As someone who's been in the ecommerce game for years, I can't stress enough how crucial it is to pick the right platform when you're starting out, switching solutions, or taking your brick-and-mortar store online. Trust me, your choice can make or break your customer reach and profitability.
In this review, I'm diving deep into Shopware to see if it's up to snuff for handling those crazy traffic spikes and order surges we all dream about. I'm impressed by their use of tools like Apache JMeter to simulate different scenarios – it shows they're serious about scalability.
But let's be real, Shopware isn't perfect. Those high server requirements? They can be a pain. And if you're not tech-savvy, you might end up needing to hire a programmer, especially if you skip the free plugin for tech specs. It's these kinds of trade-offs that I always look out for when evaluating platforms for my clients.
So does Shopware’s limitations overpower its benefits?
Let’s find out:
Quick Verdict
As an ecommerce expert I am really impressed with Shopware. The product and customer streams are a game changer for merchandising and targeting and the “Shopping World” is a great tool for creating content. I like the scalability and the high traffic handling – essential for growing businesses. The B2B Suite is a nice touch showing Shopware is versatile across different business models.
But I do have some doubts. The high server requirements and need for a programmer might be a turn off for smaller businesses or those without technical skills. I also don't like the pricing – while the features justify the cost for bigger operations, it might be a stretch for startups or small businesses. The German only forum is another minus for me – Shopware could really benefit from making their community resources more international. Overall I think Shopware is a good choice for businesses ready to invest in a powerful and scalable ecommerce solution.
What is Shopware?
Shopware is a leading ecommerce platform in Germany that is making major leaps in the global market. The PHP-based ecommerce solution features the community version that is open-source and fee-based versions.
Shopware has been excelling in the ecommerce industry for 18 years with notable brands such as L’Oreal, Segway, and Euronics under its belt. Its impressive features include integrated SEO competences and out of the box marketing features.
Key Features
Now that you’ve had just a taste of its features, let’s take an in-depth look at what Shopware has to offer.
Product streams
Here’s the deal: product information that’s rich, consistent and detailed boosts customer experience. Your products become easy to find and it becomes simpler for you to expand your product assortment.
The product setup in Shopware is straightforward so you can include your product and create variants along with their different prices and images. Its merchandising capabilities let you set rules based on the set criteria for attributes.
For instance, you can use data in the attributes section to boost various products depending on set criteria. You can use rule-based merchandising to promote your products above those of other brands or boost products that have a higher margin. This strategy comes in handy for larger online stores.
Customer streams
Customer steams are more like customer segments you make based on established criteria. This can include gender or amount spent to allow for automation. For example, you can set up a customer stream filter for customers below 25 years who have made a purchase using a mobile device.
New users who meet this requirement will be added automatically to your customer stream so you can assign marketing newsletters and promotions that fit this target audience.
Shopware also comes with advanced options that allow personalization of products. This makes customization smooth for your customers and enhances their experience. It also lets you assign an added cost to the options.
Shopping world
Shopware’s Shopping World feature lets users generate flexible content pages. It uses the drag and drop function for products, blog posts, video guides, and banners. This storytelling feature helps brands build a higher level of engagement with its new and existing customers.
Consequently, Shopware has its built-in blog with all core blogging features such as user management, digital publishing, media management, and an easy theme system. However, you should note that this CMS solution is not as effective as WordPress.
SEO optimization and marketing
Shopware features an automatic SEO configuration that provides a good solid basis for effective Google ranking. It also offers powerful features for sales promotion. This includes:
Affiliate programs
Shopware lets you create affiliate links with different cookies, commission amounts, and individual codes.
Loyalty programs
Shopware also comes with loyalty programs where you can manually set the number of loyalty points to award on different items and customer groups.
Storytelling
This feature helps develop your brand’s voice and authenticity. Customers get to create an image of what your brand is like. This builds customer engagement, inspires their shopping experience and promotes loyalty. You create this in the Shopping World section we discussed earlier.
Integrations
Shopware integrates with several third-party solutions such as Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, Stripe, WordPress, PayPal, Skrill and Braintree. It also comes with some APIs for custom integration and their ongoing customer support can help you around this.
The ecommerce software also features a dealer integration that comes at an extra fee. However, it allows online store owners to create storefronts and manage them for drop-shippers. It works well for resellers who opt to use a unified product catalog.
Support
Shopware’s customer support comes at a monthly cost and hence its quality. The support offers a designated technical account manager for general inquiries and Shopware related issues.
Moreover, Shopware provides its own forum to users that is available in German only. So unless you’re willing to learn a new language, it can be overwhelming. Shopware has an academy complete with live training, webinars, and certifications.
B2B Correspondence
Mapping B2B functions in ecommerce is a complex process that requires a high degree of customization and integration of business processes. For this reason, Shopware came up with the B2B Suite to allow you to extend standard functionality. This helps business owners to integrate the B2B Suite into their workflow.
Some of the more advanced capabilities you should expect here include:
- Customer budget management
- Private shopping
- Ability to set up different themes at the customer level
- Ability to set up individual stores
- Quotation
Shopware Pricing Plans
Shopware has four pricing plans separated by the features they offer. Let’s see what each plan offers for online store owners.
Community Edition
The Community edition is a decent choice for entry-level storeowners. It uses the open source version to involve the community in the development process. It includes community forum support, product streams, customer streams, and plugin extensions. The Community edition plan is free of charge.
Professional Edition
The Professional edition aims for customers who need an all-inclusive manufacturer support system. This package includes manufacturer support, product streams, customer streams, warranty, Shopping World presets, Shopware ERP, digital publishing and storytelling feature. The Professional edition costs €1295 as a one-time fee.
Professional Plus Edition
The Professional Plus edition offers premium plugins that open your business to new possibilities. The features you’ll get in this package include manufacturer support, customer streams, product streams, Shopping World presets, warranty, plugin extensions, all premium plugins, digital publishing, and the storytelling feature. The Professional Plus package has a one-time fee of €5995.
Enterprise Edition
The Enterprise edition offers all the stops for a successful online business. Its scalable features include 24/7 customer support, B2B Suite, individual care, developer support, marketplace, client management, exclusive access to the Enterprise portal, dealer integration and all the features mentioned in the Professional Plus package. It uses the custom enterprise pricing for its charges.
Who Should Consider Using Shopware?
Whether Shopware is the perfect fit for your business model is subjective. This decision requires a detailed look at your business goals. Regardless, the community version is a great option for a newbie online store owner with some technical expertise.
The plans and licensed plugins are costly and may not really fit small-budget businesses. However, we can justify the high prices by an impressive performance and reliability.
Equally important, Shopware’s newest version, the Shopware 5.2 comes with a Pickware interface on its Professional and Professional Plus plans. This enables users to track stock movements, evaluate Last in, First out method in inventory evaluation as well as assign articles to suppliers in few clicks from a single backend.
Our Take
Shopware is a great ecommerce solution due to its flexible configurations, simple user interface and its rich extension base to boost functionality.
However, it is not very user-friendly for those who are not tech savvy. Therefore, you will have to hire a programmer to take you through the process. Nevertheless, it is a better alternative to other ecommerce solutions such as Magento due to its scalability and advanced SEO capabilities.
Do you have any questions about this Shopware review? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
since last year I had more than 10 customers who wanted to immigrate their online shop from shopware to woocommerce or other platform.
Shopware might make good technology but the service and the employees are borderline hostile to customers. I would never recommend this to a single person. Even if the exact use case couldn’t be met by another platform, I would recommend they learn to code themselves before using this platform.
This is hands down the worst experience I have had with an online company.
Sorry to hear about that Nick.