Shopware e-commerce is a PHP-based e-commerce platform that was developed in Germany over 18 years ago. Since then, the system has become one of the most popular store provider players in Germany and is now successfully represented in many European countries.
The store system offers a large developer and user community that regularly provides contributions, inputs, and feedback to optimize the software. The modular store architecture enables a quick start. It is highly scalable and fully customizable, giving your company the flexibility to adapt the software to business-specific requirements. Flexible system extensibility brings in highly scalable features such as Varnish cache while offering integrated use of Apache JMeter, clustering tools and continuous platform support. The store configuration provides an option to add the server for specific tasks, allowing further scaling and better response times.
Four editions for businesses of all sizes:
Shopware offers many suitable solutions for retailers and large corporations at every stage of development. It helps your business model grow in the highly dynamic world of e-commerce. You should first check which Shopware license suits your needs, because the price of the store system and its version depend on it. There are 4 different open-source versions that you can use to set up an online store. Let’s go through them one by one below:
1. Shopware Community Edition:
This version is available free of charge. It contains all the essential functions needed to run an online store. The payment options such as PayPal, Instant bank transfer or purchase on account are included as free plugins in the system. In addition, the store already has a responsive version, which is ideally suited for new store operators.
2. Shopware Professional Edition:
In the Professional Edition, you get all the features of the Community Edition, including Product & Customer Streams, Shopping World templates, and many exclusive services that can efficiently take your business to the other shore. There is also a fascinating storytelling feature here that opens up many marketing opportunities. Professional is best suited for small and medium-sized businesses. This edition is loaded with native features that can help your business start a successful online business and develop rapidly.
3. Shopware Professional Plus Edition:
With the Professional Plus Edition, you not only get all the standard features including Storytelling, but also all 12 Premium Plugins, which cost €499 and up individually. However, when deciding on the Professional Plus license, you need to understand to what extent you need all the premium plugins or not. If you find that you need at least 6-7 extensions of them, then Professional Plus is recommended.
4. Shopware Enterprise Version:
The Enterprise version is the most powerful among all editions. This storage system is suitable for both B2B and B2C business models. There is no official price for this edition from the system manufacturer, but according to our estimation, it can cost around €30,000 along with monthly maintenance fees of €500. Of course, this edition has all the features of the Professional as well as the Professional Plus edition and has many required sub-shops and a custom B2B solution. This edition is aimed at large entrepreneurs with many multilingual stores and large international companies.
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Contact us nowCURRENT SHOPWARE VERSIONS
With each version the system offers new features as well as fixes critical bugs. There is currently Shopware 5 and Shopware 6. Although the two systems offer completely different and completely different structures, nevertheless both online stores are regularly updated by the system manufacturer. Below we describe the main features of each of these versions.
Shopware 5
This is probably the most used platform among all Shopware versions. It is a very stable and feature-rich platform that currently has over 80,000 online merchants. The system provider has announced that the support and continuous development of the 5th version are planned for another 5 years even after the release of the 6th. From now on, you will receive regular releases until mid-2021, bug and security fixes until 2023, and security updates until 2024. Among other things, the provider offers an additional 5 years of support, regular feature releases and security updates for all its premium plugins.
Shopware 6
As technologies are constantly developing, Shopware is also at the forefront of this competition and offers continuous updates for its versions. The current store system features more flexibility and less complexity, and is best suited to meet the challenges of tomorrow’s technological world.
The flexibility can keep up with the pace of change in people’s behavior, expectations and requirements. There are APIs that connect to individual components such as storefront, administration or third-party solutions (such as ERP, CRM or PIM) within the single central system. Whether you are a very small startup or a large retail company, Shopware 6 has features for all.
List of changes from Shopware 5 to Shopware 6:
After the release of Shopware 5, many changes were introduced, including bug and security fixes, new feature enhancements and others. Some of them are:
Customization of hidden buttons in backend modules
ElasticSearch support, media manager, assigning multiple categories to a shopping world
Snippets for pseudo prices, REST-API connection, stream filter
Connect button in the menu, cron job configuration, inline editing of pseudo-variants, new product layout, HTML emails on order status change.
Rotating product sliders, custom maintenance pages, attributes for partners, etc.
More information about all the improvements can be found on the official website.
ADVANTAGES OF MIGRATING TO SHOPWARE 6
Shopware 6 has become a trendy e-commerce platform for building highly responsive and lucrative online stores. The B2B stores are best suited for medium to small businesses. Some of the reasons why you should migrate to the latest store system are:
Easy to use admin panel:
The admin panel with drag and drop design is very user-friendly and lets you edit content, banners and products easily.
REST API integration with third-party providers:
With the online store, there is centralized access to inventory, warehouse, supplier and purchasing management. It also enables shopping in a marketplace with an increasing number of sales channels and revenues.
Technical Support:
We, as a Shopware agency, provide efficient support by phone or email, so that any problem you encounter will be solved in real-time.
Cost-effective setup:
The setup cost is quite low compared to the other e-commerce platforms. The online store can be downloaded for free and the general website can cost 2-3,000 euros. Similarly, the cost increases if you choose better packages. The pricing may also vary according to your custom requirements, but regardless of the requirements, the Shopware costs are acceptable while other store providers are much more loyal.
SEO Shopware:
A great advantage is the SEO possibilities for manufacturer pages. If you have a lot of items from a particular manufacturer, you should think about optimizing the corresponding manufacturer page. With the latest show system this problem was solved quite well.
The other reasons are:
- Numerous built-in features for online merchandise sales.
- Configurable HTML and text emails
- Excellent user support
- OnePage checkout and guest checkout
- Abandoned cart recovery tool and integrated data security plugin
- High level of security
- Design customization
- Less complexity and more flexibility
After completing the Shopware 6 migration, you will get numerous benefits such as an increase in conversion rate, better customer retention and cost efficiency.
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Contact us nowWHY MIGRATE TO SHOPWARE 6
Migration simply means changing your current e-commerce platform. You can migrate your current online store to the latest Shopware system, whether it is integrated Magento, Woocommerce, Shopify, Prestashop or other system. Read more about the mechanism of each Shopware migration below.
1. Migrate from Magento to Shopware 6
For a migration from Magento to Shopware, many plugins and extensions can be used. Such extensions are suitable to transfer your Magento data like products, customers and other related data types to your new store. First, you need to perform a local Magento installation, then a plugin installation. Then you need to set up the shipping and payment methods, and then connect. After the connection is established and customized according to your requirements, you need to change the metadata. Check the migration of the data in the migration overview. You can select which data you want to migrate from your connection to the Shopware 6 store. After the data selection, click on the “Start Migration” button and the migration will be performed in 4 steps: Check, Read, Write and Media Download.
After that, it should be checked whether the data from the old store can be assigned to the new one. Data like payment methods, shipping methods or tax rates are not transferred automatically. If the data in your Magento store still changes after the migration, you can repeat the migration process at any time. Simply select the data you want to migrate again under Data Selection and then click Start Migration again in the upper left corner.
The data that can be migrated from Magento to Shopware is product data with the product variants, product categories, manufacturers, tax rates, customer data, order data, ratings, multistores, multilingualism, CMS pages. So the migration from Magento to Shopware is quite a straightforward process.
2. Migrate from WooCommerce or PrestaShop to Shopware 6.
For migrating from other platforms like WooCommerce or PrestaShop, you can follow the same scheme. First, you need to install the migration plugin from the Community Store using the Plugin Manager.
In any case, please check the following points before you start the Shopware migration:
In any case, please check the following points before you start the Shopware migration:
In the backend, check if all system requirements have been met, otherwise errors will occur. Go to Configurations > System Info
You must have access to the database, which should exist locally in Shopware.
Create a default manufacturer.
The shared property field from your old system should already be created as a property group set in your Shopware installation.
Language sub-shops must be activated in advance so that they can be matched later.
After migration, check if the number ranges are consistent and correct them if necessary. Before you start the migration, you need to create a new file and database backup of your Shopware installation, then start creating the links to the storage system. When you set up the links, you need to import all the important store settings. You can choose which settings you need for the migration. When creating a new item, the manufacturer field is required, so you need to select a manufacturer from the list.
Some tips for a successful migration:
Optimize the MySQL server
Optimize the migrated database
In Prestashop, the items should be correctly transferred to the configurators, and the passwords can be migrated if the so-called “salt” (a random element) is entered.
In WooCommerce, the payment methods cannot be imported, the default provider is used and WooCommerce also does not support graduated prices, so only the first price is imported.
3. Migrate from Shopify to Shopware 6
At the moment, there is no ready-made plugin for migrating from Shopify to Shopware. However, you can first make a full backup of your entire Shopify store for the migration, especially the database. Then you can hire us as Shopware experts to do the data migration. We will set up a store for you and migrate the database, as well as set up important functionalities you need in your store and create the theme. During the migration, the developer will also first analyze your Shopify store to what extent the current features & functionalities of your Shopify store are compatible with the 6th version or not. If this is not the case, then our agency can create plugins for you.
4. Migration from Shopware 5 to Shopware 6.
To upgrade from the 5th to the 6th version, you need to install the plugin first. After installation, create the connection to your existing Shopware 5 store and then edit the connection.
During migration, some metadata is truncated, so you need to modify the metadata. After that, check the migration. You can select the data you want to migrate from your connection to the new store. In the list you can also see if it is store data or plugin data and how many records will be migrated. Now you can start the migration. During the migration, the first thing that happens is a data check to see if the data from the old store can be migrated to the new one. After that comes a data read operation, where all the data from the source store that is to be migrated is read. Now the migrated data is transferred to the new store system. After the data has been written in, the media files are downloaded from the old Shopware 5 installation and loaded into the Shopware 6 Media Manager tool.
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Contact us nowShopware is a trendy platform with all the essential features you need for your successful web presence. The store can be easily optimized for SEO and automatically takes care of most of the basic settings for efficient search engine optimization. You only need to read them manually if necessary.
At WebiProg you will find the experienced Shopware specialists who will perform a professional store migration for you or create an SEO optimized Shopware store.
Alex Samoylenko
Oleksii Samoilenko has been working in the IT industry since 2004 and possesses extensive experience in e-commerce (B2C and B2B), SEO, online marketing, conversion optimization, and digitalization.
As the Managing Director of WebiProg GmbH, he guides companies on their path toward digital transformation and develops sustainable strategies for successful online projects. His blog articles provide practical insights, in-depth expertise, and valuable tips for optimizing online shops and digital business processes.
