Comparison between Magento and Prestashop Ecommerce System

Hello Friends..Thanks for your comments on my previous blog comparison between Magento and Zen-cart.
Recently i finished one project in Prestashop and i found that its very good E-commerce system for small business solution.  And also i found prestashop and little less feature than Magento Provides, Here below i provide brief comparison between Magento and Prestashop

About Magento:

Magento is Open Source eCommerce software. Magento eCommerce was launched on March 31, 2008. Within two years of development, Magento has become one of the most popular eCommerce software.

About Prestashop:

PrestaShop is Open Source e-commerce software for Web 2.0. PrestaShop is available as licensed software and was officially launched in August 2007 for small and medium enterprises. Prestashop is based on the Smarty template engine.

Comparison between Magento & Prestashop

1. Size of software

Presta - 2.2 MB (1292 files)

Magento 10.3 Mb (5521 files)

2. Installation

Prestashop installation requirements are less.

Magento installation needs a lot of extensions like PDO, CURL etc

3. Features

When it comes to features, Magento is a way ahead from Prestashop. Customer groups, product comparison, CMS are there in Magento. Magento’s SEO features make it the most suitable ecommerce software. Magento also provide Multi-Store feature which is very powerful. When it comes to design also, Magento is a clear winner.

Prestashop’s search feature is very impressive. The search on Prestashop frontend is relatively faster than magento.

4. Code contrast

Prestashop is based on PHP5 and Smarty template engine. The first model MVC is not excellent. It will be difficult if you touch the first Prestashop code. The line of code is much more for smarty adoption; which increases the workload for extending development.

Magento adopts Zend framework. The developers are not only required to master PHP, but also required to have good knowledge about Zend framework.

5. Shipping & Payment Modules

Magento offers wide range of shipping and payment modules, whereas such feature is missing in Prestashop.

6. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Magento is relatively more SEO friendly than Prestashop.

7. Design Flexibility

Design of Magento seems to be difficult than Prestashop. So, if you don’t have much technical skills and you want to customize the Magento Design, then you should hire magento expert.

8. Backoffice

The back office of Magento is less intuitive which requires more technical skills to manage it effectively. Whereas, backoffice of Prestashop is relatively simple and easy.

9. Community

Magento has comparatively larger community. Magento Community have 130,000 members, Prestashop have 30000 members. (Figures are approximate).

Function contrast:

Features	Prestashop	Magento
Open Source	100%	100%
Pricing	Free	Free
Templatable	Smarty	Smarty
Multi-Language	Yes	Yes
Multi-Currency	Yes	Yes
Product Reviews	Yes	Yes
Product Ratings	Yes	Yes
Downloadable	Yes	Yes
Related Products	Yes	Yes
Product Features	Yes	Yes
Newsletters	Yes	Yes
Discount Coupon	Yes	Yes
SEO URLs	Yes	Yes
Backup & Restore	Yes	Yes
Printable Invoices	Yes	Yes
Sales Reports	Yes	Yes
Free Shipping	Yes	Yes
Wholesale	Yes	Yes
News & Events	No	No
Wish List	No	Yes
Testimonlals	No	No
Track order	No	No
F.A.Q	No	No
Gift Certificate	No	No
Recently Viewed	No	No
Points	No	No
Bulk Category Add	No	No
Bulk Product Add	No	No
Product Comparison	No	Yes
Statistics	Yes	No
Affiliate	No	No
Memberships	Yes	No
One-page Checkout	No	No
Order Barcode	No	No
Merchandise return (RMAs)	No	No
RSS Feed	No	Yes
TAG	No	Yes
Send to friend	No	No
Access Restrictions	No	No
Live Chat Software	No	No