Magento vs PrestaShop vs Shopify

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Magento

3.1K
877
+ 1
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PrestaShop

502
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+ 1
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Shopify

12.1K
6.4K
+ 1
76
Advice on Magento, PrestaShop, and Shopify
Dan Platon
Needs advice
on
PrestaShopPrestaShopSyliusSylius
and
SymfonySymfony

I'm looking to build an eCommerce website and seeking advice from professionals on the most reliable tech stack that I can use. Currently, the website is built on top of WordPress with WooCommerce, but the company has grown up, and evidently, the number of products have been increased. The site needs a fresh code because WordPress doesn't make it anymore.

The stack I'm most familiar with is PHP + Symfony + MySQL + Apache HTTP Server or NGINX. Headless eCommerce is the one I'm looking for, because of the huge complexity, it would be great to separate the backend from the frontend. Not sure about CMSs, because they had a huge amount of functionality that the application doesn't need. I've been looking also at PrestaShop, it seems ok, but not sure about customization and front-end integration. As a custom solution, I have found Sylius or Aimeos for the backend, but I'm not too sure about a frontend stack.

Could you please give some suggestions about the frontend stack and if the ones for the backend are ok?

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Replies (5)
Patryk Padus
CEO | IT Department at webo · | 6 upvotes · 24.7K views
Recommends
on
DrupalDrupal

You need PIM and Drupal can both do eCommerce site and PIM catalog with many modules. Tests are available and extension are coded as Open Source too. Smaller cost of ownership. Require knowledge and more debug to get good result. From version 10 it will provide automatic updates that required for e-commerce in term of security

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Thomas Rothe
Developer at netzGiraffe · | 4 upvotes · 4.2K views
Recommends
on
PrestaShopPrestaShopShopwareShopware

hey it is my first comment on stackshare :-) let me say, i am developer for/with prestashop and shopware

both using symfony but in different versions both system can completly customized in templates, modules, hooks/actions ....

i think it depends on the amount of products, countries and taxes too

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No professional experience with shopware but version 6 is rewrite using sYmfonY 5. It's #1 e-commerce software in Germany.

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Jean Francois Rebaud
Recommends

"You can use the framework of your choice, but the key thing to remember is that the best way to maintain a stable structure based on network demand and load is to use a DevOps approach with microservices. You can use Symfony, but with this framework, you typically have both the backend and frontend in the same source code, which can be more difficult to maintain and evolve. For more information on microservices and DevOps technology, you can refer to a DevOps case study on my website by following the link below:" https://profix-info.com/en/etude/

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Pascal MARTINEAU

Hi, Sylius (headless) is great. For the front, I suggest you to have a look at vuestorefront.io, I've never used it but heard a lot about it and it seems it fits well with Sylius.

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Needs advice
on
MagentoMagento
and
Reaction CommerceReaction Commerce

I am consulting for a company that wants to move its current CubeCart e-commerce site to another PHP based platform like PrestaShop or Magento. I was interested in alternatives that utilize Node.js as the primary platform. I currently don't know PHP, but I have done full stack dev with Java, Spring, Thymeleaf, etc.. I am just unsure that learning a set of technologies not commonly used makes sense. For example, in PrestaShop, I would need to work with JavaScript better and learn PHP, Twig, and Bootstrap. It seems more cumbersome than a Node JS system, where the language syntax stays the same for the full stack. I am looking for thoughts and advice on the relevance of PHP skillset into the future AND whether the Node based e-commerce open source options can compete with Magento or Prestashop.

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Replies (2)
Kyle Harrison
Web Application Developer at Fortinet · | 8 upvotes · 26.4K views
Recommends
on
MagentoMagento

Where im confused is why you think PHP isn't commonly used. It powers the grand majority of the internet, and as a language designed entirely around making websites (as opposed to general purpose languages like Java that have crammed in an http server to make it work for websites too), its a language that's incredibly easy to jump into, and offers a lot of flexibility and versatility on how to navigate web facing challenges.

Also don't kid yourself about the node "one language" ecosystem. You will find yourself often visually confused as you jump between editor tabs which .js is aimed at the browser, and which .js is aimed at the server, and gets even weirder when using js based templating engines. (This is why in my node projects with a front-end, I use Angular, which uses TypeScript),). JS was never intended to run outside of a browser based VM context, its just yet another language we've jimmyrigged an http compatible socket listener into and given filesystem access.

If you're worried about wasting your time jumping into bed with PHP, don't be. Its not only extremely widely used, but after 20 years its still incredibly relevant, high performing (you will be shocked to see how fast php7 actually is), high paying (yes, six figures), and the language itself has evolved leaps and bounds into a multi-paradigm beast of a toolkit bespoke to solving web challenges.

If you liked Spring, check out Symfony sometime. Its a PHP7 web framework that takes a LOT of inspiration from Spring, and pairs up with Doctrine, a PHP7 ORM that takes a great deal of inspiration from Hibernate. The company that makes Symfony, is also the same people behind Twig, which is so ridiculously good and popular, its been ported to pretty much every language including Java and node.

As for free packaged out of the box storefronts, Magento is a total beast of a package, and isn't for the feint of heart. But it is also THE most complete and ridiculously configurable self hostable e-commerce system you'll ever come across. Many web professionals have made entire careers completely around Magento. I am not one of them, but I have used Magento, PrestaShop, and several others, and I keep coming back to Magento. Outside of hosted shops like Shopify, Magento is, as far as I'm concerned, where you wanna be for a totally custom, plug-in based shop front for a website. The only time I'd recommend different, is if a customers website is powered by WordPress, then WooCommerce is where you wanna be.

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anas mattar
Technical Lead at DPO International · | 2 upvotes · 8.7K views
Recommends

I prefer to use Magneto because it open source and has a lot of extensions in it so it's so faster for building a website

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Decisions about Magento, PrestaShop, and Shopify

I decided on shopify over Woo since the user interface was so much easier to use. I have been setting up my hypnotherapy site. I was interested in the ease of using html as ell. For me i have little time to sit worrying about code and also have an assistant who is not familiar with websites, so it all needed to be easy to use and so Shopify seemed the better choice.

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Isaiah Garcia
Community Developer at StackShare · | 4 upvotes · 6.5K views

The interoperability and reliability of Shopify is simply unmatched on the market. Having been a web developer for a few years, I cannot imagine going with any other solutions because of the level of development that would need to go into each and every tweak requested by stakeholders.

Shopify makes it easy to use apps off the shelf to test an idea, after which you can replace it with a custom solution or build on top of it.

Using their robust API, array of webhooks, Shopify Flow and Shopify Scripts, with a little know-how anything you want to do is just a few clicks or lines of code away from reality. The community is also pretty robust, so if you ever need help, you're not alone.

Full disclosure: I've been invested since 2015, but it's because they really are the best on the market.

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Rhonda Greene

I chose Shopify over other options - the leading contender of which was WooCommerce - based mainly on the availability of integrations with other tools and platforms I use, as well as the ease of adding and updating inventory. Additionally, should I ever open a physical location, my existing inventory can easily be sold via a POS system as well. Eyes to the future!

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Giovanni Gatto
Developer at Whiskynet · | 3 upvotes · 11.7K views

We were about to migrate our older PHP 7.0 + Symfony 2.8 + Sylius 0.17 based E-commerce site to a more recent PHP stack. We were leaning towards Laravel as that has become our primary Framework in the recent years.

We chose Vanilo because it is so modular that it let us do the migration step by step and we could add the components we needed on the run. In total it took us 9 months to migrate everything from the old PHP 7.0 Symfony codebase to PHP 7.4/Laravel/Vanilo. We could also copy the old Admin theme to Vanilo thus the Admin users don't see any difference.

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David Swift

We devised SwiftERM to generate additional income from existing consumers on ecommerce websites. Available for those using Shopify, Magento, Woocommerce or Opencart, it runs in alongside (not instead of) existing email marketing software like Mailchimp, Drupal or Emarsys. It is 100% automatic so needs zero additional staff. It uses predictive analytics to identify imminent consumer purchases. The average additional turnover achieved is 10.5%. It is the only software in the world authorised to send Trustpilot to send product ratings in outbound emails. Developers and ecommerce retailers are invited to try to it for free, to establish viability this predictive analytics system is. SwiftERM is a certified Microsoft Partner MPN ID 6197468.

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BrandLume Inc
President at BrandLume · | 3 upvotes · 79.9K views

we've had alot of shopify clients and do alot of those website builds, but we decided a little while back to transfer any client possible to woocommerce, for our e-com web development, as there is alot more functionality available with zoo-commerce. you can have a look at our examples and even our own website in the link provided.

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Pros of Magento
Pros of PrestaShop
Pros of Shopify
  • 22
    Open source
  • 14
    Robust
  • 12
    Powerful
  • 10
    Widespread community support
  • 8
    E-commerce made easy
  • 4
    Mature
  • 4
    Flexible
  • 21
    Free
  • 15
    Powerful
  • 15
    Customisable
  • 14
    Easy to understand code
  • 13
    Scalable
  • 12
    Great community
  • 11
    Easy to customize with plugins
  • 10
    Easy learning
  • 8
    Fast
  • 7
    Rich features with powerful functions
  • 4
    Feature rich
  • 4
    Learning
  • 4
    Easy to handle
  • 23
    Affordable yet comprehensive
  • 14
    Great API & integration options
  • 11
    Business-friendly
  • 10
    Intuitive interface
  • 9
    Quick
  • 3
    Liquid
  • 3
    Awesome customer support
  • 2
    POS & Mobile
  • 1
    Dummy Proof
  • 0
    Nopcommerce

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Cons of Magento
Cons of PrestaShop
Cons of Shopify
  • 2
    System is too complex
  • 2
    Slow
  • 1
    Processor hungry
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 1
      User is stuck with building a site from a template

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    - No public GitHub repository available -

    What is Magento?

    Magento Community Edition is perfect if you’re a developer who wants to build your own solution with flexible eCommerce technology. You can modify the core code and add a wide variety of features and functionality.

    What is PrestaShop?

    PrestaShop is written in PHP, is highly customizable, supports all the major payment services, is translated in many languages and localized for many countries, and is fully responsive (both front- and back-office).

    What is Shopify?

    Shopify powers tens of thousands of online retailers including General Electric, Amnesty International, CrossFit, Tesla Motors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Foo Fighters, GitHub, and more. Our platform allows users to easily and quickly create their own online store without all the technical work involved in developing their own website, or the huge expense of having someone else build it. Shopify lets merchants manage all aspects of their shops: uploading products, changing the design, accepting credit card orders, and viewing their incoming orders and completed transactions.

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    What companies use PrestaShop?
    What companies use Shopify?

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    What tools integrate with Magento?
    What tools integrate with PrestaShop?
    What tools integrate with Shopify?

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    What are some alternatives to Magento, PrestaShop, and Shopify?
    WooCommerce
    WooCommerce is the most popular WordPress eCommerce plugin. And it's available for free. Packed full of features, perfectly integrated into your self-hosted WordPress website.
    WordPress
    The core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more there are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine. Over 60 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web they call “home” — we’d love you to join the family.
    OpenCart
    It is an online store management system. It is PHP-based, using a MySQL database and HTML components. Support is provided for different languages and currencies. It is freely available under the GNU General Public License.
    BigCommerce
    It is a true all-in-one ecommerce platform with the power to grow your business & help you sell more. It empowers you to rise above complexity – and ultimately focus on optimizing your business for growth.
    Broadleaf Commerce
    It provides the most sought-after eCommerce functionality for supporting B2C, B2B, Marketplace, Multi-Site, Multi-Tenant and API Commerce at the best value in the market. Every solution can be customized to ensure your eCommerce site is tailored to your specific requirements. Robust functionality within a lightweight framework lend to some of the characteristics that cause it to stand out from the rest. Never feel restricted by a features list again.
    See all alternatives