PrestaShop vs Shopify

No universal answer, but clear rules: (1) If you're starting without a technical team, without a development budget, and you want to be live within 1 week — Shopify. (2) If you have a complex catalog (>500 SKUs with rich attributes), a B2B project, multistore, or specific business rules — PrestaShop. (3) If you have a limited budget but want full control over code and SEO — PrestaShop with a team. (4) If you want ultra-predictable cash flow and the loss of optionality doesn't bother you — Shopify.

Shopify is cheaper to start (€29/month) but quickly catches up or exceeds with growth: subscription (€29-2000+/month based on volume), transaction fees (0.5-2% on every sale unless you use Shopify Payments), monthly apps (often €200-500/month combined). PrestaShop is free at the core but requires hosting (€15-200/month), third-party modules (one-time purchase or annual subscription), and a technical team to maintain it. Over 3 years, Shopify is typically 30-60% more expensive in TCO once you exceed €200k annual revenue.

PrestaShop has a clear advantage on technical SEO: customizable sitemap, unlimited 301 redirects, complete JSON-LD structured data, modifiable robots.txt, multilingual hreflang, customizable URL structures. Shopify is more constrained: frozen sitemap (no negotiation on adding products), redirects via limited interface, partial structured data, imposed URL structure (/products/, /collections/). On complex SEO challenges (multilingual with subdomains, advanced structured data, multi-country), PrestaShop is decisively superior.

Shopify for initial ease of use: highly polished admin interface, rich app store, managed hosting, included technical support. You're live in 1 day. PrestaShop requires more configuration (hosting, modules, design) but once installed, the back-office is just as effective for routine operations (orders, products, customers). The difference shrinks significantly after 6 months of use.

PrestaShop has a very clear advantage: native multistore (single back-office, multiple shops with different configs), multilingual with proper hreflang, multi-currency. Shopify handles multilingual / multi-currency via Shopify Markets (paid add-on in constant evolution), but real multistore (multiple independent entities) requires Shopify Plus with a subscription per shop — quickly very expensive.

Yes, it's one of the biggest 2026 trends. Migration is possible and frequent: we retrieve the Shopify catalog via API, import into PrestaShop, remap URLs with systematic 301s, handle active subscriptions (Shopify Subscriptions → dedicated PS module or direct Stripe). Expect €5,000-15,000 depending on complexity. See our dedicated Shopify to WooCommerce Migration page for the WP/WC pair, or contact us for Shopify → PrestaShop.

PrestaShop code is fully open source, hosted with you, modifiable however you want. If you leave PrestaShop in 5 years, you take everything with you: code, database, design, custom modules. Shopify doesn't give you the source code, you stay dependent on their infrastructure and their business model. If Shopify suddenly raises prices or changes its terms, you have no leverage. That's the fundamental difference: ownership vs tenancy.

Yes: our developers have been coding on PrestaShop for 10+ years, we've also supported Shopify projects (in migration or initial build). We can do a comparative audit on your specific case: catalog volume, type of business (B2C / B2B), available technical team, budget. Consulting audit at €590 (3-5 days) that delivers a costed recommendation and implementation plan.