10-second breakdown:
PrestaShop was built with big online shops in mind who want to build a semi-custom design in a self-hosted environment. A bit more hands-on than your full-service ecommerce shop builders and it’s not for beginners. Programming experience is almost necessary. All told, it’s a powerful way to build a shop that is truly unique and fast.
The good:
Beautiful themes and lots of them. There are over 2000 templates to choose from in the gallery and every one is really good looking in its own right. Almost all of them are responsive to take advantage of the large number of mobile shoppers nowadays and uploading them and adding your text is a very easy process.
SEO is a strong suit for PrestaShop. Organic traffic that is targeted to keywords based on the products you sell is a powerful weapon in the hands of an ecommerce shop. Free potential customers isn’t something to scoff at.
Page speeds are faster than other competitors, which could help that SEO situation as well as keep more people from skipping the site before they see what you’ve got to sell.
The bad:
The learning curve is undeniably steep for people with little coding experience. If you don’t understand programming at all, you’re going to have trouble getting started.
The software is free, but everything else will cost you including hosting, add-ons, and maybe a designer.
How it works:
PrestaShop isn’t an “all-inclusive” style of shop building software. In fact, it doesn’t share a lot in common with most of the solutions (Except Magento Community Edition). This product is an open-source software that comes in two different versions. Both products are completely free to use. While you don’t pay for the platform, there are other things that you’ll need to supply on your own. Here are the basics:
Domain name and hosting: This is a software and not an all-in-one solution, you’ll need to have your own domain and hosting account (here’s our list of top choices). There is a cloud-hosted option with PrestaShop that’s worth looking into. If you’re looking for a more inclusive option; many other ecommerce platforms (e.g. Shopify) do have just about everything you need included.
SSL and Payment Processor: In order to make money, you’ll need to take credit cards and have some security on the site that will make it safer for customers. Integrating these things is entirely on you. We’ve put together a list of the top credit card processors we like. Check it out.
Development Help: You’re probably going to need a developer to work on your shop. There are templates, but without coding knowledge it’s just not going to look the way you want.
Choosing a hosting type is incredibly important with PrestaShop. There are only two options, entirely self-hosted or hosted through PrestaShop Cloud. There aren’t a lot of reasons not to use the cloud version. It’s free, you can use your own domain name, and it’s much (like way) easier to deal with. It’s a lot less coding, too.
If you use the cloud, you’ll simple sign into a dashboard that can handle most of the inner workings of the software. There is a pretty intuitive setup wizard that helps you pick and attach a theme and punch in your first products. If you choose the self-hosted route, you’ll have to manually put everything together and upload the software to your server before you can get to this process.
Picking a template will be daunting, especially if you’re the thorough type. There are over 2000 professionally-designed third-party templates. PrestaShop only gives you the basic template that comes stock and all of the other options are paid. Prices vary more than other platforms from less than $50 to more than $500. This high number of choices is great if you want the feel of a unique design without having to do a lot of coding. Other platforms have so few templates many of the stores look the same. Probably not happening here.
Either way, once it’s set up things are noticeably easier than with other open-source shop builders.
Entering the product’s data, categories, and features can be done right when you add the product to your store. Order management is also simple and one feature we like is the ability to email your customer right from the order page. This is really cool if you like personalizing the experience. A simple email note from you could mean a world of difference and could gain the loyalty of more buyers.
Support is tricky. You can pay for support (gets costly), but with so many of the features and templates designed by third parties, you may not get the help you need. There is a lot of educational material and an active forum, which could help.
PrestaShop really shines in the features department. There are over 300 of them that all come standard with the free software. Everything you could possibly think of like a shipping calculator, currency conversion for international sales, automated emails, promotional setup, SEO tools, and even the ability to offer gift wrapping.
If you can’t find something right off hand, but feel like you need it; there is a third-party add-on store. This is a pay-to-play environment with costs ranging from around $20 into the hundreds. It’s here you’re going to find third-party selling integrations (like Amazon, eBay), design elements to make your shop look better, and advanced SEO helps.
Another difference between PrestaShop and the open-source giant Magento are the payment gateways. Presta offers 12 built in and the ability to integrate with just about any choice on the market (here’s our list of the best).
If you want a shop that is a bit more hands on and free than a fully supported ecommerce platform, but still something that is easily managed; there aren’t many options better than PrestaShop.
For complete rankings of all ecommerce software, go here.
http://authority.org/ecommerce-software/prestashop/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150438173937
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