PrestaShop vs WooCommerce vs Ecwid by Lightspeed: What Each One Really Costs

Updated August 2026

If you've ruled out Shopify because the monthly plan, the payment gateway fee, or both feel like the wrong deal for your store, you've probably landed on one of these three. WooCommerce, PrestaShop, and Ecwid by Lightspeed are the three most common answers to "I don't want to pay Shopify's fee," and each one gets there through a genuinely different mechanism. WooCommerce is a free plugin you install on a WordPress site you either already run or now have to build. PrestaShop is free, open-source software you self-host from scratch, with its own official hosted tier if you'd rather not manage a server. Ecwid by Lightspeed is a paid, hosted widget you drop into a site you already have, or run as a standalone store, and it never touches a server you own at all.

"Free" is doing a lot of work in that first paragraph, and it doesn't hold up the same way for all three once you price a full year. This guide builds a genuine year-one total cost of ownership for a small store and a growing store on each platform, using every vendor's own published pricing and licensing where it exists, and disclosing every assumption plainly where it doesn't, because none of the three vendors publishes a total like this themselves. We checked every figure against WooCommerce's, PrestaShop's, and Ecwid's own pages in August 2026, verified each project's license directly from its source, and confirmed exactly what "Lightspeed" means for Ecwid's ownership and branding today.

Key Facts

• WooCommerce's own pricing page describes the core plugin as "Free, with no monthly subscription," then budgets hosting at "$25 - $350/month for most stores" and extensions at "$29 - $299/year per extension" on top of that free plugin. (WooCommerce)
• PrestaShop's core is free to download and self-host under the Open Software License 3.0, and PrestaShop also sells its own official Hosted tier directly: €24 excl. VAT a month paid annually, or €29 excl. VAT a month with no commitment. (PrestaShop)
• Ecwid no longer has a free-forever plan. Its pricing page lists Starter at $5/month for 10 products, and staff logins are gated by tier: Business includes 2 staff accounts, Unlimited includes unlimited staff accounts, and neither Starter nor Venture includes any. (Ecwid)
• Per W3Techs' August 2026 survey, WooCommerce runs 48.1% of the ecommerce systems it tracks and 8.1% of all websites, while PrestaShop runs 2.9% of ecommerce systems and roughly 0.5% to 0.7% of all websites. (W3Techs: WooCommerce, W3Techs: PrestaShop)
• Lightspeed Commerce closed its acquisition of Ecwid on October 1, 2021, for roughly $163.6 million in cash plus 4,842,674 Lightspeed shares. The consumer-facing product is still marketed as "Ecwid by Lightspeed" today, while inside Lightspeed's own Retail product suite the same platform is labeled "Lightspeed eCom (E-Series), formerly Ecwid." (PR Newswire, Lightspeed)

TL;DR: PrestaShop vs WooCommerce vs Ecwid by Lightspeed

What Each Platform Is Actually Built For

All three are answers to the same complaint, but they're not the same answer. WooCommerce inherits WordPress's enormous install base and its full content-management tooling, which is why it wins hardest among sites that were built to publish first and sell second. PrestaShop was built as commerce software from day one, not a plugin bolted onto a CMS, which is part of why it kept its own hosted tier and its own module marketplace instead of depending on somebody else's plugin directory. Ecwid solves a narrower, more specific problem than either: adding real commerce to a site, or to a set of sales channels, without touching a server or a plugin stack at all.

If your real need is a small catalog bolted onto a design-first marketing site rather than a dedicated commerce platform, none of these three is automatically the answer either. Our best Squarespace alternatives and best Wix alternatives roundups cover that lighter end of the market, and the wider field sits in best ecommerce platforms in 2026.

License, Ownership, and What You're Actually Buying

This is the part most comparison articles skip, and it's worth verifying directly rather than assuming. PrestaShop's core is licensed under the Open Software License 3.0, with official modules under the Academic Free License 3.0, confirmed directly in the PrestaShop GitHub repository's own license file. WooCommerce is released under GPLv3, confirmed directly in the license file shipped inside the WooCommerce plugin itself. Ecwid isn't open source at all: it's a proprietary SaaS product, and what you're buying is a subscription and a set of standard terms of service, not a copy of the code.

The ownership story is the more interesting verification. Lightspeed Commerce Inc. closed its purchase of Ecwid on October 1, 2021, for roughly $163.6 million in cash plus nearly 4.85 million Lightspeed shares, per Lightspeed's own closing announcement. The branding since then has split in an unusual way that's worth stating plainly rather than guessing at. On the public-facing site, ecwid.com, the product is marketed as "Ecwid by Lightspeed," and that's the name printed in the footer of its own pricing page as of this article's research. But inside Lightspeed's own Retail product ecosystem, the same underlying platform is documented as "Lightspeed eCom (E-Series), formerly Ecwid," using the E-Series and R-Series naming convention Lightspeed applies across its product line. Functionally it's one product wearing two names depending on which door you walked through: the standalone Ecwid brand for merchants who found it on its own, and the Lightspeed eCom name for merchants who already run Lightspeed's point-of-sale hardware and are being cross-sold into commerce.

Plan Lineup and Published Pricing

Three platforms, three completely different pricing shapes. Here's what each one actually publishes, checked directly against its own page.

PrestaShop: a free download, and one official hosted tier

PrestaShop's Hosted offer runs a 14-day free trial, is billed only after the trial ends, and can be cancelled anytime with full data export, per PrestaShop's own terms. It's a genuinely different structure from WooCommerce, which sells no hosting product of its own at any price.

WooCommerce: there is no plan, so here's the cost stack

Ecwid: four published tiers, no revenue share at any of them

Ecwid states plainly that there are no setup fees and no transaction fees at any tier. The trade-off for that simplicity is the one worth flagging loudly: the free-forever plan that used to anchor most Ecwid comparisons is gone, and staff logins, not just product count, are what actually forces an upgrade once more than one person needs access.

Who Owns Hosting, Security Patching, and the Day It Breaks

This is the axis that actually decides the shortlist, because it's the one that turns a sticker price into a real bill. Two of these three ship you the software and step back; only one of them takes the operational risk off your plate entirely.

Read that PrestaShop security release for what it actually says, because it's more honest than most vendor security pages: correct handling of a visitor's IP address, the release notes, "is a shared responsibility between the application and the hosting setup." That's the whole story for both open-source platforms in one sentence. The software ships the fix. Whether it gets applied, and whether the server underneath is configured correctly for it to matter, is the store owner's job on Classic, and it's the one thing Hosted subscribers and every Ecwid merchant get to stop thinking about.

Decision by What You're Actually Trying to Do

The Real Year-One Cost: A Small Store

Assumptions: about $60,000 a year in online sales, one person running the store, a catalog under 100 products, four paid modules or extensions where the platform has them, and card processing excluded from every column so the comparison isn't distorted by rates that vary by country and processor on all three sides.

At this size Ecwid's low end is dramatically cheaper, because it's genuinely built for a small, capped catalog and there's no hosting decision to make. Its high end still lands under the other two, because a one-person store rarely needs more than a couple of paid apps. What the table doesn't show, and what matters more than the total, is that PrestaShop's and WooCommerce's numbers are close to identical here on purpose: both are self-hosted PHP applications with comparable server requirements, so a fair comparison should land them in the same range rather than inventing a gap that isn't real. If PrestaShop's official Hosted tier is more your speed than Classic at this size, budget €288 to €348 excl. VAT a year for it directly, a genuinely vendor-priced number rather than an assumption, and roughly comparable to Ecwid's mid-tier once you account for the support and setup it bundles in.

The Real Year-One Cost: A Growing Store

Assumptions: about $500,000 a year in online sales, a team of three to five people needing logins, eight paid modules, extensions, or apps, mid-band hosting for the self-hosted platforms, and again no card processing on any side. PrestaShop's official Hosted tier is left out of this table on purpose: PrestaShop doesn't publish a staff-seat structure for it, so it doesn't read as scoped for a multi-person team the way Classic, WooCommerce, and Ecwid's tiers all are.

This is the finding worth sitting with. At $60,000 a year in sales, Ecwid is clearly the cheapest of the three. At $500,000 a year with a real team, all three converge to almost the same range, because the thing that was free at small scale, Ecwid's lack of a hosting bill, stops being the deciding factor once staff seats and app spend catch up to what hosting and extensions already cost on the self-hosted platforms. The trap specific to Ecwid here is the staff-account ceiling: Business includes exactly 2 seats, so a team of three or more has to jump straight to Unlimited, and that jump is bigger proportionally than either open-source platform's equivalent step up in hosting tier.

Extensions, Modules, and Apps: How Each Marketplace Actually Works

For lifecycle and abandoned-cart email specifically, all three platforms typically pair with a dedicated tool rather than relying on native email alone; see best email marketing software in 2026 for that category on its own merits rather than tied to whichever storefront you picked.

Multi-Channel Selling and Where Each Platform Actually Lives

This is the section that separates Ecwid from the other two most clearly: it's the hosted widget you bolt onto a site you already have, not a platform that replaces one.

If your inventory has to stay synced across that many channels at once, most sellers at this scale add a dedicated automation layer rather than checking each channel by hand; see best Make alternatives for that category.

Who Runs It Day to Day

Risk and Governance

When PrestaShop Is the Right Call

• You want proven open-source ownership with a genuine fallback if self-hosting doesn't work out. PrestaShop is one of the few open-source platforms that also sells its own official hosted tier directly, so you're not choosing between full DIY and a third party you have to vet yourself.
• Your customers, support relationships, or team are stronger in Europe or Latin America than the US. PrestaShop's own numbers put its top markets at France, Spain, and Italy, and that shows up in the depth of its module marketplace and community for those regions specifically.
• You want no platform fee and no revenue share at any sales volume, and you're comfortable with PHP, MySQL, and a server, or with paying an agency that is.
• A module marketplace with mostly one-time pricing appeals to you more than an annual-subscription model. Year-two costs on PrestaShop's marketplace are often lower than the equivalent WooCommerce extension renewal.

When WooCommerce Is the Right Call

• You already run WordPress, or the rest of your business already depends on it. The marginal cost of adding a store to an existing, well-maintained WordPress site is close to nothing, and this is the scenario where "free" is honestly free.
• Content is a real part of your commerce strategy, not an afterthought. The store lives inside a full CMS, so your blog, landing pages, and product catalog share one system and one content team.
• You want the largest possible hiring pool for ongoing development. WordPress developers are more numerous and more broadly available than PrestaShop or Ecwid specialists.
• You want zero platform fee at any volume, and you're willing to own the update schedule, or pay a managed WooCommerce host to own it for you.

When Ecwid by Lightspeed Is the Right Call

• You're adding commerce to a site, blog, or social presence that already exists, and rebuilding the whole thing around a storefront platform would be a step backward, not forward.
• Your sales already happen across Instagram, TikTok, Amazon, and Google as much as through a single website. Ecwid's multi-channel selling is native from one dashboard, not stitched together through apps.
• Nobody on the team is technical, and nobody wants to become the person who owns a server. There's no hosting decision, no PHP version to check, and no plugin compatibility to test.
• Your catalog and team are genuinely small, or your team is exactly two people or fewer. Below the Business tier's staff-account ceiling, Ecwid's simplicity is a real advantage, not a limitation you'll hit right away.

If None of These Three Fits

If the storefront itself is fine but the real gap is that orders, inventory, and the customer record live in separate tools that drift out of sync, that's a different problem than a platform choice, and none of these three solves it; none of them was built to. Rework's Commerce module runs order and commerce operations inside a wider platform that also carries Sales CRM, Lead, Inventory, Invoice, and Work Ops, so the order and the customer record sit on one platform instead of three tools kept in sync by hand. It isn't a storefront builder: there's no themed storefront, no template gallery, and no D2C checkout, so it would sit beside whichever of these three you pick rather than replace it. Rework doesn't publish a price for Commerce; it's quoted per organization at rework.com/pricing, and it's built for mid-size operators of roughly 10 to 200 people, not solo sellers. If that's closer to your actual problem, best order management software in 2026 is a more useful starting point than another storefront comparison.

Decision Framework

What to Do Next

1. Name who owns patching before you compare another price. If that name is blank on a self-hosted option, PrestaShop Hosted or Ecwid removes the question entirely; if it's filled in, Classic or WooCommerce's cost advantage is real.
2. Price your actual hosting and module list, not the low end of any range. Get a real hosting quote for your traffic and a real list of the extensions or modules you'd install on day one, then price those against WooCommerce's published $29 to $299 per extension and PrestaShop's typically one-time module pricing.
3. Count your team size before you pick an Ecwid tier. Business's 2-seat cap is easy to miss until a third person needs a login, at which point Unlimited is the honest comparison, not Business.
4. If PrestaShop is on your list, request the Hosted trial before ruling out self-hosting. Fourteen days is enough to see whether the managed version is worth its published €24 to €29 a month over doing it yourself.
5. If you're comparing more than these three, start from best ecommerce platforms in 2026, or read Shopify vs WooCommerce if a hosted platform is still on your shortlist alongside these open-source and embedded options. For a full evaluation framework rather than a single matchup, see how to choose an ecommerce platform.