PrestaShop vs. Woocommerce Comparison

Comparison  ·  September 2021  ·  By Remis Jarmalavicius  ·  4 minutes of reading

One of the biggest headaches when starting a new store is choosing where to host and what system to use for your store. And there are a dozen systems to try on: PrestaShop, Woocommerce, Drupal, Magento, Wix, Shopify.

I have been in the ecommerce business for almost 13 years and am willing to share some helpful tips on choosing the right fit for your store and what to watch out for.

You can find other platforms compared to PrestaShop in our blog. Still, in this article, I will explore the main differences between Woocommerce and PrestaShop.

In this article, I will explore the following:

PrestaShop community is small. It is a niche platform. But don’t get me wrong, it is not a disadvantage. Read on.

Woocommerce is WordPress with an ecommerce plugin on top. And WordPress is one of the most popular platforms ever. But popularity is not always good, and you will see shortly why.

Google Trends for PrestaShop vs Woocommerce
Google Trends for PrestaShop vs Woocommerce

As you see, Woocommerce popularity is growing, while PrestaShops is shrinking.

So the choice between Woocommerce over PrestaShop might be valid if you care more about popularity.

Ecommerce Management: PrestaShop vs Woocommerce

While Woocommerce is just a plugin for WordPress – it is not that rich in features. It is not that well-polished when it comes to the entire ecommerce business.

Woocommerce does not lack many capabilities however Prestashop was designed specifically for this type of activity.

PrestaShop was founded in 2007, while the initial release of Woocommerce happened in 2011. Now this is a substantial difference.

On both platforms, you will find lots of similarities:

  • products management
  • catalog (categories) management
  • orders
  • discounts
  • purchases
  • reports

There is no reason to compare the mentioned content types became the only significant difference is the user interface. However, there is one huge difference which we will talk about a bit later is – content (pages, blog posts).

Content Management System: PrestaShop vs Woocommerce

Because Woocommerce is based on WordPress, a blogging platform, it already contains a rich suite for content management: custom/static pages and blog platform.

While you can have static pages and blogs in PrestaShop, it is more limited as you usually have to buy a blog addon for PrestaShop to start a blog. Such a plugin can cost from 50 to 120 USD.

PrestaShop for free has some ability to create basic pages and blog articles, but that is nothing “rich” to compare to Woocommerce, which uses Wodpress blogging platform.

Plugins in PrestaShop vs. Woocommerce

For Woocommerce, you can install up to 60k plugins to your store, while PrestaShop owns only 3k addons.

That might be a considerable limitation at first, but pay attention that Woocommerce plugins are designed for content (blog) management most of the time. I doubt that there are more than 3k addons intended for ecommerce.

So don’t drive your conclusion out of numbers that do not have any meaning.

Plugins Prices in PrestaShop vs. Woocommerce

PrestaShop has an official marketplace and marketplace in EShopAddons. Typical PrestaShop addons costs are from 30-150 USD. While with Woocommerce, everything is trickier; it ranges from free to 150 USD.

You will rarely find PrestaShop plugins for free that would be up-to-date and from good sources. At the same time, Woocommerce has lots of free plugins for paid alternatives.

That might be a good advantage for Woocommerce owners.

When to Choose What: PrestaShop vs. Woocommerce

There are use cases to choose PrestaShop as there are for Woocommerce. I built a list of the most vital points to select one or another; maybe that will help decide.

When to choose PrestaShop:

  • When you plan to have lots of products (1k or more)
  • When you need warehouse management
  • When you have complex discounts and promotions, logic
  • When you have ample staff or multi-region ecommerce
  • When you want to run multiple stores from one project

When to choose Woocommerce:

  • When blog content will be the main leads generator (affiliate marketing)
  • When you have your copywriters for content.

Of course, there are more reasons to choose Woocommerce. Still, I never found any reason where Woocommerce beats PrestaShop badly in any area except on blog content.

Conclusion: PrestaShop or Woocommerce

The conclusion when suggesting to my clients is based on how tricky/extensive the ecommerce system will be in 5-10 years.

If content (blog, pages) is not your store’s main drive, then I would select PrestaShop as it is the best platform if you have a warehouse, have lots of tracking/shipping to do, or you think that your business is complex and needs lots of various workflows.

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