PrestaShop is the French open source platform behind more than 150,000 stores. The software is free; the building blocks are not, because almost every feature you miss is a module of 50 to 300 euros each. Below are the true costs, the strengths, the limits of the module economy and the honest answer to when switching pays off.
What exactly is PrestaShop?
PrestaShop has existed since 2007, comes from Paris and is open source: you download the software for free, put it on your own hosting and fully own your store. The business model sits around it, mainly in the official marketplace where thousands of modules and themes are sold individually. Since late 2021 PrestaShop has been part of MBE Worldwide, the Italian group behind Mail Boxes Etc., which is building logistics and SME services around it.
Technically the platform has just been through its biggest modernisation in years: PrestaShop 9, released in June 2025, runs on Symfony 6.4 and supports PHP 8.1 through 8.4. Alongside the classic free version there are now a hosted edition and an enterprise variant, but the heart of the installed base runs self-hosted, the way the platform grew up.
And it did grow. According to platform tracker Storeleads, more than 153,000 active stores run on PrestaShop as of mid 2026, five times as many as on Shopware. The centre of gravity lies in France, Spain, Poland and Italy; the Netherlands does not appear in the top countries. In southern Europe, PrestaShop is what WooCommerce is worldwide: the obvious free start. Here it is a choice you usually inherit, from a previous developer or a previous owner of the store.
What does PrestaShop really cost?
The software is free, and for a small store with a hands-on owner PrestaShop is, together with WooCommerce, the cheapest serious starting point there is. But a store is more than the software. These are the items you actually budget for, at price levels as we see them in the market in August 2026, excluding VAT:
| Item | Expect | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| PrestaShop itself | € 0 | Open source, free to download and install |
| Hosting | € 10 to € 100+ p/m | From shared hosting to an environment that can handle peaks |
| Modules | € 50 to € 300 each | Through the official marketplace; a serious store easily runs five to fifteen |
| Theme | € 0 to € 200 one-off | Premium themes; a custom theme costs a multiple of that |
| Payment provider | Per transaction | Mollie or another PSP; PrestaShop itself adds no surcharge |
| Maintenance | € 0 to € 250+ p/m | Doing it yourself costs time, outsourcing it costs money |
The item that makes this table different from every other platform is the third one. PrestaShop has no subscription, but the marketplace is the till: advanced filtering, a better checkout, invoices the way you want them, a carrier integration, each is a module with its own price tag, and often an annual renewal for updates and support. Add up the modules of an average serious store and there is easily 500 to 2,000 euros of building blocks in your shop, plus the renewals.
That makes "free" mostly a starting price. If you are technical and need little out of the ordinary, PrestaShop runs on a few tens of euros a month. If you run a serious store, hosting plus modules plus renewals plus maintenance ends up in the same range as a subscription platform, only spread across invoices from ten different parties.
What PrestaShop is good at
An honest review starts with what is right, and that is more than the shrinking numbers suggest:
Free, open source and yours
No subscription, no revenue cut, no platform setting rules. The software and the database are yours, and stay yours, whatever happens to the company behind it. If you refuse to rent on principle, this is the argument.
An enormous installed base
More than 153,000 active stores, and in 2020 over 300,000 merchants processed 22 billion euros in sales through the platform. That mass means virtually every problem you run into has been solved somewhere before.
A module for almost everything
The marketplace counts thousands of modules and themes, from payment methods to marketplace integrations. You rarely have to build anything from scratch; the question is at most which module is the good one.
Strong in multilingual Europe
Multiple languages, currencies and tax rules live in the core, built by and for European sellers. Many PrestaShop stores run in two or three languages as a matter of course, without ever having made a project of it.
Freshly modernised
PrestaShop 9 from 2025 brought the platform to Symfony 6.4 and modern PHP versions. That is not cosmetics: it means faster code, longer security support and a foundation developers can move forward with again.
Store running to your satisfaction, a developer who knows the system, a stable module set? Then there is little wrong with PrestaShop and this article is mostly reassurance.
Where it starts to strain as you grow
The pain points of PrestaShop are not hidden defects. They are the flip side of the module economy, and you only feel them once the store becomes serious work:
The module counter never stops
Every wish is a module, every module has a price, and many modules ask for money again every year for updates and support. What started as a free platform quietly becomes a collection of separate purchases nobody can quite total anymore.
Quality varies per maker
The marketplace is open, and it shows: next to excellent modules sit poorly maintained ones from makers who have already disappeared. Every module is its own supplier with its own support, and in a conflict they happily point at each other.
Major version steps are projects
From 1.6 to 1.7, from 1.7 to 8, from 8 to 9: every big step means testing, replacing or re-buying modules and themes. That is why thousands of stores still run versions that are years old, without patches, because the upgrade costs too much hassle or money.
You are the system administrator
Hosting, PHP versions, backups, security and the updates of the core and every module: all of it is your responsibility. Nobody calls you when it breaks; you call, usually your developer.
The Netherlands is a side market
The centre of gravity lies in France and southern Europe, and you notice it here: fewer Dutch specialists, module support that arrives in French or English, and integrations with Dutch services that are just that bit less self-evident.
B2B and international keep stacking
Customer-specific pricing, quotes and payment on account are possible, but every piece is yet another module or custom build on top of the pile. What a full B2B store needs quickly becomes a structure with many owners.
The base is shrinking fast
More than 153,000 stores sounds comfortable, but the peak was nearly 219,000 at the end of 2021. Thirty percent down in under five years is the sharpest decline among the major platforms, and eventually you feel that in the energy of the ecosystem.
How is the platform doing?
Two things are true at once, and you deserve to know both. PrestaShop is alive: version 9 was a genuine modernisation, releases simply keep coming, and since late 2021 there is an owner in MBE Worldwide that wants to build the platform out with logistics and payment services rather than squeeze it. Anyone on a current version with a good developer has no acute problem.
At the same time the numbers tell a clear story. From nearly 219,000 stores at the end of 2021 to just over 153,000 as of mid 2026, with minus fifteen percent in the past year alone, the sharpest decline of all platforms in this series. The explanation is not one drama but a thousand small sums: outdated 1.6 and 1.7 stores whose upgrade cost more than a switch, module fatigue, and subscription platforms that simply take the upkeep off your hands. For you as a merchant that does not mean the lights go out. It does mean the stream of new modules, integrations and specialists is moving towards the growing platforms, and the cost of staying behind gets a little higher every year.
PrestaShop or Shopify?
The question is not which platform can do more, but who does the work and where your features come from. Side by side:
| PrestaShop | Shopify | |
|---|---|---|
| Software | Free, open source | € 21 to € 289 p/m, Plus from € 2,100 |
| Hosting and security | Arrange and pay yourself | Included, scales automatically |
| Extending features | Modules, € 50 to € 300 each | Apps on subscription, much built in |
| Transaction fees | Only your payment provider | Provider plus a 0.2 to 2% surcharge with an external PSP |
| Maintenance and updates | Your responsibility | Handled by the platform |
| Major version steps | Projects with module risk | Invisible, the platform updates itself |
| Custom work | Unlimited, everything is code | Within theme and apps; checkout customisation on Plus |
| Multilingual | In the core, set up yourself | Markets, currencies and languages built in |
| Specialists in the Netherlands | Thin on the ground | Widely available |
| Data ownership | Full, your own database | Platform managed, export always possible |
Where PrestaShop wins: no subscription, full control and ownership, multilingual selling in the core and a module range that covers almost anything. Where Shopify wins: all upkeep off your plate, version updates that happen silently, an ecosystem that is in stock in the Netherlands too, and features that come built in instead of bought individually.
And total cost? The two are closer than the word "free" suggests. Hosting plus modules plus renewals plus maintenance ends up, for a serious store, in the same range as a Shopify subscription with apps. The difference is the shape: with PrestaShop you buy loose building blocks from loose suppliers and organise the whole yourself, with Shopify you rent one service where the whole is already organised.
Stay or switch: how to decide
Stay on PrestaShop if your store runs on a current version, your module set is stable and you have a developer who knows the system, or are one yourself. Especially with a multilingual store serving southern Europe you are in a fine place. A migration costs 8,000 to 20,000 euros with us, and that investment has to solve a problem you actually have. Without that problem, switching is a waste of money, however much we would like you as a client.
Switching becomes logical as soon as one of these situations sounds familiar:
- You still run PrestaShop 1.6 or 1.7. The upgrade to version 9 is then effectively a rebuild with new modules, and that is exactly the moment to put the platforms side by side instead of staying inside PrestaShop by default.
- The module counter and the annual renewals have become a fixed cost nobody has an overview of anymore.
- Every change starts with the question which module will break, and your developer spends more time on conflicts than on improvements.
- The developer who knew the system has left, and you notice how thin the Dutch PrestaShop scene is the moment you look for a successor.
- You want to run a business, not a system. The hours that now go into updates, modules and hosting should go into buying, marketing and customers.
What moves with you, and what does not?
The question behind every migration is what you lose. The honest answer: less than you fear, but not nothing.
Products and combinations move
Including prices, stock levels, images and copy. What PrestaShop calls combinations becomes variants in Shopify, and categories become collections.
Customers and order history move
Your customers find their details and past orders in the new store.
Passwords do not move
They are stored encrypted and cannot be transferred in any platform migration. Customers set a new password at their first login; we prepare that message together.
Your multilingual content moves
Many PrestaShop stores run in several languages, and those translations are valuable. We bring them along per language and set them up in Shopify with markets and language versions, so nothing has to be rewritten.
From an old version as well
For the data migration it makes little difference whether you run 1.6, 1.7, 8 or 9: we extract products, customers and orders from all of them. So you do not have to climb the upgrade mountain first, only to switch afterwards anyway.
Your rankings move, provided you arrange it
Every old URL gets a 301 redirect to its new address, category and content pages included. This is where migrations without a plan take the most damage, and with us it is a fixed part of the job.
Modules do not move, their function does
We list every module: what Shopify covers out of the box, what becomes an app and where custom work is needed. Usually considerably less remains than you expect, because many modules do things Shopify simply ships with.
Your theme deliberately does not move
A PrestaShop theme cannot be ported. That is not a loss but the moment to build a store that is yours, without the old system's module dependencies attached.
Our complete approach per platform, from data export to launch, is on the page about migrating your store to Shopify.
What a switch costs and how it works
A migration is not a matter of an export button. We first map your modules, theme customisations, products and URL structure, and determine the Shopify equivalent for each part. Then we build the store, migrate the data and give every old URL its 301 redirect. Your PrestaShop store keeps selling until launch day; you do not miss a day of revenue.
Expect 8,000 to 20,000 euros for a regular store, and up to 60,000 euros once B2B functionality, an ERP integration or a very large catalogue is involved. After the audit you get one fixed price. Our platform-by-platform approach is on the page about migrating your store to Shopify.
Not sure your current store is the problem? Have it checked first, free of charge. Our free store analysis scans your store live for speed, SEO, accessibility, security and checkout, and works on any store, PrestaShop included. Within two minutes you have a report with concrete improvements.
Frequently asked questions about PrestaShop
The software is free. A complete store is not: expect 10 to 100 euros a month for hosting, modules of 50 to 300 euros each with often an annual renewal, plus the cost of maintenance, done yourself or through an agency. A serious store thereby ends up in the same range as a subscription platform in practice.
The software is: PrestaShop is open source and free to download. The store around it is not, because hosting, modules, a theme and above all maintenance cost money or time. The business model sits in the marketplace: virtually every feature you miss is bought as a separate module with its own price tag.
According to platform tracker Storeleads, more than 153,000 active stores as of mid 2026, mainly in France, Spain, Poland and Italy. That is still five times as many as Shopware, but thirty percent below the late-2021 peak, and with fifteen percent decline in the past year the sharpest faller among the major platforms.
Since November 2021, MBE Worldwide, the Italian group behind Mail Boxes Etc. among others. PrestaShop itself was founded in Paris in 2007 and continued as its own brand and platform after the acquisition, with the marketplace and payment services as the business model.
The platform's biggest modernisation in years, released in June 2025: a new foundation on Symfony 6.4 with support for PHP 8.1 through 8.4, a renewed back office and better performance. Note: the step from 1.6 or 1.7 to 9 is not a button but a project, in which modules and themes have to pass the test again.
It works fine, but you notice the Netherlands is a side market: the centre of gravity lies in France and southern Europe, Dutch specialists are thin on the ground and the support of many modules arrives in French or English. Dutch payment methods and carriers work through modules; the real question is who maintains the system for you here.
PrestaShop is free open source you host yourself and extend module by module: maximum control, and you organise the whole. Shopify is a service with a fixed subscription covering hosting, security and updates, with apps for extensions. The choice is about who does the work: with PrestaShop you buy loose building blocks from loose suppliers, with Shopify you rent one organised whole.
Yes. We extract products with combinations, customers, orders and multilingual content from PrestaShop through the database or an export, from older versions like 1.6 and 1.7 as well, and transfer them in a structured way. Every old URL gets a 301 redirect so your rankings move with you, and for every module we determine the Shopify equivalent up front.
With us, 8,000 to 20,000 euros for a regular store, including data migration and 301 redirects. Add B2B functionality, an ERP integration or a very large catalogue and it rises to 60,000 euros. After the audit you get one fixed price, no surprises afterwards.
