QOR Commerce 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 | QOR Commerce | thirty bees |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Read-the-docs project | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 71 · Good | 81 · Excellent |
| Category | E-commerce Platforms | E-commerce Platforms |
| License | MIT | OSL-3.0 |
| Language | Go | PHP |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal, source | bare-metal, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 5,344 | ★ 767 |
| First released | 2016 | 2017 |
| Replaces | Shopify, Magento | Shopify |
What are QOR Commerce and thirty bees?
QOR Commerce
QOR is an open-source set of Go libraries for building content management systems and e-commerce sites. It provides admin scaffolding, product modeling, and order handling for custom commerce applications.
- Go commerce framework
- Auto-generated admin
- Product modeling
- Pluggable architecture
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
QOR Commerce vs thirty bees: key differences
QOR Commerce is written in Go, while thirty bees is built with PHP. Licensing differs — MIT for QOR Commerce versus OSL-3.0 for thirty bees. QOR Commerce is the lighter option, starting around 256 MB of RAM against 1,024 MB for thirty bees. QOR Commerce has the considerably larger community, at 5,344 GitHub stars versus 767. Thirty bees lists first-class Docker deployment; QOR Commerce does not.
Why pick each one
Choose QOR Commerce if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Mature project with 5.3k GitHub stars
- Written in Go
- Tiny footprint — runs in 256 MB RAM
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 QOR Commerce or thirty bees better?
Neither is universally better. QOR Commerce has the larger community, while thirty bees is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are QOR Commerce and thirty bees free and open-source?
Yes. QOR Commerce is licensed under MIT and thirty bees under OSL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run QOR Commerce and thirty bees with Docker?
QOR Commerce: check the project docs for container support. thirty bees: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, QOR Commerce or thirty bees?
QOR Commerce has the smaller minimum footprint at 256 MB of RAM, compared to about 1,024 MB for thirty bees. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.