E-Commerce Websites: Which one is better: PrestaShop or OpenCart?

First of all, there are plenty of good themes are available for Opencart for around $50. Prestashop requires a much larger budget. However, editing the theme coding requires some knowledge in case of Opencart. As a normal user, I do find it difficult, but if you find a good theme, then there is no need to worry about the coding or tweaking part. Better research more so you do not have to tweak your theme.

Secondly, the plugins/ extensions are super cheap at Opencart marketplace. Prestashop is comparatively very costly.

In below, we have worked out a comprehensive comparison between OpenCart and PrestaShop to make clear which is the better eCommerce Software, although both of which are free, rich-featured and used by millions of people around the world. This comparison is written from several aspects, including features, ease of use and hosting requirements.

System Requirements

Apache, PHP 5.2.x, MySQL and Curl are needed to host OpenCart. However, hosting PrestaShop requires Apache 1.3/2.x, Nginx, Microsoft IIS, PHP 5.1.x, and MySQL 5.0.x. Additionally, there are some optional requirements of running PrestaShop-based site, including memory limit to 64 MB and filemaxLoad size to 64 MB, etc.

Content Management

OpenCart has a fairly solid but simple content management tool for non-product pages within the hosted websites, known as “Information” rather than “Pages” in the administration panel. While PrestaShop content management is very smooth and is a bit less basic than that of its competitor.

Administration Panel

OpenCart VS PrestaShop – Administration OpenCart’s administration panel is very easy-to-use, which doesn’t include many dead-ends or odd design decisions that can make simple tasks frustrating, such as having to add a “module number” to a product encoring your own intension. However, the administration panel of PrestaShop is much better than that of the former software, although which is with many irritating omissions.

Theming & Available Extensions

Opencart marketplace is way to Good as compared to prestashop . IN opencart everything is automatic and really a heaven for app developers

Prestashop marketplace is super slow every-time when you update your app they take weeks and month to update the app also they have very protective system no information about the developer in their marketplace .

Prestashop development is very slow and requires too large budget. Opencart extensions are $30-$50 where Prestashop extensions costs $70-$100. There are some costly extensions as well.

Basic SEO extension, social login extension, one page checkout and newsletter extensions are needed for my store which were available at a relatively cheaper rate.

Scalability

OpenCart VS PrestaShop – Scalability With the ability to group by manufacture and attribute, OpenCart handles a large amount of products easily. In addition, an OpenCart store for a client has around 1,500 products in it, without any problems on the development server. However, PrestaShop claims that there is no limitation in the quality of products and attributes that can be displayed and sell in their users’ store.

Checkout

OpenCart has a guest feature so that customers don’t have to sign up for an account and can simply just enter the minimum amount of details required to process their orders. As for PrestaShop, they offer a one-page checkout amount other features, which enables their users to customize fields to gather certain information. From the design to shipping, PrestaShop checkout makes purchasing easy for customers.

SEO

One of the best forms of marketing is search engine marketing. Having a high search engine ranking for the online store owner websites’ keywords related to the their products can mean the difference if their store takes high number of sales or not. The good news is that both of the 2 software are search optimized allowing pages to be indexed by all major search engines and includes support for custom product and category meta tag.

Multi-Store

OpenCart VS PrestaShop – Multi-Store By using the 2 applications have multi-store abilities that allows users to manage multiple stores from one admin interface. In below, we have listed many advantages in being able to set up multiple stores.

1) set different prices for each store.
2) set products to an appearance on specific stores.
3) theme each store differently to match the products that are being sold.
4) localize each store by setting a different default, currency and tax class.
5) set up a default customers group for each store allowing users to have some stores setup retail customers and others as wholesale.

Shipping & Support

OpenCart and PrestaShop both allow flexible shipping modules and are fully integrated with major carriers, which enables users to provide customers with reliable shipping options and the ability to include custom message. In addition, with the 2 software, people are capable of controlling logistics, such as fees, weight, shipping retractions and more.