Opencart vs Prestashop vs Magento
The new open-source free shopping cart software based on PHP/MySQL is as follows: Opencart, Prestashop， Magento。They have already exceeded osCommerce, Zencart, CRE Loaded.If you just want to build a media-sized shopping cart, choosing them is a very good choice. However, these three kinds of shopping cart software have their own advantage and disadvantage. Which to choose? Let’s make a contrast. You can choose according to your requirement. Of course, you can also tell IECSP the detailed requirement, we assist you to determine which shopping cart software to choose.
Function contrast:
| Features | Prestashop | Magento | Opencart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Source | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Pricing | Free | Free | Free |
| Templatable | Smarty | Smarty | PHP |
| Multi-Language | |||
| Multi-Currency | |||
| Product Reviews | |||
| Product Ratings | |||
| Downloadable | |||
| Related Products | |||
| Product Features | |||
| Newsletters | |||
| Discount Coupon | |||
| SEO URLs | |||
| Backup & Restore | |||
| Printable Invoices | |||
| Sales Reports | |||
| Free Shipping | |||
| Wholesale | |||
| News & Events | |||
| Wish List | |||
| Testimonlals | |||
| Track order | |||
| F.A.Q | |||
| Gift Certificate | |||
| Recently Viewed | |||
| Points | |||
| Bulk Category Add | |||
| Bulk Product Add | |||
| Product Comparison | |||
| Statistics | |||
| Affiliate | |||
| Memberships | |||
| One-page Checkout | |||
| Order Barcode | |||
| Merchandise return (RMAs) | |||
| RSS Feed | |||
| TAG | |||
| Send to friend | |||
| Access Restrictions | |||
| Live Chat Software |
Conclusion: Magento win, Prestashop and Opencart lose.
Code contrast:
Opencart’ code is not only a very excellent but also a high efficient framework, which adopt MVC schema development, and have a clear logic structure, easy to study and modify. Of course, the precondition is that you have to possess a powerful PHP developing ability. Opencart don’t use the Smarty template engine, which is a reason IECSP admire it. This project can not only increase the efficiency, but also decrease the code workload of the programmer.
Based on PHP5, Prestashop adopt smarty template engine. The first MVC schema is not excellent. It will be tough, if you touch the code of prestashop first. The linage of code is much more, for it adopt smarty, increase the workload of extending development.
Magento adopt Zend framework, not smarty template engine. For the programmer who are making extending development, they not only need to master PHP, but also need to handle Zend framework. The efficiency of development will be increased, if you can handle Zend framework. However, adopting Zend framework will definitely decrease the disposal performance of Magento, which is congenital deficiency, but Magento add the Compiler module in order to increase performance, at least 30%.
Conclusion: Opencart win, Prestashop and Magento lose.
Speed contrast:
We deploy the three shopping cart softwares on the same host, and turn on the cache function, Magento turn on Compiler module, the homepage display 20 products. We make the first and second visit to every shopping cart software, then record the visit speed. Through many time testing and average value contrast, we find that the speed of Opencart is the best. The speed of Prestashop and Magento is a little worse. What IECSP need to show is that our test is based on our own host environment, our own simple method, not the general objective evaluation. The possibility of error exist. If you test, the result maybe different from ours.
Conclusion: Opencart win, Prestashop and Magento lose.
Community and support contrast:
Magento developed by a company from US, Prestashop by a group of students from French, Opencart by a programmer from British.
Now, magento Community have 130,000 members, Prestashop have 30000 members, Opencart have only 4000 members.
Conclusion: Matento win, Prestashop follow, Opencart last.
19 Comments
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thanks for this review, I have been used Prestashop since 10 months ago and made some money from this great opensource ecommerce application. But we realize that these three kinds of shopping cart software have their own advantage and disadvantage. Now i’m learning the opencart template system as requested from our client.
Regards
ArdianYS
I can tell you from my experience that Prestashop is much easier to install and to use.
I know that when I tried to install Magento for the first time, I got frustrated after about 15 minutes because it seemed too hard. Usually with new software it never takes me more than 15 minutes to figure out how it works.
In fact I am just now in the middle of converting a Magento site to Prestashop for a client.
Also, many of the Prestashop features and addons you have marked with an X are available now.
I am also an English Moderator on the Prestashop forum, and I see many people that are far less tech savvy than me that manage to install and customize their own shops, and install themes, modules and modification with little or no help.
I have many useful modules for Prestashop on my store (http://www.presto-changeo.com/), like a filter module, a translation module (which I used to translate my site to 15 other languages), and an attribute wizard module that lets you customized your attributes similar to apple’s website.
I have not tested Prestashop on a really large scale (10,000 – 50,000+ products), so I can’t say if Magento works better in those conditions, but for any small / medium shops, I feel the Prestashop is by far the better option.
I have personally experienced Prestashop and Opencart. Prestashop will be very nice, but is still in its early phase and has many bugs to work out. There are several issues to be worked out for U.S. based customers such as shipping features. I have decided to use Opencart because of ease of product import and export, and easier to integrate shipping features.
While I do appreciate your effort into putting together this review, I’ve gotta say that it has some inaccurate information whithin. To be honest I did not have the patience to read it through, but I did notice your “Function contrast” comparsion. That’s actually what I was looking for.
There are some features that even though you said PrestaShop cannot do, I have used them before:
- It doesn’t have “News & Events” and F.A.Q. indeed, but it has CMS, which can be easily used for matter.
- It has for sure: Wish List, Testimonials, Track order, Gift Certificate, Recently Viewed, Points, Bulk Category Add, Bulk Product Add, Affiliate, Merchandise return (RMAs), RSS Feed, TAG, Send to friend.
I haven’t used Opencart at all and I only played a little with Magento, but I’m 100% sure that PrestaShop is a good choice for most uses. It has everything you need and then some. Quite fabulous I’d say.
I hope this helps.
Actually, sometimes after we use certain shopping cart for quite a while the business grows and the needs grow accordingly. That’s why more people switch to magento and prestashop. If you decided to make such move at least use a service like cart2cart to have no problems with data entry errors.
Prestashop is easy to use but its product attributes are limited, Magento full of bloat, making changes is a nightmare.
the architecture of opencart alone compared to magento and prestashop makes it a win for me hands down.
@ Tomer
I find it strange that people are selling modules and themes for free open source software — it rather defeats the purpose of the open source community. All the add-ons and tweaks I’ve created over the years for osCommerce were given for free to the community. If you want to profit from software you wrote, write extensions and add-ons for commercial software like Photoshop, etc.
Look what can you do with OpenCart:
http://style.st/opencart-template-leonardo
Never coming back to Magento again. Way too difficult.
i like magento
http://www.bodyworkout.us
PrestaShop has made inumerous updates and this post is wrong by now!
At the moment I feel PrestaShop is the best. Thanks to PrestaShop Team.
Iì’m not sure Opencart wins on speed. and on what I see Prestashop really supports unlimited categories and products, but…guy…try to put in opencart’s database 1000 categories…you’ll se the real shit of that product…
Sure, Prestashop wins, Magento I don’t know, but Opencart…Sucks…
I have a store running on opencart, installation and setup was very easy, tried magento, was EXTREMELY frustrating but then i came across Prestashop
there’s no turning back for me, its all i need and more, like most have highlighted, they provide most of the features that have been Xed in the diagram above.
I would recommend prestashop anyday
But… OpenCart have Feed and Statistics… :S
Ahh and have tags too lol..
Hey, somethings are missing on Magento:
Track order
F.A.Q
Gift Certificate (com connect or enterprise)
Recently Viewed
Points (com connect or enterprise)
Statistics
Affiliate (connect or enterprise)
One-page Checkout
Send to friend
Access Restrictions (connect or enterprise)
Live Chat Software (connect)