Magento vs Shopware: detailed comparison of the shop systems

There are so many options for developing an online shop that it can be confusing to decide on a particular platform, like a simple trip to the market. For example, if you want to buy ingredients for a cake and go without a list when you see a variety of products in the supermarket, you may not be able to choose the ones that best suit your goals. On the other hand, if you have a list of specific products at hand, you won't have any doubts and waste your precious time comparing products. You already know exactly what you need to buy, and a study conducted by Builtwith to compare e-commerce platforms shows that Magento e-commerce is one of the most popular e-commerce systems on the Internet. But in recent years, Shopware is gaining extreme popularity.Shopware and Magento - both are exceptional in terms of usable features and extremely popular. It is not easy to choose the best one, and comparing the features of each platform can create a lot of confusion in your mind without having the slightest idea which one you should choose for your website.

Magento shop system at a glance

Magento is the best-known e-commerce platform, certainly in terms of self-hosted solutions. Every year, Magento handles a gross merchandise volume of over 100 billion US dollars, and there are many advantages to using Magento for your online shop. In addition to the exclusive features for a software that focuses entirely on e-commerce sales, it has significant differences from other platforms. It has one of the best security and SEO technologies among all e-commerce platforms.

Advantages of Magento:

• All-in-one e-commerce solution with countless functions
• Flexible customisability and expandability
• Multishop and multilingual capability
• Extensive marketing, promotion and social commerce features
• High Usability
• Self-hosting on any PHP hosting
• The developers to customise your online shop are easy to find
• The software is free to start
• Widely used and well-known platform
• An active community
• Highly scalable

In addition to the features pre-installed on the platform, Magento has a marketplace full of paid or free modules to extend the functionality and fulfil your requirements. Modules for shipping, payments, billing methods or various marketing extensions can be purchased to promote your products and content more dynamically.a big advantage of Magento e-commerce is that the standard theme of the platform has already been well developed and worked on. However, if you want to change the look of your website, there are several themes to choose from on the Magento Marketplace, whether for a fee or for free.

Those: BuiltWith https://trends.builtwith.com/shop/Magento

*Explanation of the scheme: TOP 10K, 100K, 1m - means: TOP of websites by traffic, so among the 100K most popular websites, for example, Magento-based websites in 2022 took about 1750. Among the TOP 1m in the same year - about 8750.

The most important Magento functions at a glance:

• Inventory management
• Processing of shipping costs
• Voucher management
• Multiple payment options
• API for web services
• Optimised for mobile phones and tablets
• Built-in SEO functions
• Customer groups
• Newsletter management
• Marketing tools
• Order processing
• Customer service
• Integrated payment methods and shipping methods. You can read more about this in ourArtikel.

Magento is more business orientated. It offers a free Community Edition, which is very powerful, and an Enterprise Edition for large companies.The Community Edition of Magento is open source and can be used by anyone for free, so your only costs depend on your current hosting provider. If you opt for the Enterprise Edition, on the other hand, you'll have to shell out some money. In our article "Costs for creating and supporting Magento online shops" you can read more about the costs of this shop system. The Magento shop solution is mainly used by large retailers such as Samsung and Nespresso as well as countless small and medium-sized e-commerce companies.

Shopware shop system at a glance

Shopware is the leading e-commerce platform in Germany and is making great strides in the global market. It is a modular online shop system with over 91,000 customers worldwide that was first released as open source software in 2004. In February 2022, Shopware AG took a significant step in its strategic development and entered into a partnership with the two renowned investors Carlyle and PayPal. Shopware is also very actively tapping into the English-speaking market and has a very good chance of becoming the most widely used e-commerce software.

Source: BuiltWith https://trends.builtwith.com/shop/Shopware

Explanation of the scheme: TOP 10K, 100K, 1m - bedeutet: TOP der Websites dem Traffic nach, also unter den beispielsweise 100K populärsten Websites nahmen die auf Shopware basierten Websites im Jahr 2021 fast 125. Unter den TOP 1m in demselben Jahr - über 1000.

Here is an overview of some of the advantages:

• Over 55,000 satisfied customers, the system is precisely customised to the needs and requirements of the German market.
• Clear and easy-to-use backend
• Viele responsive Templates
• Shopping worlds
• Integrated blog
• Intuitive and clear structure in the front end
• Affiliate and voucher system
• Effective Google ranking
• Multi-shop and multi-language capable
• Product variants, stock levels, availability status and prices can be adapted or added flexibly and quickly.
• Integrated payment methods and shipping methods. You can read more about this in ourArtikel.
• Numerous plugins in the Shopware Store that extend the shop functionality. You can read more about this in our article „The most popular plugins for Shopware 6 at a glance“.
• From version Shopware 6 Professional Edition (also Shopware Cloud and Enterprise), there are options for designing customised products - this is possible with the Premium extension„Custom Products“ which is available in the Shopware Store. In our article„The Shopware product configurator is an indispensable tool for your online shop“ to find out about further options for a product configurator.

The following Shopware editions are available:

• Shopware Community Edition (kostenlos)
• Shopware Rise
• Shopware Evolve
• Shopware Beyond

We have created an article "Costs for the creation and support of Shopware 6 shops" with a comparison of prices. If you are interested in a B2B shop with Shopware, we recommend our article "Shopware 6 B2B - the solution for your company" As Magento is equipped with numerous functions, the use of this software is quite complicated. If you are not technically minded, using Magento may not be user-friendly for you. The Magento interface is complex as it contains thousands of different settings. The Magento development and customisation can present real difficulties. Shopware is much simpler in this sense. It also has better performance:If you already have an online shop based on Magento and are thinking of migrating to Shopware, we recommend our article "Advantages of migrating from Magento to Shopware". Here we have compared the two systems in detail.

Our e-commerce web agency has been dealing with various e-commerce software solutions for years. As one of the leading shopware development agencies, we offer a comprehensive service - from the initial consultation to ongoing support. Our Shopware programmers are competent and offer first-class solutions. Our references tell you more about us.

Magento or Shopware? The most important differences at a glance

When starting out in e-commerce, you always come up against one question: Which shop system would be better? In our article, we explain the features and strengths of both e-commerce platforms in detail. We compare them according to certain criteria. This will help you make the right choice and understand why we at Kenner Soft favour Shopware.

Technical requirements

The same programming language and the same basic software are used for both systems. There are some differences between Magento and Shopware in terms of the frameworks used and other points.

Magento

Dhis shop system is written in PHP and uses MySQL as a database. Symfony and Laminas components are used for the PHP code. As far as the front end is concerned, the layout is composed of blocks. Their arrangement on the website and the structure are defined by XML files. Thanks to the modular architecture, each functionality can be implemented separately. This makes Magento easy to customise and expand. The CSS code with LESS is used for the design and layout of the websites. The dynamic behaviour is made possible by JavaScript frameworks Knockout.js and RequireJS. Elasticsearch is used as the search engine. Caching is done with the help of Varnish and Redis.

Shopware

Shopware 6 is based on PHP and uses MySQL as a database. It uses the Symfony base. Twig and Bootstrap are used in the frontend. Twig.js and vue.js are used in the admin panel. As Shopware follows an API-first approach, external systems can be integrated without any problems. Shopware 6 does not have any encrypted modules or source code components, and both Shopware and Magento use Elasticsearch for search. Redis and Varnish are used for caching.

Performance

This is a decisive factor for the success of any shop. Particular attention is paid to loading times, as these are achieved through higher performance. Shorter loading times contribute to higher sales and conversion rates. To increase the performance of both shop systems, images, CSS and JavaScript are compressed. The comparison of Magento 2 vs Shopware 6 shows higher Shopware score results than Magento, and it is fair to say that the platforms mentioned are reliable. However, performance is heavily dependent on setup and maintenance.

Support for

Both Magento and Shopware offer official vendor support for paid plans. For Community Edition, users have free access to community resources. You can ask questions in forums and get answers there. However, it is important to note that the resources for Magento are only available in English. Shopware has an advantage in this regard because it provides German-language documentation and training.

Magento

The Shopware vs Magento comparison highlights the strengths and advantages of each shop system. The community content for Magento users includes some tools and features as well as recommendations from the manufacturer. For developers, there is an official Developer Guide, the Developer Portal, Slack Channels and a Stack Exchange area. You can also get good help for Magento from YouTube channels, various websites and paid courses, and those who have selected versions of Adobe Commerce that are subject to licence fees will receive official support from the manufacturer. Detailed information can be found on Magento's blog and social media channels. If updates are required or other support issues arise, our Magento 2 agency will be happy to assist you.

Shopware

Compared to Magento, Shopware is German-speaking and is gradually gaining a good reputation worldwide. Users can find the information they need in the community forum. There are also other resources such as user manuals, training courses or webinars. Developers can find specialised documentation and training on the official website, and manufacturer support is offered especially for paid plans. Shopware provides technical support, which covers shop setup and help with the operation of the frontend and backend. The response times are defined according to the support contract booked. You can arrange a callback for certain support packages or receive developer support. Various support contracts also offer "emergency support". This allows you to receive technical help outside of regular support hours. Shopware partners and several professional Shopware agencies also offer good support.

Functional diversity

When comparing Magento vs Shopware in this respect, it is fair to say that these systems offer a wide range of standard functions. If you want to expand your own webshop, you can think about integrating ERP system with Shopware.

Magento

Magento was initially recognised for its wide range of functions and has established itself as a perfect e-commerce system. It later turned out that incomplete or sub-optimal implementations do not require any changes to the Magento standard. Then you have to turn to an agency that specialises in this.

Some core features (multi-warehouse capability, AI-supported search) have been offered as extensions decoupled from the core since the Adobe takeover. They can be integrated into the project code and operated on the shop server or run as SaaS solutions in Adobe's cloud infrastructure. Adobe offers new, forward-looking enterprise-ready solutions. The powerful CMS editor "Page Builder" is available for both Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce. It is therefore fair to say that Magento's feature set is similar to Shopware's worlds of experience.

Shopware

It is well known that Shopware is characterised by the following functions such as "Rule Builder" and "Flow Builder". This allows you to create filter rules and specific workflows directly in the admin area. Shopware 6 offers flexibility and sufficient capabilities as well as an easy to use user interface, has compatibility with all operating systems and browsers. You can open several menu elements at the same time without having to reload the page. This allows you to save time with Shopware compared to Magento. If you opt for Shopware Magento Migration, it can be carried out by Kenner Soft at any time.

Shopware 6 vs Magento 2: das Wichtigste in Kürze

Although both e-commerce platforms are powerful and are used to build online shops, it is important to consider their capabilities. Everyone chooses the option that suits their needs, requirements and budget. To help you choose Shopware or Magento, we have compared the shop systems according to criteria in a table (including Magento vs Shopware costs).

Hopefully you will make the right decision with the help of the above information on Shopware and Magento. If you choose Shopware, Kenner Soft Service GmbH can help you with the creation and support of your online shop as well as with Shopware Performance Optimisation.