Why are PrestaShop themes so expensive?
Following the similar question in Quora:
The reply is very simple: unlike WP, which does not change its core from version to version, PrestaShop can’t provide an option to guarantee, that the bought theme will work in future versions.
- For example: we know there was Presta 1.6.x version, but those templates which were used there, won’t be compatible with Presta 1.7.x… The same situation is waiting for us in Presta 1.8.x, when the templates used in 1.7.x will have conflicts in 1.8.x. Sure, the developers of templates are limited in marketing/sales due to this and life-cycle of such templates is comparatively short (if we compare with WP).
- Another reason is: the penetration of Presta in the market is not so huge, as WP (quantity of the installations), that’s why the price for each template is higher – it should cover charges for its development.
- The worst is that templates consist of visual part mostly (front-end), but modules are back-end based… And modules (addons) struggle even more, than themes, when PrestaShop changes their core version! Contributors of addons need to adapt their modules promptly to suite the new requirements otherwise the customers won’t be happy of such service. Sure, this trigs extra expenses on the developers (contributors) side!
Based on these 2 approaches let us sum some conclusions:
- PrestaShop, being very powerful and rich by its functionality from box, is not flexible and predictable at all – we can’t know what will be inherited in the future versions from the current assemblies;
- Presta is very conservative CMS which is based on MVC-structure of Symfony framework, which declares some rules of the game. It’s very cool scalable in measures of the current version, but not ready for the regular updates, like WP does. It means, that mostly serios stores are frozen for years in their current version, because the expenses to update them following all possible customizations inside will be unbelievably huge!
Despite of this we like Presta for its wise UX/UI approach, smart structure and rich functionality!