Magento and PrestaShop, are two of the most widely used ecommerce web platforms with hundreds and thousands of sites powered by each of the platforms. When it comes to comparing Magento vs PrestaShop, each one of these platforms come with their own strengths and limitations, which may influence the success or failure of an ecommerce store, if not taken into account.
In this blog, we have come up with a point to point comparison for Magento Vs PrestaShop, to help business owners and entrepreneurs choose the best platform as per their needs of the business. So, without wasting any time, let’s start our comparison; Magento vs PrestaShop.
1. Features
When it comes to the features offered by ecommerce web development platforms, few come near to the level and scale offered by Magento. It won’t be wrong to say the Magento is the undisputed king in terms of the sheer volume of state-of-the-art features and customization levels offered for an ecommerce store. It’s a dedicated platform that brings to table endless possibilities for ecommerce stores to build a powerhouse store, for ultimate success.
On the other hand, we also can’t downplay the features offered by PrestaShop, even if it can’t be compared to Magento straightaway. The platform offers hundreds of templates that can be easily used to develop a customized ecommerce store. PrestaShop also offers easy integration of all major payment gateways, this brings young entrepreneurs easy access to ecommerce stores.
While both platforms offer plenty of basic features and functionalities, there isn’t a doubt that Magento is far ahead in terms of the number quantity and quality of features offered by the platform and thereby is the clear winner in this aspect.
2. Performance
When it comes to performance, Magento tends to lack behind time to time with its backend issues. The developers and business owners alike, tend to complain about the performance issues for the platform, which affect the overall performance of the ecommerce store.
Now, when we talk about the performance of PrestaShop, it’s right at the top among the best. The platform doesn’t suffer from any backend issues and is almost always at its premium performance level, offering a great advantage for an ecommerce store to offer consistent user-experience to the visitors.
So, when we talk about the Magento Vs PrestaShop winner in terms of performance, PrestaShop leads the competition in this aspect.
3. Support
Both of these are open-source platforms, which means that users are required to depend upon documentation and communities mainly to get answers for their queries. On the positive side, both of the platforms come with massive and matured communities, willing to share their experience and help other users sort out issues faced with each platform.
However, in terms of sheer numbers, Magento leads by a large margin with a far bigger community and the number of ecommerce stores powered by the platform. This means that it’s easier to get community help for Magento as compared to PrestaShop. Also, PrestaShop doesn’t offer any official support team, which means that you are totally dependent on the community to address the issues you may face with the platform.
So, in terms of support, Magento takes the lead again as the best ecommerce web development platform, amongst the two.
4. Ease of Use
To put it simply, Magento is by no means an ecommerce platform meant for non-technical users or even beginners. The platform is highly complex and requires expert developers with experience using a CMS to be able to leverage its full potential, in fact, even installing Magento may be a challenge for beginners.
PrestaShop on the other hands is meant to be a beginners’ friendly platform, which can even be used by a total layman with no development experience.
This means that if you are a beginner looking to build a basic ecommerce store, PrestaShop is the choice for you, however, if you want to go big, Magento is the right choice (although it will come at a higher price).
The Winner: Honestly, there isn’t any clear winner between Magento vs PrestaShop, that because each platform has its own strengths and limitations. The choice of platform depends on the users’ preferences. For instance, for entrepreneurs with little development experience and a restricted budget, PrestaShop may be the best way out. Alternatively, established companies looking to compete nationally or globally would need the power, scalability and customization levels offered by Magento to compete and come out successful in the fiercely competitive online industry.
