PrestaShop started in 2005 as a student project within the EPITECH IT School in Paris, France. Originally named phpOpenStore, the software was first available in two languages: English and French. Three months after its launch the project was translated into thirteen languages. The company, PrestaShop SA, was founded in 2007 by Igor Schlumberger and Bruno Lévêque. Between May 2010 and April 2012, PrestaShop grew from 17 employees to more than a hundred, with the establishment of secondary headquarters in Miami. As of April 2016, PrestaShop has over 120 employees and offices in 6 countries. In March 2014, PrestaShop SA secured $9.3M in Series B Funding to continue its global expansion efforts. In January 2015, the company launched PrestaShop Cloud, a free self-hosted version of its software, but at least since 2017 is no longer available. According to technology tracking website BuiltWith.com, the market share of PrestaShop for open-source e-commerce websites is 9%. According to W3Techs, PrestaShop is used by 0.5% of all websites. In October 2019, PrestaShop closed the Miami headquarters and ceased its operations in the Americas. In 2019, PrestaShop received the Acteurs du Libre International Award for its international development strategy. The current and latest version of Prestashop is 1.7.6.7
Business model
As an open-source organization, PrestaShop is faced with the challenge of generating revenues. By leveraging the size and international scope of its open-source community, the company established two main sources of revenue:
PrestaShop Addons, a marketplace through which merchants purchase custom addons and themes for their stores
Strategic partnerships with e-commerce industry leaders such as PayPal or Google
Features
PrestaShop has more than three hundred built-in features for managing product listing, payments, shipping, manufacturers and suppliers. PrestaShop uses a web template system that allows users to customize store themes and add new features through add-on modules. The PrestaShop Addons marketplace provides a platform for third-party developers to sell themes and modules to merchants.
Themes
PrestaShop provides a basic responsive theme by default. Users can install or develop their own themes that change the display of the website without altering its content.
Modules
Add-on modules extend the software's built-in functionalities. Users may install modules directly within the software administration panel or develop their own.
