site when you are making changes and when your customers are visiting from one page to another is what you should improve. Simply to say, four factors influence the loading time of a website. Let’s discuss.

• The hosting plan _ What type of hosting plan have you chosen might affect the loading times of your site. It will determine the ability of your store to handle a certain level of traffic. If the traffic exceeds that level, your site will take longer to load than it usually takes. This can tailor the views of your customers about your site being slow and unimproved.
• The platform – The performance of your website also depends on the type of platform you have selected. Some e-commerce platforms are capable of handling a large number of visitors because of their mechanism.
• Design and setup – Believe it or not, your ecommerce store’s design and setup plays a huge role in determining its performance. You won’t even realize to what extent you might be slowing down your site by adding too many high definition images or adding way too many plugins and extensions.
• Visitor’s internet connection – This is not a fault that you can fix. However, it will still affect your sales. If your visitors are using a slow internet connection, your store will take forever to load sometimes.

In a  nutshell, if you are using Shopify, you do not have much to worry about your store’s performance as the baseline is the same no matter which one of its plans you choose because the difference between the plans is just about the number of features and tools.

The performance of PrestaShop greatly depends on the hosting platform you select for your store. You will have to see the track record of the hosting providers before choosing one. However, for better results, you can also find a plan which is specially optimized for PrestaShop.

Also, keep in mind that once your store begins to get more traffic, shared hosting will not offer you the same results as it used to. Once you see that you are getting more visitors, you should consider upgrading to a better hosting plan so as to maintain the performance level of your e-commerce store.

Shopify vs. PrestaShop – Security

Running an online store is not as simple as it may sound. Above all the aspects of an online store, security stands as the most important one. When you are dealing with the financial and personal information of your customers on a regular basis, you must be cautious and ensure that your store is secured. So in case of any hacking or breach attempt, your data does not get compromised. Because if it does, you will end up losing so many customers, and your sales will be affected.

When you are focusing on online security, you must focus on two primary factors. Let’s discuss:

Which platform you are using for your e-commerce store.

What measures of security are being implemented by your web host.

Shopify provides a more defined experience when security is your concern. No matter which one of its plans you choose, your store must never have poor security. All you need to do is use a strong password, and if you want to be more cautious, you can change your password every few months.

As far as PrestaShop is concerned, it is also one of the secured platforms for setting up your e-commerce store. If you select a reliable hosting provider, there is no need to worry about your store’s security. Moreover, you get to access a huge collection of add-ons as compared to those offered by Shopify. Most of these add-ons are related to security. Simply to say, PrestaShop offers you more tools for your store’s protection than Shopify.

Both Shopify and PrestaShop are great options to choose from in terms of security. However, Prestashop offers you greater control over your store’s security.

Is PrestaShop any good?

If you wish to build an online store and you have prior coding experience with HTML, PHP, and CSS, or if you can hire a developer, you can find PrestaShop to be a great e-commerce platform with an essential feature set. The expanded module collection is what makes this platform appealing.

Is PrestaShop really free?

Yes, PrestaShop is 100 percet free.

Is PrestaShop a CMS?

PrestaShop’s CMS enables you to build, manage, and delete your store’s pages. You can do the same with the pages’ content such as banners, images, static blocks, etc.

Who uses PrestaShop?

People who want to build their online store with a basic set of tools can opt for PrestaShop. The platform allows greater control over the store’s customization.

What is PrestaShop Used for?

PrestaShop is an open-source platform that is feature-rich. You can use it to run your store through self-hosting or in the cloud.