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PrestaShop may be free to download, but its users are faced with substantial costs in the long run. Since PrestaShop is open source, you’ll need to pay for a hosting service, which can run anywhere from a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars every year.
And the costs don’t stop there. Unless you’re comfortable with coding, to get your store up and running, you’ll need the help of web developers, IT specialists, and web designers. Plus, in order to supplement PrestaShop’s barebones software, you’ll have to pay for numerous expensive add-ons that’ll quickly eat into your profits. The expenses never end with PrestaShop — there's even a charge for recovering your password!
If it's free eCommerce software you're looking for, Shift4Shop is a much better solution. Our End-to-End eCommerce plan is truly free and has no limits on bandwidth, orders, or anything else — and it has hundreds of built-in features most platforms reserve for pro- or even enterprise-level accounts. All you need to do to access our free plan is to use Shift4 as your credit card processor, and you'll have functionality Prestashop users can only dream of.
Out-of-box featuresPrestaShop claims their software is "100% free," and while it's true that you can download the software at no charge, you'll quickly need to start paying for add-ons to bring missing features to your PrestaShop store. Paid add-ons include features like single-page checkout, abandoned cart recovery tools, a customer loyalty program, and much more. But Shift4Shop includes all of these features, plus much more, right out of the box.
Technical supportOnline store owners need access to technical support to keep their businesses running, but PrestaShop charges huge fees for very limited support hours. The cheapest support plan costs $279.99 for one month — but during that time, you only get 3 hours of support. Annual plans cost from $399 to $1,399 but still limit your available hours (the top-tier plan only includes 20). Support is also only available on weekdays from 9 AM to 6 PM Central European Time, which is a 6- to 9-hour difference if you're in the US. Compare this to Shift4Shop's free, 24/7/365 live support, and the difference is like night and day.
“I spent a month setting up my store and the following three months trying to fix their bugs. Prestashop is great in theory, but their slow load times, system overload errors, and ultra expensive add-ons make growing and maintaining a store impossible.”
– Ex-Prestashop customer
Ease of useWith an open-source solution like PrestaShop, starting and maintaining an online store is tough work. Not only do you need to install and set up the software, you'll also have to perform important updates on your own — and that's on top of needing to learn the platform to run your business. Unless you're a tech expert, you're going to need to hire an IT professional or shell out for PrestaShop's additional services. But with Shift4Shop, you don’t need to have any design or programming experience, and setting up an online store takes just minutes.
Shift4Shop lets you take payments in minutes with a built-in Shift4 integration and also supports more payment solutions than any other eCommerce platform. See a full list of payment providers here.
PrestaShop Checkout accepts credit cards and a few other types of payments, but to add additional payment methods to your store, you'll need to pay extra for add-ons which can cost hundreds of dollars each.
Open-source eCommerce software can spell disaster for store owners when updates are released to the platform. These updates are necessary to fix security vulnerabilities, so you can't skip them and remain safe — but the updates frequently cause issues that break parts of your store including your theme and add-ons. You also have to apply the update yourself, unless you want to pay PrestaShop to do it for you. Shift4Shop is completely different, however, since we handle all software updates automatically and you'll never have to worry about security breaches or broken features. Our expert team ensures your online store is always up and running, 24/7/365.
Shift4Shop offers the most advanced features in SaaS eCommerce, even to merchants using our free, unlimited End-to-End eCommerce plan. Our fully scalable solution includes everything you need to run a successful online store and adapt to complex business needs, unlike PrestaShop which constantly encounters hard limits and surprise expenses.