PrestaShop's decline revives the question of e-commerce sovereignty
PrestaShop, the historic French publisher of online store software, has just announced a layoff plan (plan de sauvegarde de l'emploi). For the thousands of French merchants who built their business on this platform, the question is now on the table: should they migrate, and to what?
On professional networks, one answer dominates: Shopify. Speed, user experience, a well-stocked app store: the North American platform seems to offer a natural transition.
This analysis deserves some nuance. Migrating from PrestaShop to Shopify means trading an economic risk for a sovereignty risk. For a French SME or mid-sized company thinking in five-year terms, this is not a detail.
Another path exists. European. Open. Hostable wherever you want. Able to run the online store and the entire information system. That path is Odoo.
Shopify: what migration really involves
Your data subject to US law
Shopify is a US SaaS platform listed on the New York Stock Exchange. All data (customers, transactions, buying behavior, marketing data) is stored on infrastructure subject to the Cloud Act, a US law that allows US authorities to demand access to that data, including when it concerns European citizens, and including when it is physically stored in Europe.
The European GDPR does not protect against this extraterritorial mechanism. For a merchant collecting the data of tens of thousands of French customers, this point is far from trivial.
A commission that eats into revenue
Unless Shopify Payments is used (which relies on Stripe and de facto excludes French and European payment solutions), every transaction made on Shopify generates a commission for the vendor. This commission comes on top of the platform subscription.
The more revenue grows, the heavier the bill gets. The marginal cost of growth is not zero.
A total cost of ownership that explodes
Shopify's base subscription covers only a limited functional scope. As soon as needs grow (recurring subscriptions, multi-warehouse, French tax compliance, accounting connectors, B2B management, compliant invoices), you have to turn to app store applications, billed between 30 and 100 dollars per month each.
For a serious merchant, the real monthly cost quickly reaches five to ten times the advertised subscription.
Progressive technological lock-in
Custom developments on Shopify rely on Liquid, a language proprietary to the vendor. Any customization investment is lost in the event of a future migration. This asymmetry (the merchant invests, the platform keeps) is the business model of proprietary SaaS.
A roadmap that answers to shareholders
Shopify is a listed company. Its product strategy is dictated by quarterly pressure from financial markets, not by merchants' business needs. Regular price increases, features moved to higher tiers, restrictions on older plans: all changes that merchants endure without being able to oppose them.
Odoo: the sovereign, open and integrated answer
Faced with this, Odoo embodies a credible, industrially proven alternative. Published from Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium and used by more than 12 million people worldwide, Odoo natively covers all of the company's functions in a single application.
A unified information system, not a siloed store
The fundamental mistake in the "Shopify versus PrestaShop" debate is reducing the question to the online store alone. Yet for most serious merchants, e-commerce is just one channel among others: B2B, physical retail, marketplaces, telesales, resellers.
Odoo manages everything in a single database, with one customer record, one stock, one accounting. Concretely:
- E-commerce, ERP, CRM, accounting, sales management, purchasing, project management and human resources in a single application.
- A single customer record from quotation to invoice, through to the after-sales ticket.
- Stock shared between the online store, physical shops and marketplaces.
- French accounting fed automatically by sales, with no third-party connector.
- Compliant invoicing generated automatically, with no human intervention.
End-to-end automation, from visit to supplier payment
This is where Odoo's major differentiator against any pure web specialist lies. No e-commerce vendor (neither Shopify, nor PrestaShop, nor the others) will ever be able to offer complete automation of the company's chain.
With Odoo, a purchase click on the online store triggers, in cascade: the sales order, the stock issue, the compliant invoice, the accounting entry, the VAT return, the purchase order if replenishment is needed, and automated payment. With no human intervention between each step.
This native integration is out of reach for a system that stacks a Shopify store + Pennylane accounting + Sage ERP + HubSpot CRM + a third-party logistics tool, linked by fragile connectors.
Native French and European compliance
Odoo ships out of the box with French accounting to Plan Comptable Général standards, the compliant Fichier des Écritures Comptables, preparation for mandatory e-invoicing, VAT OSS management for intra-European Union sales, multi-company and multi-currency with consolidation, and specific localizations for more than 80 countries.
No North American e-commerce specialist offers this native compliance. On Shopify, French tax compliance systematically goes through a paid third-party connector.
Free hosting, sovereign data
With Odoo, the merchant chooses where their data lives:
- The vendor's official infrastructure (Odoo.sh).
- A sovereign European host (OVHcloud, Outscale, Scaleway, SecNumCloud-certified hosts).
- Their own servers under controlled managed services.
This freedom is decisive for players sensitive to sovereignty issues: healthcare, defense, the public sector, strategic industry, but also for any SME or mid-sized company executive who takes these issues seriously.
An independent, profitable publisher with controlled growth
Odoo SA is not listed on the stock exchange. The company is profitable, growing strongly, with a clear roadmap and major annual releases. Odoo 19 has just been released, further expanding the solution's e-commerce capabilities.
A scalable solution from SME to mid-sized company
The same tool serves a merchant starting at 1 million euros in revenue and an industrial company at 200 million. No forced re-platforming at each growth stage, unlike the move from Shopify Standard to Shopify Plus, which is a transformation project in its own right.
ANOR: Odoo integrator specialized in the sovereign transition
ANOR is an Odoo consulting and integration firm, specialized in supporting French SMEs and mid-sized companies. Our core business: turning complex information systems into integrated, secure and durable Odoo platforms.
Our approach: business first, technology second
A successful e-commerce migration never starts with a tool choice. It starts with an in-depth functional analysis: which business processes? which data flows? which sales channels? which compliance requirements? which growth challenges?
ANOR systematically applies a consulting-first approach. Before any configuration or development, we frame the needs, prioritize, and measure the business impact. Technology comes next, in service of the business.
Our industry expertise
We work in four main areas:
- Trading and B2B distribution: management of prices, commercial terms, complex customer accounts.
- Retail and e-commerce: integration of online store, physical shops, marketplaces, loyalty programs.
- Services: recurring invoicing, project management, time tracking, technical support contracts and time and materials.
- Manufacturing: MRP, multi-level production, traceability, quality, integration with business tools.
Our team
ANOR has a team of experienced senior consultants, structured around specialized business directorates: executive management, operations and delivery, finance and strategy.
PrestaShop to Odoo migration: our proven methodology
We have supported several merchants in their transition from PrestaShop to Odoo, with no commercial disruption, no loss of organic search ranking, and a consolidated information system at the end.
Our migration methodology is organized in five phases:
- Business and functional scoping Analysis of the existing setup, identification of specificities, prioritization of critical features, mapping of third-party integrations.
- Target design Odoo configuration, definition of the necessary custom developments, data migration plan.
- Data migration Transfer of products, customers, historical orders, SEO content, URL redirects to preserve search ranking.
- Testing and training User acceptance testing, team training, parallel running if needed.
- Controlled go-live Go-live planned outside the critical commercial period, intensive post-launch support, gradual ramp-up.
The typical duration of a PrestaShop to Odoo migration is between 3 and 6 months depending on the complexity of the scope.
Digital sovereignty is built choice by choice
PrestaShop's layoff plan is not just an isolated event in French e-commerce. It is a signal of the fragility of the European software ecosystem and of the urgency, for French executives, of making deliberate choices about digital tools.
Migrating in a hurry, without strategic thinking, to the first American platform that comes along accelerates the French economy's technological dependence. Migrating with sovereignty, integration and autonomy in mind sets your company on a durable trajectory.
At ANOR, we don't believe in digital sovereignty as a slogan. We build it project by project, client by client, supporting executives who take seriously the control of their tools, their data and their margin.
Considering a PrestaShop to Odoo migration?
ANOR supports you in the diagnosis, scoping and implementation of your transition to Odoo.
First step: a free diagnosis of your current PrestaShop store. We analyze your functional scope, volumes, technical constraints and business challenges to propose a clear, costed migration path.
Article written by Cyrille de Lambert, President and Founder of ANOR, Odoo integrator since 2009 and former PrestaShop integrator. ANOR supports French SMEs and mid-sized companies in their digital transformation projects, with a focus on data sovereignty and technological autonomy.