PrestaShop Review

When you choose an all-in-one eCommerce solution for your business, you expect to benefit from a simple platform. The whole point is to easily launch your online store without having to deal with any complications. Unfortunately, PrestaShop offers a very complicated platform that you won’t be able to use easily. Firstly, you’ll need to use hosting from a third-party provider, which already complicates things quite a bit. Next, you’ll have to upload your files via FTP, which requires you to know a few technical skills from the start. When you compare PrestaShop with other platforms such as Shopify, the process of setting up and maintaining your online shop is complicated. If you’re looking for an incredibly easy-to-use eCommerce solution, you will most likely want to avoid using PrestaShop.

One reason PrestaShop has become so popular in such a short amount of time is its vast selection of features. With so many excellent features, they make it very simple for you to grow your online business. You will easily be able to determine pricing according to geographical location, customize out-of-stock messages, configure the checkout page, add new products automatically with different variants, and so much more. When it comes to functionality, PrestaShop is definitely loaded with numerous perks and goodies. However, some of their features tend to be a little difficult to use. This makes PrestaShop less for beginners and more for an intermediate webmaster who has basic coding skills. If you feel like even the slightest complications make be a big hurdle for you, you’ll probably want to avoid using PrestaShop.

Just like with themes, you’ll want your eCommerce platform to provide you with a nice selection of third-party integrations. This provides you even more freedom to customize your online store and give your customers more interactions. They call their apps Modules at PrestaShop, and these modules come in two forms - free and premium. They have over 3,000 modules for you to choose from, which is very good - especially when you consider that some eCommerce solutions don’t have any third-party integrations. However, rather than paying monthly fees for the modules like most platforms, you’ll have to pay one-time fees, which are much more expensive. If you need to add numerous modules to your store, it can get rather expensive pretty quickly. However, it can definitely be much more cost-effective in the long run since you only pay once. Overall, PrestaShop has a large selection of modules, but you should set aside a larger upfront budget if you need a lot of them.

Having a wide choice of themes is important when building an online store. You’ll want to have the freedom to choose just about any design of your liking while knowing that very few other online merchants will be using the same design. Fortunately, PrestaShop has a decent amount of themes for you to choose from. They currently have over 4,000 available themes, giving you more than enough to choose from for your online marketplace. The quality of their themes is also rather impressive. For such a large amount of themes, you’d expect each one to feel rushed, but they are actually quite good. PrestaShop has a large selection of free themes, but they also have premium themes that cost money. Fortunately, their pricing is rather affordable, especially when you compare them to other platforms. Overall, when it comes to the selection and quality of themes, PrestaShop does not disappoint.

When you launch an online store, you’ll most likely be focusing on features, performance, and pricing, but it’s also essential to look into the platform's stability. Reliability is critical - the last thing you want is for your platform to crash when customers are just about to make purchases or during key moments such as Black Friday. Fortunately, PrestaShop excels when it comes to reliability. They provide you with the ability to choose the hosting of your choice, so you can pick one that provides excellent uptime scores and meets all of your personal needs. Additionally, their amount of incidents in the past few years is meager, so you won’t have to worry about dealing with outages or major issues. When it comes to web page loading times, PrestaShop excels once again. They have super fast-loading websites with tons of optimizations in place to let you hit the ground running. You don’t have to perform any optimizations to enjoy fast-loading websites with PrestaShop. Overall, this eCommerce solution certainly delivers when it comes to performance and speed.

Uptime

Benefiting from a great uptime rating is always enjoyable. It basically means that your website has much fewer chances of experience downtimes regularly. With most eCommerce platforms, you’ll be entirely dependent on their platform for their uptime guarantee. However, with PrestaShop, you are actually much more dependent on the hosting provider of your choice. This allows you to enjoy the freedom to choose a higher-quality hosting provider to experience higher uptime ratings. Overall, PrestaShop is great for uptime because you have much more flexibility.

Incident Frequency

Along with having a positive uptime rating, PrestaShop also delivers a very stable platform. Their high-reliability score makes it easy for you to enjoy excellent stability when it comes to features. The likelihood of your features crashes at key moments, such as when a client is about to make a purchase, is very low. We looked into their recent incidents and were unable to find any outstanding outages or complaints against them. Additionally, we looked deeper into their history over the past few years - no major complaints were filed, and no major outages have been reported in the past few years. With so many clients using PrestaShop, this shows us that they have an incredibly reliable eCommerce platform that won’t let you down when you need them the most.

Speed

A fast-loading website is always important, but it’s even more crucial when you’re dealing with an online store. People will be going through tons of different pages while browsing for products, and the last thing they want is to have to wait long periods of time when loading each page. Fortunately, at PrestaShop, you get the ability to pick the ideal solution for speed. Your website loading times won’t necessarily depend on their platform but on the hosting provider you choose. This allows you to go ahead and choose a better quality hosting provider to enjoy faster loading speeds. The themes at PrestaShop are already well-optimized, so with a high-quality hosting provider, you will definitely be able to achieve super-fast loading times. Overall, PrestaShop is a great solution if you need a fast-loading online shop.

When you choose an eCommerce service for your online store, chances are you’ll be relying heavily on their support team to get started and every time you run into issues. Unfortunately, PrestaShop doesn’t offer the best experience possible when it comes to supporting channels. They only have a couple of ways for you to contact them - by phone or by email. Their support tickets provide you with services completed by their experts, but they cost quite a lot of money. Email support is usually rather slow, so you’ll end up waiting long periods of time before getting the answers you need. When it comes to their phone support, you’ll often have to deal with long waiting times before getting connected to an agent. Overall, PrestaShop isn’t the best for providing customer support, but they do offer some support channels, and you’ll often be able to get the answers you need if you don’t mind waiting.

Support Availability

Having proper supper channels to contact when you run into issues is crucial when operating a business online. PrestaShop doesn’t have the best support available, but they do have adequate support nonetheless. You can contact their team by phone, email, and support tickets. However, they are only available by phone during business hours, which greatly reduces the number of hours you can contact them during the week - you won’t be able to contact them for immediate assistance during the night or on weekends. This leaves you with email or support tickets only, which can often take several hours before getting a response. Overall, PrestaShop is decent but definitely not among the best for customer support.

Speed of Response

Since PrestaShop does not offer any live chat support channel, you will most likely experience longer wait times when calling them. This is due to more people calling them. During our testing phase, we attempted to contact them on numerous occasions, and the wait time was slightly longer than with other similar platforms. We often had to wait 10 to 20 minutes before being able to speak with an actual person. When contacting them via support tickets, you’ll often have to wait a few hours. The same applies to email support - the waiting time can last several hours, making these two options better suited for non-pressing issues. When it comes down to it, the speed of response at PrestaShop isn’t ideal.

Friendliness & Helpfulness

One of the aspects worth considering when looking into the quality of a support team is helpfulness. Even if fewer support channels are available, they might be able to provide superior support compared to other platforms that offer more support channels. Phone support was able to resolve most of our issues without any delays and too many complications. However, more complex issues were left unresolved, requiring us to search for assistance through third parties. Email and support tickets were what seemed to be automated responses. They provided the answers to our questions, but the responses themselves felt scripted. If their support is not helpful enough, they offer expert assistance, but these types of interventions are rather expensive.

Telephone Support

Phone support at PrestaShop is basically the only way you can come in direct contact with their team. Sure, they have email support, but this doesn’t provide you with a give and take the conversation, such as phone or live chat support. Due to this being the only direct and immediate way to contact them, their phone lines are often bustling, causing you to have to wait quite some time before getting connected to an agent. Phone support agents seemed very competent, though, so the help you will get from them should be more than enough to resolve basic and more advanced issues with their platform. Overall, their phone support channel is decent, but not the best - plus, it’s only available Monday to Friday from 9 am to 6 pm.

Email Support

Email support is available at PrestaShop, but it’s not the best. Since they have very few support channels and no live chat, many people choose to contact them via email. We found the waiting times before getting a response to be rather long. In fact, we even had to wait over a full day in one circumstance before getting a response. This should definitely be kept as a support channel for non-urgent issues that can wait. Additionally, the quality of the support team via email seemed to be much less efficient than their telephone support team. We were able to get answers to basic inquiries, but more complex issues required us to phone them directly. It would definitely be nice to see them add a live chat option to load off the email support team.

Luckily, the pricing plans at PrestaShop are currently straightforward. They only provide you with one available pricing plan, so they keep the options pretty simple. However, they are currently working on entirely updating their pricing plans, so they have two new pricing plans that are on their way. At the moment, there is no information about the new plans that are on their way, so we can’t provide any additional information. Fortunately, their basic plan provides you with unlimited access to all of their features, so for the time being, they are among the most affordable eCommerce solutions currently on the market. Additionally, they don’t have any transaction fees, so you will be able to save a ton of money by using PrestaShop. Overall, until they update their pricing structure, PrestaShop is very affordable.

Plans Pricing

One of the most confusing parts about PrestaShop is definitely their pricing plans. They make it very difficult for you to find out how much they charge for their eCommerce solutions. We had to dig deep to find their pricing page, and even then, we found it rather confusing. When writing this review, they only have one available pricing plan called “Start”. This pricing plan includes everything without limitations. However, they also have two other pricing plans called “Pro” and “Premium”, but these plans currently do not exist. They are marked as “coming soon”, so you should expect them to raise their prices for unlimited features shortly. However, as of now, all of their features are available in their basic pricing plan.

Transaction Fees

As mentioned earlier, PrestaShop currently does not have multiple pricing plans, so you get all of the benefits with their basic plan. This includes no transaction fees. However, since they are currently working on adding other pricing structures, there is no saying whether or not they will add transaction fees in the future. This could also develop as a need to increase to more expensive plans as you sell more products. However, at the moment, PrestaShop does not have any transaction fees, so you can enjoy this for as long as they stick with their current pricing structure.

Other Fees

We looked all over their website and were unable to find any hidden fees. However, as we mentioned earlier, there is no saying what is to come since they are currently working on changing their pricing structure, and there is no mention on their site on how this will look. You should probably keep an eye out on their pricing structure so you don’t run into any last-minute unexpected fees once they change their pricing structure.

Among the top-rated eCommerce platforms on the internet, PrestaShop is one of the easiest solutions available for beginners. They provide their users with affordable pricing, tons of useful features, and an incredibly easy-to-use dashboard. Beginners appreciate the ease of use, while more advanced users still get to benefit from quality functions.

PrestaShop isn’t just a beautiful platform that’s simple to use. It also delivers an excellent performance so users can enjoy a powerful environment. In fact, it’s so powerful that PrestaShop actually received the 2016 CMS Critic Award for Best eCommerce Software. This wasn’t the only important recognition they got - they also got listed on the 2016 - Inc. 5000 List of Fastest-Growing Private Companies in Europe.

Alexandre Eruimy, the CEO of PrestaShop, states that together they are a community, and they treat their clients like family. Its mission is to help merchants worldwide achieve the freedom to launch an online marketplace easily.

One of the truly unique things about PrestaShop is the location of its headquarters in Paris, France. Their main office is located inside a landmark Parisian building, originally a marketplace bazaar in the late 1800s. This hundred-old building has been a business hub for over a century, and PrestaShop definitely aspires to be around for just as much time.

PrestaShop is a powerful eCommerce platform that provides you with a lot of flexibility. You get to choose your own hosting provider, and you’ll need basic coding skills to use certain features. While this platform isn’t entirely complicated, it’s not the most beginner-friendly solution either. You should definitely know what you’re doing before jumping into this platform. One of the major upsides to PrestaShop is their vast array of built-in features along with their large selection of modules (third-party integrations). Additionally, they have over 4,000 themes to choose from, making it easy for you to find the perfect design template for your online store. Their customer support is not the best, but they make up for it with amazing tools and loads of performance optimizations. Overall, PrestaShop is not the easiest eCommerce platform on the internet, but it definitely has many great features worth exploring.