In the first quarter of 2021, e-commerce grew by 58% on an annual basis: traffic on shopping sites also increased by 27% (source: https://www.corrierecommunications.it/digital-economy/ecommerce/boom-delle-commerce-il-record-italiano-nel-2021-crescita-a-quota-78/).
Choosing among the many platforms available is not easy at all: it is an operation that must be performed by calculating different variables, because each company is different and each project must be calibrated according to its characteristics.
Before starting, you need to make a premise on the nature of the two platforms: Prestashop is a CMS, is a self-hosted Content Management System (open source), while WooCommerce is a plugin based on the WordPress CMS.
E-Commerce: PrestaShop or WooCommerce?
In this analysis we are going to take into account the following 6 indicators:
- Ease of use
- Management of the shop
- Personalization
- Performance and SEO
- Security and updates
- Cost
- Ease of use
Both tools are extremely simple and intuitive.
Regarding the possible use of one platform instead of the other, in the specific case of WooCommerce must be considered the preliminary knowledge (perhaps due to a previous use) of the WordPress interface (certainly one of the most used CMS platforms in the world).
In this case, in fact, people who are already familiar with WordPress will not find that hard to face a new graphical interface and become familiar with it.
However, regardless of the usage habits or preference for one over the other platform, from the point of view of ease of use there are no major differences between PrestaShop and WooCommerce. - Management of the shop
In both platforms it is quite easy to manage the various settings of the store.
However, if a shop needs a wide assortment, and therefore the loading of numerous products, it may be better to opt for PrestaShop.
The “limit” of WooCommerce lies in its being an additional function of WordPress. Unlike PrestaShop, in fact, which was created exclusively as an e-commerce platform, WordPress was born as a platform to create blogs.
Another difference concerns the default payment options.
While PrestaShop supports both bank transfers, cheques and other payments (PayPal, Stripe, etc) you must use the so-called modules, WooCommerce only supports PayPal and Stripe, while other payment options can be enabled only with additional options/plugin/integrations. - Personalization
PrestaShop has over 3500 third-party modules to implement countless features and customized themes, as well as the possibility to access a wide range of editable themes to create an exclusive store. In the product features, PrestaShop certainly offers more freedom of customization (e.g., custom selectors for attributes, product codes, calculation of stock discounts, etc.) than WooCommerce.
On the other hand, WooCommerce, offers a large library of extensions and plugins, but the most important aspect to consider is that they are compatible and functional, in terms of usability, for WordPress. - Performance and SERP/SEO
As we know, the issues of performance and positioning in search results (SERP/SEO) can have a great impact on the success of an e-commerce platform. For this reason, we have analyzed how the two platforms perform in these areas.
As to the performance, a great difference is made by the hosting where the e-commerce service is hosted.
With a good hosting and the right optimizations, both platforms offer a fast and reliable service.
Unlike Shopify, for example, both PrestaShop and WooCommerce do not include a hosting service: that is why the performance indicator, as mentioned, is strongly influenced by the choice of the hosting.
As SEO, you can work on optimizations on both platforms.
Within Prestashop there are no plugins able to automatically generate meta-descriptions and meta-titles (but there are several modules that help at this, for example SEO Manager by Codecanyon).
However, every time you add a product or a category, it is good practice to fill in all the fields dedicated to meta-data, useful for SEO optimization.
However, being closely related to WordPress, Woocommerce allows the change of URL, body content, Meta descriptions, alt tags and other elements of the page directly through WordPress Editor.
In short, it is as if you used the Yoast SEO plugin also for e-commerce optimization activities, because the actions are identical.
As far as SEO is concerned, the two platforms’ results are pretty much the same: optimizations must be carried out in both platforms in a constant manner, following the common rules of the SEO (the same regardless of the platform you use). - Security and updates
As for the performance, once again hosting plays an important role.
Basically, both platforms are vulnerable in the exact same way.
Some people believe that WooCommerce has a greater degree of potential risks, since it is a plugin and, as a consequence, it is more subject to frequent updates, that must be regularly executed to avoid high vulnerability risks.
However, what makes the difference is the adoption of additional measures for the protection of the website, for example by implementing additional security components or by correctly executing the proposed updates.
That said, however, also in this field the security that PrestaShop provides us is greater than that of WooCommerce: the latter, in fact, requires continuous (and necessary) updates, as well as compatibility with all other plugins installed on the website.
From this point of view, however, PrestaShop is a more secure and stable platform: since many modules are developed by PrestaShop itself, a working and secure setup is definitely granted. - Cost
Both PrestaShop and WooCommerce are completely free, with no monthly costs or sales commissions.
Both platforms can be used to sell physical and digital products, as well as to offer simple tools for product management, analysis and order fulfillment.
Any costs will be attributable to additional plugins or extensions, useful to implement more specific and additional features.
However, the basic functionalities of both platforms allow you to immediately sell in complete autonomy and with a wide choice of customization of themes, design and functionality.
Strengths
PrestaShop
- ease of configuration and management
- translation of contents into 25 languages
- intuitive “product creation” section
- 600 native features and numerous customization options
- excellent platform stability
- Lightweight software
WooCommerce
- integration with WordPress and extensive library of themes and plugins
- utility of being able to take advantage of the huge WordPress community
- being integrated with WordPress, it can be easier to find suitable hosting plans
- 100% customizable (header, footer, product cards, checkout, etc.)
- cheaper plugin and extension costs
Final considerations
To sum up, the effectiveness of a platform is closely connected to its use: between Prestashop and Woocommerce, therefore, there is no obvious preferential choice.
Each platform has its own characteristics and advantages or disadvantages in certain situations.
The choice mainly depends on the size of the company, the use of e-commerce, and the amount of products within it, the preferences on the technological stack, the specific know-how of the team and the resources needed when any update or change is to be implemented over time.
For a medium-large company, with an important activity in e-commerce, with a wide catalogue of products and constantly updated, Prestashop could be a more effective and above all strategic choice in the long term.
At the same time, however, Woocommerce’s scalability, extreme ease of use and lower costs of additional extensions could make the WordPress plugin a great choice for some companies.
In fact, there are many small and medium-sized businesses which do not sell that many products or which, perhaps, already use WordPress as a platform and do not want to waste time studying new interfaces or settings: in this case, for example, Woocommerce could be the perfect solution.
In short, it is clear that the choice of the right e-commerce platform is complex and must be considered after a careful study of all the key factors that define its characteristics. We hope with this short article to have tickled your curiosity and provided further ideas to make the right choice for your business.
If you want to learn more about e-commerce, If you want to learn more about e-commerce, take a look at our analysis between Shopify and Squarespace.
Sources consulted:
https://www.getastra.com/blog/cms/prestashop-vs-woocommerce/
https://www.perzonalization.com/blog/best-ecommerce-platform/
https://www.quora.com/Which-is-a-better-e-commerce-platform-Prestashop-or-Wordpress-Which-has-the-better-perspective
https://wpastra.com/prestashop-vs-woocommerce/
https://kinsta.com/it/blog/alternative-a-shopify/
https://www.serverplan.com/blog/prestashop-magento-woocommerce/
