You may have wondered which is the best platform to start an online store. There are several popular platforms available online that can help you get started.
But the focus of today’s article would be on WooCommerce vs PrestaShop. Both these platforms are trendy and robust ones with the necessary features to help you start an online store quickly.
I’ll compare WooCommerce vs PrestaShop and highlight their differences. In the end, you’ll be able to find the best one that suits your business.
Other Recommended Articles:
- WooCommerce vs BigCommerce
- WooCommerce vs Magento
So, without any further ado, let’s jump into the comparison.
On This Page
Overview
I’ll first provide an overview of both options to help you choose the best platform for your business needs.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the most used eCommerce plugin for WordPress. It makes it easy to turn any WordPress website or blog into an online store.
About 28.19% of all online stores in the world are run by WooCommerce, and Statista says that WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce platform in the world. It has more than 5 million installations.
You only need a domain name and web hosting to start a WooCommerce store up and running.
Because WooCommerce is free and open-source, developers worldwide constantly work to enhance the platform.
This results in a long list of WooCommerce capabilities, covering pretty much everything you’d want in an excellent e-commerce solution.
PrestaShop
PrestaShop is a self-hosted e-commerce solution for hosting your website. It first appeared in 2007 and has undergone gradual development since then.-
PrestaShop is an e-commerce platform that is available at no cost and is developed and supported by a dedicated community of volunteers under the direction of a core team of developers. It is French-based and commands a current eCommerce platform market share of around 1.52%.
Both PrestaShop and WooCommerce require you to set up your domain and hosting because they are self-hosted. Because it allows you to use any web host, hosting plan, and security tools you like, this is the approach we recommend.
Both PrestaShop and its extensions (called modules) can be purchased from their respective online stores. Some of them are free, while others will cost you.
To further customize the look of your shop, you can also visit one of the many third-party theme marketplaces available.
Current Google Trends Comparison
Even though it’s a bit of an oldie, PrestaShop is still one of the top choices for e-commerce platforms right now. WooCommerce, on the other hand, is a newer option that competes strongly with PrestaShop.
Look at the following Google Trends graph to see how interest in the two systems has changed. WooCommerce, as you can see, is expanding much more quickly than PrestaShop.
WooCommerce vs PrestaShop What’s the Difference?
Now that we know a bit about these popular eCommerce platforms, let’s dive into the comparison.
1. Ease of Use
Ease of use is the very first thing you should see in an eCommerce platform, and both WooCommerce vs PrestaShop are head to head in it.
To get started with any of these platforms, you will need to have a hosting and domain.
If you want to use WooCommerce, you will need to install WordPress first.
It gives you a simple setup wizard that you can follow to launch your store quickly.
While with Prestashop, you don’t need to install any other software to launch your store. But, it is hard to set up compared to Woocommerce because of manual database creation.
Product management is straightforward on both platforms. You can easily and quickly add, remove, and edit any product.
| WooCommerce | PrestaShop | |
| Hosting | ❌ | ❌ |
| Easy to Setup | ✅ | ❌ |
| Manual Database Setup | ❌ | ✅ |
| Automatic Backups | ❌ | ❌ |
| Dashboard | ✅ | ✅ |
| More Customization Options | ✅ | ❌ |
| Products Management | ✅ | ✅ |
2. Scalability
Both being self-hosted platforms, scaling requires nothing more than more space on your hosting provider’s servers. Because of their scalability and security, cloud hosting is the best option here.
To whatever extent your web host allows, you can scale your store.
| WooCommerce | PrestaShop | |
| Easy to Scale | ✅ | ✅ |
| Themes and Plugins | ✅ | ✅ |
3. Security
As both platforms are open source and self-hosted, you need to install an SSL certificate and plugins to enhance the security.
Your hosting provider can handle SSL certificates as most good hosting providers like Hostinger gives you a free SSL certificate which you can easily enable to secure your site.
To keep your site secure, you need to ensure that you do not use pirated extensions and keep your extensions and themes up to date.
| WooCommerce | PrestaShop | |
| SSL Certificate | ❌ | ❌ |
| Security Plugins | ✅ | ✅ |
4. SEO Friendly
Both platforms are SEO friendly, and you can also improve your SEO rankings by editing the URLs, meta descriptions, etc.
If you want to use WooCommerce, plugins like YOAST SEO can help you improve your SEO score and rank on top of Google.
| WooCommerce | PrestaShop | |
| SEO Friendly | ✅ | ✅ |
| SEO Plugins | ✅ | ✅ |
5. Ecommerce Tools & Features
PrestaShop and WooCommerce have several built-in features that can help you with essential features you want to add to your store.
If you want a custom feature, you will need to hire a developer to help you with it.
Both platforms have many design and customization options to help you create an online store that matches your preference.
Moreover, the checkout page is decent, but you can do more with the WooCommerce checkout page by using a checkout editor plugin like AIO Checkout.
Bonus: You can follow the Essential Checklist to Start an Online Store article to start a successful eCommerce store.
| WooCommerce | PrestaShop | |
| Multi-Channel Integration | ✅ | ✅ |
| Limitless Design Options | ✅ | ❌ |
| Blogging | ✅ | ✅ |
| Optimized Checkout | ✅ | ✅ |
| Abandoned Cart Recovery | ✅ | ✅ |
| SEO | ✅ | ✅ |
| Commissions Per Sale | ❌ | ❌ |
6. Payment Options & Fees
With both platforms, you can accept payments from popular payment methods like PayPal, Apple Pay, Stripe, etc.
Both platforms have built-in payment options, but you can configure more methods by using third-party apps.
If you use WooCommerce Payments, they will charge additional transaction fees. But for PrestaShop payments, each method may have different fees. For example, PayPal may charge 2.9% + €0.35 per transaction.
WooCommerce charges you a standard fee of 2.9% +$0.30 per transaction.
| WooCommerce | PrestaShop | |
| Paypal | ✅ | ✅ |
| Credit & Debit Card | ✅ | ✅ |
| Stripe | ✅ | ✅ |
| Apple Pay | ✅ | ✅ |
| Google Pay | ✅ | ✅ |
| Square | ✅ | ✅ |
| Transaction Fees | ✅ | ✅ |
7. Multilingual Support
Both platforms support multiple languages. If you are using WooCommerce, then you need to install the WPML plugin to integrate multiple languages.
But PrestaShop comes with an already installed module that enables multilingual support.
| WooCommerce | PrestaShop | |
| Multi-Lingual Support | ✅ | ✅ |
8. Pricing
Both platforms are open-source and free. Your domain and hosting will cost $20 per year, depending on your web host.
Modules for both platforms are free and paid. PrestaShop modules cost $49–$200, and theme $40–$120. WooCommerce extensions cost $29–$249 annually.
| WooCommerce | PrestaShop |
| $0 | $0 |
9. Customer Support
PrestaShop, an open-source platform, offers good support options, including email and community support, to help you with the issues you may encounter.
They also offer support plans if you need advanced assistance. The pricing of support plans is a bit higher, and small business owners would not want to pay for support.
While WooCommerce, is an open-source platform, it has a big ecosystem of developers and online learning platforms. For core plugin issues, you can visit the WordPress.org WooCommerce support forum or the WooCommerce website. These support forums allow you to post and view solved issues.
The WooCommerce support page has extensive documentation, tutorials, and guides to help you solve problems.
| WooCommerce | PrestaShop | |
| Phone Support | ❌ | ❌ |
| Email Support | ❌ | ✅ |
| Live Chat | ❌ | ❌ |
| Call | ❌ | ❌ |
| Community | ✅ | ✅ |
| Tutorials & Documentations | ✅ | ✅ |
WooCommerce vs PrestaShop: Final Thoughts
Ecommerce platforms have many considerations. Much to compare, contrast, and consider. I hope I have contributed.
PrestaShop and WooCommerce are both acceptable. Both platforms make store building and management easy.
Yes, differences exist. WooCommerce’s navigation is more straightforward than PrestaShop’s store management dashboard. Both have extensive user documentation and helpful communities.
However, I think WooCommerce outperforms PrestaShop.
PrestaShop is excellent, but you’ll need other tools for marketing, content, and other WordPress-like tasks.
WooCommerce uses WordPress themes and plugins to offer more features and options for marketing, sales, promotion, social media integration, rich content, and other activities you’ll spend a lot of time on when your store is up and running.
WooCommerce beats PrestaShop for these reasons.
