Prestashop vs shopify: PrestaShop and Shopify are both popular eCommerce platforms, offering various features and tools for building and managing online stores. Both platforms have their own set of strengths and weaknesses, and the one that is best for you will depend on your specific business needs and goals.

However, Shopify is a subscription-based platform for developing websites, whereas PrestaShop is a dedicated open-source eCommerce platform with various features to develop a well-performing eCommerce website.

Therefore, partnering with the right eCommerce website development company will help your business in a greater way. 

This blog highlights various reasons for choosing PrestaShop over Shopify. But, before understanding, an overview of each platform is essential.

What is PrestaShop?

PrestaShop is a free, open-source eCommerce platform widely used to develop feature-rich eCommerce websites. The platform is self-hosted, which means you have to install it first to use it. It offers a wide range of features and tools to create, manage and run your online store. One of the key advantages of PrestaShop is that it offers a high level of customizability. You can customize virtually every aspect, from appearance to functionality. 

Features of PrestaShop

• It is an open-source platform 
• The platform offers Multilingual capability
• Integrations and add-ons are easier with PrestaShop

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a cloud-based eCommerce platform that allows businesses to create and manage an online store. It offers a range of features and tools for developing, managing, and optimizing an online store, including customizable templates, products and inventory management, third-party integration, and so on. 

Features of Shopify

• It is a Hosted eCommerce platform
• Shopify enables various Payment gateways to simplify setting up a third-party payment provider.

Reasons to Choose PrestaShop Over Shopify

Every platform is different and conveys merits and demerits of its own. However, there are various reasons why Shopify is better than PrestaShop. But considering the major things that play a vital role in the success of your business, we have enumerated the significant reasons why PrestaShop has the upper hand over Shopify below:

1. Cost Involved

How costlier is it to develop an online store? It is the top-most question that stays in the mind of a business that is looking to develop an eCommerce website with the help of a CMS platform. 

PrestaShop is an open-source eCommerce platform you can get without paying a license fee. However, Shopify is a proprietary platform with various subscription plans. It is a cloud-based platform that offers a trial period of 14 days to test-drive its services. After that, it charges based on the plan you have selected for your business. Every Shopify plan is specific and capable of garnishing the needs of your business. 

 So, based on the platform’s acquisition cost, PrestaShop is better than Shopify because it’s available for free. But you should know that there are hidden charges with PrestaShop, although the platform itself is free.

2. Customization

Both the platforms, PrestaShop and Shopify, offer customization facilities to their users. But there’s a difference, the customization capability with Shopify is only to some extent; however, PrestaShop is more customizable. Furthermore, it offers a wide range of themes and modules for customizing online stores.

Moreover, if you want an eCommerce website that caters to your specific business needs, you can do that too in PrestaShop. The platform is open-source, which means you can completely edit, modify or create code from scratch. As a result, you can develop your website according to your business needs.

On the other hand, Shopify comes with various plans and functionalities. You can select a plan that is well-suited to your business type and has all the features you are looking for. As a proprietary eCommerce platform, Shopify offers restricted access to its code. It means that you cannot modify code according to the needs of your business. 

Hence, you don’t get as much flexibility for website customization with Shopify as you get with  PrestaShop. Thus, PrestaShop has the edge over Shopify in customization. You can partner with a potential PrestaShop website development company to get things done according to your business requirements. 

3. Multiple Store Management

With the growth of an eCommerce store, its efficiency also grows. Retailers starting with small retail stores might need to give their business a whole new appearance with their growth by expanding the network to multiple stores. Likewise, if you want the same product across all your stores, you might use different shops to segment your audience or have separate stores to provide your services. Creating many stores require different accounts and tools. It is where PrestaShop meets your expectations. It allows you to manage multiple stores from a single backend.

Whereas in Shopify, you cannot set up multiple stores with one account. You do not get that permit in Shopify, for every new store, you should have to create a new account. It lets you create accounts for every new store you have created. In this case, businesses have to set up various accounts for every new store they create. It indicates that managing multiple stores is more leisurely with PrestaShop.

4. Ability to Sell Beyond Boundaries

A website is not restricted to any type of geographical boundaries. Hence, when it comes to selling beyond boundaries, it aids businesses in reaching various customers across borders. Shopify offers limited features in terms of international selling, whereas PrestaShop offers various features available to sell internationally. Some of the pre-built features of PrestaShop include multiple currency and language capabilities, along with the checkout option for international selling. 

Additionally, different payment processing options are offered by PrestaShop to make the transaction fulfilled internationally. It is one of the most significant differences between Shopify and PrestaShop. Shopify charges an extra transaction fee if you do not use their payment system (which is also limited in some countries).

5. Inventory Management

One of the most important aspects of running a successful eCommerce store is awareness of the inventory of your products so that you can easily fulfill your customers’ demands. Inventory management is more accessible with PrestaShop with its advanced product and inventory add-on. It assures that your stock is updated according to the needs of customers. Also, the platform allows businesses to automate their inventory across all channels and better handle suppliers. Further, it gives you insights into the performance of your product so that you can easily sell more of them.

In contrast, Shopify offers built-in inventory management tools that are helpful for you to hide products when they are out of stock. 

Thus, both PrestaShop and Shopify have their own set of pros and cons in inventory management. It majorly depends on the way that suits you more among them. However, keep that in mind; PrestaShop has a much more advanced inventory management system and functionalities.

6. Security

Both Shopify and PrestaShop are different platforms that can help you build secure websites in different ways. As we know, eCommerce websites are always on hackers’ radars to steal sensitive information like credit card or bank account details. So, a strong security layer on a website is essential to foil this bid by an attacker.

Firstly we’ll talk about Shopify; since it is a cloud-based platform, it offers excellent website security to its users. It also provides free SSL registration for all online merchants who want to sell their products on this platform. Also, the stores built on Shopify are certified as Level 1 PCI DSS compliant (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard).

On the other hand, PrestaShop is a self-hosted platform; you must rely on additional third-party security tools and features. PrestaShop uses the Security Lite module, which helps to reduce the risk of unauthorized access by adding another layer of security to your PrestaShop website. 

Thus, if we compare both platforms, Shopify has more security features out-of-the-box, and PrestaShop relies on additional functionalities. But you can build a highly secure eCommerce website with a reliable PrestaShop development company regarding security. 

Conclusion

There are enough reasons now to say why PrestaShop is a good choice over Shopify. PrestaShop is an open-source eCommerce platform that offers a wide range of features and customization options. It is a great choice for businesses that need to create a unique online store with custom features. It is also more affordable than Shopify, making it an excellent option for businesses on a budget. Additionally, it offers more control over the appearance of your store. Businesses can launch their eCommerce website easily across international boundaries with the help of features like multi-currency and multi-lingual capabilities. 

Although both of these platforms are excellent in terms of features and services, Ultimately, the choice between PrestaShop and Shopify will depend on your business needs and goals. It’s a good idea to carefully evaluate the features and tools each platform offers and the costs involved to determine which is the best fit for your business.

Keep in mind your business requirements and choose any platform accordingly. You can work with PrestaShop web development company to accomplish your eCommerce development project based on your requirements.

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