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Best PrestaShop Hosting Company

PetraShop is a free to download open source solution for merchants who wish to build their stores from scratch. It is used by millions of entrepreneurs all over the world and helps them run their growing businesses. Everyone is enjoy it for being flexible, reliable and very user-friendly, which makes doing business online easier for millions.

PetraShop is best for medium size and large businesses, but it can be used to run small online stores as well. It can be a pretty cheap solution for those who know how to code and are willing to put the work into it, but might get pricy for someone who doesn’t have a lot of experience. Some features and add-ons are pretty expensive but they all offer the functionality you need for running your PetraShop website.

You can check it out right now by clicking on this link and using a fully functional demo. See if you like it and you can start using it in a few hours.

It is easy to install and run even for first timers but it has a learning curve to manage it effectively.

How to Choose Hosting for PrestaShop?

You can choose between using Self-Hosted PetraShop or PetraShop Cloud.

Choosing the Self-Hosted platform means that you’ll download software and install it on your host’s server. After that, connect it to a domain name and build your online store.

The PetraShop Cloud option lets you use PetraShop without having to pay for housing separately. You’ll use a cloud based PetraShop engine that is already installed. This way, you can only use official PetraShop plugins and add-ons and you can’t access PetraShop’s source code or database. I’ve read multiple complains about the PrestaShop’s cloud service, so you’re better off purchasing a hosting plan at HostGator (I recommend one of their cloud plans) than and using the self-hosted version.

So basically, you can run a PetraShop store without spending a penny on it, but a lot of useful modules and templates come at a price. Not to mention if you’re paying a developer to help you out and the hosting expenses.

Using PetraShop

To run PetraShop, you’ll have to download it first, set up a database and upload the software through an FTP client, then install it to the server. It’s an easy process, but you can use a guide to help you as well. Once you have it installed, you can access the admin panel and use the dashboard for managing your store.

What most people love about PetraShop is that it is easy to use but it’s not a “push one button” system that will make you an online store in seconds. Petra shop offer many tools and features that make up an intuitive interface.

You should look through the dashboard and consider which modules are necessary for running your business. If you don’t have any relevant development experience or you’re not the “tech-type” its best that you hire a developer to help you out. It will cost more but you can rest easily with your site being set up fairly quickly.

If you can go through setting up your site, managing it will be a walk in a park. Once it is done, you can do everyday operations like adding products, categories and managing SEO pretty easily. Applying discounts, adding or editing orders and contacting customers through email can also be done very easily in the orders page.

You can add unlimited products, sell digital products, view the estimated time of shipping and use a number of payment options.

The dashboard provides you a quick access to every bit of information about your webshop. You can look through the latest orders, messages, and registrations and so on. It is completely data driven, providing you with graphs display profits, sales and orders. Most of the information in the dashboard tracks your customers’ behavior. Real-time analytics provide you with tons of information and help running your web-store as efficiently as possible.

PetraShop packs a lot of statistical power and it gives you an insane amount of insight by following stock levels, abandoned carts profit levels and so on. You can view all of your store’s stats in a number of different pages and menus.

Design

Petra shop offers a selection of 2,000 templates, which let you create your store the way you want it. Some of them are premium though, but you can also get yourself an amazing design for free. Around 1,200 of these are responsive designs, so you’ll find the right design fairly easily.

Themes created by certified partners look professional and offer high standard designs but the rest don’t even compare in quality or looks. Some premium and certified partner created themes can be really expensive, ranging from $30 to $300 but can be well worth the money.

Pros and Cons of PetraShop

PetraShop boasts an incredible amount of statistical power through an easy to use interface. The front office of your webstore will also look good and provide a great user experience.

Although, you can have this fairly quickly and easily, PetraShop also has its fair set of flaws to look out for. Here we’ll show you the known benefits and pitfalls of using PetraShop for running a webstore.

Pros

  • Its free - PetraShop is an open source eCommerce platform and is completely free to download, offering great value for no cost.
  • Intuitive administration - You have access to an incredible amount of information and the interface can be mastered fairly quickly. It is great for anyone who is just starting off on their eCommerce adventure.
  • Efficient workflow - PetraShop pages load pretty quickly and all the information you need is provided seamlessly without putting too much strain on the servers. Having its own page-indexation system built-in is also a great plus. You can also import massive loads of content and products quickly and ensure that you get your work done as fast as possible.
  • Feature-rich - Some of the features in PetraShop outweigh Magento by a great deal. You have 500 free features right from the start and can download whatever else you might need. If you don't find an add-on for the feature you prefer, you'll easily score a programmer who can create it for you.
  • Large Community - With a community of 800,000 devoted users and more than 100 official employees, it’s easy to get your hands on any kind of information. This support system of users is completely free and you can look through the discussion boards to find solutions to a problem. Most of the issues you could encounter have been solved by others.
  • Good SEO - A lot of users experience a boost in organic Google visits once they switched their platforms to PetraShop.

Cons

  • Expensive extensions - Many great features and scripts might turn out to be paid ones. Templates can also get pretty expensive so you'll always have to consider that the plugin or design you're considering to buy is really worth it.
  • Many design flaws - The dashboard has a lot of cosmetic flaws which sometimes make it a bit dysfunctional and not as appealing. It still works, but it can be frustrating for some.
  • Hard to extend - PetraShop isn't as easy to extend even if you're a seasoned developer. You might run into some flaws when you try to add some of your own features and extend the cart.
  • Too many updates - You'll have to manually update in every two months or so, because the developer team is constantly fixing bugs. This is a positive thing, but it gives away that PetraShop still has many uncovered flaws and constantly having to update can be a pain for a lot of merchants.
  • Drawbacks during setup - If you're not adept to web development, you might find yourself paying a lot more money initially to have your store set up. Developers, extensions and themes can get expensive.
  • Bugs - If you have a lot of plugins and extensions installed, some of them might come in conflict with each other and cause glitches. Once that happens, you'll have to do some problem solving.

Conclusion

PetraShop stands among the most popular eCommerce solutions for a reason. It has a great selection of robust features and can handle just about any kind of eCommerce website you throw at it. Being open-source software, it is highly customizable and has many added functions.

It can be really low cost if you have web development experience and provide you with every tool necessary for running a successful business online. PetraShop isn’t for beginners and it works best if the user has usable knowledge in PHP, CSS and HTML.

All of the information necessary to make good business decisions is visible and easy to look through, making PetraShop an amazing entrepreneurial tool. It might get expensive in the process though, depending on what kind of extensions and templates your store requires.

All in all, PetraShop is a trustworthy eCommerce platform worth investing into once you work your way around the initial setup and some bugs.

I hope that you have enjoyed reading through this article and found most of the information you wanted!