Migrating from PrestaShop to Shopify: A Guide

Both PrestaShop and Shopify are useful ecommerce platforms; fighting continuously for the same market. As Shopify Experts, we firmly believe Shopify has the potential to be the perfect platform for you, but making a transition from one platform to another can often be rather daunting. This handy guide lays out everything you need to know; helping you make an informed choice when you consider migrating.

Usability

Switching to a new platform might be overwhelming if you’re concerned about getting to grips with the new system, however this shouldn’t be a worry with Shopify. With ease of use being one of its key selling points; making it one of the fastest growing e-commerce platforms out there, Shopify offers a highly usable platform for beginners (as well as still being appropriate for experts). This is achieved through their offering of an intuitive dashboard and helpful drag-and-drop store builder. As well as this, the set-up itself for Shopify is rather straightforward, and the complexities can be tackled at a later point - whereas with PrestaShop it might take longer and be more difficult due to its need for manual setup. Even if you were still struggling, Shopify has one of the best customer support networks around - so you won’t be left in the dark.

Store Management

Whereas PrestaShop offers everything at once when you join their platform, Shopify allows more of a gradual build up in this sense. If having a realm of options is nerve-wracking for you, having the option to start with Shopify Basic and build this up over time might be more of a justifiable path to take. Even with Basic, you still have access to all the necessary tools to run a successful online business, and this way you can grow your Shopify site in tune with when your business needs advance. These upgrades do come at a cost, but luckily we’ve created a similar guide for upgrading to the ultimate level - Shopify Plus, so you can make the right decisions.

Security

Considering you are constantly dealing with customer information and payment details, security should be a top priority. Both platforms offer good security measures, with PrestaShop allowing you to insert security related add-ons, and Shopify having a uniform security system across their plans which you don’t need to worry about installing. Shopify meets all 6 categories of PCI standards, covering your online store, web hosting and shopping cart which ensures customer trust as well as site legitimacy. As well as this, Shopify helpfully offers apps such as Cart2Cart Store Migration, which allows for a hassle-free and secure transfer of data across platforms, giving you one less thing to worry about. Shopify’s security cannot be faulted, which is why we believe it’s the perfect platform.

Customisation

Being able to customise your site is crucial for giving users the most personalised and unique shopping experience. Both platforms let you do this through extra app additions (or ‘modules’ as PrestaShop labels them), and both also offer pre-made themes which you can then customise further. Although PrestaShop has more themes available, it is rather clear that the smaller selection offered by Shopify is much more modern and of a generally higher standard. Not only this, but Shopify Plus allows for an ultimate level of customisation which goes as far as the checkout page. With the handy drag-and-drop store builder, you can customise your site with little stress and confusion, whilst maintaining a professional look.

Performance

It goes without saying that if your site is slow, or just not functioning as well as it could be, this can risk customers abandoning your pages and therefore you lose conversions. As well as this, you inevitably want your site to be functioning at its optimal pace when you’re working on it yourself behind the scenes. PrestaShop allows you to choose your own host, which means you need to find a host that is effectively optimised - this can be daunting and a lot of responsibility, especially when any issues occur and your site goes down. Shopify is faster than the average online store, with 99.9% uptime, as well as allowing up to 10,000 transactions per minute. Once again with Shopify, being a hosted site proves to be a winning factor here, as performance isn’t something that needs to be worried about.

Overall, Shopify offers a lot of handy features and extras that allow you to grow your business to suit your needs, as well as being rather straightforward in a lot of areas meaning you can use your time elsewhere and really drive the growth of your business. Considering moving your store from PrestaShop to Shopify? We’ve got a lot to offer, so get in touch to find out how we can take your business to the next level.