magento-prestashop

Magento vs. PrestaShop – Which One Is Your Right? Check Now!

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Magento and PrestaShop are 2 popular eCommerce platforms worldwide, along with Shopify, WooCommerce, etc. Therefore, when starting an online business, the question of which platform store owners should choose is quite tricky. Which one will suit your demands and needs to be the right platform for your eCommerce business?

To help you make a decision better, we will compare these 2 platforms, Magento vs. PrestaShop, in terms of various aspects, for example, designs, features, functionalities, pricing, etc.

Let’s get started!

About Magento & PrestaShop

magento-vs-prestashop

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Both Magento PrestaShop are open-source eCommerce platforms that enable businesses to start and manage their websites effectively. These 2 platforms are the most commonly used in the world.

Magento, initially released in 2008, has empowered about 250,000 websites, accounting for approximately 12% of all online stores worldwide.

In terms of PrestaShop, it was first released in the same year as Magento. The platform has developed so far, and at present, is powering nearly 300,000 live sites.

All in all, Magento and PrestaShop are well-known platforms with similar popularity. Whether you want to build up an online store or migrate from another solution, these 2 platforms provide excellent solutions.

However, these 2 platforms have many differences in various factors, which we will clarify in the next sections:

  • Ease of use
  • Performance
  • Features
  • Support
  • Extensions
  • Security
  • Pricing

Magento vs. PrestaShop – What Are The Differences?

Ease of Use

ease-of-use

Magento is not an easy game for beginners. To create a website on Magento platforms, you should read the official documents carefully and fully understand how Magento works, not to mention that you need some experiences and technical skills to use Magento without any trouble.

Even after installation, Magento is still complicated to operate. Therefore, if you are still new, hiring professional Magento developers or using PrestaShop is highly recommended.

Unlike Magento, PrestaShop is an easy-to-use platform. It is relatively easy to install even if you don’t have expert knowledge or experience at all.

Designs & Templates

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Both Magento and PrestaShop themes are elegant, modern, well-organized, and feature-rich. In terms of design, you don’t have to worry as these 2 platforms have a massive number of templates and at least one of which will match your needs.

However, while PrestaShop’s team design templates by themselves (PrestaShop themes), Magento has many third parties developing themes. Several websites contain a lot of Magento themes from various providers like, for example, Magento Marketplace, ThemeForest, TemplateMonster, etc.

For that reason, Magento themes might be more diverse. And all you need to do is digging on the Internet to find the right one for your business. And notably, if you have some design skills, you can design the Magento theme on your own.

Performance

platform-performance

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In terms of performance, PrestaShop is better than Magento. Because PrestaShop does not suffer from a heavy-duty CMS; hence, it will not slow down your website’s performance.

Meanwhile, Magento was reviewed as suffering from issues frequently. When coding on the Magento platform, developers often get into trouble as the website backend was getting slow, which results in slow websites that annoy users. This might happen due to the complication of the platform.

However, Magento has been trying to fix this problem to bring the best experience to users.

Features

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Both platforms have basic functionalities for an eCommerce business. But notably, when it comes to features, Magento is the winner. There are virtually no platforms that can compete with Magento in terms of features. Magento provides businesses with countless powerful features to build successful online stores.

All the features included in Magento are top-notch that can help you create an excellent website, in all aspects, from sales to after services, to attract and satisfy customers. Some outstanding features are:

  • Customer segmentation
  • Persistent shopping
  • Private sales
  • Dynamic rule-based product relations
  • Automatic email reminder

Check right to see many more powerful features of Magento.

prestashop-features

But we have to note that PrestaShop is still an effective solution for eCommerce. PrestaShop shopping cart contains more than 500 already-built-in features. Using PrestaShop, you will have essential functionalities to run a website.

Specifically, PrestaShop has an intelligent Merchant KPI and Forecasting, an Analytics tool to enhance its statistical facilities. It also includes integrations to allow store owners to export product data to marketplaces directly.

All in all, if you want to build a website with the best features that empower you the most, Magento is a perfect choice. Otherwise, if you only want to create a basic online store without any complication, please select PrestaShop.

Extensions

Both platforms have their marketplaces that include many extensions, plugins, modules provided by third parties, and both free and paid options. Therefore, you can freely choose the most suitable ones to add more features and possibilities to optimize your website.

Security

platform-security

Security is one of the essential factors when building a website. For an eCommerce site, hacking is the worst-case scenario. As your store contains countless accounts (admins and customers); consequently, your business secrets and customers’ data will be stolen. Therefore, security should be taken into careful consideration.

In this case, when it comes to security, both platforms are excellent. They provide robust protection despite several security breaches and vulnerabilities in the past. But we have to note that they are not 100% secure; however, how they respond to such insecure events is more important.

Moreover, when creating an eCommerce website, you should not entirely rely on the platform but spend considerable time to tighten your security. And Magento is a perfect platform that allows you to install powerful modules to do so.

Support

business-support

Magento’s team provides FREE 24/7 support for customers. A support ticket can be opened once you have logged in to your Magento account. A group of certified solution partners is always available for any of your assistance demands with Magento Open Source.

The massive Magento Forums is always active, with over 420,000 members and nearly 130,000 posts available for your convenience.

Different from Magento, PrestaShop charges businesses for assistance packs if you want help from experts. If you’re going to deal with everything by yourself, you have to search for its documentation, webinars, tutorials videos, which are always available.

Pricing

prestashop-pricing

One advantage for store owners is that PrestaShop is free of charge when creating a basic store. But we should know that free things are not the best options. So if you want to take full advantage of the platform, you still have to incur costs for modules, themes, and hosting.

magento-commerce-pricing

Similarly, Magento Community Edition (CE) is also an open-source platform with zero charges. Everyone can get a program code for free, which is suitable for small to medium-size businesses.

In addition, there is Magento Enterprise Edition (EE), a paid version that includes premium features. It seems costly at first sight; yet, it is a perfect solution for medium to large businesses that require advanced features, added customization options, and a wider scale of support.

SEO

platform-seo-optimization

For SEO optimization, PrestaShop has enough features. Some benefits in terms of SEO you will get using PrestaShop are, for instance, automated URL rewriting, dedicated SEO content sections, CMS pages for quality content creation, etc.

Also, Magento SEO capabilities are broad. It has a wide range of SEO settings such as meta tags for products, image optimization, edits of robot.txt files, etc. Notably, research from the Ecommerce Platform has shown that Magento’s SEO score is 95/100, a relatively high result.

Magento vs. PrestaShop – How to Choose The Right Platform?

magento-vs-prestashop-comparison
Source: ITX Design

Now, you have a general overview of Magento vs. PrestaShop and its key differences. The question is which one is suitable for your business.

Both platforms are robust and stable software. But each of which serves different business types with different budgets, tech skills level, demands, and business goals.

We suggest choosing PrestaShop if your business is mid-size or small with a mid-range budget and mid-level technical skills. On the contrary, Magento is a perfect and ultimate solution for entrepreneurs who own medium to big-size businesses, high budget, and developed technical skills.

That’s just our recommendation in general. More importantly, please define and understand your business demands and choose the right one for you. The decision is all yours!

Final Thoughts

magento-prestashop

>>> Check Now: More Magento tutorials for eCommerce sites!

Above is our comparison between Magento vs. PrestaShop, including several similarities and main differences in various aspects. We hope this blog will help you choose the best platform and create the most successful eCommerce website.

If you need further information about Magento PrestaShop, please don’t hesitate to ask us! We’re willing to answer anytime.

Thanks a lot for reading.

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