PrestaShop vs Shopify

Are you considering launching an online store? If you’re reading this, you’re probably stuck between Shopify and PrestaShop. The overwhelming task of picking an eCommerce solution for your online business is also dreadful. Pick the wrong one and it could cost you thousands of dollars to switch over to a new platform. Fortunately, we’re going to help you make the right decision by providing you with a detailed comparison of Shopify and PrestaShop.

By reading below, you will be able to see which platform provides you with the most flexibility, the most tools and the most affordability. You will also be able to figure out which eCommerce solution offers the most ease of use along with the best themes. Compare Shopify and PrestaShop now to easily see which option is the best for your business.

PrestaShop and Shopify Compared

Shopify and PrestaShop are two very similar eCommerce platforms that deliver a similar experience. Choosing between the two of them is a complicated task that can quickly become overwhelming. We want to be sure that you pick the ideal eCommerce solution for your needs. This is why we’ve compared both platforms side by side with numerous testing phases in order to bring you the best information possible. Keep reading to see which solution is the best for your needs and make an educated decision so that you don’t end up regretting the eCommerce platform that you choose.

Technical Comparison

Uptime is crucial when picking an eCommerce platform. Fortunately, both of this options can provide you with reliable platforms. Shopify has a very high uptime score of 99.98%, which isn’t quite as good as some of their competitors, but remains a very decent score. With PrestaShop, the uptime is more dependent upon the hosting provider of your choice. However, this gives you the flexibility to be able to choose a high quality hosting provider in order to benefit from a very stable platform. Incident frequencies are much rarer on PrestaShop than Shopify, making them the most reliable platforms of the two options. Finally, we want to inspect the site speed. Shopify delivers very fast loading websites that require few optimizations. PrestaShop is an open-source platform, so once again, you will be relying on your hosting provider for site speed. This means you have the possibility to choose a lightning fast provider or you could end up choosing a slow hosting provider. It all depends on your budget and research. Overall, PrestaShop has the most potential, but Shopify is the better option if you’re looking for instant results without too much hassle.

Customer Support

Customer support is one of the most important factors worth looking into. You’ll want to be sure that help is always right around the corner. With Shopify, you get some of the best customer support available among eCommerce platforms. As one of the largest eCommerce solutions available, they have a massive support team filled with experts who know what they’re doing. They answer quickly and provide quality information with every response. The same cannot be said about PrestaShop - they don’t even have a live chat support channel. PrestaShop provides you with phone and email support only and the waiting times can often be quite long. To make matters worse, PrestaShop hires basic support agents that aren’t necessarily specialized in eCommerce. This makes the quality of their responses sub-par. In the end, Shopify definitely takes the win in the customer support department.

Features

When it comes to features, these two platforms are very different from one another. Shopify has few built-in tools, but they have a massive apps marketplace so you can add on a ton of third-party integrations. PrestaShop on the other hand has a lot of built-in services and features for you to enjoy, but they don’t have many third-party integrations. Shopify’s basic features include being able to easily add new products, upload images, track orders and other basic necessities in order to run your online shop. Their third-party apps are endless with tools such as Oberlo, which specialize in helping you operate an entire drop shipping store with numerous automated functions.

PrestaShop really shines with their built-in tools. You can instantly set up physical products or sell digital items with immediate deliveries. You can setup custom messages for out of stock items, you can setup custom shipping fees according to geographical locations and much more. For product marketing, you have even more options such as allowing customers to add on gift wrapping, being able to configure coupon codes, setting up email marketing tactics and so much more.

If you’re looking for an immediate out-of-box experience with loads of built-in features, PrestaShop is the way to go. On the other hand, if you want to enjoy tons of third-party integrations, Shopify has a ton of options for you to choose from.

Design

Designing your online store requires you to use various themes and templates. Choosing an eCommerce solution with a ton of different themes to choose from makes it that much easier for you to design your online shop. One of the great thing about both these platforms is that they both have a ton of templates for you to choose from. Shopify has a dozen free themes for you to choose from an roughly 50 paid themes. However, PrestaShop has about 4,000 themes for you to choose from, making it much easier for you to pinpoint the theme of your choice for your specific business. All of the themes are PrestaShop are premium, meaning you will have to pay to use them, but their prices are much lower than the premium themes at Shopify. Overall, if you need quality and especially high quantities of different themes, you’re going to love PrestaShop the best.

Prices

Being able to save money is important if you want to make the most amount of profit. Some eCommerce solutions can end up costing a small fortune, which is why it’s important to find the absolute best prices. Shopify is an affordable platform with a few different pricing plans for you to choose from. This allows you to find the ideal plan for your needs. However, one of the major downsides to choosing Shopify is that they charge transaction fees with every sale that you make.

PrestaShop is still a work in progress and for that reason, they haven’t explored any pricing plans yet. At the moment, they only have one pricing plan, which allows you to save a ton of money. Their one pricing plan is about the same price as Shopify’s cheapest plan and it comes with unlimited features. Additionally, PrestaShop does not charge any type of transaction fees, so it’s truly one of the most affordable options currently available online.

The Final Verdict: PrestaShop or Shopify

Now that we’ve compared both PrestaShop and Shopify in more depth, it should be much easier to make a decision. Both platforms have different perks and benefits and we also took the time to mention any downsides that a platform may have.

For those of you who find customer support to be a huge necessity, Shopify is by far the better option. They have loads of different support channels including email, telephone and live chat support. PrestaShop is limited when it comes to support channels, so you’ll end up waiting longer periods of time and their experts just don’t seem as qualified as the support agents at Shopify.

On the technical side of things, PrestaShop definitely has the potential to be much more powerful than Shopify. As an open-source eCommerce platform, they don’t provide hosting for your website - you will need to use a third-party hosting provider. This means you can spend a little extra towards a high quality hosting company and enjoy lightning fast websites with incredibly stable environments. Shopify is great for people who don’t want to waste time searching for hosting providers and still want a good experience. However, if you know what you’re doing, PrestaShop can certainly provide better results.

Designing your website is also easier with PrestaShop due to their selection of thousands of themes for you to choose from. Shopify only has a few dozen themes, but they are very high quality.

Overall, it comes down to personal preference and needs, but PrestaShop is a tool for more advanced users, whereas Shopify is the ideal solution for online merchants who have absolutely no experience and want a simple platform with tons of support.