Game of Ecom­merce Thrones: Big­Com­merce vs Prestashop

Big­Com­merce vs. Prestashop… FIGHT!

Ease of Use vs Total Cost

Prestashop is open-source. This means you can mod­i­fy the source code, but it also increas­es com­plex­i­ty. That can involve high­er costs and time­lines as it requires more devel­op­ment resources. It is free to down­load. How­ev­er, you must con­sid­er oth­er asso­ci­at­ed costs such as host­ing, domain, tech­ni­cal sup­port, main­te­nance and devel­op­ment. Mod­ules and exten­sions too. Prestashop does­n’t offer a free tri­al of exten­sions, but they do offer a detailed demo to help you decide which paid fea­tures you want.

Big­Com­merce offers sub­scrip­tion plans that include these costs, allow­ing you to focus on man­ag­ing your busi­ness with­out wor­ry­ing about main­te­nance. The prices of their three sub­scrip­tion plans — Stan­dard, Plus and Pro — are based on your busi­ness’s annu­al online sales. If you have more advanced require­ments, you can opt for the Enter­prise plan. And to ensure you make the right deci­sion, there’s a 15-day free tri­al avail­able for new users. 

When it comes to ease of use, Big­Com­merce comes out on top. Its con­trol pan­el does­n’t require cod­ing knowl­edge and has a user-friend­ly inter­face, mak­ing it quick and sim­ple to set up a store. As an Open SaaS solu­tion, Big­Com­merce com­bines the basic func­tion­al­i­ty of an online busi­ness with the flex­i­bil­i­ty to expand the plat­form to meet your spe­cif­ic needs.

If you pre­fer to kick­start your online busi­ness with a free plat­form with (very) basic func­tion­al­i­ties, free­dom to mod­i­fy the source code and full con­trol over design and oper­a­tion, Prestashop is your option. Bear in mind that you will have to invest on sev­er­al add-ons along the way to have a tru­ly func­tion­al plat­form. No such thing as a free lunch. If you pre­fer a more user-friend­ly plat­form that com­bines basic func­tion­al­i­ty with flex­i­bil­i­ty for expan­sions, and has sub­scrip­tion plans that include asso­ci­at­ed costs, Big­Com­merce is the way to go. 

Func­tion­al­i­ties and features

Apart from cost and ease of use, these two great solu­tions offer fea­tures in key areas for your eCom­merce. Let’s see how Big­Com­merce does vs. Prestashop.

Prod­uct management

How easy is it to man­age your prod­ucts? Can you cre­ate and orga­nize them quick­ly and eas­i­ly? How do you man­age your inven­to­ry? Let’s take a look at how PrestaShop and Big­Com­merce answer these key questions.

PrestaShop, for exam­ple, offers a robust yet user-friend­ly prod­uct design and man­age­ment sys­tem. With its con­fig­urable fea­tures and pre­set val­ues, you can quick­ly cre­ate prod­ucts and orga­nize them into groups, which is impor­tant for large stores with a high vol­ume of prod­ucts. It also sup­ports all types of prod­uct vari­ants, includ­ing dig­i­tal prod­ucts like music, pho­tos, and e‑books. Keep­ing track of your stock is also easy with PrestaShop, as you can set a min­i­mum quan­ti­ty and receive alerts when stock is run­ning low.

Big­Com­merce, on the oth­er hand, allows you to import prod­ucts, track your inven­to­ry, and eas­i­ly under­stand order trends over time. You can adjust every detail about your prod­ucts to your pref­er­ence. It also has a unique fea­ture — you can sell prod­ucts with­out pay­ing for third-par­ty applications.

Themes and customization

Why set­tle for a bland web­site that does­n’t show­case your brand’s unique per­son­al­i­ty? A plat­form with cus­tomiz­able themes and design options is a must-have for any eCom­merce store. Both PrestaShop and Big­Com­merce offer a wide vari­ety of themes and cus­tomiza­tion tools to ensure your store looks exact­ly how you want it to. Let’s see the differences.

With PrestaShop, you can start with a (very) basic theme for free. Now, if you want to access high­er-qual­i­ty, respon­sive themes, you’ll need to be pre­pared to pay more or turn to a devel­op­er who can mod­i­fy the code and cus­tomize your store to your liking.

Big­Com­merce offers 12 free themes and over 100 paid options avail­able for a small extra investment.

Oth­er plat­forms are good at remov­ing choice from mer­chants who aren’t ready for it. Big­Com­merce is great for those who are. Its devel­op­er-friend­ly Sten­cil theme plat­form and its default Cor­ner­stone theme pro­vide a basic, flex­i­ble theme blue­print that allows you the free­dom to sat­is­fy your cre­ative expec­ta­tions with a rea­son­ably low cod­ing bar­ri­er and invest­ment on front-end services.

SEO

For an eCom­merce busi­ness to be suc­cess­ful, it’s cru­cial for cus­tomers to be able to find it eas­i­ly. Let’s com­pare how Big­Com­merce com­pares to Prestashop to sup­port your SEO strategy.

PrestaShop offers over 180 mod­ules to help your busi­ness stand out and appear at the top of search results. How­ev­er, many of these mod­ules come at a high cost, so it’s impor­tant to make informed deci­sions about which ones to use. One of the most note­wor­thy mod­ules in PrestaShop is its SEO Audit, named Best SEO Prac­tice in 2020, which helps you cre­ate con­tent that’s per­fect for both search engines and your users. It also lets you track and ana­lyze any SEO issues on your pages.

Big­Com­merce, on the oth­er hand, excels in its sol­id SEO fea­tures, includ­ing a unique con­tent deliv­ery net­work for faster page load­ing, improv­ing the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. With its built-in blog func­tion, you can eas­i­ly upload and cus­tomize blog posts that are SEO-friend­ly. It also offers oth­er tools such as meta title and descrip­tion edit­ing, image alt text, key­word com­pat­i­bil­i­ty, and 301 redi­rects. With its AMP-com­pat­i­ble themes, Big­Com­merce offers light­ning-fast prod­uct and cat­e­go­ry pages for mobile devices, essen­tial for good SEO performance.

Mar­ket­ing

Mar­ket­ing is cru­cial for boost­ing sales and attract­ing cus­tomers. Both PrestaShop and Big­Com­merce offer a set of mar­ket­ing tools to help you achieve that, such as email mar­ket­ing or social media integration.

PrestaShop’s mar­ket­ing toolset includes PrestaShop Ads, which allows busi­ness­es to adver­tise their prod­ucts on mul­ti­ple plat­forms such as Google Ads, Ama­zon Ads, Face­book, Insta­gram and oth­ers. The plat­form also offers sol­id ana­lyt­ics func­tions to help mer­chants improve the qual­i­ty of their data feed, ana­lyze com­pe­ti­tion, and com­pare prod­uct prices and qual­i­ty for bet­ter mar­ket­ing planning.

Big­Com­merce offers a vari­ety of mar­ket­ing tools, both free and paid, which includes ban­ners, dis­counts, email mar­ket­ing, aban­doned cart recov­ery and social media tools. The plat­form inte­grates with pow­er­ful mar­ket­ing automa­tion tools such as MailChimp, Hub­Spot, iCon­tact and Con­stant Con­tact, allow­ing you to cre­ate a com­plete cus­tomer list and auto­mat­i­cal­ly send tar­get­ed emails, mes­sages and newsletters.

Addi­tion­al­ly, its aban­doned cart recov­ery fea­ture reminds cus­tomers who left items in their cart, which can result in increased sales. Last­ly, Big­Com­merce lets you con­nect your store with the most pop­u­lar social media plat­forms and eas­i­ly direct traf­fic from Face­book, Insta­gram, and Pin­ter­est to your Big­Com­merce store.

Pay­ment Gateways

Pay­ment gate­ways act as the inter­me­di­ary between cus­tomers and mer­chants, secure­ly pro­cess­ing trans­ac­tions and facil­i­tat­ing pay­ment. Both Big­Com­merce and PrestaShop offer pay­ment gate­way options for busi­ness­es, pro­vid­ing mer­chants with the abil­i­ty to accept pay­ments from customers.

PrestaShop offers a wide range of pay­ment options, includ­ing 250 options from third-par­ty proces­sors or through a mer­chant account with PrestaShop Check­out Gate­ways. The plat­form also offers inte­gra­tion with Pay­pal, offer­ing check­out options such as Amer­i­can Express, Mas­ter­card, and Visa.

Big­Com­merce, on the oth­er hand, presents two pay­ment gate­way options: Pay­pal pow­ered by Brain­tree and third-par­ty pay­ment proces­sors. The default Pay­pal option is a pop­u­lar choice for busi­ness­es for its con­ve­nient one-page check­out and com­pet­i­tive cred­it card trans­ac­tion fees.

Third Par­ty tools and Integrations

The suc­cess of your online busi­ness large­ly depends on your abil­i­ty to inte­grate with the nec­es­sary tools and ser­vices to man­age your site effec­tive­ly. From ship­ping and tax cal­cu­la­tors to prod­uct reviews, there are many tools to cus­tomize your store and improve cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Both PrestaShop and Big­Com­merce offer inte­gra­tions with third-par­ty tools, but their capa­bil­i­ties vary.

PrestaShop inte­grates with a wide range of pop­u­lar busi­ness ser­vices and appli­ca­tions, includ­ing Google Ana­lyt­ics and eBay, as well as pay­ment por­tals such as Pay­Pal, Autho​rize​.Net, and Mas­ter­card Sim­pli­fy. With thou­sands of inde­pen­dent devel­op­ers and agen­cies using Prestashop, it rep­re­sents a reli­able solu­tion. As it is an open-source plat­form, it is pos­si­ble to access the plat­form code and cre­ate cus­tom mod­ules to inte­grate with third-par­ty tools. This makes Prestashop high­ly cus­tomiz­able, but also requires tech­ni­cal knowl­edge to set up and man­age these inte­gra­tions. Addi­tion­al­ly, not all third-par­ty tools are free, and there may be licens­ing fees to access them.

In turn, Big­Com­merce offers a wide range of third-par­ty inte­gra­tions and apps designed to help improve your online store. With free and paid options, Big­Com­merce’s App Mar­ket­place fea­tures a col­lec­tion of tools orga­nized into key cat­e­gories: essen­tials, design, pay­ments, ship­ping essen­tials, and mar­ket­ing, with appli­ca­tions cov­er­ing areas such as prod­uct sourc­ing, analy­sis, account­ing, CRM, and cus­tomer ser­vice. Some of these inte­gra­tions include, Mailchimp, Quick­Books Online, Ship­Sta­tion, and Jus­tuno. It is also pos­si­ble to inte­grate third-par­ty sys­tems with Big­Com­merce through cus­tom apps, but it requires hir­ing the ser­vices of a Big­Com­merce Part­ner (like for exam­ple, us).

Cus­tomer ser­vice and tech­ni­cal support

These are crit­i­cal ele­ments in eCom­merce, and very close­ly relat­ed ones too. They are vital to ensure that busi­ness­es can offer an enjoy­able shop­ping expe­ri­ence to their cus­tomers, resolve any issues quick­ly and effi­cient­ly, and run their online stores smooth­ly. Let’s take a clos­er look at what these pow­er­ful solu­tions offer in terms of cus­tomer sup­port and tech­ni­cal assistance.

As an open-source plat­form, sup­port for PrestaShop can be com­plex. Dif­fer­ent pro­gram­mers build mod­ules and tem­plates, mak­ing it chal­leng­ing to under­stand all the detailed infor­ma­tion of each PrestaShop store. How­ev­er, PrestaShop has a large user com­mu­ni­ty that works togeth­er to solve issues through forums and services.

The help and sup­port ser­vice pro­vid­ed by Big­Com­merce varies based on your sub­scrip­tion plan. The Stan­dard plan offers ²⁴⁄₇ phone and live chat sup­port, which means you can make a phone call or open a live chat any­time you need assis­tance. Addi­tion­al­ly, upon sign­ing up for a free tri­al, you receive an email and a 10-minute call to dis­cuss your busi­ness and how Big­Com­merce can help you grow.

Big­Com­merce also offers video tuto­ri­als and a Help Cen­ter for your con­ve­nience. Busi­ness­es invest­ing in an Enter­prise sub­scrip­tion plan get pri­or­i­ty sup­port, which includes an onboard­ing con­sul­tant and pri­or­i­tized phone calls. How­ev­er, all plans include per­ma­nent sup­port, with quick response (less than two min­utes) and high effi­cien­cy (85% of issues solved with the first call). 

Secu­ri­ty

With an increas­ing num­ber of online trans­ac­tions and con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion being shared, choos­ing a plat­form that offers strong secu­ri­ty mea­sures to pro­tect both your cus­tomers and your busi­ness is essen­tial to pre­vent secu­ri­ty breach­es, avoid cost­ly fines and legal con­se­quences, and main­tain cus­tomer trust.

PrestaShop offers sev­er­al free secu­ri­ty mod­ules to enhance secu­ri­ty, such as pro­tec­tion against spam and iden­ti­ty theft. The down­load­able ver­sion is com­pli­ant with indus­try-stan­dard pay­ment card secu­ri­ty (PCI). This means your PrestaShop store is not auto­mat­i­cal­ly PCI-com­pli­ant, and you will need to acquire an SSL cer­tifi­cate to secure trans­ac­tions. SSL cer­tifi­cates guar­an­tee the secu­ri­ty and encryp­tion of infor­ma­tion. PrestaShop offers a free SSL cer­tifi­cate for PrestaShop Ready accounts host­ed on Google Cloud. To fix vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and improve plat­form pro­tec­tion, the store must be updat­ed with secu­ri­ty patch­es released by PrestaShop.

On the oth­er hand, Big­Com­merce has lev­el 1 PCIDSS cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. All plans come with a ded­i­cat­ed SSL cer­tifi­cate, which con­veys pro­fes­sion­al­ism and trust to cus­tomers. It’s free for Stan­dard and Plus plans, and requires addi­tion­al pay­ments for Pro and Enter­prise plans.

Big­Com­merce’s soft­ware is host­ed on the Google Cloud plat­form, pro­vid­ing unlim­it­ed band­width and 99.99%+ uptime, and giv­ing cus­tomers fire­wall pro­tec­tion, file integri­ty scan­ning, intru­sion detec­tion tools, and DDoS pro­tec­tion. It also has ISO/IEC27001:2013 and PCIDSS3.2 lev­el 1 cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, which guar­an­tee the secure han­dling of cus­tomer infor­ma­tion and pay­ment data.

Big­Com­merce vs. Prestashop: Verdict

As we’ve seen, both PrestaShop and Big­Com­merce are pow­er­ful solu­tions that offer dif­fer­ent fea­tures and func­tion­al­i­ties to meet eCom­merce needs.

PrestaShop is ide­al for entre­pre­neurs, small busi­ness­es and star­tups seek­ing a cus­tomiz­able solu­tion that allows full con­trol over design and func­tion­al­i­ty. It’s par­tic­u­lar­ly good for com­pa­nies with an advanced tech­ni­cal team and a lim­it­ed budget.

In turn, Big­Com­merce is ide­al for medi­um-sized and large com­pa­nies seek­ing a solu­tion to expand their online pres­ence with­out wor­ry­ing about tech­ni­cal chal­lenges. Its ease of use, scal­a­bil­i­ty, and supe­ri­or secu­ri­ty fea­tures, the com­bi­na­tion of basic func­tion­al­i­ty and the flex­i­bil­i­ty for exten­sions make Big­Com­merce an excel­lent choice for grow­ing com­pa­nies that need a scal­able platform.