Shopware
Open commerce. Full control. Agentic by design.
By shopware AG · 4.2/5 verified-buyer score
Positioning guardrails
Best for
- Enterprise B2B and B2C brands running complex catalogues, customer-specific pricing and unlimited sales channels
- German/EU merchants that need data sovereignty plus self-hosted, PaaS or SaaS deployment choice
- Multi-channel retailers selling via web, POS, marketplaces and social with 3D/AR product experiences
- Teams that value open-source extensibility and a large certified partner-agency ecosystem
Ideal size: 50–1,000+ employees people · Scale-up or enterprise with in-house developers or a certified agency partner
Not for
- Small merchants wanting a zero-maintenance, fully managed store live in days
- Businesses with no developer resources or agency partner for a self-hosted deployment
- Buyers who need transparent self-serve pricing instead of sales-led GMV quotes
Value metrics scorecard
Time-to-Value
About 6 weeks (published case study)
~42 days to first production value
Total Cost of Ownership
$7,800/yr
Starts at $0 · GMV-based subscription plans: Community free, Rise from €600/month, Evolve from €2,400/month, Beyond custom; billed monthly, quoted by sales.
Implementation Friction
4/5
Engineering + admin effort required
Buyer Score
out of 5 · verified buyers
Full cost breakdown
Mandatory implementation fee
None
Seat tiers
No seat tiers; plan price scales with gross merchandise value. Community Edition is free, self-hosted and community-supported.
Add-on costs
- Shopware Intelligence+ AI add-on: €29/month for Community Edition, €19/month for Rise, Evolve and Beyond.
- Shopware Nexus orchestration layer: free introductory phase planned until 6 October 2026.
- Professional services (architecture advisory, requirements workshops, PaaS onboarding, code review, load testing) billed on time & materials.
- Initial installation free of charge when the store runs with a Shopware-certified hosting partner.
Company & support
Who is behind Shopware, and how your team gets help once it is live.
Company
- Founded
- Not recorded
- Headquarters
- Not recorded
How you get support
- PhoneEnterprise only
- EmailNot listed
- Live chatNot listed
- Support portal / ticketsPaid plans
- Community forumAll plans
- Help centre / docsAll plans
- Dedicated account managerEnterprise only
- In person / on-siteNot listed
- Hours
- 24/7
- Response time
- Rise: 8 hours Mon–Fri; Evolve: 4 hours Mon–Fri; Beyond: 1 hour
Beyond includes 24/7 priority support, a personal account manager and onboarding. Ticket-based technical support excludes Community Edition. Phone hotline/callback is weekdays 8:00–17:00 in New York and Berlin time zones.
“Not listed” means the vendor’s public pages don’t mention that channel, not that it is unavailable. Ask about it during evaluation.
Market position
Where Shopware sits against its closest alternatives. Pick any two of cost, speed, friction and buyer score, and up to 9 companies to compare.
Quadrant view
Typical annual cost × Time-to-value
The lines cross at the median of the solutions shown, so about half sit on each side of each line.
Companies on the chart 6 / 10
- Shopware
- WooCommerce
- Salesforce Sales Cloud
- Recharge
- Reputation
- Lightspeed Retail
Add or change companies
Up to 10 companies including Shopware. Listed closest first.
Stack fit signal
Compatibility with standard B2B ecosystems.
No supported MCP path today, so it cannot be driven from an AI client.
AI & MCP readiness
What Shopware ships in AI, and what it asks of your ecosystem.
AI features shipped
Shopware Intelligence Copilot ships from Shopware 6.7.1; Copilot – Agentic, Copilot – Data Insights and 3D generation are sold through the Intelligence+ add-on. Sources say Copilot runs on Shopware-selected models hosted in European data centres, takes read-only shop data, and that merchant data is not used to train provider models.
In your ecosystem
- AI connection
- Not supported
- Model key
- Vendor's key
- AI usage audit
- Not recorded
Compliance attestations
* IAPP AIGP certifies individuals, not products. It means named staff hold the credential — not that the platform does.
Bottom line
Shopware is an open-source, PHP-based enterprise commerce platform from Germany's shopware AG. A free MIT-licensed Community Edition sits alongside GMV-based Rise, Evolve and Beyond subscriptions plus a paid Shopware Intelligence+ AI add-on. It targets complex B2B and B2C commerce: customer-specific pricing, unlimited sales channels, CMS, SEO/GEO, 3D/AR, and ERP, PIM and payment integrations via 1,200+ certified agencies. Self-hosting and agency-led builds make implementation relatively heavy; published migrations show roughly six weeks to launch.
Frequently asked questions
How is Shopware priced?
Plans are GMV-based and quoted by sales. The Community Edition is free and open source; Rise starts at €600 per month, Evolve at €2,400 per month and Beyond is custom. The Shopware Intelligence+ AI add-on costs €29 per month on Community Edition and €19 per month on Rise, Evolve and Beyond.
How long does a Shopware implementation take?
Shopware publishes a case study in which AIDA Cruises launched its store six weeks after migrating off a legacy platform. However, Shopware is self-hosted by default and needs developers or a certified agency, so timelines vary with catalogue complexity, integrations and hosting choice. Paid advisory, workshops and PaaS onboarding are available on time-and-materials terms.
What compliance certifications does Shopware claim?
Shopware's site states that hosted environments meet SOC 2 Type II requirements, that the company meets ISO 27001 for information security management and that it complies with GDPR, with AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS 1.2 in transit. Buyers should confirm scope and evidence directly with the vendor during evaluation.
What AI capabilities are included?
The Shopware Intelligence Copilot is available from Shopware 6.7.1 and covers knowledge assistance, agentic multi-step task execution and Data Insights reporting. The Intelligence+ add-on unlocks full agentic and data-insight usage plus 3D preview generation and CAD-to-3D conversion; other AI features include contextual and image search and AI-assisted content generation.
Can we self-host Shopware and keep data in Europe?
Yes. Shopware is self-hosted by default and can also run on the vendor's PaaS or SaaS. Sources state that Shopware Intelligence Copilot infrastructure is hosted fully in European data centres, that AI providers have no access to the merchant store and that merchant data is not used to train their models.
What support is included with each plan?
Rise includes 8-hour service reaction time on weekdays, Evolve adds phone support with 4-hour reaction time, and Beyond adds 24/7 priority support with a 1-hour reaction time, a personal account manager and personal onboarding. Ticket-based technical support excludes the Community Edition; a community forum and documentation serve self-serve users.