Shopify vs. PrestaShop

If you want to start up your own online shop or give your current online store a makeover, the question often arises as to which store system is best suited. We’ll compare two possible options with Shopify and PrestaShop, which differ from each other not only in terms of their un­der­ly­ing licensing model, but their user-friend­li­ness and cus­tom­is­ab­il­ity, too.

First, we’ll look at the biggest pros and cons of both Shopify and PrestaShop sep­ar­ately. Then, we’ll show the biggest dif­fer­ences in cat­egor­ies like beginner-friend­li­ness, security, or SEO. In the end, you’ll have a good picture of whether Shopify or PrestaShop is a good choice for starting or re­design­ing your online store.

In June 2006, the Canadian company Shopify Inc. released its in-house solution for creating and main­tain­ing an online store. The software, which is based on the framework Ruby on Rails, took around two months to develop and was named Shopify. The open-source solution PrestaShop is a year older; as early as 2005 the first version was released as part of a student project at the EPITECH IT School in Paris, although the platform was initially still called phpOpen­Store. It was only when the company of the same name (2007) was founded that PrestaShop got its name. The ap­plic­a­tion is based on the PHP framework Symfony.

Before we go into detail about the specific sim­il­ar­it­ies and dif­fer­ences in the direct ‘Shopify vs. PrestaShop’ com­par­is­on, we will first look at the strengths and weak­nesses of the two store systems.

PrestaShop is a modular open-source solution for the creation and man­age­ment of online stores, whose core files are under the OSL-3.0 license (native modules and the Classic theme: AFL-3.0 license). The great advantage of the modular system is the resulting flexible ad­apt­ab­il­ity and ex­tens­ib­il­ity. Users in­di­vidu­ally determine which functions they need and which they do not. However, this requires a lot of ini­ti­at­ive and time, because the software must not only be installed and set up by the user, but also hosted and regularly updated.

The following table shows what other ad­vant­ages and dis­ad­vant­ages PrestaShop has:

Shopify excels as an e-commerce all-in-one solution, which is aimed in par­tic­u­lar at users who want to focus on the content design of their own online store. Those who opt for Shopify gain access to a cloud-based platform whose setup is a mere formality. Factors such as hosting or security man­age­ment can be com­pletely omitted – the Shopify team takes care of the technical support of your store. Of course, this service comes at a price. If you want to use the platform for your own web store, you pay between $29 and $299 per month. There is also a slimmed-down ‘Buy Button’ variant that costs $9 per month. There is no free edition of the platform.

Other strengths and weak­nesses of Shopify are sum­mar­ised in the following table:

The pros and cons listed so far make one thing clear: Whether Shopify or PrestaShop is more suitable as a store platform depends primarily on the goals and ex­per­i­ence of the user. While the all-round support that comes with a Shopify webstore is likely to come in handy for many, other users enjoy the freedoms that come with PrestaShop’s open-source code. In the following, we will take a closer look at this and many other eval­u­ation points in the “Shopify vs. PrestaShop” com­par­is­on – among other things, we will look at the cat­egor­ies SEO suit­ab­il­ity, security, product man­age­ment and support.

A native drag-and-drop system and an intuitive dashboard as well as an un­com­plic­ated store setup including help make it clear that the de­velopers of Shopify focused on user-friend­li­ness. Those who want to create their first web store or migrate an existing store without much effort will find a strong ally in the paid platform in any case. Getting started with PrestaShop is much more difficult. The CMS style can be a big challenge for newcomers at the beginning, because without a longer training period it is difficult to find the many different functions in the backend. Moreover, many features for a higher user comfort like a drag-and-drop edition are only available in PrestaShop after you have added a cor­res­pond­ing module.

The basic set up in terms of hosting also makes Shopify ideal for beginners. While users of PrestaShop first have to look for a suitable provider, the hardware setup for your online store is included with Shopify right from the start.

If you are not satisfied with the standard features of Shopify or PrestaShop, both have a wide range of extension options. For Shopify, there are over 5,000 official apps that you can use to add ad­di­tion­al features to the platform or customise existing Shopify features. For PrestaShop, there are almost 4,000 ex­ten­sions, which in the case of the open-source ap­plic­a­tion are also referred to as ‘modules’. In both systems, you will find both free and paid add-ons – a special feature of Shopify is the trial period offered in some cases for paid apps.

If you look at the options for visual cus­tom­isa­tion of the shop, PrestaShop clearly outshines the com­pet­i­tion: Nearly 70 design templates in the Shopify App Shop are opposed by over 2,000 themes in the official PrestaShop Mar­ket­place – for a wide variety of in­dus­tries, such as fashion, elec­tron­ics, food, or health. In both cases, with a few ex­cep­tions, the templates are re­spons­ive.

Whether goods, downloads, vouchers, or services – re­gard­less of what kind of products you offer, an e-commerce platform must optimally support you in managing them. For­tu­nately, both rep­res­ent­at­ives in the ‘Shopify vs. PrestaShop’ com­par­is­on show their best side in this point. Thus, both platforms allow you to create any number of items and update them in real time if needed. By assigning created shop items to in­di­vidu­ally defined cat­egor­ies and sub­cat­egor­ies, you can structure the shop nav­ig­a­tion with just a few clicks. Prices as well as order and shipping in­form­a­tion are also created and assigned quickly and easily with both solutions.

Both Shopify and PrestaShop offer pre-installed payment pro­cessing features:

• The open source PrestaShop has been using the PrestaShop Checkout module developed by PayPal for quite some time, which combines popular online payment methods such as giropay or PayPal and the pos­sib­il­ity of credit card payments with Mas­ter­card, etc. in a single interface. Payments from over 190 countries are supported with the help of the module, and you decide which methods you want to offer and which you don’t. However, as a central in­ter­me­di­ary, PayPal reserves the right to retain an in­di­vidu­al fee per trans­ac­tion (depending on the location of your company). Al­tern­at­ively, you will find various other modules in the Mar­ket­place to set up the offline and online payment methods of your choice.

• Shopify also supports a diverse selection of payment methods, which can be expanded as needed with the help of the cor­res­pond­ing apps. However, for online payment services such as PayPal, Amazon Pay, or Apple Pay, Shopify retains between 0.5 (Advanced Shopify) and 2.0 percent (Basic Shopify) of the trans­ac­tion value, depending on the plan selected. Those who want to avoid these ad­di­tion­al fees must use Shopify Payments, the platform’s native online payment method, which does not charge ad­di­tion­al fees per trans­ac­tion.

Customer trust in the security of an online shop is one of the most important success factors. The de­velopers of Shopify and PrestaShop are aware of this fact, although the two shop solutions differ fun­da­ment­ally in this category:

Shopify web shops are hosted directly by the provider, which is why customers are provided with a com­pre­hens­ive security package right from the start. Among other things, a free SSL/TLS cer­ti­fic­ate is available to every user, which can be used to encrypt data trans­mis­sion in their own shop at any time. Fur­ther­more, Shopify ensures PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) com­pli­ance for all card payments in order to optimally protect all your clients’ data. The Shopify team also takes care of updating the platform and main­tain­ing the server struc­tures, so you can focus all your energy on managing your shop.

Features such as SSL/TLS cer­ti­fic­a­tion or PCI-DSS com­pli­ance are also available for PrestaShop users – however, you must first download the cor­res­pond­ing modules and set them up on your own or, in the case of SSL/TLS cer­ti­fic­a­tion, purchase a cer­ti­fic­ate. Self-ini­ti­at­ive is also required in terms of PrestaShop updates and server main­ten­ance, although it should be noted that this is actively supported by hosting providers (updates) or taken over entirely (main­ten­ance of the server in­fra­struc­ture).

If you want to optimise your online shop for search engines, you will find the standard SEO tool in both Shopify and PrestaShop: With both solutions, you can create and sub­sequently revise title tags and meta de­scrip­tions for your product and category pages, as well as define search engine-friendly URLs. Al­tern­at­ive texts for the product images can also be added with both solutions – so you offer your customers an al­tern­at­ive if an image cannot be loaded and make it easier for search engines to rank your image material.

Shopify also auto­mat­ic­ally takes care of several other SEO steps, such as gen­er­at­ing canonical tags that prevent pages with highly similar content from being picked up twice by Google and other search engines. In addition, the paid shop solution generates an XML sitemap by default, which clearly sum­mar­ises all pages of your shop. The latter features you can also enjoy as a user of PrestaShop, but for this you must first download and install the ap­pro­pri­ate modules, some of which are subject to a fee.

Those who opt for Shopify also opt for the award-winning 24/7 support. Customers of all available packages can contact the Shopify team around the clock for technical problems and general questions, with email, phone, or live chat. An FAQ section that answers common questions and a small community forum on the official website round off the support package.

For PrestaShop users, the support is different. The de­velopers offer free support for technical questions and problems ex­clus­ively in the form of an online form. In it, you specify your shop version as well as brief in­form­a­tion about your concern and then receive feedback within 48 hours. Al­tern­at­ively, you can purchase one of the available PrestaShop support packages. For example, there is an analysis service that checks your shop for general problems, or a typical ticket system that lets you create a ticket when you encounter a problem. Support services for in­stalling and migrating your shop are also available. However, all support services are only available Monday through Friday.

The com­par­is­on between two shop systems here makes it clear that there isn’t an outright winner. Due to their different natures in terms of their licensing model, factors such as your own tech ex­per­i­ence and know-how, or your available budget or time also play a role in the choice between PrestaShop and Shopify.

When using Shopify, you will have to consider monthly costs that go beyond basic hosting, but in return you will enjoy a high level of ease – from easy be­gin­nings to award-winning support. PrestaShop is basically free of charge and better suited for cus­tom­ising your shop, but it is also much more demanding in terms of setup and main­ten­ance.

Finally, in the table below, we’ve sum­mar­ised the most important key points in the ‘Shopify vs. PrestaShop’ direct com­par­is­on.