Today, eCommerce stores pop up all over the Internet, and many platforms have been skyrocketing. We have already explored the pros and cons of several eCommerce platforms for building online stores, and now is the fierce battle between Shopware vs Magento.
Shopware is the leading platform in German-speaking countries with a growing European user base. On the other hand, Magento has been a popular choice for large-sized businesses for years, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.
In this article, we’re going to have a head-to-head comparison regarding Shopware vs Magento in terms of pricing, ease of use, eCommerce features, and far more. Especially, we will help you to answer the burning question: “Which one outweighs the other?”
Let’s get started!
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Shopware vs Magento: Overview
Among top Magento alternatives, Shopware is the ideal solution for the changing demands of eCommerce. This platform gives you the freedom to speedily and easily leverage your growth potential and focuses on optimizing the customer experience. With 19 years of conquering the eCommerce market, Shopware is now the most popular and progressive platform among the German-speaking part of the community. It has nearly 40,000 live websites with a market share of 4.70%.
On the other hand, Magento (Adobe Commerce) is an open-source, feature-rich platform with huge potential. Founded in 2007, Magento is one of the most popular store-building platforms in the eCommerce industry, with nearly 100,000 live websites on board. Currently, this platform ranks 8th among all of the open-source solutions on the Entire Internet. Magento is an internationally trusted brand with huge customers, including brilliant companies such as Coca-Cola, Ford, Nike, and more.
In both Shopware and Magento, the developers are trying their best to provide the optimal website-building abilities. Therefore, you need to first compare the following elements in this Shopware vs Magento comparison if you want to kick off your business with one of these two solutions.
For now, Magento comes in 2 versions:
- Magento Open Source – a free, downloadable open-source platform available to anyone.
- Magento Commerce – a pricey hosted version of Magento that can cost ($1,500+/month). This version is perfect for enterprise-level businesses in need of some serious power and development help.
In this comparison review, we’ll be focusing on Magento Open Source since it’s the most popular version.
At first glance, it may seem like an unfair competition. However, when taking a closer look, this competition clearly has a distinct character in different countries. So which prominent features will attract more and more new customers?
Let’s dive in and clear that up!
Pricing
When choosing a proper solution, the price is considered the key factor in relation to its capabilities and business requirements.
Shopware Pricing
Whether you’re looking for an uncomplicated way to quickly start with eCommerce or have a project with highly demanding requirements, Shopware always brings suitable options for store owners. Shopware is currently offering 3 editions:
- Starter Edition (Shopware Cloud) is completely free to get started. This edition can quickly bring your vision to life with the carefree package. Notably, you only pay when you first start making sales – in the form of a small revenue share. However, this edition only offers limited features just to run a very basic business with a small number of products.
- Professional Edition is the best solution for your unique brand presence with comprehensive service. For €199.00 per month (or €2,495.0 per year), you will get the comprehensive Shopware 6 features. Also, you’ll get additional eCommerce tools to make your online shop a success. This edition includes all features like Social Shopping, Custom Products, and CMS extensions.
- Enterprise Edition is the solution for successful eCommerce projects. When you register with this version, you can unlock all the eCommerce features along with individual and developer support. With Shopware Enterprise, you can easily map B2B and B2C business processes in one system solution. The modular platform can even solve demanding and complex eCommerce projects while always ensuring security, stability, and the highest performance. This version of Shopware is available on request.
Magento Pricing
Magento is technically free, but it involves the prices in both the “necessary” and the “nice-to-have” elements of getting your site online. Because this platform is suitable for powerful large eCommerce businesses, the price is definitely offbeat.
Below are Magento’s three packages, along with the expense you can expect to bear.
- Magento Open Source is free to install, but you’ll need to pay for your hosting, domain, and security. Nonetheless, if you don’t have time or any technical skills, giving the job to a website developer will be an optimal solution. You should keep in mind that the payment for this case can cost a pretty penny which is about $50-$80 per hour.
- Magento Commerce ($22,000+/year) is more suitable for enterprise-sized businesses than the Open Source edition, proving more advanced functionality. Unlike the Magento Open Source, this edition’s pricing relies on your gross sales revenue as follows.
- Magento Commerce Cloud ($40,000+/ year), in some aspects, is similar to Magento Commerce. The Cloud edition is only for large businesses coping with a huge amount of sales data. Instead, Cloud is where we store the data, rather than on a hard drive that can cause data loss in some technical cases. Because this edition releases all the features, the price for this Magento Commerce Cloud is much higher than the other 2 editions.
Besides the certain plan you choose, there are also some the additional expenses, such as:
- Web hosting ($9.95 – $29.95/month);
- Domain Cost ($10 – $20/year);
- SSL Certificate Cost ($0 – $600/year);
- Magento Developer Cost ($65 – $150/hour);
- Themes ($17 – $5,000+);
- Extensions and Add-ons ($0 – $2,000+);
- Payment Fees (2% – 4% per transaction).
For more info, we have also made a detailed Magento 2 review for you to check out!
To conclude, Magento is clearly a big-ticket option for merchants when kicking off a business. This platform is only appropriate for large enterprises that have a generous budget to pay for the costs mentioned above. Meanwhile, Shopware is more reasonable and suitable for all sizes of businesses.
Want to migrate from Shopware to Magento?
If you are intending to migrate from Shopware to Magento, LitExtension offers a great migration service that helps you transfer your data from the current eCommerce platform to a new one accurately, painlessly with utmost security.
Ease of use
In the battle of Shopware vs Magento, both platforms enable you to modify the underlying code the way you want for your website. Now, the merchants will raise the question, “Who is more user-friendly, Shopware or Magento?”
Shopware
Shopware is more approachable for both store owners and customers. However, at the beginning, setting up a Shopware store is still a headache for the developers.
The administration of Shopware is no longer divided into individual windows. This central location shows multiple settings in a clean overview. The individual area below is where you can configure Shopware. For example, it is possible to view the orders received, manage the customers, and create Shopping Experiences.
In general, Shopware is fairly easy to use, even for non-tech merchants. This platform offers drag-and-drop and double-click features. They simplify your store management and require less time in the back end. With Shopware, you will be able to open multiple windows and have a clear overview of all the data you need.
Magento
Since Magento is packed with features, it is fairly complicated to use. Magento’s admin and daily operations are quite straightforward, but the actual setup and customization process is not so easy. This kind of platform isn’t user-friendly for non-tech store owners. Therefore, I’d recommend hiring a freelancer to help you create and operate your store.
We’ve created a setup guideline for your reference. Besides that, check out the video below to get a clearer insight:
In March 2019, the announcement of Magento 2.3.1 aims to make this powerful tool more suitable for small businesses. The announcement of Magento 2.3.1 aims to make this powerful tool more suitable for small businesses. One of the most notable changes in this update is the standard page builder content editing tool which is also available in ver 2.4.
The long-awaited Magento 2 has changed significantly. This updated version provides merchants with an intuitive and user-friendly Admin Panel. It brings out improvements in the management interface that streamline the search of data in the Admin Panel and enable the creation of new content easily.
Magento 2 has received a slightly better UI compared to the old version. Nonetheless, Magento’s UI is still complex as it probably contains thousands of settings. Installing the latest version and making configurations are also challenging if merchants are not familiar with coding.
Important factors you need to keep track of are products, customers, marketing, and content management. Luckily, all categories are on the sidebar for easy navigation. It is fair to say that Magento is trying its best to bring convenience and ease of use to its users.
Both Shopware and Magento require merchants to have some technical or coding skills when operating. If you prefer running your business in Europe, Shopware will be a good choice for you. Or if you are having a medium to large business, Magento will provide more remarkable ease of use.
eCommerce Features
Shopware
Shopware has been excelling in the eCommerce industry for 18 years because of its impressive features. Let’s take an in-depth look at what Shopware offers:
Product management
To enhance customer experience, you will need to provide all of the details about the products you sell clearly, fully, and consistently. Therefore, effective product management is the only ideal solution.
The product setup in Shopware is clear and simple, so you can create variants along with their different prices and images. A merchandising capability will let you set rules based on the set of criteria for attributes. For instance, 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 stream
Customer stream in the Shopware system can help you make criteria. This can include gender or the amount spent to allow automation. For example, you can set up a customer stream filter for customers below 5 years old who have made a purchase in your store under $20,000.
One more outstanding feature is that new users who meet the requirements will also appear automatically in your customer stream. With these established criteria, you can assign marketing newsletters and promotions that fit the target audience.
Shopping world
The shopping world is the most innovative feature of Shopware for promoting your products. This solution enables non-tech store owners to create landing pages, and visually edit content on categories and other types of pages. The shopping world uses the drag-and-drop function for products, blog posts, video guides, and banners. This feature also helps brands build a higher level of engagement with new and existing customers.
Shopware also offers a built-in blog with all core blogging features, such as user management, digital publishing, media management, and an easy theme system.
Magento
With the price Magento requires, the eCommerce feature list is endless. Let’s have a closer look at some of the outstanding features that you shouldn’t miss:
Inventory management
Inventory management features are supported by the Community Engineering efforts of the Multi Source Inventory (MSI) project. MSI gives you the tools to control your product inventory.
Merchants with a single store to multiple warehouses, pickup locations, drop shippers, and more can use these features to maintain quantity for sales and handle shipments to complete orders. You can track your inventory quantities, provide accurate in-stock products and ship according to manual selections.
Furthermore, the platform processes long-running B2B shared catalog updates in the background while you’re working on other administrative tasks.
Report & Analysis
Magento gives you a chance to access a suite of dynamic reports from your products, orders, and customer data, with a personalized dashboard. This feature is well-adjusted to your business needs.
Magento will collect data and send information to Magento Business Intelligence (MBI) for analytics without having an MBI account to use.
Check-out & Payment
The checkout options control a number of attributes for the checkout page, including the layout. There are configurations to place constraints on checkout, including allowing guest checkout and enforcing a terms and conditions agreement.
After the checkout process, the customer chooses the payment method and applies any coupons with promotion codes to the purchase. They can also review and edit any information if needed.
When it comes to eCommerce features, people say that BigCommerce is always ahead of the competition. Does this still apply in this case? Take a look at our BigCommerce vs Magento comparison for more information.
SEO & Marketing
Shopware
Regarding SEO & Marketing, Shopware SEO configuration provides a solid basis for effective Google ranking. It also offers powerful features for sales promotion. Furthermore, all SEO settings are configured automatically but can be modified if needed.
One such feature is “Storytelling” – it gives your store a chance to become authentic and unique. This emotional catalyst will boost the shopping experience. After clicking or touching on any product’s image, the customer will get further details of items connected to the image. This engaging approach creates an enjoyable buying experience and contributes to exceptional usability.
Shopware also provides users with SEO plugins to boost the traffic and conversion. Let’s take SEO professional plugin (€249.00) as a typical example – this plugin combines a large number of SEO settings/optimization.
Magento
Meanwhile, Magento offers merchants a rich set of several features that helps maintain relationships with shoppers as well as get more traffic. While using Magento, you can create multiple coupons for specific online stores. For example, you can export the coupon codes for email, newsletters for marketing campaigns.
Furthermore, another superior marketing feature that Magento offers is reward points. The aim is to encourage customers to come back to your store and buy more to get rewards.
In fact, Magento has different marketing features based on the plan you choose. Magento Commerce and Magento Commerce Cloud are currently having the most features. Luckily, for those who use Magento Open Source, there is always a SEO & Marketing plugin in the Magento Marketplace to install and extend the possibilities.
Up to now, there are 469 marketing plugins from many developers around the world. The price ranges from free to $999. Therefore, you can either choose a free or a priced plugin depending on your needs.
SEO Suite Ultimate ($299.00) is highly recommended because of its rich features. The toolkit perfectly handles a wide range of on-page SEO activities from weeding out duplicate content/ enhancing site indexation to optimizing any type of URL and the metadata. This extension also comes with advanced HTML and XML sitemaps, cross-linking, SEO redirects, and advanced rich snippet functionality.
When it comes to SEO & Marketing features, Magento seems to outweigh Shopware. If you want to enjoy those striking features, you can move to Magento with LitExtension.
Apps and Extension
Both platforms allow users to develop modules or extensions for their store. These extensions can be free or priced. As a result, the functionality of both platforms is fairly extensive.
Shopware
Shopware has a large community in German-speaking countries and there are many modules and plugins available on the Shopware marketplace that are only possible in Germany.
A main disadvantage of Shopware extensions is that it is in German only for quite a long time. Accordingly, it’s understandable that some extensions are only available in German. For now, Shopware is more Europe-oriented, so if you need a plugin for a specific payment system or an inventory provider, you will probably not always find a good one. This is the most critical factor that merchants should be aware of when using Shopware.
Currently, Shopware is offering more than 3,500 modules. Plus, all the extensions are from trained Shopware developers with approved quality. The price is fairly affordable which is from €0,00 to € 7,990.00. With thousands of extensions, the categorization is a mixed bag of 20 different aspects such as B2B extensions, Checkout process, tools for selling internationally, evaluation & analysis and far more.
Magento
It is noticeable that Magento 2 is growing and improving dynamically. However, many Magento 1 modules are not compatible or available in Magento 2. Before Magento 2, many merchants realized that modules accessing the same data could create conflicts. Since Magento 2 becomes less troublesome to install and use modules, these conflicts will be less likely to happen.
Up to now, Magento is having 3,400+ extensions with 9 big categories such as Accounting & Finance, Content & Customization, Marketing, Payments & Security and more. Similar to Shopware, Magento also has free and priced extensions for users to choose from. Beside the free extensions, the price for the rest ranges from $40 – $10,000 or even higher depending on the value you need.
Support
Shopware
Shopware’s customer support comes at a monthly cost and hence its quality is reasonable. The support offers a technical account manager for general inquiries and Shopware related issues.
Shopware builds its own forum that is available in German only. As a result, users that don’t speak the language will find this overwhelming. Shopware has an academy with live training, webinars and certifications.
Magento
Those who haven’t used Magento may expect the customer support to be one of the most perfect systems among eCommerce platforms. However, this platform doesn’t have live chat, phone, or email support for merchants. Unless you register for the Magento Commerce Cloud, you will possibly deal with technical problems yourself.
Luckily, Magento also offers blogs, forums with informative and knowledge-based tips or reviews. Otherwise, seeking help from other merchants is also a meaningful way to enhance your knowledge about how things work.
The battle of Shopware vs Magento in terms of customer support already has an obvious result. Shopware definitely outweighs Magento because of its dedicated support system.
Conclusion
We hope that this article will help you choose a suitable solution for your business. This two robust open-source platforms give access to a range of unique features, allowing entrepreneurs to manage their businesses more effectively.
Between Shopware vs Magento, Shopware is more likely to match the demands of small to medium business owners, considering that it is easier and more affordable to run and navigate. On the other hand, Magento (Adobe Commerce) would be a perfect solution for those who are willing to spend more money and expand their business with lots of eCommerce features. At the same time, its complication may be quite challenging even for skillful developers, since getting the idea of its operation may take a long time.
In order to keep up with the times and become a successful business owner, you have to snatch every possible opportunity. In case you want to migrate from Shopware to Magento (Shopware to Adobe Commerce) or vice versa, LitExtension – #1 Shopping Cart Migration Expert is here to assist you! We are proud to be the world-leading cart to cart migration service which has 11 years of experience. With the automated migration tool, we can assure you that all your data will be transferred speedily, securely and accurately. We do offer the Demo migration for you to get a picture of the process with 3 simple steps.
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