Choosing Between Shopify and PrestaShop for Small Online Store

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1

I’m trying to decide between two ecommerce platforms for my small online business and could really use some advice from people who have experience with these systems.

Shopify seems great because they handle all the hosting stuff for you, their customer support is supposed to be really good, and it looks pretty easy to set up themes and get started. The downside is the monthly cost adds up over time.

PrestaShop is appealing because it’s completely free to use and appears to have just as many features as the paid options. But I’m worried about having to deal with hosting issues myself and whether it might be more complicated to customize.

I already ruled out Magento since it seems way too complicated for what I need. I’ve also heard that some of the older platforms like osCommerce and ZenCart have problems with bugs and security.

For context, this would be a fairly small shop, probably under 100 products to start. I’m comfortable with basic web stuff but I’m not a developer. Which platform would you recommend and why? Any major pros or cons I should know about?

2

Having worked with both platforms for different projects, I’d lean toward Shopify for your situation. The monthly cost might seem steep at first, but when you factor in hosting, security updates, and the time you’d spend managing technical issues with PrestaShop, it often evens out. PrestaShop can be resource-intensive and you’ll likely need decent hosting which isn’t free anyway. The real game-changer with Shopify is how quickly you can get up and running - literally hours versus potentially weeks with PrestaShop if you run into complications. Their app ecosystem is also more mature, so adding functionality later is usually straightforward. PrestaShop does offer more flexibility if you need heavy customization, but for a starter store with under 100 products, that flexibility might be overkill and could actually slow you down.