PrestaShop is an e-commerce solution which is both free and open source. It is available under the Open Software License and officially launched in August 2007 for small to medium-sized businesses. The software, which is based on the Smarty template engine, has approximately 24,000 active stores as of August 2009.

The software PrestaShop was founded in Paris, France by Igor Schlumberger and Bruno Lévêque. Over 15 languages are available to varying degrees, with only English and French having full support in all release versions. While official support is not provided, many answered questions are available on the official forum. The software makes extensive use of AJAX in the admin panel, while module blocks can be easily added to the store to provide extra functionality; these are normally provided free of charge by independent developers. The makers of PrestaShop have an official marketplace for priced modules and themes entitled PrestaStore.

Minimum requirements

PrestaShop is available to download as a ZIP file, approximately 6MB in size. Additionally, the merchant must have a domain name and an Apache web server or IIS web server already configured which features:

* Web server (Apache web server 1.3 or later, IIS 6 or later)
* PHP 5.0(*) or later
* MySQL 5(**) or later
* Linux, Unix or Windows installed operating system

(*) Some PHP 5 versions are bugged and prevent PrestaShop from working correctly:

* PHP 5.2.1 (authentication is impossible)
* PHP 5.2.6 (authentication is impossible under 64bits servers)
* PHP 5.2.9 (image management/upload broken)
* PHP < 5.2 (invalid date timezone)

(**) PrestaShop is working from MySQL 4.1.14 to 5.0 too but some features are not working (e.g., product duplication) or have strange behaviors

General feature list

Front Office:

* Special deals (price reductions, gift vouchers)
* Featured products on homepage
* Top sellers on homepage
* New items on homepage
* ‘Free shipping’ offers
* Cross-selling (Accessories)
* Product image zoom
* Order out-of-stock items
* Customer subscription & user accounts
* Unlimited payment methods
* Payment by bank wire
* Google™ Checkout module
* Cash-On-Delivery (COD)
* Preconfigured for Paypal™
* Multiple-recipient contact form
* Product tagging & tag cloud
* Search
* Merchandise return (RMAs) & credit slips
* Package tracking
* Offer gift-wrapping & recycled packaging
* PDF customer invoice
* Shopping Cart recall
* Sale of services & virtual goods
* Custom Favicon
* RSS feed
* Newsletter opt-in
* ‘Pick up in-store’ option
* Customized product (text and images)
* Wishlist
* Loyal customer program
* Affiliate program
* Sponsor-a-friend benefit program
* Customer product reviews

Back Office:

* Unlimited categories & subcategories
* Full-featured WYSIWYG text editor
* Unlimited product attribute combinations
* Unlimited product specs
* Unlimited images with automatic resizing & file optimization
* Unlimited currencies
* Unlimited tax settings
* Unlimited carriers & destinations
* Tax by state, country, both, zones, or no taxes
* Digressive pricing (Quantity discounts)
* Real-time currency exchange rates
* Inventory management
* SMS/Text-message alerts
* Add/delete function modules
* Bar codes
* Contextual help
* Attribute Combo Generator
* Delivery status notification e-mails (customizable)
* Unlimited languages & dialects
* Import/export language translations
* 13 default language translations
* Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
* Friendly URLs / Permalinks
* 100% modifiable graphic themes
* Back Office users & permissions (ACL )
* Maintenance Mode
* Minimum order amount
* Newsletter contact export
* Alias search
* Bulk lister/import .CSV files
* SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption
* Visitors online
* Content Management System (CMS)
* Reports
* Customer groups

Languages

PrestaShop is now translated into 38 languages: Arabic, Argentina, Bulgarian, Catalan, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, English, Finnish, French, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Iranian, Italian, Latvia, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese-Brasilian, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thaï, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.

Releases

PrestaShop 1.0 was released on July 31, 2008.
PrestaShop 1.1 was released on December 19, 2008,
PrestaShop 1.2 was released on July 29, 2009,
PrestaShop 1.3 alpha was released on January 26, 2010,
PrestaShop 1.3 beta 1 was released on March 9, 2010.