Three platforms, three kinds of project
We design and build e-commerce platforms on Sylius, PrestaShop, and Shopify Plus. Each solves a different kind of project, and the choice between them shapes three years of roadmap, budget, and team velocity.
This is the comparison we hand to CTOs and Heads of Digital before signing the stack. No generic recipes: five dimensions that weigh in the decision, real cases behind each one, and the final table that captures when each platform is the right answer.
Sylius: full control on top of Symfony
Sylius is an open-source e-commerce framework built on Symfony 7. All store logic — catalog, pricing, promotions, checkout, shipping — lives as code in your repository, with Clean Architecture and DDD principles applied from the core. API Platform ships with REST and GraphQL out of the box for headless architectures.
Typical project stack: Sylius 2 · Symfony 7 · API Platform · Doctrine ORM · PostgreSQL · Redis · Next.js (when headless). Typical team: two to four Symfony engineers running on two-week sprints.
PrestaShop: a ready-made store for SMBs and mid-size catalogs
PrestaShop ships a complete store from install: mature admin panel, broad ecosystem of commercial modules, production-ready templates. The adoption curve is short and the starting cost is low.
Typical stack: PrestaShop 9 · Symfony 6 (internal) · official marketplace modules · MariaDB · CDN. Typical operation: catalogs from 500 to 30,000 SKUs, classic B2C contexts and simple B2B setups.
Shopify Plus: speed and managed operation
Shopify Plus runs the full infrastructure as a managed service: hosting, scaling, certificates, patches, PCI-DSS. Every change is applied via Liquid, a Shopify app, or Hydrogen for the headless front. The commercial console is the market reference for marketing and operations teams.
Typical stack: Shopify Plus · Liquid · Hydrogen (Remix) when headless · Shopify Functions for custom logic · partner apps. Typical operation: high-traffic D2C, international brands with a focus on time-to-market.
Dimension 1: control over the business domain
The first cut is how much of your own business logic lives inside the e-commerce.
In Sylius, every entity (Product, Channel, Order, Promotion) is a PHP class your team extends, decorates, and tests. Complex pricing rules — B2B contract discounts, configurable bundles, volume tiers, country-specific legal conditions — get modeled as domain code. Checkout behavior changes with decorators, without touching the core or losing the upgrade path.
In PrestaShop, logic lives in modules. For standard pricing and promotion rules, the engine covers 80% of cases. More singular rules require custom modules that sit inside the PrestaShop ecosystem and share the release cycle with the version.
In Shopify Plus, custom logic is implemented via Shopify Functions (Rust or JavaScript with WASM), embedded apps, and webhooks. It covers typical e-commerce cases elegantly; complex domain logic gets externalized outside Shopify to your own microservices syncing via API.
Operating read: if your business model has rules that are your competitive advantage — negotiated B2B pricing, per-customer catalog configuration, eligibility logic — Sylius keeps that logic inside your repository and under your control. Shopify Plus pushes it out to external services. PrestaShop puts it in marketplace modules.
Dimension 2: time-to-market
Raw speed for an online store with a mid-size catalog, standard payment methods, and classic B2C processes.
Shopify Plus launches a project in four to six weeks for a well-prepared catalog. The platform includes optimized checkout, integrated gateways, mobile admin app, and operational dashboards. Initial investment concentrates on theme, ERP integrations, and lightweight customization via apps.
PrestaShop launches in six to ten weeks. The base template gets adapted, essential modules get integrated, local gateways get connected. Advantage in markets with their own payment methods (Bizum, Cofidis, local financing) where the PrestaShop ecosystem is strong.
Sylius launches in twelve to sixteen weeks for a store with bespoke backoffice and front. Initial investment is higher because the domain architecture gets designed, your own entities get modeled, and the front gets built from scratch or on Next.js. Pays off when the business's singularity justifies the investment.
Dimension 3: real TCO over three years
Total cost of ownership including licenses, engineering, maintenance, modules, and operation.
Shopify Plus starts at around €2,300/month base license and grows with apps, partners, and custom engineering. Bigger variable: the per-transaction cost tied to volume and per-channel pricing in multi-brand organizations. Predictable and operational, no own infrastructure required.
PrestaShop starts at zero license cost and grows with commercial modules (€50–800/module, many with annual subscription), dedicated hosting (€200–800/month depending on traffic), and maintenance. Competitive TCO on mid-size catalogs; rises sharply when custom modules exceed ten.
Sylius starts at zero license cost and is sustained by a stable engineering team: two to four Symfony profiles plus a DevOps sharing infrastructure. Infrastructure cost around €400–1,500/month for mid-size loads. Higher upfront investment, lower per-feature growth — accumulated technical debt is the lowest of the three when the team is senior.
Operating read: Shopify Plus is operationally predictable. PrestaShop is cheap until it isn't. Sylius requires an in-house team or a stable partner and pays that team back as the business grows in complexity.
Dimension 4: ecosystem and talent
People available who know the platform decide the project's real velocity.
Shopify Plus has the most mature partner ecosystem: certified agencies, thousands of apps, global community. Shopify-dedicated talent is abundant but usually mixed profile (marketing + tech). Deep Shopify engineering is niche.
PrestaShop has a solid base in Southern Europe, especially Spain, France, and Italy. PrestaShop talent is accessible and the local partner ecosystem is broad. Short learning curve for mid-level PHP profiles.
Sylius rides on the Symfony ecosystem, which is the most mature in enterprise PHP. Talent is senior — Symfony profiles with experience in DDD, API Platform, and clean architecture. Lower volume, higher seniority, higher cost per person, higher output per person.
Dimension 5: customization without vendor lock-in
How much control your team keeps three years in and what happens if the initial partner leaves the project.
Sylius lives in your repository, your Git, your credentials. The day you change teams, all the code and the architecture keep working exactly the same. Migrating from Sylius to Sylius with another partner is trivial.
PrestaShop lives partly in your repository (custom modules) and partly outside (commercial modules from the marketplace). Migration keeps the base, but commercial modules are an external dependency.
Shopify Plus lives on Shopify infrastructure. Migrating out means rewriting the store. Portability is for catalog and data, not for system behavior. In exchange, operations are managed and uptime is the provider's responsibility.
When each platform
Actionable summary, based on project profile:
| Profile | Recommended platform | |---------|----------------------| | High-traffic B2C, brand, international | Shopify Plus | | D2C with own mobile apps and marketing-led operation | Shopify Plus | | Mid-size catalog, local market, local payment methods | PrestaShop | | Large catalog with standard commercial modules | PrestaShop | | B2B with negotiated pricing, contracts, custom logic | Sylius | | Multi-vendor marketplace with complex rules | Sylius | | Headless with Next.js front or native app | Sylius or Shopify Plus (Hydrogen) | | Company with in-house Symfony team | Sylius | | Company without technical team, operational focus | Shopify Plus |
Real cases that took each path
Three anonymous projects, one per platform, with the reasoning behind the call.
International B2C cosmetics brand → Shopify Plus. Catalog of 1,200 SKUs across twelve markets, integration with a proprietary ERP and a PIM. Decision: speed to launch per market, operational management without an internal tech team, focus on performance marketing. Result at twelve months: five active markets, average conversion of 2.4%, checkout p95 under 600 ms.
Industrial B2B distributor → Sylius. Catalog of 45,000 SKUs with configurators, per-customer negotiated pricing, and master contracts. Decision: no SaaS platform models pricing and per-customer product eligibility without rewriting half the system. Result at eighteen months: average order value multiplied, order cycle from hours to minutes, native integration with SAP and proprietary CRM.
Mid-size retailer with an 8,000-SKU catalog → PrestaShop. 100% national operation, local payment methods, marketing team running the day-to-day. Decision: TCO, accessible talent, and a module ecosystem broad enough for the case. Result: store in production in eight weeks, internal team operating without a permanent partner by month six.
How we decide with the client
Every platform choice starts by understanding the business before the stack: what pricing applies, how discounts are managed, which processes already live outside the e-commerce, and how much technical talent is available. On top of that map we cross the five dimensions and deliver the recommendation with verifiable data — three-year estimated cost, required team profile, and realistic implementation time.
Every decision leaves a trace in a document the committee can read, contrast and, if needed, reject with arguments in front of them.
Behind every proposal is a team of engineers with experience on all three platforms, who measure their work by projects sustained in production, not by closing the first sale. A platform with rules, not with patches.
If you're evaluating which e-commerce stack to sign for the next three years, we can audit your business case and hand you the cross-comparison with your data before the decision gets signed.
