What is Shopware and why is it so popular?

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Shopware
What is Shopware and why is it so popular?

Shopware is working incredibly hard, and that's not without reason. The German e-commerce platform, which has been fully open source since 2016, is gaining more and more market share in Europe and the number of active installations is also increasing enormously in the Netherlands.

But why is Shopware so popular and why is it here to stay?

What is Shopware?

Shopware is a german open-source platform that focuses on the stimulation of customer experience. Shopware was established in 2000, and in the meantime, they have more than 80,000 happy customers.

The great thing about Shopware is that the software is developed by the people who use it. As a result, the quality of the software is not only very high, but also meets the highest requirements in terms of design and technology.

The owners themselves have the mission that every Shopware shop has a personalized look, of which storytelling is an important part.

With the release of Shopware 5.5, the German e-commerce platform tries to get more emotional and attractive webshop-experience which has to ensure they keep in front of the competitors.

Shopware has contracted a couple of big brands like Discovery Channel, L’oreal, Aston Martin, Borussia Dortmund and the Dutch-famous child clothing brand Vingino.

Shopware is available in the following editions:

Community Edition
Professional Edition
Professional Plus Edition
Enterprise Edition

What are the advantages of Shopware?

The enormous rise of Shopware has of course to do with the many advantages that the platform offers. Shopware comes standard with some cool functionalities.

Extended content management possibilities (CMS)

Shopware's CMS is called 'Shopping Worlds' and that is not without reason. With Shopping Worlds you can create very flexible content / pages without the need for additional technical support.

The freedom you have in the backend of Shopping Worlds is unique. With expressive images and relevant content you create a story and ensure that you can easily respond to the emotional aspects of online shopping in a flexible way.

Drag & Drop designs

Complex components such as products, banners, content and product blocks, rich media and more can be dragged to create customized layouts.

This drag & drop functionality will be used to create pages in Shopping World.

Shopware is multi-store

Just like its major competitor Magento, Shopware also has the ability to manage multiple stores under one roof.

Product and catalog management is super easy.

Due to the available extensive and flexible tools of Shopware, it is super easy to manage products and your catalog.

The fact that you can create so-called product streams is also a nice feature. Product streams respond to the shopping behavior of the visitor and provide a personalized experience.

You can create product groups by filtering on brand, price, manufacturer and reviews. When visitors select the right filters, they can see a personalized product stream.

Extensive Marketing functionalities

There are many additional marketing functionalities available on the platform besides product streams. For example, there is an option to segment customers via Customer Streams based on their interests or previously shown shopping behavior.

Digital Publishing enables you to create beautiful banners you can provide with buttons and text.

Another nice marketing tool is the loyalty program. Customers can collect points with every purchase. These points can be redeemed for a nice discount or other bonus.

High extent of scalability

Due to inbuilt-tooling, it is easy for developers to increase performance and scalability.

Integrated ERP solution

Shopware has rigged a nice integration with Pickware in the Professional and Professional Plus editions. Pickware is an ERP-solution that enables the connection between the checkout system and warehouse management, for example, stock management.

Search-engine friendly

Shopware is SEO-optimized. It offers the possibility to create SEO-friendly URLs, adapt meta titles and descriptions, use Rich Snippets, has an inbuilt sitemap and you can easily work with redirects and canonicals.

It goes too far to list all the benefits of Shopware here. The fact is that Shopware has all the latest gadgets and the open source community is constantly working on improvements and extensions.

What are the disadvantages of Shopware?

Where every platform has its advantages, it naturally also has its disadvantages. And that is no different with Shopware.

Leading time

The development of a Shopware shop is a lot higher than, for example, a WooCommerce shop. This is because Shopware is much more extensive and thus entails more complexity in the setup phase.

Limited options for international tax and excise duties rules

For such a major player and in the current time when more and more web shops are going international, it is striking that Shopware does not have this completely in order yet. It has no ready-made setups for these rules and you have to configure it yourself.

The major competitor Magento, for example, has done this much better.

High server requirements

Due to the flexibility and high performance of Shopware, you will need more than just a simple hosting plan. Shopware requires serious server power and you need to keep in mind that this is an investment as well.