Magento vs Prestashop vs WordPress

Prestashop, launched 15 years ago, is the most widely used open source application in Spain today for creating online stores, with more than 22,000 ecommerces and a penetration rate of 55%. Magento is in second position, although quite far behind Prestashop, with 5,500 stores and a penetration rate of 13%. For its part, Woocommerce (WordPress) ranks fifth with 1,500 stores and a rate of 3%, according to a study by Xopie in collaboration with BBVA’s Digital and Omnichannel Technologies Team on online commerce in our country.   

What is Prestashop?

Prestashop is a free and open source content management system designed to build online stores from scratch, from small businesses to large corporations. Here are some of its main features:

• Attributes: allows the creation of product attributes such as different sizes or different shades.
• Catalog: offers the possibility of displaying the store as a catalog, thus disabling the shopping functions and displaying the space as a catalog.
• Statistics: incorporates statistics showing the trends of visitors to the store: most viewed products, number of sales…   
• Multi Language: offers translation into different languages in a simple way.   
• Multistore: allows you to create different online stores managed through a single administration panel, being able to establish relationships between the products of the different stores.   
• Express order: visitors to the store can place an order without the need to register.
• Checkout process: allows you to choose between a 5-step checkout process or a single page checkout. 
• Related products and cross-selling: allows you to implement different marketing techniques, such as offering related products next to the one being viewed or similar products consulted by other customers.  
• SEO: allows optimization without the incorporation of any module, the creation and edition of URLs, as well as the edition of title and meta description tags, fundamental elements for web positioning.  
• Responsive theme: the current version of Prestashop, version 1.6, presents a responsive template. That is, a template that adapts perfectly to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.  
• Quick view: allows the customer to have a quick view of the product’s characteristics, without the need to access the product’s file.

What is Magento?

Magento is an open source e-commerce platform that offers all online merchants and business owners a flexible shopping cart system, as well as full control over every aspect, content and functionality of the online store. Its main features include:

• Extensive catalog: offers a catalog of tools for management, marketing and search engine optimization.  
• Scale stores: allows you to scale stores from just a few products and simple needs to easily expand to tens of thousands of products without having to change platforms.   
• Discounts and promotions: during the purchase registration you will find a series of discounts and promotions.   
• Ease of use: it has been designed as an application that can be used by someone who does not even have developer skills.   
• Simple installation.  
• Payment platforms: offers support for more than 50 payment platforms.  
• Scalable and flexible solutions.  
• Variety of themes and plugins: which significantly improves the customer experience.  

Magento vs Prestashop

Magento is a very powerful application but also much more complex than Prestashop and has a more demanding server. The main differences between Prestashop and Magento are the following: 

• Large projects: Magento is the most recommended for large projects.  
• Administration panel: Magento’s is the most complete but also the most complex and with the steepest learning curve, requiring much more effort than the one used in Prestashop or Woocommerce/Wordpress.   
• Technical profile: due to the complexity of Magento configuration, it is more focused on the implementation of technical profiles that already know the app.
• Deadlines: under normal conditions, development times on this platform will be longer than those used in a Prestashop or Woocommerce project.   
• Prices: with a more complex installation, configuration, and optimization, the cost of the project will increase.   
• Features: among the platforms we are comparing, Magento has the most features and customization capabilities.   
• Server: Magento’s server requirements are higher than those of Prestashop or Woocommerce.

What is Woocomerce for WorPress?

WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that allows you to implement a fully functional online store on a website. Among the advantages offered by this plugin are the following:

• Extensive customization: you can customize your online store in a thousand and one ways thanks to the plugins that exist, and besides, you can create as many pages as you need and even have a blog next to your store.  
• Create events: you can create different types of events and sell the tickets on the website to attend. (The Events Calendar)
• Create a membership site: and hide web content to users who have not purchased a product (with WooCommerce Memberships).  
• Ease of use  
• Usability: marked by WordPress. If you have experience with WordPress it will be very easy to learn how it works. And if you don’t, it will be easier to learn to use both than if you start from scratch with another content management system designed to set up online stores.
• Selling subscriptions: and also charging customers on a recurring basis (Woocomerce Suscriptions) 

Prestashop vs WordPress

Woocommerce / WordPress is growing more and more and has a great projection both nationally and internationally. The main differences between Prestashop and Woocommerce are the following:

• Content management: while Prestashop is a specialized content management system for online stores, Woocommerce is an extension (plugin) to provide a general content management system such as WordPress with the features of an online store. 
• Stages in the checkout process: the checkout process is somewhat simpler in WordPress than in Prestashop, since in the latter an extension must be installed to implement an effective checkout process on a single page.  
• Invoices: Prestashop generates invoices automatically, while with Woocommerce it is necessary to install a plugin that performs this function.  
• Languages: in Prestashop it is not necessary to install any extension for language management. On the contrary, in WordPress to obtain good results you must purchase the paid plugin WPLM.  
• Themes or templates: WordPress has premium templates that are much more flexible than Prestashop.   

Conclusions

Each system has its own characteristics and advantages. While Prestashop is the most used application in Spain for the creation of online stores, Magento is the most used for large projects that require adequate customization. Woocommerce/Wordpress is focused on those online stores that we create ourselves with a flexible design, since it is much simpler than the previous ones. Therefore, depending on the ecommerce objective, it will be better to choose one or the other. 

Are you thinking of creating or redesigning your online store and are not sure which of the three systems can best suit your needs? Please do not hesitate to contact us, our our ecommerce development team will be happy to help you with your project 🙂