Best practices for optimizing PrestaShop stores as they grow

[Caroline Harper]

Hi everyone,

I’m currently working on improving the performance and maintainability of a growing PrestaShop store, and I wanted to hear how others approach this at different stages.

As a store scales, things like performance, module management, theme customization, and update safety start to matter much more than at the beginning. Sometimes, small decisions made early on can cause issues later when traffic or product count increases.

I’m curious:

What changes made the biggest difference for you as your PrestaShop store grew?

How do you balance customization with keeping updates safe?

Are there any general practices you wish you had followed from the start?

I’d appreciate hearing real experiences from other store owners or developers.

Thanks!

[wepresta]

Hi,

Biggest wins as stores grow:

• Caching + faster hosting (PHP/OPcache, Smarty/CCC) and image optimization (WebP/lazyload).
• Audit modules: remove unused/overlapping ones; heavy modules often cause slow queries.
• Keep updates safe: no core edits, use child theme/overrides sparingly, everything in Git, and always test on staging + backups.

What I wish from day one: staging + Git + “no core edits” rule and basic monitoring to catch regressions early.

[Mediacom87]

Hi,

I would add a solution for cleaning and maintaining the store to avoid database congestion or unnecessary files.

[El Patron]

9 hours ago, Caroline Harper said:

What changes made the biggest difference for you as your PrestaShop store grew?

How do you balance customization with keeping updates safe?

Are there any general practices you wish you had followed from the start?

I’d appreciate hearing real experiences from other store owners or developers.

The first thing I recommend is reviewing competitor shops within your product vertical. Look closely at the features, UX patterns, and trust signals they implement, and identify what your own store is missing or under-delivering on.

Customization must always be balanced with update safety. Best practice is to apply all changes on a staging environment first, take full backups of production, and only then deploy tested changes live.

From an infrastructure perspective, follow proven best practices: use the best hosting your budget reasonably supports, SSD or NVMe storage, PHP-FPM with dedicated resources, and—something many overlook—properly tuning MySQL instead of relying on default out-of-the-box settings.

From experience, store owners and administrators can only take a business so far on their own. To scale meaningfully, you eventually need an agency or technical partner that understands your product vertical, actively analyzes competitors, identifies missed opportunities, and brings stronger ideas to the table—someone focused on taking the business to the next level rather than simply maintaining the status quo.