Online shopping today has come a long way ahead with enhanced modifications and functional improvements. With eCommerce industry clocking trillions of dollars, many small shops are jumping the eCommerce boat. But before becoming a member of eCommerce family, you need to decide an important question – which boat to use? Meaning which shopping cart to use for sailing through the tough times. In this article, we’ve compared two of the best open source, powerful and flexible eCommerce platforms – Drupal Commerce and Prestashop.

Drupal vs Prestashop

What is Drupal Commerce?

It is an open source eCommerce platform built as plugin for Drupal Content Management System. It is used to create online stores as well as applications of all sizes. So if you already are using Drupal for your website, then you are in luck with Drupal Commerce.

What is PrestaShop?

It is a free MySQL/PHP based open source shopping cart, simplifying the process of store launch and is supported by huge community base.

Ok, so they are free and open source. What’s in it for me?

Let’s look at the five common features between Drupal Commerce & PrestaShop.

  1. You can add unlimited product with different types of category to your eCommerce store
  2. Payment management is quite easy with payment gateways integration flexibility
  3. Both are mobile friendly, delivering a better mobile user experience to your customers
  4. Fast, effective and straightforward store management that helps to change product attributes effortlessly
  5. In built marketing and promotional tools, including coupons and discounts to acquire more customers

The main distinctive feature between the both platform is that PrestaShop was basically built as a shopping cart while Drupal Commerce is a plugin for CMS. Apart from that there are various differences like:

  1. Installation - You need Drupal CMS for using Drupal Commerce cart. Whereas in PrestaShop just install and setup your shopping cart.
  2. Taxes - Both Drupal Commerce & PrestaShop have easy tax guidance and rules according to the country of your business. It also calculates taxes automatically as per your demography.
  3. Security - Drupal Commerce is certified by many security advisories as Drupal is one of the most secure CMS. In PrestaShop, the security is PCI compliant and CSS certified, safeguarding your customer’s credit card information.
  4. Learning Curve - Drupal has a high learning curve and requires in-depth programming skills to manage your store. Whereas PrestaShop is quite easy to handle an online shop even for newbies.
  5. Support - Both shopping carts are supported by an active community. When you require additional support, PrestaShop charges a fee, whereas Drupal Commerce offers better documentation with different kinds of instructions but has no technical support. You need a consulting partner or Drupal Development Company India for added support.

Conclusion:

Both Drupal Commerce & PrestaShop are powerful solutions for setting up your online store that can deliver great opportunities for growth and prosperity. Drupal Commerce is ideal for businesses that has some technical skills and prefer CMS built shopping carts. PrestaShop is suitable more for beginners. Have you conducted market research to analyze any other eCommerce shopping cart apart from Drupal Commerce & PrestaShop? Please share your feedback in the comments below.

Author's Bio: 

Kaushal Shah manages digital marketing communications for the enterprise technology services provided by Rishabh Software.