nopCommerce vs thirty bees
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted e-commerce platforms options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | nopCommerce | thirty bees |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 93 · Excellent | 81 · Excellent |
| Category | E-commerce Platforms | E-commerce Platforms |
| License | GPL-3.0 | OSL-3.0 |
| Language | C# | PHP |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 1,024 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal, source | bare-metal, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 10,155 | ★ 767 |
| First released | 2008 | 2017 |
| Replaces | Shopify, Magento | Shopify |
What are nopCommerce and thirty bees?
nopCommerce
nopCommerce is a free, open-source e-commerce solution built on ASP.NET Core. It offers a full-featured storefront and admin, multi-store support, and a marketplace of plugins and themes.
- Built on ASP.NET Core
- Multi-store and multi-vendor
- Plugin marketplace
- Responsive admin panel
thirty bees
thirty bees is an open-source e-commerce platform forked from PrestaShop with a focus on stability, performance, and merchant-friendly features. It runs traditional online stores and is compatible with many PrestaShop modules.
- PrestaShop module compatibility
- Stability focus
- Multi-store support
- Theme system
nopCommerce vs thirty bees: key differences
NopCommerce is written in C#, while thirty bees is built with PHP. Licensing differs — GPL-3.0 for nopCommerce versus OSL-3.0 for thirty bees. NopCommerce is the more established project (first released 2008), while thirty bees arrived in 2017. NopCommerce has the considerably larger community, at 10,155 GitHub stars versus 767.
Why pick each one
Choose nopCommerce if…
- Great for .NET shops
- Feature-rich out of the box
Watch out for
- Windows-friendly but .NET expertise needed
- Heavier resource use
Choose thirty bees if…
- Released under the OSL-3.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Written in PHP
Watch out for
- Smaller community
- Slower release cadence
Frequently asked questions
Is nopCommerce or thirty bees better?
Neither is universally better. nopCommerce has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are nopCommerce and thirty bees free and open-source?
Yes. nopCommerce is licensed under GPL-3.0 and thirty bees under OSL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run nopCommerce and thirty bees with Docker?
nopCommerce: yes. thirty bees: yes.