There’s no looking back for eCommerce industry ever since digitization has revolutionized the industry. Brick and Mortar stores have already gone for the revamp and made themselves available on digital channels. There has been a jump from 8% transaction in 2013 to 20% in 2019 so far in online transactions. Users today expect quality products at cheap prices and instant customer support team in case of any grievances.
All such scenarios have led businesses to incline their interests towards ecommerce website development companies to build their own e-commerce platform. This is the only easy, reliable and robust solution that guarantees business growth and success in the long run. The major question which pops here is – which platform to choose to build the e-commerce platform?
If you too are struggling with the dilemma and confused about the list of e-commerce platform, then we are here to loosen the tension and guide you to opt for the best e-commerce platform as per your need.
1) Magento
Magento is a widely popular self-hosted, open source e-commerce framework. It is the most preferred framework from small and medium enterprises to big companies like Samsung, Nike, Ford and more. Few advantages of Magento to mention are:
a) User-friendly
b) Excellent user experience
c) Flexible and Customizable
2) Prestashop
Prestashop is a self-hosted e-commerce platform. It is basically best for small businesses as it is cheaper in cost compared to Magento. It has a low monthly maintenance cost, supports 41 languages, can be installed free from the web.
3) Shopify
Shopify again is the hosted e-commerce platform. It is suitable for both small and medium business enterprises. It’s inexpensive, easy to install, comes with different free and paid themes, and has excellent user support.
Now coming down to which out of the three is best, let’s explore the features separately to know more about the platforms on an individual level.
1) User Friendliness
Shopify: In terms of user friendliness, Shopify is the true winner. It comes with a drag-and-drop interface, simple and easy tools, easy theme editing and more. All this promises a seamless user experience to all SMEs & big enterprises. In the line of customers’ experience too, Shopify enhances their buying experience with seamless and easy steps right from check in to check out.
Magento: Highly preferred by big enterprises, Magento does come with some disadvantages. It’s not that users friendly as Shopify. A business may need to look at each and every aspect of Magento like templates, testimonial reports and more. Magneto is not for those who have basic or very limited tech knowledge. Despite its flaws, Magento covers 28% of internet marketplaces and wins over 16% of the top one million websites.
Prestashop: It is still considered as the underdog of e-commerce platforms. It acts as a bridge and brings the integral, complex features of Magento and simplicity of Shopify into one. To main elements of Prestashop – customizable front office and a simple back office makes Prestashop very user-friendly. The best advantage of Prestashop is that it’s free to install and use. Prestashop comes with impressive statistical features like Intelligent Merchant KPI and
Forecasting.
2) Costing
Another point to be considered before finalizing e-commerce platform is costing. Let’s explore more on this.
Magento: Magento is an open source platform, so the business can avail community edition for free. All required is to set up the business’s hosting and domain name. Another edition is the enterprise edition which comes at a cost of $18,000/year. Since it’s the preference of big players, even small businesses can avail Magento by opting for a shared hosting which comes at minimal costs.
Shopify: Shopify has more elaborate plans and thus brings forward four plans named as Lite, Basic, Pro, and Unlimited. The plan price ranges from 9 USD to 179 USD on a monthly basis. All of the mentioned plans come with no transaction fees for a 14-day trial. Shopify offers day and night customer support, manual order creation tools, bandwidth, and unlimited products in the plan costing.
Prestashop: As already mentioned above, Prestashop is free to install and use. However, it does carry some expenses when additional elements are required for use. Being an open-source solution platform, it requires a paid web hosting. The hosting fees vary as to build the platform you need to incur costs in purchasing several paid modules or a good-looking template.
3) Customer Support
Magento: Magento provides community-based support. This means that there won’t be any specific service representatives to answer your queries one to one. In case of any issues or queries, the business is required to post the query/question on community forums. Another alternative idea is to look at forums for any previous answers to a similar query.
Shopify: Unlike Magento, Shopify offers 24×7 customer support. It also offers both dedicated and community-based support. This is essentially helpful for small businesses who are first time looking for e-commerce platforms and thus need one on one representative to answer queries easily and instantly.
Prestashop: Prestashop offers paid support. Different levels of support come at different prices. The cheapest plan is of $249 per month which caters to 3 hours of support, and 1 year of support ranges to $399. Prestashop also offers to discuss queries on forums and getting it resolved through previous answers.
Before you choose any one of these, make sure to discuss your project with your eCommerce website development company.
Conclusion
To conclude, all three platforms come with their own advantages and disadvantages. It only depends on the size of the business and the requirements which decide the platform to choose. For small enterprises with a limited or fixed budget and moderate requirements, Shopify would work. Magento suits best for big enterprises who expect lots of customization and resources to meet the needs of a platform. Whereas, Prestashop is for businesses that need the feature list of Magento and simplicity of Shopify.
Siya Carla is the Solution Consultant at Finoit Technologies, a leading custom software development company which provides unique web design and mobile app development services. By creating interactive mobile apps for 450+ customers across the globe, Finoit enjoys a great reputation as a prominent mobile app development company.
Design and Development - Software, Mobile Apps & Web Development 