Optimizely Commerce Connect vs. PrestaShop

Very strong fit for mid-sized organizations that need more flexibility and customization as compared to canned or template-based offerings, but also want the efficiency and externalization that comes with a pre-existing, cloud-hosted platform (as compared to a full custom offering). Works well with a PIM and more mature catalog data in order to fully leverage the dynamic data capabilities.

Incentivized

I really wouldn't recommend PrestaShop to every person or business. This service has very good features to be able to create an online store and allow customers to add products to their cart instantly, it allows to make electronic payments quickly and the money reaches the company's wallet instantly, without However, it has many disadvantages, PrestaShop does not have a technical service to help implement the software on the website, so if you are thinking of using PrestaShop, you must first have a good team of web developers who are capable of integrating PrestaShop with the Wordpress site without any problem, in addition, PrestaShop takes up a lot of space in the Hosting service, each product that you add to the PrestaShop catalog occupies much more Hosting space and this causes the catalog to take longer to load when the client comes to visualize it. To use PrestaShop I recommend a very powerful Hosting that is able to withstand the high consumption it has.

Incentivized

• Web content management -- the interface is drag and drop and makes it very easy for business users to create product pages.
• In site search with Episerver Find -- it is easy to promote attributes and make quick tweaks to fine-tune results.
• Integrate with other systems -- we have integrated with our ERP, our product information management system, our digital asset management system and our marketing automation system to take advantage of investments we have already made in content and customer data.

Incentivized

• Quite easy to use compared to other open-source e-commerce software.
• Has lots of free plugins to help you set up a great basic shop.
• You can easily create your own unique site.
• Lots of payment option plugins and you can use them to sell globally.

Incentivized

• Support. Episerver used to have direct support and access to the tech team to discuss and resolve issues. The new support portal is not enough for developer needs.
• Quality Assurance. We find issues in the Episerver code that should have been resolved in QA before release.
• Sales. Episervers sells the framework as a solution while showing Alloy. While it helps Episerver sell more, it puts the implementation partner into trouble as the client thinks they bought the solution. Episerver does not provide a solution. It provides a framework that you can build a solution on.

Incentivized

• Since it starts as ready to go platform it's difficult to protect your store from being copied by someone else
• Without a developer, you depend on Prestashop's modules marketplace that lacks free extensions
• Since it isn't an enterprise level platform the use of Prestashop is strictly related to the size of your business

Incentivized

Really want to be able to spend more time and resources on rolling out new things with Episerver but at the moment we seem to be fixing alot of issues and pain points with the way our system was setup.

Incentivized

Considering the problems we had and still have, 0.

The job functionality is one of the strongest benefits Optimizely offers. It allows a savvy user to quickly go in to a given job, see the job history to find errors and then even take the steps of a job, copy the code and paste it back into your source to diagnose a potential issue.

Incentivized

The lack of performance and the unstable system make it very hard to use it for a serious e-commerce application.

100s of implementation and so far no major security breaches.

Some caching and optimization is definitely needed. However, it is not as bloated as other CMSs with lots of plugins needed.

We had an incredible team at Episerver Supporting us with the go live, reviewing our integration, and pushing our integration partner to deliver a quality product

Incentivized

Since we use PrestaShop OpenSource there is only community support. What we found is that many other users fight with the same problems and there seems no solution or input from the PrestaShop developers' side.

Fully understand what is OOTB feature of the platform before proceeding to develop. Then implement a customization of key features once you can prove they are working as OOTB to make them more user friendly and productive for the business. Eg pre order and e gift card

Incentivized

Stibo STEP MDM was a powerhouse. It seems we could do anything we could dream up, but we also had an in-house IT dev team to support it. The cost was the reason we went with Optimizely Commerce Connect. We did not explore HubSpot for this project.

Incentivized

As compared to other open-source systems, PrestaShop has the most elegant backend interface. Most of your standard eCommerce features come default: 1. Invoice and Delivery documents in PDF, 2. Promotion and discount mechanism, 3. SEO functionalities, 4. Quick access, 5. Statistics, 6. Categorization, Brands, Attributes, Features/Filters, sorting, pagination, list or grid view. The next best thing is the stability of versions. Currently, at only ver1.7, this is the only open-source CMS that doesn't require the constant nightmare of updating and breaking the site. The open-source community is still offering modules for ver1.5, 1.6 and 1.7. If you need modules to enhance the features, it is also a one-time cost since the versions are so stable. The experiences with 3rd party module developers are very good so far. Most modules are from EUR49-100.

This is the best example of "If it's not broken, don't fix it!".

• Positive: We have a usable website - better than what we had before and we are seeing a constant increase in adoption.
• Positive: Counter associates are using the website to help customers.
• Negative: Too much time being spent QCing previous work.

Incentivized

• If you don't have open source developers on staff it will be costly.
• The out-of-the box solution is not really a solution. Be prepared to hunt down modules to do standard things you'll want to do.
• The interface is unlike the e-commerce usual. There will be a learning curve and don't count on online documentation.

Incentivized