Magento or Prestashop, which is better? [closed]

Question

I want to find an ecommerce solution for my little shop. My friend tells me that Prestashop is very easy to use and develop modules for, but some say Magento is better. Can anybody tell me which is better for developing modules and why?

Answer 1

Magento is more polished, but also a beast to modify, in my experience. After using Magento for a few shops, we switched to Prestashop and are much happier. It took a bit more customization up front (French-based development left some quirks in the address forms, for example), but it is much, much simpler to wrap your brain around and to develop custom modules.

Answer 2

Magento is S L O W. It has a very specific list of server requirements that have to be met, and even then it may not work 100%.

Also, using Magento on a shared hosting environment can be VERY insecure as Magento likes to have things writable on the file system. If your hosting company does not have iron clad security another user on that system can make changes in those writeable areas.

As far as code quality, I'd say it's pretty good. It's also more complicated than it needs to be. They completely ignored the K.I.S.S. principle (Keep It Simple, Silly).

To sum up, Magento is good if you are interested in an expensive server and complex development. If you want straight forward, it's not for you.

Answer 3

Like you, i am NOT a programmer but a store owner. So i hope my view point helps you, i have used both PrestaShop and Magento.

Magento i didn't like, boat ware!
Prestashop is good, pretty templates but the good modules are not free and to get an online shop with the features you need can end up costing 1000s

I also use Zen Cart, while it has the worlds ugliest standard template, if your CSS knowledge is average you can make it look pretty much like anything you want. It has more features built in than the Magento £11k pa has and all modules on the site are free and also a better community too as the forums are open source focused.

Hope it helps.

Answer 4

I fully agree with the opinion that MAGENTO is to "heavy" and consumes too much CPU and memory. If you have your own dedicated server you may try MAGENTO.

But if you can afford shared hosting only use lightweight PRESTASHOP. Much shoppers do not need complicated functionalities provided by MAGENTO and therefore don't like it. More doesn't always mean better - sometimes simpler means better.

Moreover there is large set of PRESTASHOP extensions available free and commercial ones. so every shop owner may choose what he needs and wants. Every potential market gap is filled immediately e.g. if somebody noticed there is no fast checkout option in the guest mode buying. This kind of extension appears immediately on the market.

Answer 5

I am not a programmer, so I am confined to noob-like needs. At first I tried Magento, and found it to be difficult. It also "crashed" (not sure what word to use) a couple times, the last time beyond something I could figure out. I began to wonder if the entire thing was created just to get me to get in so deep that I'd need pro support to fix it when in a pinch.

So as I searched the internet looking for a decent alternative, I stumbled upon PrestaShop. I gave it a shot, since my Magento site was still RIP. Found it to be much easier to use, and I had a shop up and running (STILL up and running) in a day.

So I'm not sure what it all means, but hands down I liked PrestaShop better. I did like the options to create multiple shopping experiences within Magento, but I figure I can just use multiple PrestaShop installs to accomplish the same thing. Either way I'd have to customize 'em, anyway.

So that's my two cents, for what it's worth. Hope it helps someone.

Answer 6

I used Prestashop, it is really good one. As an programmer can customize and make required changes in it. Also Prestashop having good modules which are available for free.