What is the reason I must use Prestashop?

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I'm going to build a online shop with the following requirements:

 

1. Fixed amount/percentage discount within certain period

2. Global voucher (for all users) and individual voucher (for particular users only)

3. Free shipment or discounted shipment

4. Reward point ( for example, when a user purchase more than certain amount, he will get some reward points so that he can use it later)

 

The others should be standard features.

 

The key factors to decide which platform to choose are:

 

Functionality (meet my requirement)

Cost

Performance

Expandability

 

Actually I read some articles and posts in stack overflow. Surprisingly most people recommend Prestashop. This makes me puzzled why there are so many users use Magenta already. Most people said Prestashop is lighter so that it's faster. But I build two demo sites:

 

prestashop.jesuisla.com.hk

shopdemo.jesuisla.com.hk

 

It seems sometimes Prestashop is even slower. Do I need to optimize it? (Both sites disable the cache.)

 

Any suggestion will be appreciate. Thanks.

[[email protected]]

I did a test to open my home page, catalog page and product page. In prestashop, it takes about 6-7s. In Magento, it takes about 4-5s. Why prestashop is slower? What should I do to optimize it?

[tuk66]

This is PrestaShop forum. Don't you expect to recommend Magento, do you.

 

YSlow results:

URL: http://prestashop.jesuisla.com.hk/ Grade B, Overall performance score 84

URL: http://shopdemo.jesuisla.com.hk/ Grade D, Overall performance score 62

 

URL: http://prestashop.jesuisla.com.hk/product.php?id_product=14 Grade B, Overall performance score 83

URL: http://shopdemo.jesuisla.com.hk/index.php/kenneth-cole-new-york-men-s-con-verge-slip-on.html Grade D, Overall performance score 63

[Scotty501]

Prestashop has come a long way and is by far for me the best e-commerce platform out there. Magento has been around for an awful long time and as such has many users due to this - I have not touched Magento for some time now so recent updates may have improved the software.

 

Far more people are starting to move down the Prestashop route these days (as you have seen in forums elsewhere). Magento in my opinion is too bloated - and slower.

 

There are others of course, and I have tested them all to some level and the nearest I found in usage was Tomato Cart (maybe one for the future) - but I still go with Prestashop at the moment with the new release looking nice and sparkly.

 

I ran two speed tests on your links and Prestashop was faster (as the above post shows from tuk66).

 

There are more ways to optimise Prestashop which could speed it up even further if you have not done so already. Check the performance tab in your back office.

 

For me - it's all about support.

 

Magento has a large community - so help is pretty good. Prestashop fails here for me. Forums need sorting out big time - search just does not work, but after learning, failing and winning with PS - it has made me a little more self sufficient with Prestashop so I tend not to need so much help. For new users to Prestashop - it can be a real struggle getting help - and that is a problem for PS.

 

Just my opinion but I hope it helps.

Edited May 10, 2012 by Scotty501 (see edit history)

[Mike Kranzler]

Hi bagusflyer,

In terms of your specific requirements, all of those can be handled either by default with PrestaShop or with an external module you can easily find in your Addons store.

 

In terms of key factors, I will try to answer each one individually:

 

Functionality - I addressed this above, but I also would like to note that PrestaShop's administration panel is far more streamlined and easy to use when it comes to creating and managing your site.

 

Cost - PrestaShop is 100% free to download and use. You have the opportunity to purchase external addons such as modules and themes, but you can absolutely be selling online today without spending a dime on your site. That's completely up to you.

 

Performance - Scotty and tuk did a good job of addressing this above. When you compare apples to apples, I think PrestaShop compares pretty favorably.

 

Expandibility - PrestaShop is 100% open source (something Magento is moving away from, which led to the recent resignation of their co-founder), so the potential is limitless with PrestaShop.

 

I hope this helps address your remaining concerns.

 

-Mike

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Thanks for all your replies. Of course I'm not expecting your recommendation for magenta here. But I really want to hear more opinions although I heard quite a lot in Stack Overflow already.

 

The main thing puzzled me is the opinion about the the performance of the website. I don't know how you get the performance scores (or maybe you did after I adjust my website configuration). For me I just counting while the page is loading. The Prestashop is a little bit slower than Magenta. However, I did some researches I found the slowness is caused by the cache and "Force compile". When I turn off the "force compile" and turn on the cache, the prestashop can be very fast. Of cause when I do the comparison, I should turn off the cache because the cache is turn off in my Magenta site.

 

Another thing I have to mention is the Webservice api. Are there any example anywhere ? ( I found one for Magenta which is using SOAP. But I prefer REST than SOAP.)