When starting a new ecommerce store, the question you’re often asked is whether to use PrestaShop or WordPress. The two platforms have many similarities but also some key differences that could help your business grow in different ways depending on what fits best with how it operates and who will be using them!
The question is so common because almost 40% of internet sites are built with WordPress. But from the technical point of view, WordPress is more of a blogging platform, while PrestaShop has been designed specifically for ecommerce.
But these days, the question is valid, and I think we can compare those. Let’s take a look at the following:
- When to use WordPress and PrestaShop
- When to Choose PrestaShop vs. WordPress
- Why Comparing PrestaShop and WordPress Is A Bad Thing
- Conclusion
When to use WordPress and PrestaShop
Learning curves for both WordPress and PrestaShop are quite similar. This means that you or your customers will spend about the same amount of time learning how to use them, regardless which system it is that you choose!
They are both open-source and free to modify and have many plugins, themes, customizations, and features.
However, if you want to start an ecommerce website with WordPress – the platform offers plenty of plugins for this purpose. One of the most popular plugins for WordPress ecommerce is WooCommerce.
We even have an article comparing WooCommerce to PrestaShop for curious minds.
Here is a short table showing how similar WordPress and PrestaShop is:
| Feature | WordPress | PrestaShop |
|---|---|---|
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Completely free | Yes | Yes |
| Cheap hosting expenses | Yes | Yes |
| Cloud hosting solutions | Yes | Yes |
| Thousands of plugins | Yes | Yes |
| Thousands of themes | Yes | Yes |
| Big community | Yes | Yes |
| Over ten years in development | Yes | Yes |
| Paid support solutions | Yes | Yes |
| Growing popularity | Yes | Yes |
| Great performance | Yes | Yes |
When to Choose PrestaShop vs. WordPress
As mentioned earlier, PrestaShop is an ecommerce platform having multiple range of features:
- Lots of payment methods
- Lots of warehouse, shipping, delivery features
- Lots of support currencies and localization options
- Multilanguage
- Multi-store (meaning you can have one back office for multiple stores/domains)
So PrestaShop will be the best if you have any of the following problems:
- You have tons of products.
- You have complex shipping or delivering workflow.
- You need lots of customizations or workflows.
- You have stores in multiple locations.
- You provide worldwide ecommerce.
If you are planning to have blog with lots of articles or a very tiny shop (with less than 100 items) – WordPress might be the great choice!
Why Comparing PrestaShop and WordPress Is A Bad Thing
PrestaShop is an ecommerce platform. It was built as an online store initially, while WordPress was a blog engine built from the start.
The two platforms haven’t changed to anything else. The only way you can get more functionality out of them is by using plugins, as both have tons of it.
I cannot think of anything better for ecommerce than PrestaShop, but all the blogging should certainly be done with WordPress.
Not sure about PrestaShop? See our article about trying PrestaShop demo.
Conclusion
This was a concise comparison of PrestaShop and WordPress. I covered in much more detail other platforms, which you can read about in PrestaShop comparison to other platforms blog.