You have decided to open an online store? There are several web ecommerce platforms available for businesses to sell their goods online.
While some offer better features than others, they all have one thing in common: they cost a pretty penny.
If you’re looking for a platform that offers excellent support and reliable services at a reasonable price, then Magento or PrestaShop might be worth checking out.
PrestaShop vs Magento comparison – Two leading players in the eCommerce space.
What did you need to know before choosing one? These two eCommerce platforms currently dominating the web.
Both PrestaShop and Magento are great options when building an eCommerce website. Both offer robust extensions and themes, and each has its fanbase.
Let's take a look at their pros and cons, so we can decide which platform is better for our business.
What is Magento?
Magento is a well-established open source solution that has gained massive traction since its launch in 2007. The platform boasts over 7,34,990 sites using it with 1,62,787 live websites and continues to evolve.
In addition to offering solid technical capabilities and a user interface, Magento boasts a large community of developers who actively contribute to the development process.
Magento has continued to expand upon its functionality and become easier to manage.
Its robust features include extensive customization options, numerous plugins, integrated marketing tools, and a powerful back office control panel. This makes it ideal for both small and large companies alike.
Magento offers different versions like Magento Open Source, Commerce, Commerce Cloud to fulfil your business requirements.
Themes are also easier to install and customize, and Magento allows businesses to create multiple stores without reworking too much code.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Highly Flexible & Scalable | Require Technical Knowledge |
| Rich in features | Complexity |
| Advance Customization | Require good hosting environment |
| Large Community | Steep Learning Curve |
| Mobile Friendly | Time Consuming |
| Better Security | High Maintenance |
| SEO Friendly | High Cost of Development |
What is PrestaShop?
PrestaShop is an open-source eCommerce platform written in PHP that offers many features, including multi-store functionality.
It is free to use and compatible with any hosting service provider. It provides great search engine optimization capabilities and comes with a strong community of users and developers.
Prestashop was originally designed to provide a framework for small businesses, but its scope has grown much larger than that.
A lot of successful entrepreneurs around the world use it as their online store solution.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Free, Open Source Platform | Paid Functionality |
| Easy to Install and maintain | Limited Design Options |
| User-Friendly Interface | Lacks Multi-Store Functionality |
| Easy Customization | No Free Support |
| Secure Payment | Limited availability of free modules. |
| Minimal System Requirement | |
| Wide Range of Add-ons & Numerous Integrations |
The Detailed PrestaShop vs Magento Comparison
There are many eCommerce platforms out there today, and each platform has its own advantages and disadvantages.
To help you take your business to the next level, we’ve decided to list a detailed comparison of Magento vs PrestaShop.
1) Ease of Use
This is where the difference between PrestaShop and Magento truly comes out.
As an online store owner, your website should be user-friendly. You want your customers to find what they need easily, quickly, and without any hassle.
If you use Magento, then you’ll notice that at times it can be difficult to navigate around the system, especially if you don’t know how to code. Magento is much more complicated and requires extensive training.
It is not a beginner-friendly platform as you need to spend time reading official documentation to fully understand how and what works.
One must have technical skills and knowledge, especially if you want to develop custom features or themes.
On the other hand, Prestashop makes it incredibly simple to create an attractive website in minutes. Also, since you don't need coding knowledge, you can focus on what matters. PrestaShop is easy to manage. You just need to sign up and follow the instructions provided by PrestaShop.
The backend interface of PrestaShop is well-organized and easy to use with a simplified management process including orders, categories, products, SEO, etc. More than that, the admin panel of PrestaShop is mobile friendly can be accessed through smartphones or tablets.
2) Costs
PrestaShop and Magento are both open-source eCommerce platforms and are free to use with the basic features to build a successful eCommerce website.
Magento Open Source is the free version of Magento, while Magento Commerce pricing is based on store average gross sales revenue per year, starting from $22,000.
Customize the CMS easily after installing it as per the business requirements. There is also an additional cost for hosting service on the Magento hosting you opt for.
Similarly, setting up PrestaShop is free where you can download & install it easily. You need to pay for web hosting. Similar to Magento, one can add and customize the PrestaShop add-ons.
The operating cost for Magento vs PrestaShop is not much different. But when it comes to large-scale business, there is much difference observed.
3) Site Management
Let’s take a closer look at the settings offered by PrestaShop and Magento to manage your website.
Managing PrestaShop's online store is pretty easy and efficient because of its sleek and well-organized dashboard.
You can load your website over Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), configure multiple payment options, enable a multi-store setup, and have a built-in maintenance mode to disable your store temporarily to solve small issues.
On the hand, Magento online store can be run effectively because you can control multiple websites from the same dashboard.
Ability to enable administration permission system roles and users, support for multiple languages and currencies, design customization, tax rates, product information, and content management.
You’ll find options to set up extensions, as well as manage notifications, and backups.
During our tests, we found that PrestaShop has a user-friendly interface that makes the process of managing your stores much simpler.
However, Magento offers many more options for site management.
4) Performance & Scalability
Magento is unbeatable when it comes to page load time, other dynamic or static operations, and query processing time. Magento is faster than PrestaShop in terms of performance. All the calculations are performed on the server side and not on the client side.
That means if you put your order button at the bottom of the page instead of the top, then the page would load instantly without reloading. Whereas in PrestaShop, the pages load slowly. Additionally, Magento comes with several additional caching methods that increase SEO, and speed, and improve user experience.
Scalability is key in the digital world. Magento is a scalable platform with the power of handling 500k visits per day. It has been optimized to work with thousands of products while maintaining scalability and stability requirements for large enterprises.
On the other hand, PrestaShop is not as scalable as Magento. Handling large amounts of traffic or orders is a bit difficult with PrestaShop. Today, more people than ever are turning to their smartphones as their primary way to shop online.
Therefore, having a strong mobile experience is critical for success. A scalable solution will ensure that you can handle the traffic without sacrificing performance.
5) Support
When it comes to running an online business, customer service is extremely important. Both platforms repair their flaws regularly.
If something goes wrong, they will get back to you as soon as possible. There are plenty of forums where you can ask questions.
Prestashop has a much larger community of users, and thus it is easier to find answers to your problems.
When using PrestaShop, you get 24/7 technical support via email, phone, and live chat. However, you can contact the Magento community forumto ask questions related to plugins, extensions, or custom coding.
The same goes for updates. As long as you're paying for the software, you'll always be updated with bug fixes and security patches, as well as the latest features.
In addition, you can upgrade to the latest version whenever you wish. There is no such service provided by Magento.
6) Security
Security is paramount in eCommerce. No matter where you build your site, whether it's Magento and Prestashop, the goal is to keep your data safe and secure.
With PrestaShop, you have access to a number of tools that allow you to monitor everything from payments to visitor activity.
Moreover, Magento provides full security against hacking using SSL encryption technology. You can also follow some best magento security tips to protect your store and data.
7) Built-in Features
Both PrestaShop and Magento offer innovative features that make them stand out. PrestaShop offers its users the opportunity to create custom modules that extend their functionality. In addition, it provides many templates to choose from.
On top of that, the PrestaShop theme editor makes it really easy to customize any of the settings as well as change the structure of the site. PrestaShop offers built-in features that support all the important functions of an online business such as adding and managing products, adding multi-currency, reducing abandoned carts, order management, multi-language, and more.
Besides basic features, one can get data analysis reports and detailed insights into the marketing campaigns to further enhance business performance in the future.
Magento on the other hand has some advanced functionalities but lets you build only simple websites. Its template system does not offer nearly the same level of flexibility, and customization is more difficult than PrestaShop.
Magento Open Source is already packed with all the basic and required functions, including all aspects of selling products online, from product management and sales to client segmentation.
Magento Commerce version has around 250 top-notch built-in features that can fulfil the demands of any business size.
8) Extensions & Modules
There are over 4000 extensions available on the Magento marketplace that can come in free or paid plans.Magento Marketplace Extensions are categorized into groups from the Sales, Payment & Security, Content & Customizations category, Site Optimization, to Shipment & Fulfilment, etc.
Recommended Read: Must Have Magento 2 Extensions In 2023
PrestaShop exceeds Magento in respect of extension quantity as it provides more than 3000 add-on modules.
Every needed module to boost eCommerce business including conversion rate, traffic, and customer relationship is available on PrestaShop Marketplace at an affordable price.
9) Payment Methods
Magento’s payment options are more diverse compare to PrestaShop.
Magento is offering Authorize.net, PayPal, bank transfer, cash on delivery, and purchase order payment methods by default. There are also various payment gateways that can be integrated through payment extensions and add-ons.
The default PrestaShop module already includes frequent payment methods such as cash on delivery, checks, or PayPal.
Moreover, the PrestaShop Checkout solution and other 250 payment options by 3rd party service providers are offered to ensure a smooth, and seamless checkout process.
10) SEO
The last thing you want is to lose sales due to poor SEO. However, if you decide to go with Magento, you won't be able to do much about it.
Even though it might be possible to improve your rankings, it could cost you plenty of time and money.
On the other hand, if you decide to go for PrestaShop, you can immediately start optimizing your site for search engines.
Recommended Read: 7 Best E-Commerce SEO Strategies
Recommended Read: Latest SEO Trends for eCommerce
Final Word: PrestaShop vs Magento
Compared PrestaShop vs Magento, it can be concluded that both platforms are powerful platforms and excellent choices.
You probably will be satisfied anyway. As both of them offer lots of features and tools to build and manage an online eCommerce store.
Also Read:- Magento vs Shopify
