In this article I will try to document the three free CMS to implement online stores (Oscommerce, Prestashop, Magento, Woocommerce), the idea comes from having to deliver a job with certain somewhat special characteristics, I will try to update content and keep it up to date now. which for me is also a work tool.

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UPDATED 2021
In this article I will try to document the three free CMS to implement online stores (Oscommerce, Prestashop, Magento, Woocommerce), the idea comes from having to deliver a job with certain somewhat special characteristics, I will try to update content and keep it up to date. day, since for me it is also a work tool. Although today, there are more CMS to design online stores, I wanted to highlight these, I hope that if someone uses other different ones, they will not feel offended, such as Zen Cart, Open Cart, Virtuemart (Joomla), Woocomerce (WordPress ) or Shopify, which have jumped on the e-commerce craze by adding shopping carts to their apps, although our opinion is that they are not as powerful as the first three.

OSCOMMERCE ANALYSIS:

Possibly it has been the best manager for online stores, however, to this day, it has lagged behind and more seeing how strong its competitors are, if there is one thing that should be highlighted about the “KING” of electronic commerce, it is its stability and power, against it has its design with tables, which in the years in which we find ourselves we cannot allow continuing using layout without CSS.

This store manager appeared in March 2000, and reached 14,000 online projects in 2008, although the following year this figure fell to 12,000 online stores, which indicates less interest from webmasters.

Version 3 came to light recently, but it has remained an unfinished project and with the intention that the community continues the project, we believe that this will be a mistake and will gradually disappear.

There is currently version 3, which appeared in 2012, correcting major problems it had with logins, but it still has obsolete code that can lead to more than one head due to the large number of holes it presents… they also separated what is code of design, but even with these improvements there is still a massive flight from this system to other platforms such as Prestashop and Magento, it has no continuity at all.

Since version 3 came out, instead of increasing the functionalities, they have managed to go backward. If you want to know more details about the version of Oscommerce 3, I recommend reading the article, since 2012 there are no updates.

In any case, in the new version of Oscommerce they have added CSS, they have restructured its code, they have improved all the security errors it has, but despite all these small improvements, which we consider patches, it has missed the e-commerce train, mainly because does not have a defined business model, and its most direct competition (Prestashop and Magento), is counting on strong investments that are making them have a larger human team, which translates into constant improvements and a very powerful e-commerce tool.

Our opinion July 2018: Oscommerce is out of date, we do not recommend it.

OSCOMMERCE LINKS:

EXAMPLES OF STORES DEVELOPED IN OSCOMMERCE:

  • Outdated, we did not find 2018 examples with enough quality to be shown, most stores still have the basic design and functionality that made this store system popular

HIGHLIGHT:

  • It allows for the integration of several languages.
  • A small community, in 2011 the largest community in Spanish disappears.
  • A large number of free modules so costs are lowered.
  • Management of payment modules.
  • Developing in Oscommerce is cheaper, it is simpler, and with little technical knowledge, you can do it.
  • Very simple installation.

AGAINST:

  • The initial installation is very basic, they require many modules to start looking like a store.
  • It barely uses CSS so all block changes have to be done manually.
  • The stalled project, Version 3 since 2012.
  • Does not incorporate a model, view, controller, or old system.
  • They are not accessible (site maps, friendly URLs, meta-tags, dynamic titles, etc…) by search engines if we do not implement a large number of modules.
  • With the closure of the Oscommerce Spanish forum, the greatest help that existed for this software in Spanish disappears.
  • Lots of bugs/errors in security.
  • Easily hackable.
  • It does not have a mobile version or marketing.
  • Updating a store in Oscommerce is a big problem, in most cases, all the development has to be done again.

PRESTASHOP ANALYSIS:

This is one of the newest managers, but it is one of my favorites, very good indexing, fully integrated ajax, which gives it a very modern look, and of course it works with CSS, and the default theme is validated by the W3C, Since it is made with CSS, it will be very easy for you to change its appearance and customize it, and of course, in version 1.7 it has Bootstrap integrated from home, so you will have full compatibility with mobile phones and tablets. In Spain, it is the system most used by most companies that sell their products online.

The project was created in France, but it has support in English, and of course in Spanish, although the Spanish community is not that big, it continues to grow at a good pace. The application weighs very little and is installed with surprising ease, if you are used to struggling with impossible installations you will be surprised by its simplicity, in 10 minutes you will have the store up and running. If you are used to working with SMARTY, you are in luck because Prestashop runs under this framework, so you will immediately know where all the elements are located. In the new version of Prestashop 1.7, its backend becomes more robust and works with Symfony

One of the things that have caught my attention the most is how complete the administration panel is and above all how easy and intuitive all the panels are, your customers will appreciate it. Especially when they see the ease with which they can manage the entire store, create categories, products, manufacturers, control customers, etc…

It has a module to migrate from Oscommerce stores to Prestashop stores, which can come in handy for online stores that want to update to a more current tool, this tool can cause problems although performing a proper migration between both applications as long as has modified Oscommerce will not be very complicated.

I would recommend its installation for any type of company that needs a fast tool and that is looking for good natural positioning. It currently has a community of more than 250,000 users and continues to grow very fast, today it has doubled its users in a short time. Lately, the improvements are constant and the solution to the bugs that appear are practically resolved weekly, the tests carried out with version 1.6 show that it is the fastest of the three today, JULY 2018, obtaining a score of 98 over 100. It is a modular application so it will allow us to add features without having to modify the core of the application.

Version 1.5 where supports multi-stores, matching Magento in functionality, so they make it increasingly difficult for us when choosing one system or another, if you want to know all the news of version 1.6, we leave you our link where We comment on all the features of the version of Prestashop 1.6. The great novelty of 2017, without a doubt, is the launch of Prestashop 1.7, which also brings endless new features.

Version 1.7 of Prestashop brings many new features, the most important is the gradual migration of the entire system to Symfony, which means a complete change, but at the same time makes it more secure and powerful. Another strong point is that the default theme has been completely renewed, making it simpler and more minimalist, more in line with the versions that Magento, Shopify, or WooCommerce can bring.

According to the latest study carried out by the Prestashop team, the Google tests give it a 98/100, making it the fastest eCommerce application today.

Awarded as the best application for electronic commerce in 2010 and 2011, consecutively, so Prestashop is a safe bet.

At the Prestashop Day held in May 2018 in Madrid, they talked about all the news that version 1.7 of Prestashop brings, a round table of different personalities of Spanish eCommerce, and about the future of Prestashop, I recommend it since it can help you decide:

OUR OPINION JULY 2018: Without a doubt, he is currently the king of e-commerce in Spain, he started slowly, but having a store made in Prestashop is a guarantee of good development.

PRESTASHOP LINKS:

  • Download PrestaShop v.1.7 .
  • Prestashop forum here .
  • The Prestashop official forum is here .
  • Prestashop expert.
  • Company development Prestashop stores.
  • In short, the best compilation of the modules for 2017.

EXAMPLES OF STORES DEVELOPED IN PRESTASHOP :

  • Bimba and Lola
  • Headict.com
  • E-Golf Ball
  • Zabar
  • Prado Museum
  • Stickaz

HIGHLIGHT:

  • It allows for the integration of several languages ​​easily.
  • The final cost of a relatively cheap professional project.
  • Management of multiple payment modules. It is very easy to incorporate new modules to extend the characteristics of the store.
  • Integrated customer groups.
  • Easy installation with most options.
  • The attributes tool is customizable and easy to use.
  • Allows you to define physical or virtual products (downloads).
  • Very easy to use.
  • Low CPU consumption.
  • Allows you to enter barcodes.
  • Very intuitive and simple administration panel.
  • It’s very fast.
  • Prestastore: Store already developed modules.
  • It has a multistore.
  • The Spanish community is very large.
  • Lots of blogs talking about Prestashop, lots of documentation.
  • Many official Partners were formed by the Prestashop team.
  • Webservices to be able to integrate ERP, CRM, or other external applications
  • Prestashop 1.5, mobile version for both iPhone and Android.
  • Possibility of acquiring a native APP for iPhone, Android, or Windows Phone.
  • Architecture Model / View / Controller both in the front office and back office.
  • Prestashop 1.5 has considerably improved shipping and warehouses.
  • Prestashop 1.6 It has a responsive version by default.
  • Prestashop 1.7 Incorporates Symfony at its core, very robust.

AGAINST:

  • Support mostly in French or English, we are currently working so that this is not the case and more and more people contribute.
  • Attribute system to improve.

MAGENTO ANALYSIS

Magento was born in 2007 so we can deduce that it is a relatively young project, but despite this factor, it has earned the respect of many programmers, being today one of the most used systems.

Magento was bought by eBay in 2011 for around 180 million, the exact figure is not known, since it was bought for 22.5 million dollars, 49% of the shares, and the remaining 51% had been bought previously. But in 2015, the Permira investment fund bought Magento for $925 million, and in 2018, the monster Adobe buys Magento for $1.68 billion. What makes us see that Magento is a profitable company with a great future, what we are not so clear about is where the market will evolve, and if its free licenses will become paid in SaaS or Cloud systems, at least The trend that Magento seems to want to follow is that everything goes towards the Enterprise versions, paid of course.

One of the things that I do not like about this manager is its installation, too many problems installing the script, its control panel is just as complicated, if you have experience with web pages, you will be able to get used to it, but if your client, In the end, it will be the person who is going to work on it every day. You do not have computer skills, you may have quite a few problems managing it. If you are a novice user I do not recommend Magento, on the other hand, if you have programming knowledge ahead, you will be able to do practically anything. Therefore, I recommend Magento for large companies or large projects, Since this is where the potential of Magento is really seen, it is very important to know how to modify Magento since inexperience can be fatal since performance will plummet with poor programming.

The order management is done really well, in the latest version they have copied certain things from Prestashop, this is not bad, on the contrary, e-commerce managers must learn and add functionalities from the other, for example in this case they have added Memcached, prices by user groups, language symbols, cash on the delivery payment method and bank transfer by default.

The main problem that MAGENTO presents is the slowness, it will hardly work in shared hosting, you will need at least a VPS or a dedicated server to be able to run the store properly, apart from having performance applications installed. To touch the heart of Magento it is important to have sufficient knowledge since any error will surely affect the application and its performance. Another problem is that they have a free version that is limiting more and more, compared to the paid version which is around 15,000 euros a year. This license will give you access to advanced marketing tools, customer segmentation, full-page caching, and PCI secure code, among other outstanding features.

OUR OPINION JULY 2018: Magento is powerful, it is very good, but development with this application is expensive and a server with sufficient resources must be available. In addition, the purchase of Adobe can involve payment for the Community Edition version that until now was free.

MAGENTO LINKS:

EXAMPLES OF STORES DEVELOPED IN MAGENTO :

  • My own bike.
  • The Northface.
  • Helly Hansen
  • land rover

HIGHLIGHT:

  • Very powerful, almost everything can be done.
  • Allows multi-stores.
  • Ajax search system.
  • It allows complete customization of the site.
  • The administration panel is the most complete of the 3 tools.
  • Very powerful order management.
  • Responsive version integrated by default.
  • Alternative payment in case of error.
  • CSS compiler (Saas/ Compass).
  • Very robust and safe.

AGAINST:

  • A small community, little support, almost everything in English.
  • High final costs.
  • Complicated installation and customization.
  • Complicated administration panel, even more so for companies without computer knowledge.
  • It consumes a lot of resources and requires powerful hosting.
  • The size of the installation file is very large.
  • Quite demanding server characteristics.
  • In the case of having a store with a lot of traffic, it is possible to need hosting for the front office and another for the backend, so the expense can skyrocket.
  • The learning curve is very high.
  • EAV architecture, Entity-Attribute-Value (or plus point, depending on how you look at it).
  • Version 2 Community Edition is unstable, it marks a before and after of Magento towards the payment of licenses.

WOOCOMMERCE ANALYSIS:

We must clarify several things regarding Woocommerce, since I think people are not clear about it, the first is that Woocommerce is not a CMS, if not, it is a WordPress plugin that enables all the necessary functionality to be able to turn WordPress into e-commerce. The second point to clarify comes with the most used system, WordPress is the most used web page system in the world, if you do a search on Google Trends for WordPress it will appear, but that does not mean that Woocommerce is the most used system, It is important that you know this since many people, companies, developers… identify WordPress with Woocommerce and immediately indicate that it is the most used system when in fact it is not, according to Woocommerce, 28% of world stores use their system, I really think which is quite high.

woocommerce appeared in 2011 with another name, for the veterans you will remember the name of Woothemes, where its main business was the sale of templates, from there it evolved to what we know today. In 2015 it was the most important year since it was acquired by Automattic and that is when it really took off, remember that Automattic is the company behind WordPress and many other successful plugins, like the rest of CMS such as Prestashop and Oscommerce, it is totally free.

OUR OPINION JULY 2018: Woocommerce is a stable, simple, and easy-to-use system, but totally focused on small stores or with few products.

WOOCOMMERCE LINKS:

EXAMPLES OF STORES DEVELOPED IN WOOCOMMERCE:

  • All blacks, Rugby team.
  • Weber, manufacturer of barbecues.

HIGHLIGHT:

  • The initial configuration is very simple and fast.
  • The customization of the templates is extremely easy, that’s why many small stores use it.
  • The learning curve is extremely fast, if you have used WordPress it will be very easy for you to learn.
  • Management of payment modules.

AGAINST:

  • Unfortunately, it has very few modules to add new features, Magento or Prestashop have many more modules.
  • Unfortunately, it is not scalable, we do not recommend it for complex developments or large companies.

COMPARATIVE CONCLUSION ONLINE STORES:

When choosing one CMS or another, you must take into account how extensive the project is going to be, after using Oscommerce for many years, I have to say that for now all the projects I have carried out have been perfectly developed in Prestashop, achieving the same or better results. Now, now it’s up to you to choose the design of the online stores that you think is most convenient. I have always supported Oscommerce for its robustness but I sincerely believe that it has definitely lagged behind, or they make a change soon or it will be their end, especially considering that it uses many obsolete functions and that with the arrival of PHP6 lots of errors.

Magento is the new system where large companies are investing, recently bought by eBay, and in 2018 again bought by Adobe, for small stores, we do not recommend it since due to the cost, both development and hosting can shoot up our budget, it has many modules that are paid and we talk about high licenses…..and there have always been problems, crashes, continuous optimization of the server, etc…so we will need high maintenance, so if you have a high budget this is your option, from €10,000 for a serious project.
The third system is Prestashop, the Prestashop team is betting very strongly on its application and we are constantly finding new updates, this means that it is cutting the space that Magento had generated in terms of functionality, the biggest difference was multistore, although, with the launch of version 1.5 the distance has been shortened and equated to Magento, in addition, it already incorporates many more free functions than its great rival, in equal conditions (budget and resources) it would be necessary to see who really does what it has to do, which is for no other purpose than to SELL! Professional development with this tool should cost €6,000.

If we look at the following graph with the evolution of the main systems since 2004, we can see how Oscommerce is in free fall, not to say that it is over, and where Magento and Prestashop 2011 grew at a very similar level, globally, Magento has more audience, mainly by the American community, in Europe, however, it stands out above Magento Prestashop and in Spain (the case of this graph),  Prestashop is the most sought-after system without a doubt and the most used, especially for its versatility and ease.

With respect to Woocommerce we can see that it continues to grow but Prestashop, despite the fact that it falls, is still the undisputed leader, the slight drop in Prestashop and Magento is due to the fact that they are systems with more travel than coupled with the crisis, the maturity of the market and others invoices make the market trend stabilize.

Finally, we wanted to include Virtuemart, which has not managed to overcome the definitive launch of Prestashop in 2012, and Shopify, although it has good things, has not managed to enter fully among the best cms for electronic commerce, possibly due to its subscription payment.

What I recommend is that you try the three applications, OSCOMMERCE, PRESTASHOP, AND MAGENTO, try them and choose the one that best suits your project, and although I have said it at the beginning of the article there are other options that we have not added, but that in future updates we will add so that you have all the information available.

In the event that you opt for an agency specialized in electronic commerce, each agency will have its own rates, depending on its certifications, experience, types of project, etc., but if it helps you we can indicate market rates, a development in Woocommerce can be for a fee between €1,000 and €5,000, in Prestashop between €6,000 and €50,000, Magento Community Edition between €6,000 and €50,000, and Magento Enterprise from €50,000. These figures are for custom developments, with consultancy and specific custom developments, it is not to set up a template and run, good luck with your decision.

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Last Update: May 25, 2023

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