Prestashop and headless technology – is it worth it? Looking for opinions and experiences

[MartinCz]

Hi everyone!

I’m looking for information about implementing headless technology in e-commerce, especially in the context of Prestashop stores. I’m considering switching to this type of solution for my store and would love to hear about the pros and cons of this approach, especially compared to the traditional Prestashop architecture.

I’m particularly interested in:

What real benefits can headless bring to a store running on Prestashop (e.g., speed, frontend flexibility, improved user experience)?

What challenges or limitations might arise during implementation and later maintenance?

Are there ready-to-use integrations or frameworks that facilitate applying headless architecture to Prestashop?

How does maintaining and updating Prestashop look when using a headless setup – does it complicate daily operations?

If this topic has already been discussed on the forum, I would really appreciate it if you could share links to relevant threads – I don't want to duplicate existing discussions.

Additionally, if anyone has practical experience implementing headless with Prestashop and can share a case study, examples of projects, or results achieved – I would be extremely grateful!

Thanks in advance for all your opinions, tips, and shared materials!
In your opinion, is implementing headless architecture with Prestashop a good idea nowadays?

Best regards!

[Webkul Solutions]

You can check this link below for better clarification about the headless technology.

https://webkul.com/blog/why-should-you-consider-using-headless-prestashop/ 

[binshops]

Hey,

Here is the fastest and best performing Headless solution for PrestaShop:

https://www.binshops.com/prestashop-headless-pwa

 

you can check the performance with demo:

https://react.binshops.com/

[binshops]

 

About the main topic:

If your business is growing, and you also want to enhance your front-end customer experience, the PrestaShop Headless solution would be a great choice.

To be honest, if we want to avoid a full re-platforming, we need to think in terms of a large-scale architecture — a system composed of multiple connected components, integrations, and an API gateway that aggregates everything. It’s truly a complex ecosystem that involves different technologies working together.

To achieve such a sophisticated setup, headless architecture is the first step.

This is the key advantage of going headless — along with the smoothness and flexibility that simply can’t be achieved with classic themes.

So, if we don’t take these steps, re-platforming won’t be the solution either and does not guarantee our scalability. This scenario applies to any platform or system: if we truly want to take control of our business and grow technically, adopting a headless approach is the way forward.

 

"What challenges or limitations might arise during implementation and later maintenance?"

answer: we need to add another server to run the storefront application, a small vps server for serving the front, nothing will be changed on your main server and shop.

 

"How does maintaining and updating Prestashop look when using a headless setup – does it complicate daily operations?"

answer: it does not need daily operations, just like your main shop.

 

This demo storefront: https://react.binshops.com/ is running on a VPS server. So, the main shop was: https://rest.binshops.com/ and we just installed the REST API and it's giving us: https://rest.binshops.com/rest/bootstrap then, we just added a VPS server for running our storefront. That's it. 

 

for more look at: https://www.binshops.com/prestashop-headless-pwa

 

Kind regards,
Sam

Edited November 2 by binshops (see edit history)

[binshops]

3 hours ago, binshops said:

 

About the main topic:

If your business is growing, and you also want to enhance your front-end customer experience, the PrestaShop Headless solution would be a great choice.

To be honest, if we want to avoid a full re-platforming, we need to think in terms of a large-scale architecture — a system composed of multiple connected components, integrations, and an API gateway that aggregates everything. It’s truly a complex ecosystem that involves different technologies working together.

To achieve such a sophisticated setup, headless architecture is the first step.

This is the key advantage of going headless — along with the smoothness and flexibility that simply can’t be achieved with classic themes.

So, if we don’t take these steps, re-platforming won’t be the solution either and does not guarantee our scalability. This scenario applies to any platform or system: if we truly want to take control of our business and grow technically, adopting a headless approach is the way forward.

 

"What challenges or limitations might arise during implementation and later maintenance?"

answer: we need to add another server to run the storefront application, a small vps server for serving the front, nothing will be changed on your main server and shop.

 

"How does maintaining and updating Prestashop look when using a headless setup – does it complicate daily operations?"

answer: it does not need daily operations, just like your main shop.

 

This demo storefront: https://react.binshops.com/ is running on a VPS server. So, the main shop was: https://rest.binshops.com/ and we just installed the REST API and it's giving us: https://rest.binshops.com/rest/bootstrap then, we just added a VPS server for running our storefront. That's it. 

 

for more look at: https://www.binshops.com/prestashop-headless-pwa

 

Kind regards,
Sam

@MartinCz notif. 

[ErnestQ]

18 hours ago, binshops said:

 

About the main topic:

If your business is growing, and you also want to enhance your front-end customer experience, the PrestaShop Headless solution would be a great choice.

To be honest, if we want to avoid a full re-platforming, we need to think in terms of a large-scale architecture — a system composed of multiple connected components, integrations, and an API gateway that aggregates everything. It’s truly a complex ecosystem that involves different technologies working together.

To achieve such a sophisticated setup, headless architecture is the first step.

This is the key advantage of going headless — along with the smoothness and flexibility that simply can’t be achieved with classic themes.

So, if we don’t take these steps, re-platforming won’t be the solution either and does not guarantee our scalability. This scenario applies to any platform or system: if we truly want to take control of our business and grow technically, adopting a headless approach is the way forward.

 

"What challenges or limitations might arise during implementation and later maintenance?"

answer: we need to add another server to run the storefront application, a small vps server for serving the front, nothing will be changed on your main server and shop.

 

"How does maintaining and updating Prestashop look when using a headless setup – does it complicate daily operations?"

answer: it does not need daily operations, just like your main shop.

 

This demo storefront: https://react.binshops.com/ is running on a VPS server. So, the main shop was: https://rest.binshops.com/ and we just installed the REST API and it's giving us: https://rest.binshops.com/rest/bootstrap then, we just added a VPS server for running our storefront. That's it. 

 

for more look at: https://www.binshops.com/prestashop-headless-pwa
there is also a lot of useful information here: https://yonibet-entree.com/

Kind regards,
Sam

Thanks for the example, really helpful. Did you implement any front-end caching solution — like Varnish, Cloudflare Workers, or something similar — to reduce API calls? And have you compared the performance against a standard PrestaShop theme?
It would be really interesting to see some concrete benchmarks, especially under higher traffic load.

[binshops]

On 11/3/2025 at 5:49 AM, ErnestQ said:

Thanks for the example, really helpful. Did you implement any front-end caching solution — like Varnish, Cloudflare Workers, or something similar — to reduce API calls? And have you compared the performance against a standard PrestaShop theme?
It would be really interesting to see some concrete benchmarks, especially under higher traffic load.

@ErnestQ
 

both API level caching and front-end level/presentation layer caching are possible. 

We already implemented this API caching in our Pro version, this can be used on large catalogs. Also there is a report showing the throughput for API calling:

https://www.binshops.com/prestashop-api#api-caching

At presentation layer, we can do many tricks. We already used the React Cache Query https://www.binshops.com/docs/next-ecommerce/special-features.html#react-query so making it fast and preventing duplicate requests as a result fewer API calls. This makes it very fast for rendering already visited pages. This is enabled on our demo too you can test: https://react.binshops.com/

For SSR caching (like what you mentioned Varnish or other caching mechanisms), the storefront pages can easily be easily cached on Redis for first request SSR calls. I do not have benchmark for it right now, however all depends on the configurations and setup, but the road map is very clear for achieving a high speed storefront.