If you’re looking to launch an e-commerce project, it’s important that you make the right decision when it comes to choosing which tool to use. Two of the specific platforms for the creation and management of e-commerce shops are PrestaShop and Magento. Each of these has its unique strengths, along with certain downsides.

Below, we’ll offer a comparison of Magento vs PrestaShop to make it easier to choose one or the other when it’s time to create your own online shop.

What is Magento?

Magento is an open-source tool for the creation and management of online shops. With Magento, you’ll gain access to various tools allowing you to carry out advanced e-commerce management, with marketing, SEO optimisation and stock-management options.

Advantages of using Magento to create an online shop

Magento offers significant benefits in developing e-commerce sites, including:

1. Creating scalable shops

One of the main benefits offered by Magento when it comes to developing and managing e-commerce businesses is its scaling possibilities. You can go from managing just a few products to marketing thousands of them, without the need to change tool or carry out any complex transformation processes for your e-commerce business.

2. Multi-platform and multi-language

With Magento it’s easier to manage various shops from the same control panel. This tool is perfect for those with various digital businesses, looking to manage them all in an integrated way from the same platform.

What’s more, Magento includes the capacity to create your online shop in various languages, allowing you to reach customers on the international market.

3. Great performance

Magento is the favourite choice of those seeking to launch e-commerce projects intended to receive a large quantity of visits. With this tool, you can create large shops and marketplaces that support a large volume of web traffic without any negative impact to the site’s performance.

4. It’s very safe

Creating an e-commerce business with Magento guarantees a high level of security. Beyond the periodic security updates carried out by the platform, it also offers additional security patches to guarantee your site a higher degree of protection against external attacks.

Constructing an online shop with Magento is synonymous with security and reliability, which is why many large shop and marketplace projects put their trust in this tool.

What is PrestaShop?

PrestaShop is an open-source platform through which users can develop and manage a virtual shop. It features all the tools and elements necessary to create an e-commerce site, such as shopping baskets, cross-selling, product pages, payment gateways or shipment management, among others.

Advantages of PrestaShop for creating an e-commerce business

The advantages offered by PrestaShop for creating an online business are very attractive. PrestaShop’s main strengths are:

1. It’s open source

PrestaShop is developed under an open-source licence, which means that you can use it for commercial projects without the need to pay. With PrestaShop, you can create an e-commerce business while reducing any initial investments.

2. It allows for a high degree of customisation

With PrestaShop, you’ll have access to a wide variety of modules allowing you to add all types of features to your e-commerce site. It also includes a range of templates to change the appearance of your online shop.

PrestaShop is the ideal platform if you want to develop a professional online shop with a high degree of customisation, both visually and functionally.

3. Very easy to use

Both installing and using PrestaShop are very easy and require no advanced technical knowledge or understanding of web programming. With a simple and intuitive interface, you can access all the platform’s tools and options to efficiently create and manage an online shop.

4. Huge community

PrestaShop has wide online community, making it easy to find resources and information about any issues concerning the creation of online shops. What’s more, this community actively participates in aspects such as security, the development of modules to add new features, and the creation of templates to change the design of PrestaShop stores.

Magento vs PrestaShop: which should you choose?

We’ve put Magento and PrestaShop head to head to identify their main differences and make it easier to choose which tool is the one for you.

Shop administration

Shop administration and management is one of the key aspects that can swing the balance one way or the other.

While on PrestaShop it’s easier to access shop configuration and administration options, the variety of options presented by Magenta is greater. Both platforms feature an intuitive and simple interface, making it easier to configure and manage your e-commerce business at any time. The learning curve for Magento is greater than that of PrestaShop, making the latter the recommended choice for simpler projects or those carried out by users without any prior knowledge of these types of e-commerce platforms.

E-commerce customisation

Again, both platforms stand out in this regard. Both Magento and PrestaShop offer a wide range of add-ons to customise the shop to the needs of each project. With both tools, you can create practically any type of online shop without any excessive difficulty.

When it comes to visual customisation, PrestaShop offers many more options, with a greater variety of templates that allow you to adapt the design of your online shop.

Online-shop performance

The performance of Magento and PrestaShop depends to a great extent on the hosting service on which your site is stored. In any case, Magento is superior in this regard, as it has been designed to be able to work with thousands of items and support large volumes of web traffic without affecting the performance of the e-commerce site.

If web traffic is a relevant factor for your project, Magento is a better option than PrestaShop hosting.

Site security levels

If there’s one issue that concerns both users and businesses today, it’s cybersecurity. An online shop should have a high level of security as it handles sensitive user data, as well as banking information.

Magento and PrestaShop are in constant development, offering periodic updates that correct vulnerability and increase security levels for your online shop.

It should be noted that Magento also includes a system of independent security patches that the user can install on their online shop. This fact offers it an extra level of security in comparison to PrestaShop.

If you’re planning to launch an e-commerce site, choosing between Magneto and PrestaShop is a decision you will probably need to consider. Both platforms are specialised in the development and management of online shops, and are the most popular options on the market in this regard.

PrestaShop is a great choice to quickly and easily create a professional online shop. What’s more, it offers a high level of customisation, both visually and in terms of the features available.

Magento is more attractive if you expect your e-commerce business to receive large quantities of web traffic. As a scalable platform, you can immediately increase the options and items offered, without the need to apply any significant changes to the e-commerce site.