Shopware vs Magento: a comparison

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Shopware vs Magento: a comparison

Shopware vs magento 2

Shopware is generally easier to use than Magento. Complex web shops with many requirements should better turn to Magento. Shopware particularly excels in B2C, while Magento also has a strong focus on B2B. Both have a large community and a large set of marketing tools.

With more than 80,000 customers and the release of version 6.0, Shopware is going strong. In the meantime, Shopware has become a formidable competitor of the more famous content management system Magento. What are the differences between both platforms? In this article, we will take a closer look at this.

	Shopware	Magento
Usability	Easy to use: Setting up as well as maintaining the shop is easy to do.	More complex to use. Due to the power and extended set of features, it is useful to hire a Magento developer.
Costs	Relatively cheap and transparent prices.	More expensive and sometimes a custom price.
Support & community	40,000 community members. Free and paid support.	100,000 community members. One of the biggest developer communities in the world.
Functionality	B2C functionalities are great. A smaller set of extensions available.	Strong at B2C and B2B and an enormous database of extensions available.
Marketing tools	Well organized with the focus on storytelling and creation of landing pages. Standard SEO is covered well.	Very extensive (shipping, coupons, automation, etc.). Provided with endless extensions that can be installed. Standard SEO is covered well as well.

1. Usability: Shopware vs Magento

Shopware characterizes itself by the easy-to-use admin environment. This environment is not only flexible, but also easy to manage. It ensures that less technical people can use the system as well.

The Shopware environment is flexible, but also simple to manage.

It does not mean Magento is really hard to use. For a system with that many functionalities, it is easy to use, especially after the release of Magento 2. However, due to the powerful and numerous tools, it will take some more time to learn how to use Magento compared to Shopware.

Regarding the development of the webshop, for Shopware you need less technical knowledge than for Magento. However, if you hire a developer, this can help a lot.

2. Costs: Shopware vs Magento

The entry versions of both platforms are free of charge. When you want more functionality and features there are upgraded plans available. The costs of these plans vary and we did our best to display them beneath.

As you can see, the entry for relatively small shops is easier at Shopware regarding the costs. The prices of Shopware are way more transparent as you only pay a one-off fee, while the costs of Magento are dependent on the turnover. The more sales you get, the more you have to pay: above $1 million you will come to another tier.

3. Support & Community: Shopware vs Magento

The Shopware community consists of more than 40,000 members around the world, and is the fastest-growing of all e-commerce platforms. You can get free support from the forum, the developer guide or make use of paid plans to be sure you are always up to date.

At Magento, you make use of an even bigger community. With more than 100,000 members, Magento has one of the biggest communities for developers.

This makes it easier to find bugs or other problems within the forum, as someone else has probably ever faced this problem already.

This way, you will find a suitable solution quickly.

4. Functionalities: Shopware vs Magento

We can be clear when it comes to functionalities: Magento offers a wider range of functionalities than Shopware. It does not have to mean Shopware is a bad choice, because you might not use that manu functionalities of Magento for your webshop.

Shopware is known for its unique functionalities for B2C as the deploy of storytelling, digital publishing, focus on customer experience and drag and drop functionalities.

But Magento as well has a good track record for B2C and has the advantage it is also successful in the B2B-segment. Due to Adobe’s acquisition in 2018, it seems like the platform wants to deploy automation, marketing and analytics.

That being said, the extended support of price rules, discounts and coupons is a strength of Magento even as the extensive roles- and rights system for the backend. In comparison to Shopware, where the roles- and rights system is pretty flat.

5. Marketing tools: Shopware vs Magento

What is a good online store without extensive marketing tools? Nothing, because a product does not sell itself. That’s why both platforms put a lot of effort into it.

As described above, Shopware has some nice USPs with storytelling and digital publishing. Marketeers can be happy as they can create and manage marketing campaigns independently, without any technical knowledge.

These campaigns exist of banners, product streams, integrated blog pages and all with easy editing options like drag & drop.

At the moment, for Magento users it is a bit more complicated to create campaigns independently. It is possible, however a couple of extra widgets or plugins are needed. The advantage is that the Magento community has you covered.

Regarding SEO, both platforms do not differ much. In fact, they are doing a great job on SEO. Titles, Meta descriptions, logical standard site structure, canonical tags, 301 managers and so on. These are all standard at Shopware and Magento.