Magento VS PrestaShop, everything you need to know

Introducing Magento

• In 2008 Varien created Magento, an open source ecommerce CMS (Content Management System). The project was based on the Zend framework. 
• In June 2009, Varien launched the Enterprise version, which is paid on the basis of an annual fee and offers some additional features such as private sales. 
• In 2018 Adobe bought Magento, but the open source project continues to exist. 
• Currently, Magento is at version 2.4, and it is this version that we will use in the comparison.

Growth curve of Magento stores (all versions together): 

Source: https://trends.builtwith.com/shop/Magento

Introducing PrestaShop

In 2007, students from Epitech (school for computer science and new technologies) created the open source CMS PrestaShop. At its inception, PrestaShop used an “in-house” framework that is currently being transitioned to Symfony. 

Today, it is the company of the same name that manages and maintains the PrestaShop open source project. The latest version is 1.7.8 (7.8 with the new version nomenclature); this is the version we will use in this comparison.

Here is the curve of PrestaShop stores (all versions together):

Source: https://trends.builtwith.com/shop/PrestaShop

Key points of the comparison

The objective is to provide a practical guide for making the right choice between the 2 CMS and not to compare features. So we’re going to compare 5 points: 

 

	Technical relevance	Explanation
Community	+++	More advice and feedback on best practices
Price	+	Enables easier start-up and maintenance
Performance	+++	Makes it easier to bear the load and is more pleasant to navigate
SEO	++	Helps generate natural traffic to the site
Integration	++	Reduces costs and increases quality by pooling developments

 

	Business relevance	Explanation
Community	++	Enables better support
Price	+++	Minimizes financial risk and maximizes return on investment
Performance	+++	Reduces bounce rate and supports traffic peaks
SEO	+++