This is a round-up between two popular eCommerce platforms – Shopify and PrestaShop. In this comparison, we will dig into the features of these two powerful store builders to find out which is a better platform today. We will identify the Pros and Cons of Shopify and PrestaShop from a user’s perspective to help you choose the best eCommerce platform.
Table of Contents
- Shopify vs PrestaShop
- PrestaShop vs Shopify – Introduction to the Platforms
- Shopify vs PrestaShop – Which is Easier to Use?
- PrestaShop vs Shopify – Managing your Store
- Shopify vs PrestaShop – Ease of Customization
- PrestaShop vs Shopify – Self Hosted or Hosted
- Shopify vs PrestaShop – Performance and Security
- PrestaShop vs Shopify – Availability of Support
- Shopify vs PrestaShop – Market Trend and Popularity
- PrestaShop vs Shopify – Pricing and Fees
- Shopify vs PrestaShop – Final Checkpoints
- Final Thoughts – Shopify or PrestaShop?
Shopify vs PrestaShop
When you think about building an online shop, the choice of an eCommerce platform is one of the key decisions you need to make. While there are several online store builders available for you to choose from, we will limit ourselves to Shopify and PrestaShop in this comparison.
We believe that as the indie store owner, the following are the key parameters that can guide you in choosing the best eCommerce platform for your shop.
- Ease of Use
- Store Management
- Customization
- Infrastructure Management
- Performance and Security
- Support
- Market Trend
- Pricing
Consequently, we will evaluate both Shopify against PrestaShop, along these parameters. This will guide you to choose the right platform for your online shop.
PrestaShop vs Shopify – Introduction to the Platforms
The fundamental difference between Shopify and PrestaShop is that Shopify is a hosted eCommerce platform while PrestaShop is a self-hosted option. The differences between these platforms primarily stem from this inherent difference between the two.
While both these store builders are capable of running an eCommerce business, their limitations and capabilities are fundamentally caused because of the way they are built.
Shopify vs PrestaShop – Which is Easier to Use?
Shopify is a beginner-friendly eCommerce software. Launching an online shop with the Shopify platform is a straightforward job and needs no effort. You can simply head on to Shopify right now, and launch your shop. Shopify lets you create an online shop with a free myshopify.com subdomain using its infrastructure.
PrestaShop on the other hand is primarily a self-hosted solution. You need to provision a server with web hosts like HostGator which preferably offers a one-click PrestaShop installation. Note that PrestaShop also offers a hosted option but that looks pricier (discussed later) compared to both Shopify and the self-hosted approach.
We will limit our discussion to the self-hosted version of Shopify only.
In short, we believe Shopify is a far more beginner-friendly solution and easier to launch an online store.
PrestaShop vs Shopify – Managing your Store
PrestaShop offers many options when it comes to store management capabilities. You can have unlimited admin accounts and have the ability to run multiple stores from one admin Dashboard. PrestaShop automatically includes two payment gateways: Payment by check and Bank transfer. You can add other Payment modules such as PayPal, Cash on Delivery, etc.
On the other hand, Shopify eCommerce features differ depending on the plan. All plans allow Shopify stores to add unlimited products. They also equip you with the essential store tools for optimizing product pages.
Another important feature of Shopify is the availability of Sales Channels. With this, you can sell products on social media platforms or popular online marketplaces without any additional cost. Shopify also lets you launch a dropshipping business with platforms like Spocket.
Shopify provides around 60 payment gateways.
Both Shopify and PrestaShop have excellent features to manage your online store. However, Shopify has strong official partnerships with shipping providers and payment gateways.
Shopify vs PrestaShop – Ease of Customization
Shopify has an impressive and mature ecosystem with the availability of extensions, themes, and external plugin software. You can find a Shopify app for almost every functionality that you can think of. Yes, over all these years the platform has matured to that extent.
If there are requirements which are not supported by the core solution or one of the numerous free or paid Shopify apps, you can also avail of the help of third-party Shopify experts to implement any custom requirement on your online store.
There are dedicated theme houses that specialise in developing Shopify themes. Theme houses and app shops like Debutify can give a huge boost to the UX of your online shop. You can check our list of handpicked premium Shopify themes to know more.
PrestaShop also has an impressive addon marketplace and theme stores. However, the add-on modules appear pricier compared to Shopify.
Moreover, if you follow Reddit discussions, it gives a vibe that developers are not very comfortable with PrestaShop because of its inbuilt complexities. This should not be generalised and the participants in the threads do not represent the entire developer community, still, I would take it with a pinch of salt.
both PrestaShop and Shopify support third-party apps. However, Shopify seems to be a little ahead on this parameter.
PrestaShop vs Shopify – Self Hosted or Hosted
When you use Shopify, you do not have to worry about the technical aspects and can be assured of the enterprise-class infrastructure enjoyed by some of the big players. Be it hosting, CDN, security, and domain management – Shopify handles everything for your online shop.
On the other hand, when you use PrestaShop, you need more technical expertise to run your online shop. Starting with a web host (we recommend HostGator for this), you are primarily responsible for managing the infrastructure of your online shop. Whether that works for you depends on your technical expertise.
If you are technically sound PrestaShop offers more granular control over your infrastructure. But unlike Shopify, you need to manage it.
Shopify vs PrestaShop – Performance and Security
The performance of your PrestaShop majorly depends on your web host. For example, if you use the cheaper shared hosting plan starting at $3.75 per month, the performance will be worse than the dedicated hosting plan that starts at $91.98 per month.
At the same time if you are comfortable using a VPS like UpCloud (our affiliate link to get a free 25 Euro credit!), you can get superior performance than a shared hosting plan at a cheaper price (starts at 7 Euro/month).
You can improve the performance further by adding CDNs and performance tuning.
Shopify, on the other hand, uses common infrastructure for all its customers. They offer out-of-the-box CDN backed by Cloudflare. Files delivered over the Shopify CDN are minified and compressed automatically using Brotli and gzip, reducing the size of the files the browser must download. Requests use HTTP/3 and TLS 1.3 to further enhance request performance and security.
Both Shopify and PrestaShop can help you run a highly performant online shop. However, with Shopify, you get access to the same infrastructure as all its customers. But if you use PrestaShop, you need to choose the infrastructure and tools carefully.
PrestaShop vs Shopify – Availability of Support
Shopify is not an open-source software backed by the community. It is a proprietary solution built and supported by dedicated employees. As a Shopify customer, if you need help and support, you can easily reach out to Shopify’s support channels. Also, there are support forums to discuss your concerns with fellow Shopify store owners.
PrestaShop on the other hand follows a community-driven approach. It is the PrestaShop user community that would be the primary support option for you.
Shopify scores higher when we consider the support options for your store.
Shopify vs PrestaShop – Market Trend and Popularity
The above graphics from BuiltWith show the current usage statistics of the different eCommerce platforms. As you can see, while Shopify enjoys 23% of the market share (excluding 6% usage of the Shopify Plus plan), PrestaShop has a share of around 4% of the overall eCommerce universe.
BuiltWith also shares more interesting information in the form of eCommerce usage distribution of the top 1 million sites.
Notice how these statistics get more skewed towards the usage of Shopify if we filter out only the top 10K eCommerce sites.
So, does it mean Shopify is the outright winner and there is no point in this uneven comparison? We do not think so. Both these platforms have in-built capabilities and inherent strengths and weaknesses that we will highlight in this comparison. Make your decision based on your requirements but choose right.
Shopify is the market leader when we talk about eCommerce solutions. PrestaShop lags far behind if we consider the trends and penetration.
PrestaShop vs Shopify – Pricing and Fees
We will look into the cost aspect with a few scenarios.
Minimum cost to launch an online shop with Shopify
- Domain with NameCheap – $13.98/year
- Hosting – Free
- CDN – Free
- Themes – Free
- Shopify Subscription – $29/month (excluding the starter $5 plan)
- Transaction Fees – 2.9% + 30¢
The minimum annual cost to run a Shopify store is 361.98. There is also a transaction fee of 2.9% + 30¢.
Note that this is the minimum cost. Your running expenses will be higher as you add premium Shopify apps or themes to your shop.
Minimum cost to launch an online shop with Self-hosted PrestaShop
- Domain with NameCheap – $13.98/year
- Hosting – $36.99/month (recommended plan from HostGator).
- CDN – Free with Cloudflare
- Themes – Free
- Subscription – NA
- Transaction Fees -Variable. Depends on the Payment gateway.
The minimum annual cost to run a Shopify store is $457.86 There is also a transaction fee that will vary based on your payment gateway.
Again, this is the minimum cost. Your running expenses will be higher if you choose to introduce premium modules or themes to your PrestaShop shop.
On a separate note, if you are looking for an online store builder that supports custom domains and themes even on a perpetual free tier, we recommend you explore Payhip. You can read our Payhip review to learn more about the platform.
Shopify vs PrestaShop – Final Checkpoints
| Feature | Shopify | PrestaShop |
|---|---|---|
| Open Source Software | No | Yes |
| Easy to launch a shop | Yes | No |
| Store Management | Good | Good |
| Customization Options | More | Less |
| Third-party Developers | More | Less |
| Who manages Infrastructure? | Shopify | You |
| Who handles Performance and Security? | Shopify | You |
| Support | Shopify, Community | Community |
| Market Trend | Market Leader | Low |
| Transaction Fees | Variable | 0 |
| Minimum cost to launch | Lower | Higher |
| Free Tier | No | NA |
| Free Trial | 3 days | NA |
| Visit Shopify | PrestaShop |
Final Thoughts – Shopify or PrestaShop?
To summarize, we found Shopify a far better and more robust eCommerce platform than PrestaShop. With its beginner-friendly solution and a mature eco-system, it can serve online businesses of every niche.
If you are looking for an open-source system, explore WooCommerce.
If you want to know our opinion, we recommend Shopify.
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