The Merchant Engine compared with PrestaShop
PrestaShop is the European incumbent: PHP, a back office and a front office in one install, modules and hooks, and native right-to-left support. The Merchant Engine is a TypeScript stack with the same all-in-one shape but a different centre of gravity: a REST API first, a storefront branded from configuration, and an installer that provisions a server rather than a web wizard you click through.
What PrestaShop does better
PrestaShop is open source under OSL-3.0, has been shipping since 2007, has an installed base this project cannot compare to, and supports right-to-left languages natively in both the front office and the back office. Its module marketplace is enormous. On ecosystem and track record it is far ahead of this project.
Row by row
Every claim about PrestaShop was read from its own documentation on 2026-09-09 and carries the page it came from. Every claim about The Merchant Engine links the documentation page that proves it. If a row is wrong, it is a bug: write to bbadii@pm.me and it gets corrected.
| Criterion | PrestaShop | The Merchant Engine |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A fully customizable ecommerce platform sold to merchants and built by an open-source project. “Sell online on a fully customizable ecommerce platform, adapted to the growth of your business.” Source: prestashop.com | A self-hosted ecommerce platform: a REST API, an admin dashboard and a server-rendered storefront, installed together on your own server with one command. Read the page that proves it |
| Language and runtime | PHP 8.1 or newer, with MySQL or a compatible database. “you need a web server running PHP 8.1+” Source: github.com | TypeScript on Node. NestJS and Prisma for the API, Angular for the admin, Analog.js for the storefront. Read the page that proves it |
| API | A legacy webservice CRUD API, plus a new Admin API in version 9 built on API Platform. “The Admin API in PrestaShop 9 is based on the popular API Platform in version 3” Source: devdocs.prestashop-project.org | REST, one versioned surface under /v1, split by audience into a storefront and an admin OpenAPI document that are generated from the code, never hand-written. Read the page that proves it |
| Admin dashboard | The back office ships with the install. The codebase is a PHP monolith being migrated to Symfony. “a monolith following traditional object-oriented PHP practices” Source: devdocs.prestashop-project.org | Included and installed with everything else. Angular, role-based permissions on every endpoint, light and dark, and one editing tab per locale on every text field. Read the page that proves it |
| Storefront | The front office is rendered by a theme, and the theme documentation is where a developer changes it. No official headless storefront path appears in the documentation read on this date. “PrestaShop themes control the entire front-office experience: layout, templates, styles, and client-side behavior.” Source: devdocs.prestashop-project.org | Included and installed with everything else, server-rendered, and branded from the store configuration rather than forked: colours, fonts, logo, locales and money come from the database. Read the page that proves it |
| Install path | No single command: the release package is unpacked and its web installer run, and the development version needs a dependency install and an asset build first. “This step is only needed if you downloaded the development version” Source: devdocs.prestashop-project.org | One command. ./setup.sh asks for the store’s values, verifies each third-party integration live, builds the images, creates the database, issues the certificates and creates the owner account. Read the page that proves it |
| License | Open Software License 3.0 for the core and Academic Free License 3.0 for the modules, with a paid marketplace alongside. “Open Software License v. 3.0 (OSL-3.0)” Source: raw.githubusercontent.com | Source available: PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0, free for personal, educational, research and nonprofit stores. A store that takes money buys a yearly commercial license in one of four tiers. Read the page that proves it |
| Hosting model | Both: download and install it yourself, or take the vendor's hosted offering. “Let us take care of the technical aspects and access a ready-to-use store” Source: prestashop.com | Self-hosted only. There is no vendor cloud, no hosted tier and nothing to sign up for; the install runs on your box and the licence check is an offline signed file. Read the page that proves it |
| Extension model | Modules and themes, wired through display and action hooks. “Hooks are extension points which are placed throughout the system, allowing subscribing Modules to be notified” Source: devdocs.prestashop-project.org | You own the checkout: it is a modular monolith you change in place, with a documented recipe per kind of change and the gates that keep the change honest. Read the page that proves it |
| Payment providers | An official first-party module for bank wire, with cheque and cash on delivery as their own official modules (the row below covers cash on delivery). “PrestaShop module that allows to accept payments for your products via bank wire transfer.” Source: github.com | Cash on delivery, manual bank transfer and gift cards ship and work. No card gateway ships in the first release; the payments module has the seams and a recipe for adding one. Read the page that proves it |
| Cash on delivery | Supported through an official first-party module. “Accept cash on delivery payments” Source: github.com | Shipped. A payment method row the store owner switches on, published by the public checkout endpoint with its translated name, and snapshotted onto the order. Read the page that proves it |
| Content languages | Multilingual out of the box, with more languages downloadable. “PrestaShop comes multilingual out of the box: there is one default language” Source: docs.prestashop-project.org | French, English and Arabic catalogues ship. A store enables the ones it serves and picks a default; every user-facing field holds one value per locale in one database. Read the page that proves it |
| Right to left | Right to left is supported natively, and the theme documentation covers generating the RTL stylesheet. This matches what the storefront does here and goes further, since the back office is covered too. “PrestaShop supports RTL (Right-to-Left) languages like Arabic, Hebrew, and Farsi.” Source: devdocs.prestashop-project.org | The storefront mirrors: the store configuration names the RTL locales and the pages set dir and lang per locale. The admin edits Arabic in a right-to-left tab, but its own interface is English and is not mirrored. Read the page that proves it |
| Infrastructure | A PHP web server with MySQL 5.6 or newer, Apache or Nginx recommended. “any flavor of MySQL 5.6+ (MySQL, MariaDB, Percona Server, etc.)” Source: github.com | PostgreSQL and Redis, in Docker, on one Linux box. The installer sets both up; a second box for the storefront is optional. Read the page that proves it |
| Maturity | Copyright since 2007, currently on version 9. No official page fetched states a first-release date in prose. “9.1.5” Source: github.com | The youngest product on this page, and the page says so: the first public release is not tagged yet. What stands in for a version history is the gate set every push runs, published rather than described. Read the page that proves it |
Which one to pick
Pick PrestaShop when
- You have PHP people and a hosting stack that already runs it.
- You need right to left in the administration interface as well as the storefront.
- The module marketplace has the integration you need and buying it beats writing it.
- An OSL-3.0 licence with no commercial fee is a hard requirement.
Pick The Merchant Engine when
- You want a TypeScript stack end to end, with the storefront and the admin sharing one API.
- You install for clients and want the installer to do the server work: certificates, database, integrations verified live, owner account created.
- You want to build your own storefront against a documented REST contract rather than replace a theme.
- Cash on delivery, gift cards and manual transfer are the tenders you need, and you want them in the box rather than as modules to install.
Questions
PrestaShop already does Arabic and right to left. What is different here?
PrestaShop covers both the front office and the back office, which is more than this engine does today: the admin here is English and is not mirrored. What is different is the shape: the locales are store configuration, every field holds one value per locale in the database, and the storefront reads direction from that configuration at request time.
Is there a migration path from PrestaShop?
No importer ships today. Moving a catalogue would go through the admin API and is real work.
Why not just use a PHP platform?
If your team is PHP, do. This engine exists for teams that would rather read TypeScript from the API to the storefront, and want the checkout logic in one repository they own.
See it for yourself
The fastest check on any row above is to run the thing: install it locally in one command, or read what an install puts on a box. The other comparisons are on the compare index.
Last updated . Every claim on this page is read from a published source and cited beside it.