Magento Vs PrestaShop: Which ECommerce platform is best for you?

You need to choose the right and the best E-Commerce platform for your business. There are many options available in the market which you can compare. If we start by first selecting open source platforms as they provide you all the source code which you can customize the Magento and PrestaShop could be the top choice for you. You can compare the two and can have the better idea of which one fits your needs the most. In this article, we will help you compare Magento and PrestaShop so that you can select the one which is best suited for you.

Magento and PrestaShop

Both of these are open source platforms hence they can be customized in many ways. PrestaShop provides you with lots of features, allows easy website management, SEO benefits and gives users power of analytics and reporting. Right now more than 1,25,000 online stores are based on PrestaShop.

Magento is a well-accepted leader in E-commerce solutions market. You can easily hire Magento Developer as it is widely used the platform. It provides lots of features, tools, and options for customization. Magento also provides improved SEO benefits with targeted promotion and merchandising. Magento also allows multiple payment and shipping options. Right now most of the large businesses have built their e-commerce store using Magento. If we talk in figures then more than 2,35,000 online stores are powered by Magento right now.

Benefits of Magento

Magento is a flexible, open source E-commerce solution and provides lots of features. You will be in full control of Magento and you can easily change the look, content and its functionality. Magento provides features for search engine optimization and you can even use it as a tool for catalog management.

Magento was launched in 2001 and it carries lots of success stories on its shoulders. If you have zeroed on the Magento CMS then you can find the best Magento development company in the market which can help you to develop your e-commerce website using Magento platform. Magento has a strong online community which can answer all of your queries and a new initiative with eBay will make the system even more powerful and will add many new developers to the strong already strong community.

Magento provides users with all kinds of modules, features and extensions. Technical support provided by Magento’s developer is one of the best. Due to so many benefits, Magento is termed as the best platform for professional online stores and it performs great for running any kind of online business.

Benefits of PrestaShop

PrestaShop is also open source e-commerce solution with lots of features. You can use the basic set up of PrestaShop for free but you may need to purchase the templates, modules, and themes if you want to use the advanced version. PrestaShop was launched in 2007 and is best for small to medium businesses looking for an online presence.
PrestaShop supports 40 languages. It doesn’t offer official technical support but you can resolve your queries from the PrestaShop forum which has lots of developers and users as participants. You just need PHP 5.2, MySQL 5, Linux Unix or Windows OS to develop e-commerce site based on PrestaShop

Therefore both Magento and PrestaShop are great choices as they both have their benefits and drawbacks. Hence it is important to know in detail which CMS is best for you. Now let’s discuss them on the basis of following factors and parameters and lets see which one is best for you:-

Features and Capabilities

In terms of features, Magento tops the list. Magento is a highly focused platform which provides the user with all that is required to build an online store with powerful features and capabilities.

PrestaShop provides many features but not as much as Magento does. PrestaShop has hundreds of templates, easy website builder and lots of payment gateway solutions and it gives Magento a good competition.
Although both the platform provides the basic functionalities of an e-commerce store in terms of a number of features no one can compete with Magento. Hence, if you are looking for best features and tools to power your e-store then Magento is the best while if you want to build a basic online shop easily then PrestaShop is best for you.

Speed and Performance

Magento has seen speed and performance issues as users reported. Users and developers of Magento have often complained about slower website due to slowing down of the Magento backend. Magento developers tried to answer these issues and tried to make Magento as fast as possible.

With PrestaShop, performance and speed is not much of a concern. PrestaShop doesn’t slow down your website as it doesn’t have the problem of heavy CMS like Magento.

Although there are some issues related to performance and speed of Magento while PrestaShop provides a slightly better and smooth experience to e-store owners and its customers.

Technical Support

For open source platform, users can easily get support mostly through free documentation, communities, and forums around the world. With both, Magento as well as PrestaShop, you can get a large community of users who can easily help you out to resolve most of your issues and problems regarding their use and development. You can even take help from the official documentation which is available for both the platforms.

Magento CMS is more popular and has a much bigger community of users and developers. Due to its huge user base, Magento allows you to resolve your issues more easily than in the case with PrestaShop. Magento was launched in 2001 while PrestaShop was launched in 2007. Hence it can be said that Magento must be having a huge user base and easy support system.
Moreover, PrestaShop doesn’t provide an official technical support and you just have to depend on users and documentation while in case of Magento, if you purchase the paid version, you will get official technical support for each of the issue you may face while using and developing Magento e-store.

Security

PrestaShop and Magento, both are designed and developed to provide your e-store with proper and robust security. The issue of security has been addressed well and measures to implement tight security are taken with PrestaShop, Magento and most of the other popular CMS. They both try best so that there is no vulnerability left which can be exploited. But still Magento has more security related powerful plugins which you can use to even enhance further the security of your e-commerce site.

Ease of Installation and Use

Magento is not easy for a beginner and if someone with no knowledge or experience of using any CMS tries using it, he can find it little difficult to use. Installing Magento is also not an easy while PrestaShop is easy to install and doesn’t need you to have an expert knowledge of the platform. Magento is not easy to use even after its installation. Magento requires you to have some knowledge and experience of using the platform or you have to hire a Magento developer to help you. If you are looking for factors like installation and ease of use then PrestaShop can be a good bet for you.

Cost and Pricing

Both the platforms are open source and are free to use which means they will be liked by most of the customers due to their zero price. Although nothing is free in this world both of these platforms and CMS don’t follow this quote as both are free of cost but then still you have to spend money to implement and run a successful business. The basic version of both platforms is free and you can easily create a basic e-store but if you want to get full advantage of these platforms then you will have to buy the paid versions. When you have finally decided to buy anyway then Magento’s Enterprise edition comes at top of the list of best e-commerce solutions which provides you with an enormous amount of features, functionalities, and benefits.

Conclusion

In the end, we can say that both of these platforms i.e. Magento and PrestaShop are the best choice to use as platforms to develop e-commerce stores. Hence you can choose the one which best fulfills your requirements. If the requirement is just for a basic online shop of small to medium size then You can use PrestaShop while if you want to grow continuously each quarter or year after year then Magento is the best choice for you as it provides greater functionality for scaling up. If we compare both platforms in terms of all of the factors which we have discussed above then Magento comes out to be the real winner as it is easy to scale up, provides you professional technical support and also has powerful features.