Goodbye Prestashop

[TillyOak]

Well, anyone who has seen any of my other posts will know that we've been long time users of Prestashop and right up until we upgraded to 1.7 from 1.6 we were particularly happy and content with the platform.   On upgrading, that all changed, and we were met with issue after issue.   We have since worked our way through all the problems with very little help from either support or these forums, and whilst (as I've always said) we appreciate people's time is precious and we can't always get the answers straight away to problems, these forums are a ghost town now.

The most recent issue we experienced (after about 2 months of constant work getting the site back to some kind of normality) was some customers not being able to make payments and therefore abandoning their carts.   Support got involved and they apparently fixed the issues by applying a number of known bug fixes.   After only a few days we noticed more abandoned carts and having reached out to those customers, again, they explained PayPal was timing out.   We've searched and searched for answers on the forums, asked questions and alas nothing.

Last night, we then realised email notifications had stopped, went into the email templates and they are all gone!.

Even though we're running (and have been for years) the GB language, the template screen is telling us although there are template files for "GB" there are none for the "default" EN?.   en-us is disabled, and has been for as long as we can remember, we've never had issues until now, we re-installed the mail alerts module at the same time in the hope this would maybe reboot something, but nothing.

With that, and having read multiple threads here, I can only come to one conclusion, and that is simply Prestashop is dead in the water.   With so many issues scattered all over the forums, evenon new installs, and with so many threads going unanswered, the writing is on the wall from what I can see, and with so many issues now developing on our own site we have no choice now but to seek an alternative ecommerce solution that works out the box and has a decent support system, and WooCommerce ticks all those boxes.

We've already set up a test site, migrated some data using a module from WooCommerce extensions, and it works flawlessly.   Over the next week or so we'll look to fully migrate away.

Although this is partially a rant, it's also to thank everyone involved in Prestashop for having created what I believed was one of the best ecommerce systems out there, unfortunately this is no longer the case as a broken and buggy ecommerce system is useless, especially to those thinking of starting out with Prestashop, even simple things like the menus are terrible to look at, but given the huge number of possibilities to create bugs within the platform we have no choice from here but to migrate away for the good of our business which is growing.

Again, thank you to everyone who is involved in Prestashop and for having spent the time and effort on it, but this is one long term user that has had enough and I can only hope you manage to fix what is fundamentally a very workable ecommerce system with major flaws and very poor support.

All the best

Marko

[Daresh]

The truth is prestashop 1.7 requires hiring a professional developer, you won't go far only trying to look for help on the forums.

[TillyOak]

2 minutes ago, Daresh said:

The truth is prestashop 1.7 requires hiring a professional developer, you won't go far only trying to look for help on the forums.

Anything that needs the hire of a professional developer to gain basic functionality isn't realistic 

[Daresh]

To what exact version of prestashop 1.7 did you migrate?

[TillyOak]

Tbh I can't remember remember but there was only one further update released afterwards so it was the latest for the time, but having dealt with access issues, customers unable to register, product attributes being unmanageable, and a whole host of other issues we finally thought we'd got to the point of a useable system and then payment issues and translations now disappearing so it's no longer viable for us to continue with such an unstable environment and we have had our hosts involved from the start who gave us a lot of support but who have also told us a lot of the modules appear to be problematic which is probably either due to the lack of support they offer or just plain buggy nature, even now there are issues installing some basic mods from the add-on catalogue, we have to try 2/3 times before they eventually install, that's not a good way of working.

Either way, we have made the decision to migrate and have already started the process, I hope it will be worth it and can't say I'm pleased to have to do it but there's nothing more frustrating for a customer than trying to make an order and it failing, quickest way to lose them for sure.

[Daresh]

Sure is, I've seen a lot of people jumping in prestashop 1.7 too fast, not taking into account massive changes that this version is going through and then complaining about bugs

I often advise no to update to 1.7 and wait for it to stabilize.

[TillyOak]

We waited an eternity before upgrading, in fact we only upgraded because support for 1.6 came to an end so we were running the store with no further ability to patch if I remember right, even having waited all that time before upgrading it's still clear 1.7 isn't able to achieve what 1.6 did, even a fresh install of 1.7 is fraught with problems from what I can see on these forums and a lot of the developers that spent a lot of time of the forums and were a lifeline have also abandoned prestashop, to they were literally the only ones keeping the forums alive with solutions and answers, their decision to walk away was a significant one, and one which should have seen many of us realise the end was nigh for prestashop, looking at the financial viability of prestashop also is poor reading, it's a sinking ship from what I can tell, and not something I enjoy saying, but reality has to kick in at some point and for us it's time 

[wop99]

I know this is not about this topic, but I posted about it a month ago and it still had not been approved.  

Reduced Banner

Is there a way to turn off the Reduced Banner? I set up a new item and the price is not reduced yet the banner shows up. I know I am missing something.

[PrestaHeroes USA]

when running a stand a lone eCms one person can only take it far as their skill sets allow.  for example you were happy on 1.6, upgrade (for some reason) and suspect you did not do this on a development machine....etc...etc....

it takes a lot of hats to run a really successful standalone eCMS.

The forum is for getting the people started, I've not asked a question here in at least five years,  in other words an agency won't learn anything about ecms from client...client knows product vertical and agency know ecommerce....that's when sales go off the chain

PS is not for do it yourself business owner, build a catalog and get an agency that can take it from there. 

My best advice I can give....

[bnadauld]

how did you find the migration to your new store form PS. Can you tell me how you did it as we have loads of customers and no way to keep our business if we move too

[TillyOak]

2 hours ago, bnadauld said:

how did you find the migration to your new store form PS. Can you tell me how you did it as we have loads of customers and no way to keep our business if we move too

Effortless, there are extensions to do this and there is a free one to move products and images but not attributes, customers or orders but there is a paid version to do this.

WooCommerce has its own theme which is free but basic, but very workable and since we've had the test site up and running we've threw as much at it as we could without any issues.

So far so good

[Rhobur]

There are lots of succesful stories with (even big) businesses using PS 1.7.

In my experience and excuse the lack of modesty but it is not a short/light one the vast majority of apparently unsolvable issues are coming from unsuitable hosting parameters, bad modules, overrides etc meaning particular reasons not general ones.

And I agree to the recommendation that a running medium sized business needs to have a developer close rather than searching the general forums for solution to apply to a circumstantial issue.

Just my 2 cents, I am not looking for work on PS forums quite frankly avoiding it having other sources for it.

 

Edited June 20, 2020 by Rhobur (see edit history)

[TillyOak]

27 minutes ago, Rhobur said:

There are lots of succesful stories with (even big) businesses using PS 1.7.

In my experience and excuse the lack of modesty but it is not a short/light one the vast majority of apparently unsolvable issues are coming from unsuitable hosting parameters, bad modules, overrides etc meaning particular reasons not general ones.

And I agree to the recommendation that a running medium sized business needs to have a developer close rather than searching the general forums for solution to apply to a circumstantial issue.

Just my 2 cents, I am not looking for work on PS forums quite frankly avoiding it having other sources for it.

 

I get the need for a developer for custom sites but we used prestashop out the box with the exception of a few minor alternations which were more theme related than anything but we lost those on the upgrade but reapplied them accordingly, as for overrides I believe we had a few of those from 1.6 also but on trying to revert them were told by prestashop support the ability to disable overrides was broken currently and there is no end date to when that will be fixed, they together with a while host of other inherited issues makes for a catalogue of headaches.  I get we may have caused some of the issues ourselves, I get that for a serious business we should have someone who can navigate the problems, I get that if my grandmother had wheels she'd be a bike, the issue is we have already out a lot of money into prestashop and a lot of time, I don't like to skate it because I have always loved it, but to be in a position where prestashop modules break constantly and then for support to have to come along a apply bugfixes that we don't know about and then to report other bugs that nobody responds to is too far even for the most patient of us.  I'm not whining for the sales of it, I've held off for many many months before making the decision to migrate, I've tried asking the questions, I've tried contacting support and I'm pretty much no further forward to be honest, to then have to employ a developer to fix all these issues and then potentially loose those fixes on the next catastrophic update is good money after bad.   

I don't know if woo, for example, would be any better but something has to change, whether that's prestashop or us, at the moment the only option I see is us, because as more and more people abandon PS , including some very well respected and committee developers, the future doesn't look Rosey from what I can see.

Again, not trying to slate PS, just telling it from our experience, yes there are a lot of success stories, we were one of them until recently but we have lost orders and customers and we have to make a decision based on what is best for us, I'd love to stay with PS but we're struggling, to stay any longer could be suicide.

Marko

[Rhobur]

I see.. I could comment/argue on some of the points above but honestly it wouldn't matter as you already made the decision to switch to WP/Woo.

All I can hope is that you won't regret it.

All the best and have a great weekend!

[TillyOak]

1 hour ago, Rhobur said:

I see.. I could comment/argue on some of the points above but honestly it wouldn't matter as you already made the decision to switch to WP/Woo.

All I can hope is that you won't regret it.

All the best and have a great weekend!

If I could stay with Prestashop and have the site running smoothly without the need to pay a developer on every update to fix the thing I'd be delighted.   Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen, I'm not happy about having to move away from Prestashop believe me, it's a system I've became very familiar with and enjoy using, and it's very powerful, but when we have issue after issue, it's just not worth putting the time and effort into it any longer.   Even yesterday, I updated the prestashop checkout module, then half hour later I had to do it again, then late last night it was updated again.   All this after the system told me it had been successfully upgraded each and every time so it's either giving us a false positive or the module was actually updated 3 times in the space of 24 hours!.

We could indeed comment all day long and my intention isn't to tell people how buggy I find Prestashop, it's to tell people that I am saddened I find I have no choice after a long battle to keep the site up and running that eventually we have to admit defeat.   I would absolutely have no hesitation in spending money to have someone look at the site, but my fear is the ongoing costs of doing this will cripple us as there doesn't seem to be an end to the issues we face.   ThirtyBee's was set up out of frustration on how Prestashop was going, and performing, it's lack of support and development or ongoing attention to detail, unfortunately we can't all employ developers to continuously monitor and fix issues.

As far as I'm concerned, I wanted to let people know that we have kept the site up and running as long as we could, we fought for it, we believed in it, but unfortunately we can't justify it any longer with the loss of some customers and orders.   Something has to give at some point.   As for Woo, we've been testing it live and in maintenance, and so far we haven't had any issues, that may change, we don't know but what we do know is there appears to be a lot more support available.

As for regrets, I sincerely regret having to move away but as I say, for us it's a must now and I do hope it's the right move for us.

All the best to those who continue using PS and I hope your experience is a better one than ours

[yama]

22 hours ago, TillyOak said:

we only upgraded because support for 1.6 came to an end

There is no problem to get support for 1.6 with the community, I'm not sure you need an "official support".

If 1.6 worked fine, I think it was a mistake to upgrade it.

 

[TillyOak]

1 minute ago, yama said:

There is no problem to get support for 1.6 with the community, I'm not sure you need an "official support".

If 1.6 worked fine, I think it was a mistake to upgrade it.

 

From what I believed, 1.6 updates came to an end, which means no further patching for security holes or vulnerabilities, I could be wrong, but didn't want to take the chance.

[Roynac]

28 minutes ago, TillyOak said:

If I could stay with Prestashop and have the site running smoothly without the need to pay a developer on every update to fix the thing I'd be delighted.   Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen, I'm not happy about having to move away from Prestashop believe me, it's a system I've became very familiar with and enjoy using, and it's very powerful, but when we have issue after issue, it's just not worth putting the time and effort into it any longer.   Even yesterday, I updated the prestashop checkout module, then half hour later I had to do it again, then late last night it was updated again.   All this after the system told me it had been successfully upgraded each and every time so it's either giving us a false positive or the module was actually updated 3 times in the space of 24 hours!.

We could indeed comment all day long and my intention isn't to tell people how buggy I find Prestashop, it's to tell people that I am saddened I find I have no choice after a long battle to keep the site up and running that eventually we have to admit defeat.   I would absolutely have no hesitation in spending money to have someone look at the site, but my fear is the ongoing costs of doing this will cripple us as there doesn't seem to be an end to the issues we face.   ThirtyBee's was set up out of frustration on how Prestashop was going, and performing, it's lack of support and development or ongoing attention to detail, unfortunately we can't all employ developers to continuously monitor and fix issues.

As far as I'm concerned, I wanted to let people know that we have kept the site up and running as long as we could, we fought for it, we believed in it, but unfortunately we can't justify it any longer with the loss of some customers and orders.   Something has to give at some point.   As for Woo, we've been testing it live and in maintenance, and so far we haven't had any issues, that may change, we don't know but what we do know is there appears to be a lot more support available.

As for regrets, I sincerely regret having to move away but as I say, for us it's a must now and I do hope it's the right move for us.

All the best to those who continue using PS and I hope your experience is a better one than ours

Hello everyone, we just wanted to share our feedbacks maybe it could help @TillyOak on his decision.

We have launched our website on 2018 by exploring 3 different CMS platform and wanted to give you our feedbacks.

1. We started by using Wordpress + Woo commerce. The issues that we face was the following:

> No out of the box multi language as it is available with Prestashop (Big headache for us at that time)

> Multicurrency issues, we used different plugin to over come that, but it was not straightforward

> No Ready Theme perfectly working such the one that we re currently using on https://roynac.com 

> Issues to handle email template etc...

on the other side,

> we enjoyed the huge developer available even on Fiverr, Upwork or Freelancer who can fix issues etc...

> A lot of free or cost effective plugin available..

> do not forget that Woocommerce is basically a module to make wordpress handling e commerce tasks etc...

2. Then we moved to a private agency offering their own custom made CMS from India. but really we spent 30-40000 $ by going that way which were not successful for us.. we can develop that if you wish to learn more.

3. we are using prestashop for more than 7 months the 1.7 version. We never used the 1.6 at all. 

And really we are very happy for the following reasons

> Multi language, multi currency out of the box

>As said above, we are using Zone Theme. And it working perfectly fine, even the speed of the website seems good (GTmetrix and Google Speed Insight)..

> Very easy to manage products, pages etc...

> and each time we purchased a module, the help received was very good from the module developer !!

So just we wanted to share our ideas, we do hope that would be helpful for you to make a final decision... just be careful with woocommerce.... you will always need a developer too

[TillyOak]

2 minutes ago, Roynac said:

So just we wanted to share our ideas, we do hope that would be helpful for you to make a final decision... just be careful with woocommerce.... you will always need a developer too

Thanks for that, and the thought had crossed our mind in respect to potentially requiring some professional help even with WooCommerce, I guess what you're saying is no matter which platform we go to there is the potential for issues depending on each individual's requirements, and the one thing we are struggling with at the moment is themes for WC, simply cannot find one that is aesthetically pleasing as PS, despite the ugly menu with PS currently, but that's likely fixable.

Having read a lot of the replies here, we're not quite at the 100% that we were, probably 90% now but we still feel the support available is the biggest crux to bear with PS, but having looked through all the error logs and PS Checkout logs we can't see anything that stands out and most of the transactions seem to have went through OK and I did read an article recently (can't for the life of me remember where) that had similar issues to us with the checkout process not working for some customers and it appeared it was the customer's computer causing the issues with anti-virus or firewall software being too over aggressive in their blocking of some financial transactions, sooooooooooooo ..... aw god damn it, why does Prestashop draw me back every time!!! I'll have some serious thought about it again and hopefully figure something out, I need to go lay down now my heads hurting lol !!

[Rhobur]

I don't think there is a perfect solution which works with everyone on every shop hosted on every server.

Furthermore, software has to evolve and many times this procees is painfull.

Being a developer for so many years on Linux and Apple (sorry Windows guys, no love here...) I can tell you that in my experience there is no bugfree software on this planet.

As for the Prestashop being in discussion here I strongly believe that with all its shortcommings it is the best cost/performance eCommerce platform.

We're talking about a platform oferred for free you can have a shop up and running without spending a dime.

Once you need more features then of course you have to spend some but hey, this means your business is growing and you can afford it.

Technologies change and evolve every year and even a platform like PS has to do some changes if the libraries it uses changes first otherwise it looses compatibility and poses security risks.

I understand that any shop owner will  like to have a setup and forget eCommerce platform but believe me this is a unicorn, a mithical creature.

And you can move your PS shop anywhere, ask the shopify users if they can do that or how much per month do they end up paying for what they discover they need, you'll be shocked.

As a PS ambassador in my country (purely honorary, it is not paid), I kind of mentor people here (merchants and devs) and do not accept clients in my country so not to create a conflict of interests but I admit I advise people in need to use it as I am convinced it is in their best interests.

I have my share of PS clients all over the world and trust me when I say that some of them are big businesses.

In the end taking care of an online business is no different than having a brick and mortar one, you still face issues and need professionals to rely upon.

It is my belief that a shop owner has to care about the business itself and not try to be an all knowing developer or an IT guy in any form.

P.S. About the support, maybe not many are aware of but PS doesn't and can't offer free support (besides the free software they're offering), they have to make a living somehow, put food on their tables, shoes on their kids feet... These forums rely on people spending their time without any pay, trying to help others as they can when they can, community work... when someone gives you his work for free can you blame him for not commiting to help you for free for life too?

Edited June 20, 2020 by Rhobur
spelling (see edit history)

[Hans Presta]

I am new to PS. Installed PS 1.7.6.5

Do you advise me not to start with this version? Is a lower version better for me?

[Rhobur]

No, start with the latest.

[Roynac]

On 6/20/2020 at 11:16 PM, Rhobur said:

I don't think there is a perfect solution which works with everyone on every shop hosted on every server.

Furthermore, software has to evolve and many times this procees is painfull.

Being a developer for so many years on Linux and Apple (sorry Windows guys, no love here...) I can tell you that in my experience there is no bugfree software on this planet.

As for the Prestashop being in discussion here I strongly believe that with all its shortcommings it is the best cost/performance eCommerce platform.

We're talking about a platform oferred for free you can have a shop up and running without spending a dime.

Once you need more features then of course you have to spend some but hey, this means your business is growing and you can afford it.

Technologies change and evolve every year and even a platform like PS has to do some changes if the libraries it uses changes first otherwise it looses compatibility and poses security risks.

I understand that any shop owner will  like to have a setup and forget eCommerce platform but believe me this is a unicorn, a mithical creature.

And you can move your PS shop anywhere, ask the shopify users if they can do that or how much per month do they end up paying for what they discover they need, you'll be shocked.

As a PS ambassador in my country (purely honorary, it is not paid), I kind of mentor people here (merchants and devs) and do not accept clients in my country so not to create a conflict of interests but I admit I advise people in need to use it as I am convinced it is in their best interests.

I have my share of PS clients all over the world and trust me when I say that some of them are big businesses.

In the end taking care of an online business is no different than having a brick and mortar one, you still face issues and need professionals to rely upon.

It is my belief that a shop owner has to care about the business itself and not try to be an all knowing developer or an IT guy in any form.

P.S. About the support, maybe not many are aware of but PS doesn't and can't offer free support (besides the free software they're offering), they have to make a living somehow, put food on their tables, shoes on their kids feet... These forums rely on people spending their time without any pay, trying to help others as they can when they can, community work... when someone gives you his work for free can you blame him for not commiting to help you for free for life too?

yes I agree with you

[Ali Samie]

On 6/19/2020 at 5:13 PM, TillyOak said:

Anything that needs the hire of a professional developer to gain basic functionality isn't realistic 

This is painful in PS but it's true. Even as a developer it's not easy to build a basic functionality. This platform is going to die soon.

[ventura]

I've been reading that for fifteen years. Please keep me informed of new alternatives for the same price, preferably not saas, or paint and color applications.

There is always the possibility to collaborate with other prestashop based options but following other development criteria. eg https://thirtybees.com/

[TiaNex Shopping]

as the growing up of mobile apps, 

the open source web app will get lesser support ,it's reasonable as the trend,

in the other way, i think it seems there is some problem with prestashop architecture or design now,

but it's still excellent , 

if you have complex problems , you need a professional developer or buy a service , you can get some free answer for some simple questions