PrestaShop Updates — Study Based on 496 Real Interventions

At MonSiteBug, we work daily on PrestaShop stores in trouble. Since 2018, we have handled 8,815 support tickets including 2,459 specifically for PrestaShop. Among these, 496 involve site updates — PrestaShop versions, server migrations, PHP updates. This excludes 54 simple module updates.

This article is an exclusive study based on our real data. No theory, no assumptions: hard numbers from real cases handled by our team.

Update requests evolution: 2018–2026

The demand for updates has evolved significantly over the years, reflecting the growing maturity of the PrestaShop ecosystem and merchants' awareness of keeping their store up to date.

Key insight: 2024 marks a historic peak with 122 update requests. The release of PrestaShop 8 triggered a massive wave of migrations, doubling PrestaShop tickets compared to 2023.

Which PrestaShop versions are affected?

Analyzing version mentions across all our 2,459 PrestaShop tickets:

PrestaShop 8.x dominates with 87 mentions, followed by 1.7.x (61) which remains widely used. Version 1.6.x (23 mentions) mostly involves legacy stores requiring major migration. PrestaShop 9, recently released, is starting to appear with 7 mentions.

Update types: what our clients request

Module updates represent 36% of requests. This is the most frequent type and often the trickiest: a single module update can break checkout, the back-office, or trigger a 500 error without warning.

Post-update issues

Key takeaway: Error 500 and site crashes are the most severe post-update incidents. In every case, our team intervenes urgently to restore store access — often within hours.

Recovering failed updates: our specialty

A scenario we see regularly: a merchant attempts an update alone, it breaks, and they call us urgently. Inaccessible site, back-office showing error 500, blank page... We have handled 101 failed update recoveries, and in 100% of cases, we restored the site.

The PrestaShop CLI: our tool of choice

When a site is in a critical state after a failed update, the graphical update module is unusable. That's where the PrestaShop CLI (Command Line Interface) becomes essential.

• Resume at a specific step — The CLI lets us restart an update from a specific step. If it crashed at step 7 out of 12, we resume at step 7.
• No timeout — Unlike the web interface, the CLI runs as long as needed.
• Step-by-step correction — Fix an error, then rerun only the next step.
• Full control — Maintenance mode, cache, overrides, one by one.

PrestaShop 9: already ~20 successful migrations

We have already supported around twenty merchants in their migration to PS 9. A well-prepared migration in a development environment goes smoothly, with production downtime lasting only minutes.

Key figures at a glance

Why trust experts with your updates?

The numbers speak for themselves. Out of 496 site updates performed, we encountered post-update incidents in about 4% of cases — and every time, our team recovered the situation. Most incidents we handle are failed updates attempted by merchants themselves. Good news: we recover 100% of cases.

Our secret weapon? The PrestaShop CLI. Where the GUI crashes or times out, the command line lets us work calmly, even on the most critical cases. We also master manual update finalization when needed: step-by-step correction until the result is achieved.

After 8 years and over 8,800 interventions, our conviction is simple: a well-prepared update goes smoothly in a development environment, and production downtime lasts only a few minutes. A failed update can cost days of lost revenue.