PrestaShop vs Magento

1. PrestaShop vs Magento

2.  While building custom web stores, developers have option to choose from a wide range of ecommerce platforms. Both Magento and PrestaShop are widely used ecommerce platforms. Both ecommerce platforms are written in PHP programming language.  Magento supports two relational database systems — MySQL and MariaDB, whereas PrestaShop supports only MySQL. At present, Magento is owned by EBay.  The developers have option to choose from an array of Magento products and solutions according to precise business needs or specific industry.  Each new version of Magento comes with a number of new and improved features to simplify development of modern ecommerce websites.

3.  On the other hands, PrestaShop is available as an open source and community supported ecommerce platform.  It simplifies custom ecommerce website development by providing a custom template along with a number of modules and themes.  The market share data posted on several websites indicate that Magento has a much larger worldwide ecommerce market share than PrestaShop. But the smart developers never choose an ecommerce platform based on its worldwide market share and popularity.  They always compare the widely used ecommerce platforms to pick the best ecommerce platform for their upcoming project.  That is why; it is important for developers to understand the major differences between Magento and PrestaShop.

4. Comparing Two Popular Ecommerce Platforms: PrestaShop vs. Magento Installation and Setup Both Magento and PrestaShop are designed as easy to install ecommerce platforms.  The users can install and configure PrestaShop through a straightforward process. On the other hand, Magento can be installed in a number of ways.  While installing Magento, users have to decide if they will manage a single store or multiple stores.  If an enterprise needs to manage multiple online stores through a single admin interface, it must deploy skilled developers to create a robust development environment.  Also, the developers have to put extra time and effort to install the complex Magento extensions.

5. Extensions and Plugins Each of the two ecommerce platforms allows developers to choose from a variety of extensions and plugins to meet specific needs. The extensions and plugins even make it easier for developers to improve the ecommerce website’s functionality and customer experience without writing additional code.  But PrestaShop allows developers to avail more extensions and plugins than Magento. While using Magento, developers can choose from over 1500 plugins and extensions.  On the other hand, PrestaShop allows developers to choose from over 25000 plugins and extensions. Many developers prefer PrestaShop to Magento to avail additional and robust extensions.

6. Hosting Solutions  Nowadays, online retailers need robust infrastructure to make their web stores deliver richer customer experience and prevent downtime.  At present, Magento does not provide any hosted solutions. Hence, enterprises have to build and maintain robust infrastructure to run the Magento application smoothly.  They also need to incur additional expenses to build and maintain the hosting infrastructure. On the other hand, PrestaShop allows online retailers to choose from two hosted solutions.  The online retailers can opt for the open source downloadable version to host the ecommerce application in their own environment.  At the same time, they can use the free hosted solution to setup and run the ecommerce website quickly in the cloud without installing specific software or investing in expensive hardware.

7. Search Engine Optimization Major search engines keep upgrading their search engine algorithms frequently to deliver more relevant search results to users. While developing an ecommerce website, the developers must optimize the ecommerce website for various search engines. The search engine optimization (SEO) features and tools provided by ecommerce platforms help developers to improve the ecommerce website’s search engine ranking and visibility. PrestaShop provides only basic search engine optimization options. But Magento provides more robust and advanced search engine optimization features in comparison to PrestaShop.

8. Pricing  As noted earlier, both Magento and PrestaShop are open source ecommerce platforms. Hence, each of the two platforms helps developers to curtail ecommerce application development cost. But the features provided by individual editions of Magento and PrestaShop differ.  The developers have to use enterprise edition of Magento to make the ecommerce website deliver richer customer experience by availing additional features.  Likewise, the free theme and modules provided by PrestaShop do not help developers to build outstanding ecommerce websites.  The developers have to use premium themes and modules to make the web store standout in the crowd.

9. Usage At present, Magento is being used by large enterprises like Coca-Cola, Burger King, NCare, Brown-Forman and BevMo. Many large online retailers opt for Magento to control and customize their web stores according to their varying requirements. The robust features provided by Magento even help retailers to scale and expand their web stores without any hassle or delay. On the other hand, the retailers who opt for PrestaShop want simple and easy to use ecommerce platform for building and managing web store. Normally, the retailers do not have any plan to grow or expand their online business in near future. On the whole, both Magento and PrestaShop are robust and scalable ecommerce platforms. The developers have option to choose from several editions of each of the two ecommerce platforms. But they must remember that each of the two widely used ecommerce platforms has its own advantages and disadvantages. Hence, they must compare various editions of PrestaShop and Magento according to precise needs of each project.

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