With Magento having been bought by EBay, some people think it’s future is insecure as an open-source e-commerce platform and are looking for alternatives.
I looked around and found two for this e-commerce application comparison: PrestaShop and Drupal Commerce.
Actually, there’s another good one: UberCart, which is an e-commerce module for Drupal 6. But since Drupal Commerce is the evolution of UberCart, it seems there’s no reason to go with Drupal 6 and UberCart if you’re starting a new site. You might as well pair Drupal 7 with Drupal Commerce.
PrestaShop
PrestaShop is an open-source e-commerce application based on PHP.
Plus points for PrestaShop:
- More popular than Drupal Commerce (1472 Alexa rank vs. 76968 for Drupal Commerce)
- 90,000 shops use it
- 256,000 community members
- Seems easier to use and get going
- 256 major features
Possible cons for PrestaShop:
- Runs on MySQL only. Drupal and Drupal Commerce also support PostgreSQL
- Based out of France. I don’t think that should be too much of a problem, though. European payment methods are supported, but then so art the major American ones (Authorize.net and PayPal)
Drupal Commerce
Drupal Commerce is implemented as a series of modules for Drupal. There’s also an installation profile to allow you to easily install it along with the Drupal base.
Pros for Drupal Commerce:
- Based on Drupal. You get hundreds of Drupal modules that you can integrate to get great general content management and website functionality.
- While the PrestaShop site is more popular than Drupal Commerce’s, Drupal is much more popular at Alexa rank 396 than PrestaShop. You won’t be alone while using Drupal.
- Drupal Commerce is based on Drupal 7, a highly modular and modern CMS base. I know this seems repetitive, but 7 is a big plus for Drupal Commerce because of the flexibility it offers.
Negatives for Drupal Commerce:
- I think Drupal Commerce has less commerce-related modules (such as for payment) than PrestaShop. Many of those are still under development.
Summary
All in all, I think Drupal Commerce has the potential to be a great e-commerce environment combined with the general content management power of Drupal. If you’re looking for something easy and specifically already oriented toward e-commerce, PrestaShop might be better.
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