The difference between Shopify and Prestashop

Shopify

In 2006, the Canadian SaaS platform Shopify was officially launched. In June 2009, it launched an API to allow the addition of apps and apps to sell them.

The speed with which an online store can be created is one of the great advantages of SaaS, although customization is not free and easy.

Prestashop

In 2007 CMS PrestaShop was created by some Epitech students, at first only a framework was used internally that is now transferred to Symfony, which today maintains the PrestaShop open source project.

Comparison:

The Community – This is an important factor as this is where you help develop your site through partner agencies, your online store setups, or find e-commerce solutions and implement them through forums.

It is complicated to confirm the Shopify community because the official forum is very controlled by the company, you can find documentation and frequently asked questions and it does not have a public profile on Github.

On the other hand, PrestaShop has more than 1,000,000 members in general including 740 from Github, being a very active community. Also, here you can see the new features of PrestaShop. 

The comparison is a bit complicated, since an open source CMS has a larger community than a SaaS solution, with open source the community can collaborate more, whereas in a closed solution you can only make suggestions.

Price – determining factor in choosing the solution. The development price, but also the maintenance price, as well as the hosting price, with a global vision of the final costs.

Shopify allows you to create content to sell in a simple way, however, being a closed solution, it requires more applications that require the use of Python, JavaScript, and PHP, which means greater expense.

PrestaShop allows you to customize more easily since it is an open source, as well as you can create modules dominating only PHP and JavaScript, with prices between €30 and €200.

For both solutions, the ADR (Average Daily Rate) is similar: €380, although the development time is a little longer with Shopify than with PrestaShop, which is also included in the maintenance part of these solutions.

For the Hosting of the solutions, it is taken into account that with Shopify they offer very good performance because they control the code and the infrastructure, which has a server configured for it. And on the other hand with PrestaShop, you must choose a hosting provider, but by choosing it the server will be yours with a fixed rate and data recovery will be easier.

Performance – The loading time and the number of simultaneous connections is basically the performance, it is one of the elements that guarantee the stability and scalability of an online store.

The performance depends on the server used and the specific developments, with Shopify this is easier since it has excellent performance because the hosting is optimized for the platform, on the other hand with PrestaShop it depends on the hosting, although it has cache systems such as Varnish to improve performance. Even so, Shopify in the end takes a part of the billing, which can be equal to having a good server with PrestaShop that is similar to the performance of Shopify.

SEO – An eCommerce website needs the most efficient natural referrer to attract as many visitors as possible in order to sell.

The two e-commerce solutions present a wonderful reference, however, with the opportunity that PrestaShop offers for customization, it allows optimizations that can be complicated in Shopify such as changing the URL format or changing the page markup.

Integration – It is the ability and ease of integration of new solutions or new functionalities.

Shopify allows you to create more modules which allow you to have more tools that are very necessary to evolve according to your needs. PrestaShop also offers a variety of modules, mostly from visual customization to the integration of payment methods or carriers.

What is taken into account here is also the price, and seeing that with Shopify the time can be longer to develop it, it can be more expensive. Both offer APIs, although PrestaShop allows you to add more entry points and on Shopify only developers have access.

In conclusion…

Shopify is a good option to start an online business, with the option of having third-party features and tools, with good performance and that you can set up your online business quickly. (If you need to know more information to increase your sales on Shopify you can check here) 

PrestaShop, on the other hand, is open source, which can be complicated at first but later you will have control over your data, can be easily customized, and allows your business to evolve depending on your needs.