Magento has dominated the e-commerce landscape for years, and it is not likely to change anytime soon. The Magento eCommerce platform offers a wide range of features and proved to be a great choice for large projects. Shopware is a leading eCommerce PHP-based platform for creating modern and easy-to-use eCommerce shops for small and medium-sized businesses. Both are open-source and CMS-based eCommerce platforms having lots of features in common. With both Magento and Shopware, you will get countless customization opportunities to scale your business as it grows. Both platforms have a large community and many store owners worldwide. When it comes to choosing between Shopware 6 & Magento 2, it’s something where you get stuck. Well, in this blog, you will make a comparison between Magento 2 vs Shopware 6 and let you decide to choose the right eCommerce platform for your online business.
Before comparing the functionality of Shopware 6 and Magento 2, it’s very important to know each of them separately first.
About Magento 2
Magento 2 is the most powerful eCommerce platform, used by over 200,000 online retailers worldwide. It is estimated that one in four businesses use Magento software.
Magento is best known for its flexibility, usability, and scalability to scale businesses as they grow. The Magento has two additions, namely Magento open-source and Magento commerce.
Magento Open Source: This is a free version of Magento that is used by most companies. A variety of extensions are available for the open-source version.
Magento Commerce: A paid version of Magento starting from an annual fee of 22,000 euros and more depending on the turnover generated via the website. This version comes with various extensive promotional options and the standard B2B suite.
About Shopware 6
Shopware is an e-commerce platform founded in 2000 in Germany. Shopware is most popular in Germany but is rapidly gaining market share in other European countries.
Shopware6 provides complete flexibility for businesses to grow in various versions for both the B2B and the B2C markets. The latest Shopware 6 is available in the following version:
Open source: This is a free version of Shopware.
Professional Edition: This is a paid version of Shopware in which you will have to pay a one-time license fee of 2495 euros. The profession edition comes with more extensive functionalities as compared to the open-source version, including custom products and a more extensive CMS.
Enterprise Edition: The enterprise edition of Shopware offers various extensive functionalities, including the B2B suite, and advanced search functionality. The price of the Enterprise edition is available on request. We will now compare other key features between Shopware 6 and Magento 2 so you can decide which one to use for your web store.
Shopware 6 vs Magento 2: Which is Better
Hosting requirements
In general, hosting Shopware is more straightforward. Magento, on the other hand, is much more complex and has many more moving parts. Shopware is compatible with MySQL and Elasticsearch. Although running on only MySQL is not recommended, you can still use that option.
In contrast, the latest Magento 2.4 mandates the use of Elasticsearch. You would require APCu PHP in Shopware, while in Magento, there are no such requirements. Varnish is a built-in feature of Magento 2, so it can be activated without any external modules, which is one of the greatest features of Magento 2. Whereas you will get an integrated Varnish feature only in the enterprise edition.
Functionalities
If we talk about the standard functionalities, we can see Magento 2 offers more standard functionalities for your business. Having more is not always better, it is very important to know what functionalities are needed based on your business.
When it comes to Shopware, it offers full flexibility with the possibility to adjust the entire look & feel of the website for the site owner. Thus, Shopware comes with an intuitive and easy-to-use admin panel, which can easily be managed even by a non-technical person.
The free version of Shopware already has various “drag & drop options” and customizable features. In Magento 2, you will gain more flexibility regarding the product types, price rules, promotions, and the way you work with roles and rights within the system.
Ease of use of the system
Shopware 6 comes with an easy-to-use, intuitive, and manageable admin in comparison to Magento 2. That’s because the platform has limited functionalities and therefore is transparent. Apart from that, it comes with a visual editor, which makes it easy for the site owner to change or adjust the look and feel of their website as compared to Magento.
On the other hand, Magento is capable of managing and adjusting product features in the management environment.
Scalability and flexibility
Shopware vs Magento offers more features and more opportunities to grow within their platforms. The platforms can be customized to meet new requirements and can be enhanced with extensions and plugins. Magento is more scalable and flexible as it is more focused on international web stores due to its more extensive VAT structure and currency options. Here Magento wins by its exceptional features that you can’t find anywhere else in Shopware.
Extensions and community
As you know both Magento 2 and Shopware 6 are open sources, which means you can extend the functionalities that are not available as standard. This is a huge plus for both eCommerce platforms as the customization can’t be made immediately, but you can fulfill these custom requirements by adding new extensions or plugins to your web store.
If we talk about the community support of both eCommerce platforms, Magento again wins here as it has a bigger community of certified Magento developers than the Shopware community. The main reason behind this is that Magento is more focused on worldwide markets, while Shopware only focuses on the European market. Though there are many plugins and improved functionalities that are added in the latest version of Shopware 6.4.0.0.
Another thing is that Shopware has just launched and there are many plugins and features to come soon. Because of this, Shopware has fewer extensions and plug-ins than Magento 2.
Performance and security
Both Magento 2 and Shopware 6 are best known for robust security. But, Magento has more flexibility and a lot of options one can take to scale up in terms of performance and security.
Still, there is no such information available that makes it risky to use any of these platforms for any developer or site owner. In fact, there’s no issue with using any of the eCommerce platforms as both platforms are designed with a focus on top-level security and performance.
Both Shopware vs Magento use Varnish caching and enable the merging of JS and CSS files with compression. With the Shopware eCommerce platform, you will get a slightly slower speed because of its marketing & shopping worlds tool that is made to run after the page is loaded completely.
To make you sure that it’s a very slight difference in the time, comparing its prices and functionality, both platforms score well in security and performance.
Ownership cost
The ownership cost is the total cost spent while developing a web store using the platform. The ownership cost includes the costs of development, management, implementation, updates, and maintenance.
Considering the development and implementation cost alone can’t help you determine the total cost of a website, but it requires some improvements, maintenance, support, and updates after the development.
As Shopware has limited functionality with an easy-to-use and manageable admin system, the cost of implementation and maintenance would be significantly lower than Magento 2.
While Magento has thousands of features and functionalities with tons of free and premium Magento extensions, the cost of implementation and maintenance is pretty high in Magento 2. Therefore, Shopware is best suitable for small and medium-sized businesses.
Shopware 6 vs Magento 2: Which one is better for your business
Choosing the right eCommerce platform mainly depends on your business, the number of products & services, the global presence, and targeted customers. If you have a small or medium business, then Shopware is the best choice to get started with, but if you have a large enterprise with uncountable products and global reach, then Magento is the right eCommerce platform to go.
In short, both eCommerce platforms are good and have lots of possibilities to scale as you grow. Before you decide on choosing any of them, first consider your business requirements.
Try to evaluate what features and functionalities suit better for your business and once analyzed, you may go ahead. Keep in mind, that the best platform is one that suits all your business needs and requirements in a better way.
If you still can’t decide which one to choose between Magento 2 and Shopware 6, feel free to get in touch with our experts.
