Magento or Prestashop, which is better?

Having looked under the covers of both of these beasts I can't say that I actually like either of them as they're both rather ugly when you pop the bonnet and something like OpenCart is actually a much nice and easier to work with solution. However, from a feature perspective OpenCart is nowhere near either Magento or PrestaShop and unlike PrestaShop it doesn't have a team of developers behind it. However having said that it is much easier to understand and modify for anyone with a basic knowledge of OO PHP. It is much better structured. PrestaShop is actually a bit ugly under the covers and CSCart (which is an open source, but not free alternative) may also be a viable solution as it only costs like $300 so not that much. I'd have to say I'd personally go for either PrestaShop or CSCart as they do have a lot more features than OpenCart and at the same time also don't cost anywhere near Magento to setup and run. Magento is an absolute nightmare if you're looking to change anything even if you really know what you're doing... Too many layers.

Another cart I would suggest to anyone who isn't fussed about technology is nopCommerce. It's a ASP.NET based shopping cart and it's very well architected and full of features. It is also very easy to modify for anyone with ASP.NET experience.

I fully agree with the opinion that MAGENTO is to "heavy" and consumes too much CPU and memory. If you have your own dedicated server you may try MAGENTO.

But if you can afford shared hosting only use lightweight PRESTASHOP. Much shoppers do not need complicated functionalities provided by MAGENTO and therefore don't like it. More doesn't always mean better - sometimes simpler means better.

Moreover there is large set of PRESTASHOP extensions available free and commercial ones. so every shop owner may choose what he needs and wants. Every potential market gap is filled immediately e.g. if somebody noticed there is no fast checkout option in the guest mode buying. This kind of extension appears immediately on the market.

Magento is S L O W. It has a very specific list of server requirements that have to be met, and even then it may not work 100%.

Also, using Magento on a shared hosting environment can be VERY insecure as Magento likes to have things writable on the file system. If your hosting company does not have iron clad security another user on that system can make changes in those writeable areas.

As far as code quality, I'd say it's pretty good. It's also more complicated than it needs to be. They completely ignored the K.I.S.S. principle (Keep It Simple, Silly).

To sum up, Magento is good if you are interested in an expensive server and complex development. If you want straight forward, it's not for you.