PrestaShop was created in 2007 as a student project at the EPITECH school in Paris by Igor Schlumberger and Bruno Leveque. They released it as open source from day one, and the community took off faster than anyone expected. Within a few years it became one of the most downloaded e-commerce solutions in Europe.
The platform is built on PHP with a Symfony framework backbone and uses MySQL for data storage. It’s completely free to download and self-host. PrestaShop makes money through its marketplace of paid modules and themes, plus a hosted version called PrestaShop Edition that bundles hosting and support.
MerchantSpring estimated that PrestaShop powers more than 300,000 active online stores globally, with particularly strong adoption in France, Spain, Italy, and Latin American markets. The platform supports 75+ languages out of the box and handles multi-currency and multi-store setups natively.
In 2021, MBE Worldwide (a subsidiary of Italian postal group Poste Italiane) acquired PrestaShop for a reported $120 million. The acquisition gave PrestaShop access to MBE’s logistics network spanning 3,100+ service centers across 52 countries.
The open-source community around PrestaShop includes over 1 million members who contribute modules, translations, and bug fixes. The company employs around 250 people.
