indahbrank77

My Vote is for PrestaShop. 

Your vote for which CMS and what feature you like about them most?
Experienced Presta users and migrated Opencart Users.....Leave your replies here as we want to know where prestashop lacking/growing in the world of Ecommerce?

Prestashop Cloud is an alternative solution for hosting website with Prestashop users. Cloud hosting is a network of servers that allow websites to be hosted on multiple servers.

After its launch in January 2015, Prestashop Cloud is an exciting move and becomes a new choice for e-merchants beside self-hosted Prestashop. While self-hosted Prestashop allows you to download and install on your website, it is easy and quick to create Prestashop Cloud store with an email address.

Should or not should use Prestashop Cloud is still a hot debate topic for businesses. If you have plan to use Prestashop Cloud instead of self-hosted Prestashop, you should read the article that shows overview about Prestashop Cloud.

1. It is easy to create an account on Prestashop Cloud and host shopping cart free.
2. Do not need to install software. You can start to sell products on Prestashop servers in no time.
3. You can add a custom domain name at any time.
4. Speed hosting is high.
5. Developer can choose any of the hundreds of themes and modules on Prestashop Addons

1. Registering Prestashop Cloud account free, but you need to purchase built-in modulesfrom Addons to add more features and extend functionality of website.
2. It only supports to use modules and themes on Prestashop Addons. You can’t use new themes from other sources. Different modules and themes are warned that they are unsafe and incompatible to Prestashop Cloud, so which are not allowed on the platform.
3. It is limited to customize the default template. Storeowners can only change some of the default theme’s setting including color, font and lay-out; adjust logo, website icons of standard theme.
4. You don’t have full control on management of your store. After logging in to your account, you can see dashboard to manage on your PrestaShop Cloud back-office. However, it is the fact that you only change products and services by store editor. The store is yours, but Prestashop has the highest power on managing your site.
5. It does not allow you to access to database and change SQL database.
6. Prestashop do not give members permission to get their hands in the code. If storeowner want to expand scale of store, they can’t export the code, which means that developers have to rebuild the website.
7. SSL security is currently impossible.

People recognize that Prestashop Cloud is only suitable for small business to start an online store quickly with a little technical knowledge. It solves the problem about budget in the first period. However, when the number of products increases, Prestashop Cloud is not a good choice, you must build your website again from the beginning. Experts recommend you to choose self-hosted Prestashop to be independent in editing and managing your website, especially with stores carrying frequently changing product. Storeowners have full control on source code. Developers can customize e-commerce store according to their necessary.

If you want to migrate your shopping cart to Prestashop site now, migration tool of LitExtension supports you to implement hosting for new Prestashop.

see more at http://blog.litexten...estashop-cloud/

Great James,

thanks for your sharing,  let see at HERE when converting the shopping cart to another 

PS Cloud is dead,

fortunately ;-)

Great comparisons among Magento, Prestashop and WooCommerce for store development

If you don't know the way to choose the right shopping cart at the first time especially for the starters.

Don't worry, LitExtension will help to correct the mistake with shopping cart migration tools 

Online business are an attractive area to get into the digital age. ECommerce sales worldwide will reach $1.672 trillion online in 2015. Moreover, increasing of eCommerce platforms allows businesses to have many opportunities to approach new customers and many choices to maximize the potential of resources. People witnessed an amazing comeback of WooCommerce plugin in eCommerce market share in 2015.

Most of the Top 100 online retailer use in-house-built eCommerce platforms.

WooCommerce becomes the new leader at the end of 2015 with the share of 26%. Magento Community decreased by 0.5% from 25.3% till 24.8% that is the result since May 2015. Magento Enterprise and Prestashop slight increased by 0.5% and 0.4% respectively. Three biggest platforms (WooCommerce, Magento and Prestashop) take 65% of eCommerce market share.

WooCommerce has lower barrier to entry about technology and finance, which is the reason why it is difficult to stop WooCommerce plugins expanding its share. Experts predict that interest line of WooCommerce continues to increase in the coming year. While WooCommerce is conquering user’s heart, the interest in Magento and Prestashop slow down.

Interest Over Time

Experts and developers work continuously to make features more advanced and convenient for users. Releasing Magento 2 in November is one of the most anticipated events of 2015. LitExtension will draw a big picture about features and enhancements of three largest eCommerce platforms including Magento, WooCommerce, and Prestashop up to 2015.

WooCommerce is one of the best shopping cart plugins available for WordPress. Founded in 2011, WooCommerce is a young platform with high development potential.

Advantages

Cost-effective

WooCommerce is an open source plugin. It is easy to transform your WordPress website into a thorough-bred eCommerce store free. Users can find many free themes, extensions and install them quickly. Other extensions are required payment but they are cheaper than different platform extensions.

Flexibility

Business can categorize products and give sale prices and independent attributes. WooCommerce stores are able to provide physical, virtual, downloadable and even affiliate products. Moreover, this platform accept many types of payment with POS solution.

Familiar

WooCommerce is a plugin of WordPress. If users have used WordPress before, they benefit from recognizing the user-friendly WordPress interface. It is available for beginners to save a lot of time to create and manage your site.

Customization Options

Users can download about 2000 different themes in https://wordpress.org/themes/. With each selected theme, users can availably change pre-set CSS styles and color themes, tweak the code and experiment special features.

Professional platform

It helps you to control detailed order tracking and customer engagement tools. From that, users can view open orders, update delivery statuses, apply discount code, set up taxes. This platform gives customers a picture of professional service.

Analytics

WooCommerce provide some analytic tools, which allows to calculate daily sales, total sales, measure the statistics for different customers individually, follow the number of order, and determine change in trend. It is helpful for managers to measure the metrics of their site to improve sales.

Community

WordPress community has millions of users and thousands of active members on hand to give advices for people who have problem in setting WooCommerce up.

Disadvantage

Performance

WooCommerce is not an e-commerce website. It will not fulfill the eCommerce funnel. Developer has to add multiple extensions and customize their site before running it.

Scale

WooCommerce is a light platform, so it is not suitable for a big eCommerce store that has thousands of products.

Releasing from 2008, Magento is the most popular eCommerce platform with over 200.000 retailers worldwide and 2 versions: Magento Community and Magento Enterprise.

Advantages

Open Source

Magento is free for download in the Internet, except Enterprise version. It includes most of the necessary features to have your store up and run it.

Feature-rich

Magento’s admin area is second to none. It allows users to be enabled full features by the click of a button. It is easy to look at your website performance and real time information.  Magento allows third party integrations to import products from spreadsheets, manage newsletter system, start-to-finish manage an order of a customer.

Flexible CMS

It supports you manage multiple websites, integrate Google website optimizer and over 50 payment gateways. WYSIWYG editor is friendly to help non-tech individual refresh website easily. Magento is perfect choice for product editing and capable of handling large database smartly.

Strong Community

Magento is owned by eBay. Magento users receive an abundance of helps and advices from eBay advocates to manage effectively. There are over 800.000 developers worldwide with Magento experience.

Extensions

There are about 15.000 Magento plugins and extensions.

Disadvantage

Cost

Magento EE is not a free version. Users can start with Magento CE with no fee. However, you need to pay high cost for extensions and plugins. Sometimes, companies have to hire a third party to install extension for their site.

Technology

Setting up and customizing Magento is more complicated than other platforms. It offers high requirement in server and developers. Magento hosted on dedicated servers or cloud plan to keep store running stably. Developers need to have core technical knowledge and experiences in coding to install and control Magento properly.

Time

Magento’s flexible architecture also makes it complicated. The more Magento is complex, the more time it need to set up and customize as in other solutions. It requires developer’s time to get up the learning curve and be experts.

Prestashop is a free open-source eCommerce solution. After appearing in 2007, it is gaining its popularity very quickly. This platform gives business flexibility and a low entry barrier to build an online store.

Advantages

Installation

Prestashop is really easy to initial install and customize with basic features. Developers ought to download files and upload them to their host. It is suitable for PHP5 with MySQL5 (or later). If hosting company provides one-click installation, everything will be very simple for even non-tech individual.

Interface

User interface is relatively friendly. All needed information is available on Dashboard. WooCommerce keeps technical terminology minimum. Most of the emphasis are ease of use and clarity.

Feature

Prestashop supports some impressive features such as email follow-up automation, SEO, catalogue and site management, recently viewed products feature, promotional tools, international shipping. You can find more 25.000 plugins and extensions of Prestashop.

Flexibility

Prestashop allows developer to customize eCommerce store easily according to his opinions and customer’s need. You can add or delete different features through the admin panel.

Official marketplace

You can choose from 3500 modules and themes in the official marketplace: http://addons.prestashop.com/en/

Languages

Prestashop is available in 41 languages, but only supports fully in English and French.

Disadvantage

Expensive modules

Most of full functional modules is not cheap. When upgrading and expanding Prestashop, you need high budget to purchase templates, themes and extensions.

Minimum scalability

Prestashop is suitable for small and medium scale business. It does not support multi-store feature.

Support

When users of Prestashop have trouble in managing site, they can find help from Prestashop forum. However, Prestashop do not have an official support team.

Source: http://blog.litexten...rce-comparison/