Websites
It can be referred as the basis of the shop. Basically, you can think of a website as a domain/subdomain (though, this is perhaps an oversimplification). From one administration you can manage a few shops.
For different Magento websites it is possible to:
- to maintain a separate customer base, or can share the customer
accounts within all websites.
- make different currencies.
- create
different product pricing or make prices global (shared for all
websites).
Stores
Stores are ‘children’ of websites.They are your actual product catalogue. Products and Categories are managed on the store level. A root category is configured for each store. They can be used to define for example different (looking) shops with the same information.
Managing stores it is worth to know:
- All the stores within one website share the same customer accounts.
- Currency and prices are identical for all the stores.
- Different shops can have different products assigned.
Store Views
Store Views are mostly used to handle different languages on your website. You will typically have one Store View per language. This way you can “showcase” the goods in the language more convenient for the client (if you are selling goods worldwide).
With store views you can:
- have the same root category for all store views;
- set different prices depending on view.
Source: mag-manager