Hosted store platforms take a cut of every sale and decide what you may sell. A self-hosted PrestaShop puts the storefront, the catalogue and the customer relationship on infrastructure you rent, in a jurisdiction you chose, with no percentage going anywhere.
What you get
- PrestaShop 9 with Apache, PHP 8 and MariaDB 11 bundled
- Multi-language and multi-currency out of the box
- Hundreds of modules and themes, plus REST and GraphQL for headless setups
- Auto-install on first boot: the back office is reachable in about two minutes
Get it running
Pick a VPS with room to grow
Around 1 GB of memory gets a store running, but product images, orders and modules add up. Start on an offshore VPS you can scale, and give the disk headroom for the catalogue.
Install it in one click
Install PrestaShop from the catalog with your storefront hostname. That domain becomes the canonical URL for emails, links and the back office, so use the one customers will see.
Set a serious admin password
The install asks for the back-office email and password. Eight characters is the minimum it accepts; use sixteen or more from a password manager, because this login controls your orders and customer data.
Set language, country and payment
Choose the default language and country so tax and shipping start from the right place, then add your payment method and adjust the rest in the back office.
Never store or process raw card numbers on your own server. Use a payment module that redirects or tokenises, so the card details never touch your infrastructure. Handling them yourself pulls you into PCI obligations you almost certainly do not want, and one breach becomes a catastrophe rather than an incident.
Ecommerce installs are scanned and attacked constantly, usually through outdated modules rather than the core. Patch the platform and every module, remove the ones you stopped using, restrict the back office, and back up both the database and the uploads with a restore you have actually tested.
Hosting the server offshore protects it from unrelated takedown pressure. It does not change consumer protection, tax or data-protection duties in the markets you sell into: those follow the sale, not the server. Take advice for your own markets rather than assuming the jurisdiction of the machine settles it.
Whatever your store accepts from its own customers, your hosting is no-KYC and payable in Bitcoin, Monero, USDT or TRX. See top up your balance in crypto.
Start now
Spin up an offshore VPS and install PrestaShop from the catalog, or read the documentation.