Prestashop compared to Zen-Cart and osCommerce

I'm considering Prestashop for a new project. It seems to be younger than Zen-Cart and osCommerce. Since I just found it by Google, I'd like to gather comments and experience and comparison of Prestashop to established "brands" like Zen-Cart and osCommerce

As one that love working with Magento i just wanted to show you this article.

If i were in the works of setting up an site for online commerce, i wouldn't choose ZenCart or OSC. They are both old and doesnt update at all. But thats just an personal opinion. And i work a lot with these things.

My Prestashop knowledge is limited though, but if its anything like Magento i would recommend it. Cuz Magento is by far the leading commerce platform atm. Also just my 2 cents.

[Magento vs Prestashop][1]

[More reading OSC vs ZenCart][2]


[1]:

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[2]:

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We install and review all open source eCommerce solutions as a matter of course. So we have looked in depth at all the one mentioned here. I prefer osCommerce to Prestashop. Prestashop is too immature and simply does not have the in-built functionality or breadth of Add Ons. It is not a "lite" version of Magento by any means.

As to the other poster's comment about osCommerce and Magento. Magento is an out of the box solution which is very difficult to customize. You need to be a programmer to work with it and even then the learning curve is steep. And if you do customize, you then are buying out of their upgrade path. Which is why the average site does not customize and why so many Magento stores look so much alike.

Unlike Magento, osCommerce has and always will be intended as a core eCommerce solution on which you build you own unique eCommerce solution.

Two different approaches to building an eCommerce site. One is cookie cutter then other is fast track to custom solution.

PrestaShop is an impressive new entry to the field, with a very attractive user interface and impressive product option/variant capabilities (like Zen Cart attributes). One downside is that it's much harder to modify; there is nothing like the Zen Cart "templating " capability so you're always changing core files. This gets hard to manage with the frequent release schedule PrestaShop is using. But you should definitely install it and spend some time testing it and evaluating its suitability for your shop.

The prestashop as good as it looks has still very little or no documentation and or ridicilously complex written smarty templ. stuff, driving us "open source" fanatics, like cattle into bottleneck traps forced to buy our way out.

Don't forget it's a company! they are even hiring at the moment. and we will be caught.

and imho, "open source" by a company?
reaping all the benefits of community development, organising predators and game refuge paths for a nice game hunting season.

I found prestashop more powerful but to customize it you must have knoeledge on CSS , smarty template and php. For me it is better than Zen and Os

Having used oscommerce, zen cart and more recently prestashop I would say prestashop is probably one of the easier solutions for building a relatively simple, attractive looking site. My main site is zen cart but I'm considering changing to prestashop. Unless you are an experienced designer / developer then I'd stay clear of oscommerce and go for zen cart or presta. Zen Cart is in a way a simpler version of oscommerce. Prestashop just looks more tidy and less like an "out of the box" solution to the untrained eye than os and zen. Some of the free templates are pretty tidy, and with the odd change to a few images it's relatively easy to customize the feel. Function is another story. As stated before there's limited documentation and community with presta - which i'm sure will grow steadily over the next year or so, which might make a beginer go with another solution.

prestashop is much easier than zen cart, oscommerce and magento. the easiest thing to do is try to install them as they are all free.

I work daily with PrestaShop. I think that it's the perfect solution for an average project. If you need something extremely fancy (but also extremely difficult to configure/use) you should go for Magento. I'm a programmer and I've had difficulties setting it up like I wanted. The learning curve is too steep. Of course it brings other advantages, but the project has to be big enough to make up for the time lost in learning to use the the platform.

The thing I like the most about PrestaShop it's the ease of use (for both the developer and the shop admin). Its modular system completely demolishes osCommerce. Everytime I have to work on an osCommerce shop, I cringe. It's outdated and it's not a good option, by any means. If you need to change the layout of the store, you just drag modules around in the Back Office. There's no cutting and pasting code in PHP files. The same for installing new modules.

In my opinion, PrestaShop is mature enough at this point. There are hundreds of modules you can use to customize it to your liking (just do a google search or try their forum). The template system is also top-notch and easy to use. Take a look at what you can do:

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I also messed around with VirtueMart. It's not a bad solution if you want to integrate your shop with a CMS (Joomla). There's also TomatoCart, a new-comer (they still don't have documentation for developers) that's based on osCommerce 3 alpha, but from what I've seen it's a major improvement. The Back Office is amazing.

Summing it up, I think PrestaShop is excellent if you need something that's easy to use, easy to configure and flexible. Magento is better for LARGE projects because there's a lot of overhead. If you are planning on configuring more stores in the future, the time lost learning Magento might be acceptable.

Ive been using OSC these past few years and recently i started exploring Prestashop. I find presta harder to modify compared to OSC.

I think if you are more of a visual designer, it is easier to use OSC. But if u are more of a businessman, u should go for presta. The interface can be customizable but it'd take more time compared to OSC.