PrestaShop Now Offers Free Cloud Hosted Ecommerce Solutions
PrestaShop is a free, open source shopping cart used by over 200,000 stores. PrestaShop is calling its cloud hosted shopping cart solution PrestaShop Cloud. PrestaShop mentions on their website that users can begin selling items online with just a couple clicks.
It appears that the PrestaShop Cloud ecommerce solution operates on the freemium model. This allows users to start for free but upgrade to paid options as their business begins to grow. There is a PrestaShop marketplace available for users to buy add-ons and customized modules for the cloud based software.
The PrestaShop Cloud offers many of the same features as the downloadable version. With PrestaShop cloud, users get an SEO optimized selling platform that integrates natively with mobile devices. PrestaShop offers a marketing a tool kit, real time analytics and a way to fully customize your online store. Other features of PrestaShop cloud allow you to sell internationally and integrate 3rd party solutions with ease.
Bruno Leveque, founder of PrestaShop, is quoted in a press release saying, “Since the first version, our software has helped merchants process more than $15 billion in sales. Our freemium business model enables us to be uniquely positioned in the market. We can provide feature-rich ecommerce technology at the lowest cost possible while our competitors charge license fees or take a percentage of revenue directly from merchants.”
PrestaShop has been around since 2007. PrestaShop is often compared against Magento which many consider to be its main competitor. PrestaShop has an active community that is eager to help users who are new to the platform. Live demos are available for the PrestaShop platform although you could just as easily sign up for the PrestaShop Cloud offering and begin evaluating the product that way.
PrestaShop Cloud works with PayPal out of the box. This gives new users the ability to begin listing products for sale within minutes of signing up. When a customer buys a product, they could simply have the payment sent using PayPal. Modules for various credit card gateways are also available for PrestaShop Cloud.
