PrestaShop is a lightweight eCommerce solution that could effortlessly handle huge amounts of data

Author: Rakesh Patel

PrestaShop is a free, open-source eCommerce solution that is freely available for web development. It supports payment gateways like Google Checkout, DirecPay, Authorize.Net, PayPal, PayPal Payments Pro and EBANK Checkout through their respective APIs. For it to work efficiently, it needs Apache web server 1.3 or later version, PHP5 or current version, MySQL5 or later, Unix, Linux or Windows operating system. Its rapid performance is a result of the lightweight database. Even if it is lightweight, it could handle huge amounts of data easily and is useful in developing solutions that are fit for business and individual use.

The platform is SEO friendly which enhances search engine visibility. From the point of view of the customer, it is useful in a lot of ways. These include free shipping, product images could be zoomed for better views, special products on main page, user accounts, customer subscriptions and shopping cart recall among others. Both back end and front end functionalities make it a complete package to develop a good shopping product.

It's available under the Open Software License and launched officially in August 2007. The software, written in PHP and is based on the Smarty template engine is at present used by 165,000 stores all over the world. The PrestaShop group was founded in Parish, with a second headquarters in Miami in 2011. There are numerous service providers offering customization services to develop secure, robust and scalable eCommerce solutions. The team of developers is capable of providing dynamic shopping solutions that improve scalability. Furthermore, the development team could develop it in different languages, so enhances the customer reach.

Some of the services on offer by the various developers include the following:

  1. Customization
  2. Development
  3. Developing plug-in
  4. Shopping cart integration
  5. eCommerce software solutions
  6. Store design

The following are the advantages of developing PrestaShop freeware:

  1. Highly scalable solutions
  2. Lightweight and rapid processing
  3. Insightful and pleasant interface
  4. Cross selling
  5. Fully featured WYSIWYG text editor
  6. Multi language support
  7. PDF customer invoice
  8. Payment accepted in different currencies
  9. Unlimited wire transfer choices

It allows an online shop to add product categories, complete with pictures, feature listings, related items and more detailed info. It also allows the creation of newsletters, customer groups, customer referral program and even a loyalty system for returning clients. Special offers could also be made and order status reports and emails could be customized. It also enables a store to view statistics from the customer's sites, provide instant translation for the complete websites and accept unlimited currencies, a truly full-featured eCommerce package.

The platform is translated into 63 languages, with just English, Portuguese, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Italian, Russian and Polish having full support in all versions release. Technical support is provided through Paid support plans or free support on the official forum from the growing community that consists of over 600,000 active members. It makes extensive use of AJAX in the administration panel, while module blocks could be added easily to the shop for extra functionality. Normally, these are provided free of charge by independent programmers.

The makers of the framework have an official marketplace for priced themes and modules called PrestaShop Add-ons. There are several volunteers supporting and contributing their own add-ons. Often, contributors program added features for it, on top of the more than 300 available features by default. It operates an associated site called PrestaBox, that integrates the software to a simple one-stop hosting operation.