PrestaShop vs other Open Source eCommerce Platforms

[Sheldmandu]

Guys, just wanted to say how impressed I am with PrestaShop architecture and coding. We're currently using osCommerce in our shop and have been looking for a better shopping cart platform. As someone from a software development background I look very closely at shopping cart achitecture, not just the features it has, as I know we'll want to implement our own additons and customisations and I have to say that PrestaShop puts every other open source php shopping cart to waste. For someone who understands OO programming it's the perfect solution, as it's not overengineered and poor performing like Magento and much much better written than something like ZenCart or osCommerce.

Here's our experience with other carts for anyone interesting and trying to select the right cart to use (i.e. PrestaShop).

osCommerce - Nice and simple to modify and doesn't have all the bloat like ZenCart, oscMax and creLoaded. We just added the features we wanted and heavily customised it. Customisation is a real pain though, especially when you get into more complex areas that require you to touch much of the codebase. There is no decent templating system and html is generated all over the shop. Still we found it a much better platform that ZenCart or other derivatives as it had less code, so we modified as we wanted it. It also lacks many features, is outdated and contains lots of un-necessary compatibility layer code for PHP4. I've also looked at osCommerce v3.0 Alpha and can't say that I'm too impressed with how its architected.

ZenCart, oscMax, creLoaded - These are osCommerce delivatives with far too many features added and not all working properly. Moreover, they are poorly structured and a real pain to modify because there is no solid architecture behind them. HTML is pumped out all over the shop (literally) and so called templates are little more than files extracted out of the main page making it hell to made any major modifications as to make a simple change you need to modify like 10 files.

Magento - The functionality is impressive, but its very complex and performance is terrible without alot of tuning. Worst of all you shouldn't even dare run it unless you have at least a VPS as you can't optimise performance without that. It gets worse if you try to run it with 20000+ products as the EAV model used in the DB is not very well suited to that. There is always trade-offs between performance and "flexibility" and I think Magento didn't consider performance enough. To make any changes, especially core changes you really need to know what you're doing with Magento.

PrestaShop - Very well architected and lean codebase using modern software develoment methods (i.e. Object Oriented with MVC pattern). Smartly uses the well known and adopted Smarty for the templating engine instead of inventing its own. Great example of OO development in PHP. For an experienced OO+PHP developer will take less than a day to understand. Great use of Hooks (same as Events in Microsoft world) to enable custom code to tap into the core functionality. Unfortunately it currently lacks some much needed documentation and core functionality like Advanced Search, but hopefully this will change sooner rather than later. Either way that's something that can be easily added.

I think PrestaShop is the most promising open source PHP shopping cart out there and has awesome potential. However I also think the PrestaShop team needs to focus on getting the core functionality (i.e. what's expected from a decent shopping cart) nailed down before adding new funky features such as multi-store support, which will only be used by few (while everyone needs to search). Also, for modules such as FAQs which can be achieved using CMS functionality the need is not as great. Would love to see the following:
- At least one CC module such as Authorize.net in the core
- One-page checkout (i.e. Where all customer data is entered on a single AJAX drive page like in Magento)
- Ability to edit orders from the backend before payment is made (very very important for shops where negotiation and quoting happens)
- Shipping Calculation on Product Pages and Shopping Cart page (with ability to enter destination postcode)

Once again... PrestaShop is just brilliant and with a bit of nurturing can become the #1 open source shopping cart, at least for implementers and developers. Great work.

[TropischBruin]

Nice that you are comparing Apples with PineApples.

Plus you are forgetting that Zen and osCommerce where designed 6 years ago.

The only comparison that I see fit is PS with Magento, and yes, PS wins handsdown because it is easy to install and to maintain.

But.
Did you compare also the functionality between these two, and if so, what is the major difference?

Personaly I think tha Magento offers more functionality....; first and major difference in that field is that PS has no order-editor, PS cannot create orders form the admin. These both are a must have!

So, next time you compare "something" make sure you compare the right things.

[Sheldmandu]

I do realise that Zen and osC were designed 6 years ago and their architecture is pretty shocking if you look undercovers, which is why we're looking to move to something better. One of the main factors for us is performance with a large catalogue and ability to host cost effectively. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what features Magento has if it doesn't perform well and is difficult to extend. Features is something that can be added, architecture is not something that can be easily changed. Also osC 3.0 Alpha 5 is not that well designed and that's not exactly 6 years old.

I certainly agree that PrestaShop is missing some very core and important functionality (absolutely vital before we consider actually using it). Such functionality includes:
- Custom Shipping Modules (i.e. where the shipping cost depends on delivery postcode and products (i.e. Cubic Weight, not just weight))
- Custom Order Total Modules (i.e. same as in osC) so you can add surcharges for Credit Cards for example or Shipping Insurance
- Advanced Search (i.e. So you can search by Category, Manufacturer, Price Range) - same as in osC
- Order Confirmation Screen (Where you can see the total order cost including all surchages, etc)
- Separation of Order Creation & Payment - i.e. So you can select payment method, etc. Get the total price, place the order and then pay. This enable orders to be adjusted before they're paid for... Very important in a realistic environment where you have real-time communication.
- Shipping Calculation in Shopping Cart & on Product Pages

As much as I love the code and think highly of the PrestaShop architecture, I just don't think it's quite ready to be used by us without either the PS team or our guys adding a few critical features. From an architectural perspective though, it's by far the best and I hope those features can be added. For now we'll be sticking with our good old highly customised version of osC. The main reason we use osC is because it's so easy to add new features. No layers and layers of abstraction to drag code through. PS is also simple / quick enough to modify. Personally, I think the PS team needs to concentrate on adding core features such as those described above and not stuff like multi-shop support, because without those features you can't even use it as single fully functional shop.

[Malaiac]

I've also looked at osCommerce v3.0 Alpha and can't say that I'm too impressed with how its architected.

o rly ?

osc3a5 is a bad joke and a total mess.
I was hoping to move 2 heavily customised osc2.2 to osc3... after a little (read : 3 days of dev trying to bypass code soup) code review now I'm considering Prestashop to build on.

[TropischBruin]

I've also looked at osCommerce v3.0 Alpha and can't say that I'm too impressed with how its architected.

o rly ?

osc3a5 is a bad joke and a total mess.

And this is based on what?

[Malaiac]

OsCommerce 3 alpha 5 =
no plugin API <<<< rhaaaa !!! (no hooks, no nothing... come on ! moving the WP plugin API to OsCo took me 10 mn !)
3 to 5 files to modifiy in order to hack the smallest box of content
no smart denormalisation (like on images_group)
5 lines of code to make 1 query (and without multi db support)
no categories_keyword field for categories SEO URL
no consistency across database fields (id/item_id)
languages strings hard stored in database + in files + not an ounce of gettext

----

just a few points I encounter last week while recoding the front end of osco3a5

enough ?

[Sheldmandu]

osC 3a5 is very poorly architected at least for today's standards, unlike PrestaShop and Magento. As I said before Magento is too complex and too non-performant to run most shops. PrestaShop is just right, but hasn't got alot of the functionality really needed to make it work. e.g. Pluggable Payment Modules, Shopping Modules and Totals Modules are a must as well as other features I've outlined in my previous post. It's a nice architecture to base your shop on if you want to add all those features yourself. I'm also extremely impressed with the architecture and features of nopCommerce 1.11 and I think it's by far the best ASP.NET based open source shopping cart solution out there.

[Hoodgrown]

Yea.. if you like ASP.

[VIXUS]

Well i did not try others but i must say that im stuck here with Presta on feature that would help maintain 1000+ of products and their prices.

I have PC shop and im busting my balls to figure out how to maintain prices/products on daily or weekly basis.

Presta just dont have it... so im trying with CSV import (wich sux big time... see here: http://www.prestashop.com/forums/viewthread/17494/general_discussion/csv_import_problems_with_names_of_subcategories ) and sql import through myphp admin wich is PITA for average John Doe...

I was just starting to consider moving to other shop, maybe OsCommerce, and see if it can make some excel/CSV/XML - import/export properly and not so full of bugs and problems as Presta has now...

Any tips?

[ruilong]

Well i did not try others but i must say that im stuck here with Presta on feature that would help maintain 1000+ of products and their prices.

I have PC shop and im busting my balls to figure out how to maintain prices/products on daily or weekly basis.

Presta just dont have it... so im trying with CSV import (wich sux big time... see here: http://www.prestashop.com/forums/viewthread/17494/general_discussion/csv_import_problems_with_names_of_subcategories ) and sql import through myphp admin wich is PITA for average John Doe...

I was just starting to consider moving to other shop, maybe OsCommerce, and see if it can make some excel/CSV/XML - import/export properly and not so full of bugs and problems as Presta has now...

Any tips?

Could this be of any help?
http://www.prestaworks.com/various/18-bulk-product-updater.html

[Hoodgrown]

Well i did not try others but i must say that im stuck here with Presta on feature that would help maintain 1000+ of products and their prices.

I have PC shop and im busting my balls to figure out how to maintain prices/products on daily or weekly basis.

Presta just dont have it... so im trying with CSV import (wich sux big time... see here: http://www.prestashop.com/forums/viewthread/17494/general_discussion/csv_import_problems_with_names_of_subcategories ) and sql import through myphp admin wich is PITA for average John Doe...

I was just starting to consider moving to other shop, maybe OsCommerce, and see if it can make some excel/CSV/XML - import/export properly and not so full of bugs and problems as Presta has now...

Any tips?

Could this be of any help?
http://www.prestaworks.com/various/18-bulk-product-updater.html

I was feeling like DJ-Terror, but yes.. this module is an answer to my prayers. Thanks for sharing it. I'll be making a purchase next week.

[VIXUS]

Well i did not try others but i must say that im stuck here with Presta on feature that would help maintain 1000+ of products and their prices.

I have PC shop and im busting my balls to figure out how to maintain prices/products on daily or weekly basis.

Presta just dont have it... so im trying with CSV import (wich sux big time... see here: http://www.prestashop.com/forums/viewthread/17494/general_discussion/csv_import_problems_with_names_of_subcategories ) and sql import through myphp admin wich is PITA for average John Doe...

I was just starting to consider moving to other shop, maybe OsCommerce, and see if it can make some excel/CSV/XML - import/export properly and not so full of bugs and problems as Presta has now...

Any tips?

Could this be of any help?
http://www.prestaworks.com/various/18-bulk-product-updater.html

Well i was looking into that module but it looks like this one also relys on manual price update.

I have BIG excel pricelist table and im looknig for a way to import price changes periodicaly and automaticaly from that table.

So far no luck with it but i am presistant...

[tatamata]

@ DJ

Unfortunatly i dont understaind a word of French but take look at this:

http://www.magavenue.com/blog/prestashop/prestashop-v11-importer-un-catalogue-entier-dans-votre-boutique-a-partir-dun-fichier-csv-excel-calc

[VIXUS]

Unfortunatly me either but this sure looks promising...

If only theres a demo to tryout.

[Valley]

I used zencart for my previous projects. It is really a very powerful shopping cart. Functionality wise it among the best even if you compare it with expensive paid shopping carts. Lot of modules available for zencart. The problem with zencart though, its templates suck big time. If you want your shop look better, it takes for ever and requires you to be an expert in php & CSS.

zen cart announced a future release, which is almost a complete rewrite of the core with OO architecute, They have been saying, they will be releasing it soon, but looks like it may take bit more time as the development team is new to OO. the drawback though, all the old modules will become obsolete.

Check out : http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=116018

PrestaShop is the best cart as far as templates and themes are concerned. How ever in my personal opinion, it is still in its infancy for available extensions ( modules). Shipping modules and credit card payment gateway support need to mature. I think in the next 6 months to an year, PrestaShop will beat all the other open source shopping carts hands down. The reason why I am saying this is PrestaShop has very light weight and clean architecture. For developers it will be a breeze to develop or even port new modules.

I hope PrestaShop will adopt "multi vendor shipping" module, e-shipper shipping modules as in OSC and MultiShop support, google analytics as in magento, Coupons and Gift certificates support as in Zen cart. More number of Payment gateway support will also help.

I hope to see the next version of Prestashop in production soon.

[FSpearz]

I agree with Valley. I have been using different shopping carts including Miva, Magento, ZenCart, and OsCommerce. PrestaShop is the best n terms of templates and themes. I believe PS needs a lot of work to compete with Miva and Magento. PS need to design solid modules for shipping and credit card payment gateways. In addition, they need to add more attributes such as: radio buttons, checkbox, and textarea.

[o54er]

@ DJ

Unfortunately i dont understand a word of French but take look at this:

http://www.magavenue.com/blog/prestashop/prestashop-v11-importer-un-catalogue-entier-dans-votre-boutique-a-partir-dun-fichier-csv-excel-calc

I'm happy to translate it if it would help anyone?

On second thoughts, if you click on the little stars and stripes at the top right hand corner of the page, it translates it for you!

[F.P.]

Miva is not Open Source and Magento is very difficult to configure. Additionally it is still slow. The only advantage is the InnoDB but it is not a killer argument. Oscommerce and Zencart (just a fork of oscommerce) lack of a developement perspective.
Prestashop is robust with a lot of functions but it still has a lack of core functionallity in the checkout process (order summary before confirming order).
But there is another shopping cart (open source) worth to mention: OpenCart.

[TropischBruin]

First of all the comparison/features table is incorrect.

OpenCart lacks a lot of Payment modules and 1 very importand feature which PrestaShop also is missing: Orderedit.

So, looking at the 3 mentioned in the features table I still think that osCommerce wins hands down because what they say it is missing can be build in from contributions.

I do think that PrestShop will be the strongest in time, that is if osCommerce will fail to develop V3.

[F.P.]

But in the case of OpenCart I did buy the UPS Shipping, which works like a charm for about 15$ and the payment modules are not very expensive too. I was even able to copy an existing one, changing a few things in the coding (I am not an excellent programmer) and now I have a module for Directebanking. Another advantage is that the code is xhtml strict and the template engine is much faster than smarty.
Opencart has the advantage that some essential functions like agree to privacy and especially an order summary before the final checkout confirmation are already built in. I was even able to get my old osc module for cron import from a distributor to work. I do not say that Opencart is perfect, but the core functions for legal things are already there and the small community is very helpful if there are questions. Does Presta offer built in product reviews, product ratings, downloadable products or cross sell?
I like Prestashop too but if someone wants to migrate from OSC to a new system it is easier to do it from OSC to Opencart as to migrate to Prestashop. There is even a contribution to accept osc customers passwords, so the important thing of migrating customers and orders is pretty easy.
A disadvantage of Opencart is the layout in the admin section, but that can be done by css and template change.

[kdk]

You will not find another system with this zero-support like prestashop.

[Iamcaptain]

You will not find another system with this zero-support like prestashop.

Agreed. I fail to understand why there aren't people from the official coding team helping people with problems here. Many many questions never get answered and disappear from the first page of the forum. And they obviously know the answer as they made the software..

[TropischBruin]

You will not find another system with this zero-support like prestashop.

You will not find another system with this zero-support like prestashop.

Agreed. I fail to understand why there aren't people from the official coding team helping people with problems here. Many many questions never get answered and disappear from the first page of the forum. And they obviously know the answer as they made the software..

Zero support?

Have you looked arround?

There is loads of support but there are also loads of users with cheap-ass hosting accounts that have not even the minimum of requirements to run PS.
That same amount of user have no clue on what they are doing, no knowledhe of php, MySQL or anything related to it. They do NOT use the search, do not try and error and post the same question that have been answered before just because the want a quick fix and if they do not get an answer in 5 mins they complain thet there is no support, that is better and so on.

Do you think that we have all the answers for every personal situation? No, we don't and we expect that you at least search these forums, read arround for more then 5 minutes then try and error and try again, contact your hoster and then post your question.
If you post your question it would be handy that you expain what you have done, what your server setup is etc. but in most cases the user cannot even answer that question, so why should we?

[kdk]

Yes, some users helping other users. But this is not "support".

Try to find a working solution for import and export the product, after upgrading the shop, here in the forum. Which of the 500 answers from a developer did you mean?

[F.P.]

The biggest problem of PS is that there is no order summary before order confirmation. That is something important and therefore I did choose opencart.
There are some people in the German forum to develop such a module to add that essential functionality into PS and as far as I can see, the problem is that every payment module needs to be included somehow to offer that functionality. That means that if someone adds a new payment module the order summary needs a code change.
That tells me too, that a function like order summary cannot be integrated with a module. A core code change is necessary and there is zero answer until today from the developers.

[TropischBruin]

Yes, some users helping other users. But this is not "support".

Try to find a working solution for import and export the product, after upgrading the shop, here in the forum. Which of the 500 answers from a developer did you mean?

So you mean every time an update is released you consider "no support"?
Have you looked at the Bug Tracker and the comments and fixes made by the dev-team, this also "no support"?

That the export/import does not work I consider a enormous issue and I to cannot understand that it still has NOT been addressed.
But: osCommerce has also a terrible solution to this and you can only get it to work with (payd) help from others.
Maybe other carts will have a working solution, but they have other issues..., and so will it always be something.

[TropischBruin]

The biggest problem of PS is that there is no order summary before order confirmation. That is something important and therefore I did choose opencart.
There are some people in the German forum to develop such a module to add that essential functionality into PS and as far as I can see, the problem is that every payment module needs to be included somehow to offer that functionality. That means that if someone adds a new payment module the order summary needs a code change.
That tells me too, that a function like order summary cannot be integrated with a module. A core code change is necessary and there is zero answer until today from the developers.

I'm not sure if a order summery is a big miss, I do agree that it should be there.
That people from other forums have created a module for this sounds great and if it would be in the core code it would even be better, but maybe the dev-team finds it not needed.
I personly cannot understand why there is no order-edit, but hee, its free so why complain.

[kdk]

I'm not sure if a order summery is a big miss

It is a really, really big miss when you have a shop in Germany. You can not use prestashop in Germany without it.

That people from other forums have created a module for this sounds great and if it would be in the core code it would even be better, but maybe the dev-team finds it not needed.

That shows that the devs are not reading in this forum, thats shows there ignorance about their own product and the users.

I personly cannot understand why there is no order-edit, but hee, its free so why complain.

Complain because that is the sence of open-source. But the devs don't understand open-source. And they dont understand there own benefit from the users-feedback.

I'm still waiting that there will come a fork from people who knows what they are doing. I dont have hope for the project "prestashop" in the future with this ignorante devs.

[F.P.]

If I read the comment from TropischBruin that an order summary is not a big miss I am asking myself why all other shopping cart have such a function before order confirmation? If it is not a big miss, why do oscommerce, opencart, magento, zencart, xtcommerce, xtcmodified and all other ecommerce systems provide that. If it is not a big miss, why do those developers develop an order summary as standard function.
PS is the only ecommerce system, which does not provide that. The customer sees just the amount and has to pay for whatever. But it is not a bug, it seems to be a feature!

[TropischBruin]

Maybe because osCommerce was the first to do this and the rest just copied it ;-)

Anyway, I have addressed this issue in the Tax & Law subforum so the PS dev-team hopefully will give a reply on this.

[Iamcaptain]

I tried using oscommerce but it felt so primitive, i was between presta, opencart and magento. Decided on presta because it was nearly everything i wanted. Opencart looked good but the community was much smaller than presta and that put me off it.

[KIH999]

With " all the must have modules" to make PS to do "must have tasks" there will be a huge cost in upgrading if you can't do programming in PHP.

Alternate is to buy a commercial license from a company that have done this for ages and have left Beta-phase.

PS is still in Beta as i can see it. Strange bugs and behavior still pop up.

Know PS will do very good in the future, but it's sadly not in the future yet.

[nick bulanda]

what I do not understand is this, if you have a online store the only way to get product to the consumer is shipping! why do we not have core shipping? also another core essential module we need is on site payment! ho can customers buy items with a credit card when they have no paypal or google checkout your cutting your customers in half! now i am stuck with a high dollar theme i paid to have designed and a less then reliable core store.
I am now going to be forced to open cart to find a new designer to help me with a theme for a relaible cart. i underdstand prestashop is new and free, but i did donate, and contribute to the forums and stay in community.

SHIPPING & PAYMENT are key and prestashop has neither!


soooolong prestashop, i may be back! once your bugs are tweaked.

[ladivito]

i believe nothing is perfect at the beginning stage....prestateam is doing their best to upgrade the core and solve the bug...etc

if you had install a svc then you will see almost every 1-2 days there are new update coming out. They are doing their core job scope and we not suppose to hope they pay 100% attention to us on support else there will no update/patch/bug solved. BUT if prestateam have the time after work please just spare some times on us

[sm3004]

what I do not understand is this, if you have a online store the only way to get product to the consumer is shipping! why do we not have core shipping? also another core essential module we need is on site payment! ho can customers buy items with a credit card when they have no paypal or google checkout your cutting your customers in half! now i am stuck with a high dollar theme i paid to have designed and a less then reliable core store.
I am now going to be forced to open cart to find a new designer to help me with a theme for a relaible cart. i underdstand prestashop is new and free, but i did donate, and contribute to the forums and stay in community.

SHIPPING & PAYMENT are key and prestashop has neither!


soooolong prestashop, i may be back! once your bugs are tweaked.

How is shipping not in the core? I have different shipping parameters for all types of countries. Free shipping on orders over $200 for Australian customers, different prices depending on weight, etc... No idea what you are ranting about.

You obviously have no clue about web development if you can't get credit card payments to work. Are these modules free? No, but they DO exist and they do work. I have EWAY australia installed (THANKS TOMER!) and it works like a treat.

Maybe your developer just sucks... I am by far no programming expert, but I managed to get my shop up and running in under 4 weeks, including adding 300 products with various product combinations, over 6000 site members and I am NOT using the standard Prestashop theme, my site doesn't even look like a PrestaShop site.

My client's old website took 10 weeks to build and that was done by a Web Development company with dozens of employees, I did her site in 4 weeks, by myself, and it looks a whole lot better than the old site and has much more options and functionality.

I am for hire, if interested, let me know and I will show you that I am more than capable of setting up an online shop using PrestaShop, it doesn't get much easier.

[coalesce]

Prestashop needs to add some basic payment and shipping modules + a laundry list of other critical features before anyone will take this cart seriously